Girolamo Crescentini ' onMouseout='HidePop("10648")' href="http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Urbania">Urbania
For the 2000 film, see Urbania Urbania is a comune in the Province of Pesaro e Urbino in the Italian region Marche, located about 80 km west of Ancona and about 40 km southwest of Pesaro, next to the river Metauro....
, February 2 1762–
NaplesNaples in Italy, is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples. The city is known for its rich history, art, culture, architecture, music and gastronomy, playing an important role throughout much of its existence; it is over 2,800 years old...
April 24 1846) was a noted
ItalianItaly , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares its northern, Alpine boundary with France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia...
singer
castratoA castrato is a man with a singing voice equivalent to that of a soprano, mezzo-soprano, or contralto voice produced either by castration of the singer before puberty or one who, because of an endocrinological condition, never reaches sexual maturity.Castration before puberty prevents a boy's...
(sopranista), a singing teacher and a composer.
He studied in
BolognaBologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, in the Po Valley of northern Italy...
with the noted teacher Lorenzo Gibelli and made his debut in 1783, quite advanced in years as a castrato.
Girolamo Crescentini ' onMouseout='HidePop("10648")' href="http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Urbania">Urbania
For the 2000 film, see Urbania Urbania is a comune in the Province of Pesaro e Urbino in the Italian region Marche, located about 80 km west of Ancona and about 40 km southwest of Pesaro, next to the river Metauro....
, February 2 1762–
NaplesNaples in Italy, is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples. The city is known for its rich history, art, culture, architecture, music and gastronomy, playing an important role throughout much of its existence; it is over 2,800 years old...
April 24 1846) was a noted
ItalianItaly , officially the Italian Republic , is a country located on the Italian Peninsula in Southern Europe and on the two largest islands in the Mediterranean Sea, Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares its northern, Alpine boundary with France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia...
singer
castratoA castrato is a man with a singing voice equivalent to that of a soprano, mezzo-soprano, or contralto voice produced either by castration of the singer before puberty or one who, because of an endocrinological condition, never reaches sexual maturity.Castration before puberty prevents a boy's...
(sopranista), a singing teacher and a composer.
Biography
He studied in
BolognaBologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, in the Po Valley of northern Italy...
with the noted teacher Lorenzo Gibelli and made his debut in 1783, quite advanced in years as a castrato. After an unlucky stay in
London[]London is the capital of England and the United Kingdom. It has been a major settlement for two millennia, and the history of London goes back to its founding by the Romans, when it was named Londinium. London's core, the ancient City of London, the 'square mile', retains its medieval boundaries...
in 1785, where he did not win much approbation, on his getting back to Italy, he took part in Naples, very successfully, to a revival of
GuglielmiPietro Alessandro Guglielmi was an Italian opera composer.Guglielmi was born in Massa. He received his first musical education from his father, and afterwards studied under Francesco Durante at the Conservatorio di Santa Maria di Loreto at Naples...
’s opera
Enea e Lavinia, together with the already famous
tenorThe tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...
Giacomo Davide, who shared Crescentini’s artistic inclinations. Thenceforwards, his career made more and more headway, reaching the apex in the nineties, and specially in 1796, when he created two roles which would remain in repertoire for some decades and then famous until present times, in either case by his quasi-pupil
Giuseppina GrassiniGiuseppina Maria Camilla Grassini was a noted Italian contralto, and a singing teacher.- Biography :...
’s side. For him, indeed,
Nicola ZingarelliNiccolò Antonio Zingarelli was an Italian composer, chiefly of opera.-Early career:Zingarelli was born in Naples, where he studied at the Santa Maria di Loreto Conservatory under Fenaroli and Speranza....
wrote the part of
Romeo in his opera
Giulietta e Romeo*For the 2007 musical, see Giulietta e Romeo Giulietta e Romeo is a dramma per musica by composer Niccolò Antonio Zingarelli with an Italian libretto by Giuseppe Maria Foppa after the 1530 novella of the same name by Luigi da Porto...
, staged at
MilanMilan in Italy, is the capital of the region of Lombardia and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while the urban area is the fifth largest in the E.U. with an estimated population of 4.3 million...
