Stephen Storace

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Stephen Storace
Revival of No Song, No Supper with Storace's sister Nancy as "Margaretta" (1795)

Stephen John Seymour Storace (born April 4, 1762 in London ; died March 19, 1796 there ) was a British composer .

Life

Stephen Storace was the son of an Englishwoman and the Italian double bass player Stefano Storace, who directed the orchestra at Vauxhall Gardens . He was baptized in the parish of St Marylebone . His sister Nancy Storace was born in 1765. Storace learned to play the violin and the harpsichord . The family moved to Naples , where he studied composition at the Conservatorio di Sant'Onofrio . After his father's death in Naples, he was back in England in the early 1780s and then around 1784 met his mother and sister, who had moved to Vienna . Nancy Storace made a career as an opera singer there , and Stephen Storace brought his opera Gli Sposi malcontenti to the Burgtheater stage in Vienna on June 1, 1785 . In 1786 Gli equivoci followed at the Burgtheater, based on a libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte based on The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare . Possibly he was involved under the pseudonym "Cornetti" with Antonio Salieri and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in the joint project of the cantata Per la ricuperata salute di Ofelia , which the three had dedicated to his sister for recovery. In literature it is assumed that Storace was a pupil of Mozart, or at least took his advice. When Nancy left Vienna in 1787 to go to London, he, the composer Thomas Attwood and the tenor Michael Kelly were among her entourage .

Since he did not receive any commissions for opera compositions at the London Italian Opera in the King's Theater , he joined the Drury Lane Theater in 1789 , which was under the direction of Richard Brinsley Sheridan , who preferred English operas for economic reasons. Storace now had the task of translating operas into English that were successful on the continent. He also wrote two operas of his own every year and started with a box office success in 1789 with The Haunted Tower with Kelly as tenor. After this success, the previously composed opera No Song, No Supper could also be performed, which belonged to the genre of " Afterpieces ", short, comedic operas that were supposed to release the audience into the evening in a good mood after the main event. No song, no supper is about stranded sailors who find their love happiness again. According to the fashion of the time, it was given as a turbulent comedy with a touching conclusion following the satirical The Beggar's Opera . The simple verse songs corresponded to the Opéra comique, which was popular on the continent at the same time . The piece is Storace's only surviving English opera. Storace could not enjoy a great success with the music for The Iron Chest in early March 1796, as he died a week after the premiere. Nancy Storace, from whose singing skills his operas benefited, outlived him by twenty years. She gave her stage farewell in 1808 with No Song, No Supper .

Stage works

  • Gli sposi malcontenti . Libretto Gaetano Brunati, Opera buffa, 1785, Vienna
  • Gli equivoci . Libretto Lorenzo da Ponte, Opera buffa, 1786, Vienna
  • La cameriera astuta . Weird opera. 1788, London
  • The Doctor and the Apothecary . Libretto by James Cobb , 1788, London
  • The Haunted Tower . Libretto by James Cobb, 1789, London
  • No song, no supper . Libretto Prince Hoare , 1790, London
  • The Siege of Belgrade . Libretto by James Cobb, 1791, London
  • The Cave of Trophonius . Libretto Prince Hoare, 1791, London
  • Poor Old Drury . Libretto by James Cobb, 1791, London
  • Dido, Queen of Carthage . Libretto Prince Hoare after Metastasio , Opera seria, 1792, London
  • The Pirates . Libretto by James Cobb, 1792, London
  • The Price . Libretto Prince Hoare, 1793, London
  • My grandmother . Libretto Prince Hoare, 1794, London
  • Lodoiska . Libretto by John Philip Kemble , 1794, London after Cherubini
  • The Glorious First of June . Libretto James Cobb, RB Sheridan, 1794
  • The Cherokee . Libretto by James Cobb, 1794, London
  • The Three and the Deuce . Libretto Prince Hoare, 1795, London
  • The Iron Chest . Libretto by George Colman , 1796, London
  • Mahmoud . Libretto Prince Hoare, 1796, London

ballet

  • Venus and Adonis (1793, London)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ortrun Landmann: Stephen Storace: Gli equivoci, in: Carl Dahlhaus u. a. (Ed.): Piper's Enzyklopädie des Musiktheater, Vol. 6, Piper, Munich 1997, p. 36.
  2. ↑ Michael Fend: No Song, No Supper, in: Carl Dahlhaus u. a. (Ed.): Piper's Enzyklopädie des Musiktheater, Vol. 6, Piper, Munich 1997, p. 37.
personal data
SURNAME Storace, Stephen
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Storace, Stephen John Seymour
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British composer
DATE OF BIRTH April 4, 1762
PLACE OF BIRTH London
DATE OF DEATH March 19, 1796
Place of death London