Pasquale Anfossi
Bonifacio Domenico Pasquale Anfossi (born April 5, 1727 in Taggia , † February 1797 in Rome ) was an Italian composer of the 18th century, who was appreciated for his numerous operas at the time.
Life
At first he aspired to the profession of performing musician and studied violin at the Neapolitan Loreto Conservatory from 1744 to 1752 in order to play this instrument in an opera orchestra for about ten years. Then he decided to become a composer and took lessons from Sacchini and Piccini . As his first opera, the farsetta La serva spiritosa was performed for the Carnival in Rome in 1763, but with this he was unable to establish himself as a composer immediately. Instead, he worked on his teacher Sacchini and added to his operas. He was able to achieve a certain breakthrough with the dramma giocoso L'incognita perseguitata in Rome in 1773.
From 1773 to 1782 he was maestro di cappella at the Ospedaletto in Venice. By 1782 he wrote about 30 operas, which were mainly performed in Venice and Rome, occasionally in the rest of Italy and in Vienna. In 1782, Il trionfo della costanza was his first opera in London , where he was engaged as music director until 1786, staging five new operas of his own and supervising various performances of works by other composers, for example Gluck's orfeo with additional music by JC Bach and Handel . One critic wrote of his last opera in London, L'inglese in italia : "The music obviously suffers from a tiresome monotony".
Anfossi traveled back to Italy, and in the Carnival of 1787 he was able to win over the Romans again with the farsetta Le pazzie de 'gelosi . Nevertheless, in 1789 the twenty years of uninterrupted production of new operas from his pen was stopped immediately, and from now on Anfossi limited himself to church music. He was appointed maestro di capella of San Giovanni in Laterano and held this post until his death.
plant
Anfossi's oeuvre cannot be fully assessed, but in addition to at least 20 oratorios in Latin and Italian, he certainly composed at least 60 operas, perhaps 70 or more. His early work is, understandably, closely related to the style of his teachers Piccini and Sacchini, with diatonic , somewhat meaningless harmony and here and there inspired melodies . His orchestration style changed over the course of his career; he achieved more colorful effects through the effective use of wind instruments. Up until the mid-1970s he seemed to prefer the old-fashioned, pure da capo aria in his opera series , only to then move on to freer forms, as he did earlier in his comic works. He seemed to like larger shapes, and evidently had a preference for sentimental moments and characters.
Basically, his music was criticized as not sufficiently dramatic and weak in characterization. His Buffo characters are by no means as original as those of his contemporaries like Cimarosa and Paisiello , while his seria music cannot deny a certain formulaic quality.
Anfossi had long been forgotten as an opera composer, because despite his great popularity with his contemporaries, his works were outshone by those of Salieri , Rossini or Mozart as early as the 19th century. Nevertheless, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe staged Anfossis farsetta La Maga Circe (The Sorceress Circe) as Weimar theater director . He had revised the libretto together with Christian August Vulpius and also planned an extension that never came about.
It has only been around twenty years that Anfossi's work has been shown through various productions and recordings, such as B. by Giuseppe riconosciuto , honored again. At the Salzburg Summer Festival (2005), works by Anfossi were also performed.
Selected Works
literature
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Christian August Vulpius: Circe. Opera with the music of Pasquale Anfossi. Translation and editing of the Italian libretto for the Weimar Theater (= Theatertexte 13). With an introduction edited by Waltraud Maierhofer. Wehrhahn, Hannover-Laatzen 2007, ISBN 978-3-86525-013-1 (parallel print based on the manuscripts, text in German and Italian).
- Christian Esch: "Lucio Silla". Four opera seria settings from the period between 1770 and 1780 (= Collection d'études musicologiques. 88–89). 2 volumes. Valentin Körner, Baden-Baden 1994, ISBN 3-87320-588-2 (also: Göttingen, University, dissertation, 1991).
- Giovanni Tribuzio, Pasquale Anfossi, operista alla moda , in Il secolo d'oro della musica a Napoli. Per un canone della Scuola musicale napoletana del '700 , vol. II, a cura di L. Fiorito, Frattamaggiore, Diana Edizioni, 2019, pp. 133–148 ( ISBN 9788896221464 )
Web links
- List of the stage works by Pasquale Anfossi based on the MGG at Operone
- Search for operas by Pasquale Anfossi (search term in the Autore field : “Anfossi Pasquale”) in the Corago information system of the University of Bologna
- Opera works and manuscripts by Pasquale Anfossi in the DFG opera project
Individual evidence
- ↑ Achille in Sciro (Pasquale Anfossi) in the Corago information system of the University of Bologna , accessed on December 20, 2015.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Anfossi, Pasquale |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Anfossi, Bonifacio Domenico Pasquale |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Italian opera composer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 5, 1727 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Taggia |
| DATE OF DEATH | February 1797 |
| Place of death | Rome |