Arrigo Boito

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Arrigo Boito

Arrigo Boito (Italian:

librettist, composer, poet and critic whose only completed opera was Mefistofele. Among the operas for which he wrote the libretti are Giuseppe Verdi's monumental last two operas Otello and Falstaff as well as Amilcare Ponchielli's La Gioconda
.

Along with Emilio Praga and his brother Camillo Boito, he is regarded as one of the prominent representatives of the Scapigliatura (Italian bohemian) artistic movement. He wrote essays under the anagrammatic pseudonym of Tobia Gorrio[2]

Biography

Boito at age 44
Birthplace in Padua

Boito was born in Padua. He was the son of Silvestro Boito, a painter of miniatures, who was not of noble birth but passed himself off as a nobleman, and his wife, a Polish countess, Józefina Radolińska. His older brother, Camillo Boito, was an Italian architect and engineer as well as a noted art critic, art historian and novelist.

Boito studied music at the Milan Conservatory with Alberto Mazzucato until 1861, where he was a contemporary of Albert Visetti and Amintore Galli. In 1866, with Galli, Franco Faccio, and Emilio Praga,[3] Boito fought under Giuseppe Garibaldi in the Seven Weeks' War in which the Kingdom of Italy and Prussia fought against Austria, after which Venice was ceded to Italy.

Between 1887 and 1894, he had an affair with the celebrated actress Eleonora Duse. Their relationship was carried out in a highly clandestine manner, presumably because of Boito's many aristocratic friends and acquaintances. Despite this, their voluminous correspondence over the years survives. The two remained on good terms until his death.

Towards the end of his musical career, Boito succeeded Giovanni Bottesini as director of the Parma Conservatory after the latter's death in 1889 and held the post until 1897. He received the honorary degree of Doctor of Music from the University of Cambridge in 1893, and on his death in Milan, he was interred there in the Cimitero Monumentale. He was an atheist.[4]

A memorial concert was given in his honour at La Scala in 1948. The orchestra was conducted by

CD
.

Career in music

Boito wrote very little music, but completed (and later destroyed) the opera Ero e Leandro and left incomplete a further opera, Nerone, which he had been working at, on and off, between 1877 and 1915. Excluding its last act, for which Boito left only a few sketches, Nerone was finished after his death by Arturo Toscanini and Vincenzo Tommasini and premiered at La Scala in 1924. He also left a Symphony in A minor in manuscript.[5]

Mefistofele

His only completed opera, Mefistofele, based on Goethe's Faust, was given its first performance on 5 March 1868, at La Scala, Milan. The premiere, which he conducted himself, was badly received, provoking riots and duels over its supposed "Wagnerism", and it was closed by the police after two performances. Verdi commented, "He aspires to originality but succeeds only at being strange."[citation needed] Boito withdrew the opera from further performances to rework it, and it had a more successful second premiere, in Bologna on 10 April 1875. This revised and drastically cut version also changed Faust from a baritone to a tenor. Mefistofele is the only work of his performed with any regularity today, and Enrico Caruso included its two tenor arias in his first recording session.[6] The prologue to the opera, set in heaven, is a favourite concert excerpt.

Libretti

Boito's literary powers never waned. As well as writing the libretti for his own operas, he wrote them for greater operas by two other composers. As "Tobia Gorrio" (an anagram of his name), he provided the libretto for Amilcare Ponchielli's La Gioconda.

Collaboration with Verdi

Shortly after he had collaborated with Verdi on

Henry IV
). After those many years of close association, when Verdi died in 1901, Boito was at his bedside.

Libretti by Boito

The years given are those of the premieres. Boito also provided the text to Verdi's cantata Inno delle Nazioni which was first given on 24 May 1862 at

Her Majesty's Theatre
, London.

Recordings

Recordings of two operas exist:

Depictions in media

  • The play After Aida — a 1985 play-with-music by Julian Mitchell — depicts the struggle of Giulio Ricordi and Franco Faccio to get the retired Verdi to collaborate with young Boito on a project, which resulted in Otello.
  • In November 2001, Tell Giulio the Chocolate is Ready, a radio play by Murray Dahm, was produced and broadcast by Radio New Zealand. The play is based on the letters of the Verdi-Boito correspondence and explores the genesis and production of Verdi and Boito's opera Otello. The play and broadcast included those sections of the opera as they appeared in the correspondence (such as Iago's Credo).

See also

References

Notes

  1. ^ Arrigo Boito at the Encyclopædia Britannica
  2. ^ Ashbrook 1998, in Sadie, p. 528
  3. ^ Di Cesare, Maria Carmela (1998). "Galli, Amintore". Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani [Biographical Dictionary of Italians] (in Italian). Vol. 51. Retrieved 5 January 2024.
  4. ^ Businelli, p. 51
  5. ^ Boito, Arrigo. Przeslica, Agnieszka (ed.). "Publication of Boito's A minor Symphony". Boccaccini E Spada. Retrieved 11 November 2008.[permanent dead link]
  6. ^ [author missing], The Independent Review, 4 August 2003, p. 15.
  7. ^ Parker, p. 382
  8. ^ a b "CLBONERO.HTM".

Sources

External links