Filippo Finazzi

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Filippo Finazzi (born July 7, 1705 in Gorlago , † April 22, 1776 in Bargfeld-Rögen ) was an Italian opera singer ( castrato , soprano), composer and conductor .

Life

Filippo Finazzi was the son of the lawyer Antonio Sergio Finazzi and his wife Luzia. He was baptized and raised a Catholic, but converted to Protestantism at the age of 50. He was married to Anna Gerdrut Geerkens (1729–1781).

Musical career

Finazzi attended elementary school until 1715 and grammar school in Brescia until 1721 . As a male soprano (treble castrato) he traveled to the Duchy of Milan to study music there. In 1723 he went to Rome , 1724 to Naples , from there to Rome in 1726 and to Venice in 1728 , the three cities with the most important music schools at the time. During the carnivals and in the autumn of 1726 to 1732 he sang in the theaters of Sant'Angelo and Teatro San Cassiano in Venice in various roles in operas, for example by Antonio Vivaldi and Francesco Brusa (1700-1768).

After the theater entrepreneur Santo Burigotti took over the management of the Breslauer Ballhaus, in autumn 1728 he brought Finazzi, who was already sensational because of his high voice, to Breslau , where Finazzi performed in various roles until August 1730. Finazzi left the Breslau Opera in 1731 because of the catastrophic financial circumstances, returned to his fatherland and went to Bologna that same year , where he stayed at the academy. In Bologna he received the call to come to the court of the Duke of Modena as Kapellmeister . In between he sang again at the Teatro Sant'Angelo in Venice in 1732 during Carnival time. In 1737 he jumped three evenings at the Teatro Malvezzi in Bologna in Leonardo Leo's opera Siface for the famous castrato Felice Salimbeni (1712-1851) and received a fee of 105 lire. Finazzi stayed in Modena between 1733 and 1739 until 1741. Here, too, he appeared in the Carnival in the Teatro Molza in the operas Artaserse (by Giovanni Adolfo Hasse and Paolo Scalabrini ; performance: 1739) and Il Bajazette as "Virtuoso al servizio di Son Altesse Serenissimus".

Military service

In 1733, at the beginning of the War of the Polish Succession , he asked the Duke of Modena to be released in order to go into military service under the King of Sardinia. From 1741 to 1743, during the War of the Austrian Succession (1741–48), he served as a soldier in royal Spanish service and received the position of Rittmeister with a newly established hussar regiment . After the defeat of the Spanish army on February 8, 1743 near Campo Santo, northeast of Modena on the left bank of the Panaro, he was taken prisoner by Austria and came to Germany after his release.

Opera career in Europe

After his dismissal, Finazzi resumed his work as an opera singer and traveled with Pietro Mingotti's opera troupe and his rich fund of baroque type decorations across Europe. The troupe made guest appearances in Linz in the summer of 1743 in the Ballhaus on the occasion of the hereditary homage to Maria Theresa , in Prague in 1743/44 in the Theater an der Kotzen , in Leipzig in 1744 in the New Theater (in the Reithaus am Rannischer Thore) and in Hamburg 1743–46 with interruptions in the Theater am Gänsemarkt . The Danish Crown Prince, later Frederick V , attended the performance of the two operas Venceslao and Artaserse , in which Finazzi sang Casimirus and Artaserse, with his wife, the English Crown Princess Louise, in November 1743 . Finazzi composed the opera Adelaide in 1744 and worked in Leipzig as an “operiste” and “entrepreneur”.

Composer and orchestra leader

Finazzi obviously left Mingotti's troupe in 1745 and finally stayed in Hamburg, where he sang until 1747, composed operas until 1748, Il Temistocle and La pace campestre in 1746 and 1748 , and dedicated 6 symphonies to Duke Friedrich Karl von Holstein-Plön in 1754 . Finazzi set to music a number of songs by his long-time friend, the Hamburg rococo poet Friedrich von Hagedorn , who used ancient, French and English models and made himself known through fables and stories and anacreontic odes and songs. Hagedorn was responsible for the text for the Hamburg adaptation of Il Tempio di Melpomene, su le rive dell'Alstra . Hagedorn mentions Finazzi in 1744 in the didactic poem Der Schwätzer , which is based on the satire of Horace : "Ibam forte via sacra, sicut meus mos est" (Lib. II, 2), in which he has the boasters and babblers at the line: "... Invideat, quod et Hermogenes, ego canto ”lets say ironically in free translation:“ Finazzi sings well: but I can sing better ”.

Finazzi lived in Hamburg until 1754, studied music and studied the French and Italian languages. He worked as a singing teacher "entertained on a very decent footing, as he was well suffered in the aristocratic as well as the most respected bourgeois houses and had free access". His "altruism and justice" as well as "his good character, his insights and erudition contributed not a little to his happy and enjoyable life". Even after moving to Jersbek, he stayed in Hamburg in winter, “where he found the opportunity to continue his information”.

Retirement

House of the provost of Uetersen

The art-loving Benedikt von Ahlefeldt , Uetersener monastery provost and until 1754 squire of Jersbek , had met and appreciated Finazzi in Hamburg. Finazzi was a guest in Jersbek, where operas and concerts were performed in the garden house, for which an Italian music band was supposedly held or rented. Finazzi conducted 10 musicians and 8 singers from Hamburg at the inauguration of the Uetersen monastery church on the 2nd Advent, December 7th, 1749, for a fee of 147 Reichstaler.

