Alberto Franchetti
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Alberto Franchetti (18 September 1860 – 4 August 1942) was an Italian composer and racing driver, best known for the 1902 opera Germania.
Biography
Alberto Franchetti was born in
The words of music critic G. B. Nappi sum up Franchetti's primary talents: "His character is perhaps unsuitable for passionate dramas, but rather for those subjects, where the fantastic, romantic and epic are required in the symphonic texture and large choral pictures. In this regard Alberto Franchetti knows that he has no rival" (from "Orfeo" 6.3, 1915).
Of Franchetti's last opera Glauco only the third act finale (sung by soprano) No; piange ancora... with its haunting melody, seems to have survived.
Among the reasons for Franchetti's descent into obscurity is the fact that, after the promulgation of the Fascist
Recent revivals and recordings of Cristoforo Colombo and Germania (Berlin Oper 2006/7) show his work to be of genuine quality with a fine ability in orchestration and use of the chorus, symphonic in style. These traits, along with an unfortunate tendency for two-dimensional characters, were recognised early.
He also wrote a Symphony in E minor. He was the director of the Florence College of Music from 1926 to 1928: it was the only musical post he ever held. He died in Viareggio in 1942, aged 81. Franchetti's main residence the substantial Villa Franchetti (Nardi) in Florence was accepted as a "Historical Residence of Italy" in 1991 and in 2009 it became a hotel as well as a home, preserving much of its historical fabric. The villa, with its numerous outbuildings, was rescued from near dereliction by its current owner Gustavo Nardi, who writes of the villa's connections with Franchetti (http://www.villanardifirenze.com/History[permanent dead link])
Franchetti was an early pioneer of motor racing, having co-founded the Italian Motorists’ Club in 1897 and participated in the inaugural Mille Miglia in 1927.[3] He won the inaugural Coppa Florio in 1900.
His son Arnold Franchetti (1911–1993) became a composer after emigrating to the United States in 1949. Before coming to the US, he studied physics at the University of Florence, music at the Salzburg Mozarteum, and then moved to Munich where he studied composition and orchestration with Richard Strauss for three years. He was a member of the World War 2 Italian Resistance Underground movement from 1946 to 1948. Arnold Franchetti was Professor of Composition at the Hartt School of Music, University of Hartford, Connecticut from 1950 until his retirement in 1979.
Performed operatic works
- Asrael (1888)
- Cristoforo Colombo, libretto by Luigi Illica (1892)
- Fior d'Alpe (1894)
- Il signor di Pourceaugnac (1897)
- Germania, libretto by Luigi Illica (1902)
- La figlia di Iorio, libretto by Gabriele D'Annunzio (1906)
- Notte di leggenda (1915)
- Giove a Pompei, joint composition with Umberto Giordano (1921)
- Glauco (1922)
References
- ^ Son of barone Raimondo Franchetti; his mother was a Vienna Rothschild (Alan Mallach, The autumn of Italian opera from verismo to modernism, 1890-1915 2007:58); cf. Samuele Schaerf, I cognomi degli ebrei d'Italia con un appendice su le famiglie nobili ebree, s.v. Franchetti.
- ISBN 978-3-631-61361-0.
- ^ "Automobiles". Associazione per il musicista Alberto Franchetti APS. 2021-03-06. Retrieved 2023-08-13.
Literature
- Rosenthal, Harold and John Warrack. (1979, 2nd ed.). The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Opera. London, New York and Melbourne: Oxford University Press. p. 178. ISBN 0-19-311318-X.
External links
- Works by or about Alberto Franchetti at Internet Archive
- Alberto Franchetti (1860-1942) at www.albertofranchetti.it
- Free scores by Alberto Franchetti at the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP)
- Alberto Franchetti. freundefranchettis.com