’s
La ScalaLa Scala , is a world renowned opera house in Milan, Italy. The theatre was inaugurated on 3 August 1778 and was originally known as the New Royal Theatre of La Scala La Scala , is a world renowned opera house in Milan, Italy. The theatre was inaugurated on 3 August 1778 and was originally...
on January 30, while
Domenico CimarosaDomenico Cimarosa was an Italian opera composer of the Neapolitan school. He wrote more than eighty operas during his lifetime, including his masterpiece, Il matrimonio segreto .-Early life and education:...
composed the role of
Curiazio in
Gli Orazi e i CuriaziGli Orazi e i Curiazi is an opera in three acts composed by Domenico Cimarosa to a libretto by Antonio Simeone Sografi, based on Pierre Corneille's tragedy, Horace.-History:...
, staged instead in northern Italy’s second greater theatre,
VeniceVenice is a city in northern Italy, the capital of the region Veneto, a population of 271,367 . Together with Padua, the city is included in the Padua-Venice Metropolitan Area . The city historically was an independent nation...
’s
La FeniceTeatro La Fenice is an opera house in Venice, Italy. It is one of the most famous theatres in Europe, the site of many famous operatic premieres. Its name reflects its role in permitting an opera company to "rise from the ashes" despite losing the use of two theatres...
, on December 26. For Zingarelli’s opera, Crescentini composed himself an aria, “
Ombra adorata aspetta”, which would remain famous as “la Preghiera di Romeo” (Romeo’s Prayer), and which was a greatest enduring success for the singer and a permanent painful grievance for the composer, who referred to it as “my opera’s misfortune” because of its lack of “common sense”. After spending four years in
LisbonLisbon is the capital and largest city of Portugal. It is also the seat of the district of Lisbon and the main city of the Lisbon region...
, starting from 1797, as the director of the
Teatro Nacional de São CarlosThe Teatro Nacional de São Carlos is an opera house in Lisbon, Portugal. It was opened on July 30 1793 by Queen Maria I as a replacement for the Tejo Opera House, which was destroyed in the 1755 Lisbon earthquake...
, he got back to Italy and, after a sensational execution in
ViennaVienna is the capital of the Republic of Austria and also one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.7 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre. It is the 10th largest city by...
of Romeo’s Prayer , out of which he was granted a crown on stage,
NapoleonNapoleon Bonaparte later known as Napoleon I, and previously Napoleone di Buonaparte, was a military and political leader of France whose actions shaped European politics in the early 19th century.Born in Corsica and trained as an artillery officer in mainland France, Bonaparte rose to prominence...
conferred upon him the Order of the Iron Crown of Lombardy and appointed him singing teacher of the Imperial Family. This new charge drove Crescentini to
ParisParis is the capital of France and the country's most populous city. It is situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
from 1806 to 1812, when he finally got the leave to settle in his fatherland back again and was eventually free to retire from the stage. From 1814 he devoted himself to the teaching of singing at
BolognaBologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, in the Po Valley of northern Italy...
’s Liceo Musicale, whose direction he was entrusted in 1817, then also in
RomeRome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated municipality , with over 2.7 million residents in , while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat to be 3.46 million. The metropolitan area of Rome is estimated by OECD to have a population of 3.7 million...
, and eventually at Naples’s Regio Collegio di Musica, where he had, among his pupils,
Isabella ColbranIsabella Colbran was a Spanish opera singer, who was known in her native country as Isabel Colbrandt. Many sources note her as a dramatic coloratura soprano but, some believe that she was a mezzo-soprano with a high extension, a soprano sfogato...
and
Raffaele MirateRaffaele Mirate was a celebrated Italian operatic tenor who had an active career from the 1830s through the 1860s. Known for his intelligent phrasing and bright and powerful vocal timbre, he was regarded as an outstanding interpreter of the tenor roles in the early and middle period operas of...
. In 1811 he had already published a didactic essay with the title “
Esercizi per la vocalizzazione”. Crescentini survived until 1846, when his artistic world was no more but a hazy faded recollection.
