| Amilcare Ponchielli |
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Information AboutAmilcare Ponchielli |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT AMILCARE PONCHIELLI | |
| 1834 births | |
| 1886 deaths | |
| people from the province of cremona | |
| romantic composers | |
| italian opera composers | |
| italian composers | |
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Amilcare Ponchielli ( August 31 , 1834 – January 17 , 1886 ) was an Italian Composer , largely of operas. Born in Paderno Fasolaro , now Paderno Ponchielli , near Cremona , Ponchielli won a scholarship at the age of nine to study Music at the Milan Conservatory , writing his first Symphony by the time he was ten years old. Two years after leaving the conservatory he wrote his first Opera -- it was based on Alessandro Manzoni 's great novel ''I promessi sposi'' ( The Betrothed ) -- and it was as an opera composer that he eventually found fame. His early career was disappointing. Maneuvered out of a professorship at the Milan Conservatory that he had won in a competition, he took small-time jobs in small cities. The turning point was the success of his revised version of ''I promessi sposi'' in 1872, which brought him a contract with the music publisher G. Ricordi & Co. and the musical establishment at the Conservatory and at La Scala . The ballet ''Le due gemelle'' (1873) confirmed his success. The following opera, ''I lituani'' (1874), was also well received, being performed also at Saint Petersburg (as ''Aldona'' - November 20, 1884), but his best known opera is '' La Gioconda '', which his librettist Arrigo Boito adapted from a play by Victor Hugo . It was first produced in 1876 and revised several times. In 1881, Ponchielli was appointed ''maestro di cappella'' of the Bergamo Cathedral, and from the same year he was a professor of composition at the Milan Conservatory, where among his students were Giacomo Puccini and Pietro Mascagni . After ''La Gioconda'', Ponchielli wrote the monumental biblical melodrama in 4 acts ''Il figliuol prodigo'' (Milan, Teatro alla Scala, December 26, 1880) and ''Marion Delorme'', from an other play by Victor Hugo (Milan, Teatro alla Scala, March 17, 1885). In spite of their rich musical invention, both these operas did not meet with the same success but exerted great influence on the composer of the rising generation, like Puccini, Mascagni and Giordano . He died in Milan and was interred there in the Cimitero Monumentale . Although in his lifetime Ponchielli was very popular and influential, in introducing an enlarged orchestra and more complex orchestration, the only one of his operas regularly performed today is '' La Gioconda ''. It contains the great tenor Romanza "Cielo e mar", a wonderful duet for tenor and baritone "Enzo Grimaldo", the soprano set-piece "Suicidio!" and the ballet music "The Dance Of The Hours ", known even to the non-musical from its use in Walt Disney 's '' Fantasia '' (1940), and its burlesque in the 1963 Allan Sherman novelty song, " Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh " and, to a lesser degree, the 1966 Perrey And Kingsley song, "Countdown To 6." OPERAS
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