Pietro Generali

Pietro Generali

Pietro Generali (born October 23, 1773 in Masserano , † November 3, 1832 in Novara ; originally Pietro Mercandetti ) was an Italian composer and music teacher .

life and work

There are different details about his date of birth, Grove notes October 23, 1773. His father changed his family name when he moved to Rome with his family after a bankruptcy. Here Pietro studied music with Giovanni Masi and, after graduating from the Congregazione di Santa Cecilia in Rome, wrote church music before he published his first opera in 1800 .

His first major success in this field was the farsa Pamela nubile at the Teatro San Benedetto in 1804, a collaboration with the well-known librettist Gaetano Rossi , followed by Le lagrime d'una vedova at the end of December 1808 at the small Teatro San Moisè . Until Rossini's rise, he was one of the most famous composers in Venice. His farsa Adelina , an opera semi-seria or farsa, which was also created together with Rossi , had the most performances at the Teatro San Moisè with 20 performances, surpassing Rossini's La cambiale di matrimonio by 8 performances. In 1812 he wrote the Opera seria Attila and achieved some success here too, in 1817 I Bacchanali di Roma . Meanwhile, Rossini's overwhelming popularity prevented other Italian opera composers from building their own careers. Generali therefore moved to Barcelona as director of the opera company at the Teatro Santa Cruz. He stayed here for two seasons, visited Italy in 1818 and was in Paris in 1819, where some of his early works were performed again at the Théâtre-Italien that year .

From 1821 to 1823 he lived in Naples , where he wrote and taught a few operas, including Luigi Ricci among his students. After this time his work as an opera composer came to an end. He became music director of the Palermo Opera and was replaced in this capacity by Donizetti in 1825 . When the police discovered in May 1826 that he was a member of a Masonic Lodge , he had to leave the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies . He returned to his native northern Italy and in 1827 became maestro di cappella at the Cathedral of Novara . He held this office until his death and in the last years of his life mainly devoted himself to composing church music and teaching. About 54 operas have come down to us, as well as numerous cantatas, masses, requiems and other church music works.

reception

There were conflicting assessments of his work among his contemporaries. In 1828 the critic Tommaso Locatelli wrote in the Gazetta di Venezia about his opera Francesca di Rimini : “There is a certain carelessness, a certain triviality of the style, as if the maestro had written almost per otium (in his spare time).” In the Indeed, Generali was known for a somewhat superficial way of composing, which often led him to finish writing his operas only during rehearsals.

Pietro Generali is hardly known even in Italy today. The Rossini Festival in Wildbad made a successful attempt in 2010 to bring Generali closer to today's audience. The modern premiere of Adelina took place on July 16, 2010 in the Royal Kurtheater Bad Wildbad , directed by Kay Link , Dusica Bijelic sang the title role . Deutschlandradio Kultur broadcast Adelina on June 24, 2010, and a CD was published in 2015 by Naxos.

literature

• Music in the past and present Volume 4/2.
• Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians Volume 7.
• Adelina . Program published by Rossini in Wildbad 2010.

Web links

• Sheet music and audio files by Pietro Generali in the International Music Score Library Project

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Adelina or the power of nature by Paolo Fabbri in: Adelina . Program published by Rossini in Wildbad 2010, p. 9.
2. ↑ in a production by Kay Link http://www.pz-news.de/Home/Nachrichten/Kultur/arid,206629_puid,1_pageid,21.html  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link became automatic marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.