Artistic features
With Pacchiariotti,
MarchesiLuigi Marchesi was an Italian castrato singer.-Biography:Luigi Ludovico Marchesi was born at Milan.He joined the Milan Cathedral choir in 1765, and made his operatic debut at the Teatro delle Dame , in a female role, in Pergolesi's La Serva Padrona in 1774...
and with the extreme off-shoot of Velluti, Crescentini led castrati’s last charge: he was called, for his singing’s prodigies, the “Italian Orpheus”, and for his great, theoretical too, competence in this art, the “Nestor of the
musici" . Decidedly unimposing on the stage (like Pacchiarotti), he was endowed with a clear, pliant and pure voice which won him the admiration of such personages as
Alfred de VignyAlfred Victor de Vigny was a French poet, playwright, and novelist.-Life:Alfred de Vigny was born in Loches into an aristocratic family...
, who, in his story “
La vie e la mort du Capitaine Renaud ou La canne de jonc”, wrote of “
a seraph’s voice which sprang from an emaciated and wrinkled face”, or as the seventeen-year-old
Arthur SchopenhauerArthur Schopenhauer was a German philosopher known for his atheistic pessimism and philosophical clarity...
who, in his turn, entered in his diary a voice that was “
beautiful in a supernatural way” and provided with a full and sweet timbre. Crescentini, who was not an exceedingly wide-ranged sopranista, always shunned the rush towards the highest notes which the C7
whistled by his contemporary
La Bastardella was the living representation of, and shunned as well eagerness for immoderate singing ornamentation in all the cases where it was not actually necessary to the expression of the shade of feeling, of that quantum of “
infinitely small which [formed]
the perfection of [Crescentini’s]
singing” in Romeo’s Prayer; “
an infinitely small which, on the other end, [used to change]
according to the singer’s voice, to the standard of illusion and of enthusiasm he was animated by”, and which would make any execution unfailingly different from the preceding one and from the following, too .
As the champion of the true “
cantar che nell’anima si sente” Crescentini headed the revenge of the belcanto of yore on the late 18th century’s singing fashion and contributed, together with Pacchiarotti, Grassini ,
Luísa Todi de AgujarLuísa Rosa de Aguiar Todi was a popular and successful Portuguese mezzo-soprano opera singer.Luísa Todi was born Luísa Rosa de Aguiar on January 9, 1753 in Setúbal, Portugal. In 1765, her family moved to Lisbon, where her father was a musical writer in the Theatre of Bairro Alto.Luísa began her...
, the tenor Giacomo David, and few others, to lay the bases for the splendours of Rossini
grand finale of two centuries’ history of operatic singing.
Something of his concept of singing, as he had expressed it in the mentioned “
Esercizi per la vocalizzazione”, is likely to have passed as well in the vocal style of
Bellini-People:*A family of Italian painters, the most famous of which is Giovanni Bellini . His father was Jacopo Bellini and his brother was Gentile Bellini .*Filippo Bellini -People:*A family of Italian painters, the most famous of which is Giovanni Bellini (c. 1430–1516). His father was Jacopo...
operas.
Sources
- Barbier, Patrick. The World of the Castrati: The History of an Extraordinary Operatic Phenomenon. Trans. Margaret Crosland. Suffolk: Souvenir Press, 1996.
- Caruselli, Salvatore (ed), Grande enciclopedia della musica lirica, Longanesi &C. Periodici S.p.A., vol 4, Roma
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated municipality , with over 2.7 million residents in , while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat to be 3.46 million. The metropolitan area of Rome is estimated by OECD to have a population of 3.7 million...
, I, ad nomen
- Celletti, Rodolfo, Storia del belcanto, Discanto Edizioni, Fiesole
Fiesole is a town and comune of the province of Florence in the Italian region of Tuscany, on a famously scenic height above Florence, 8 km NE of that city...
, 1983, passim
- Richard Somerset-Ward. Angels and Monsters. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004.
- Sadie, Stanley (ed), The new Grove Dictionary of Opera, Oxford University Press, 1992, vol 4, ad nomen
- This article contains substantial material translated from Girolamo Crescentini in the Italian Wikipedia