In 1755 Finazzi moved into his own house, which was built by the builder Jasper Carstens near Jersbek. This later became known as "Lombardy". He cultivated the land belonging to it and reclaimed the previously undeveloped fields with a total size of around 16.5 hectares. Finazzi quickly discovered that the household was in poor shape due to the daily work outside the house. In 1757, when he was 52, he met the widow Anna Gerdrut Steinmatz, who was only 28 years old. When he broke both legs in 1758, she took care of him and cared for him. Since she was unable to take care of a three-year-old son, she moved in with Finazzi and ran the household. In 1755 Finazzi converted and was accepted into the community of the Lutheran Church by Pastor Johann Christian Wendisch. However, when he wanted to get married in 1761, the same pastor in Sülfeld refused to give him his blessing. Finazzi turned to the Syndicus and later mayor of the city of Hamburg, Nikolaus Schuback , with the final remark that he would be "le plus heureux homme du monde" (StA Hamb.) If the Hamburg Senate would grant him marriage permission. In his multi-page report, Schuback advocated marriage on the grounds that the first purpose of marriage was mutual help ( mutuum adjutorium ), and the reference to a similar process in which a law professor came to the conclusion that people are not all marital goals equally, but eunuchs could achieve at least two of the three purposes of marriage (mutual help, procreation, and suppression of lusts). Finazzi and his fiancée were married by Pastor Johann Conrad Klefeker not in the St. Nikolai Church, but “in a neighboring garden”, that is, in a country house belonging to a hamburger (probably by Nikolaus Schuback) in Moorfleet. Understandably, no biological heirs resulted from this marriage.

Finazzi suffered a stroke in Hamburg in early 1776, grew weaker and weaker and died on April 22, 1776 in his house. He was buried in Sülfeld.

swell

  • Hamburg State Archive: Dispensatio matrimonii per Eunucho Italo Finazzi (Cl. VII Lit Lb No 12a Vol 1g, Marriage Law uwda 1-6 1761. 1762). - Church book St. Nikolai in Moorfleet, Traubuch April 21, 1762, 514-2 V 1a2.
  • Church registry office Bad Segeberg: Sülfeld church burial record April 22, 1776.

Works

Vocal and instrumental compositions (reprinted by Müller, MGG, Jackman, Marx / Schröder and Lohr (1999)).

Vocal compositions

6 cantatas for a soprano part with accompaniment of the string quartet (1754); Scores:

  • D'amore il primo dardo (aria: Ch'io mai vi possa lasciar amare );
  • Mentre solingo (aria: Mi piaci ancor )
  • Nel mio sonno (Accompagnato: Quando improviso )

12 Italian odes for lovers of playing and singing , Hamburg 1775

Arias

  • Ah frenate il pianto imbelle , text from Metastasios Temistocle ;
  • Al furor d'aversa sorte , text from Metastasios Temistocle (1746);
  • Deh respirar lasciatemi , text from Metastasios Artaserse ;
  • Non m'abbaglia quel lampo fugace , text from Metastasios Temistocle (1746);
  • Numi se giusti siete , text from Metastasios Adriano in Siria ;
  • Quel labbro adorato , text from Metastasios Demetrio ;
  • 3 arias for soprano and string quartet;
  • 2 arias for soprano and string quartet;
  • Sit salvus illis decus , Motet, Bologna 1735;
  • Duet Dimmi ch'infido sei

Operas

Instrumental compositions

  • 6 symphonies Dedicate a sua Altezza Serenissima Federico Carlo Ereditario di Norveggia, Duca d'Olsatia-Slesvig Stormarnia, e Dittmarsia regnante di Ploen, Conte di Oldenburgo, e Delmenhorst ; Hamburg 1754;
  • Sonata per harpsichord solo
  • Sonata for piano

literature

  • EH Müller, Angelo and Pietro Mingotti, Dresden 1917.
  • Music in the past and present , Kassel-Basel-Tours-London 1979, (keyword: Finazzi ).
  • JL Jackman: The New GROVE Dictionary of Music and Musicians , Vol. 6, London 1980, (keyword: Finazzi ).
  • HJ Marx / D. Schröder: The Hamburg Gänsemarkt-Oper, catalog of the text books (1678-1748) , Laaber 1995.
  • A. Lohr: Finazzi und die Hofstelle zur kleine Lombardei , Jb. Stormarn 1999, pp. 115–141.
  • F. Kopitzsch / D. Brietzke (Ed.): Hamburgische Biografie , Personenlexikon, Volume 1, Hamburg 2001, (keyword: Finazzi).
  • B. Günther (Ed.): Stormarn Lexikon , Neumünster 2003, (keyword: Finazzi ).
  • Axel Lohr: The history of the Jersbek estate from 1588 to the present , Diss. Phil. Hamburg 2007, Neumünster 2007.
personal data
SURNAME Finazzi, Filippo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian opera singer (castrato, soprano), composer and conductor
DATE OF BIRTH July 7, 1705
PLACE OF BIRTH Gorlago
DATE OF DEATH April 22, 1776
Place of death Bargfeld-Rögen