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Franco Faccio

January 01, 1970

Francesco (Franco) Antonio Faccio (8 March 1840 – 21 July 1891) was an Italian composer and conductor. Born in Verona, he studied music at the Milan Conservatory from 1855 where he was a pupil of Stefano Ronchetti-Monteviti and, as scholar William Ashbrook notes, "where he struck up a lifelong friendship with Arrigo Boito, two years his junior" and with whom he was to collaborate in many ways.[1]

Franco Faccio
Faccio at the time of composing Amleto
Born8 March 1840
Verona
Died21 July 1891
NationalityItalian
Alma materMilan Conservatory
Occupations
  • composer
  • conductor

Initially, he became known as the composer of two operas and, in his years (1871–1889) as music director of the Teatro alla Scala opera house, Faccio became known as a conductor of Verdi's music at La Scala, in different parts of Italy, and abroad.

Professional career edit

After finishing his studies he began his career as a composer. His first collaboration with Boito was on a patriotic cantata, Il quattro giugno in 1860 when Boito also wrote some of the music as well as the text,[1] and this was followed by a sequel, La sorelle d'Italia, also in the spirit of the movement towards Italian unification. With these pieces, both young men received entrees into Italian society, hence Faccio's association with Countess Maffei and the letters of introduction which followed which allowed both him and Boito access to Rossini in Paris in 1862.[1]

Operas edit

Both men began work on new operas, Boito's eventually becoming Mefistofele. Faccio returned to Milan to write his first opera, I profughi fiamminghi, which was based on a text by Emilio Praga and written for La Scala where it was presented on 11 November 1863. Not a success, it survived for only five performances.[2] However, its failure was followed by a celebratory party given for Faccio by his friends. The event included Boito's reading of the infamous "Ode saffica col bicchiere alla mano", which infuriated Giuseppe Verdi.[2][3][4]

 
Faccio in 1887

Faccio's second opera, Amleto, one of the many operas based on William Shakespeare's Hamlet, was written for Genoa's Teatro Carlo Felice and was given its première on 30 May 1865. The cast included some of the finest singers of the day. As Ashbrook notes, while its "innovatory libretto" was written by Boito, there was "dismay at the score's paucity of melody",[2] but he does add that Ophelia's funeral march, the "Marcia Funebre", "[won] general approval".[2]

However, the critics were unanimous in their praise of the promise shown in the young composer and, in the following contemporary accounts, the audience appears to have shown its pleasure at what they had heard. On 31 May, the Gazzetta di Genova wrote:

The opera was generally applauded at the end of the first act, at Ofelia and Amleto’s duet, at the finale of the second act, at Ofelia’s canzone in the third, and at the funeral march of the fourth. The young maestro was called to the stage many times.[5]

In a letter to Faccio’s Milan teacher Ronchetti-Monteviti, Alberto Mazzucato wrote of the premiere:

Amleto [...] aroused unusual and profound emotions in the Genovese public, which celebrated your distinguished student with every type of flattering reception. The curtain-calls for the maestro and the performers were unanimous, insistent, continuous, and ever warmer as the imaginative work unfolded before the eyes of the listeners who were highly surprised with the truth of its conception, the newness of form, the passion of the melodies, the ensemble harmony, and of the robust skill that dominates the whole score.[5][6]

As a conductor edit

Faccio left Italy for two years and "honed his skills as an opera conductor in Scandinavia [but] secured a post at the Teatro Carcano on his return to Milan in the Autumn of 1868".[2] He also taught composition at the Milan Conservatory for the following ten years. In 1871, after working as an assistant conductor under Eugenio Terziani[7] at La Scala, he was named as music director of that house which mounted a revised version of Amleto on 12 February that year. It was not a success, and was never performed again during Faccio's lifetime.

At La Scala, he conducted the first Italian performance of Aida in 1872[2] and this was followed by the first performance of Verdi's Otello in 1887,[2] which starred his long-time lover Romilda Pantaleoni as Desdemona, Francesco Tamagno as Otello and Victor Maurel as Iago. Other premieres of the revised versions which he conducted included Simon Boccanegra in 1881[8] and Don Carlo in 1884.[9] Faccio helped to launch Puccini's career, conducting his graduation piece from the Milan Conservatory, Capriccio sinfonico, in 1884.[10]

When Victor Maurel was planning to revive the Théâtre-Italien company at the Théâtre des Nations in Paris in 1883, it was hoped that Faccio would be chief conductor.[11][12] He was hoping for not less than 100,000 francs. However, the managers at La Scala, the Corti brothers, agreed a new contract with Faccio which kept him in Milan.[13] In the end Gialdino Gialdini was engaged instead, with a young Arnaldo Conti as assistant conductor: Faccio only conducted four of the eight performances of Simon Boccanegra in Paris through the 1883-1884 season.[14]

 
Faccio's grave at the Monumental Cemetery of Milan

He continued to have an active conducting career in several Italian cities, as well as abroad where Otello was given its première. These included London on 5 July 1889[2] with Tamagno repeating his triumph as the Moor, and the Italian premiere of Richard Wagner's Die Meistersinger.[10] But by late 1889, his health was having a profound effect on his work. Verdi arranged for a less stressful post in Parma, but even that was too much.[15] After a diagnosis related to syphilis, he was institutionalized in Monza and died there.

Faccio's other activities edit

Faccio also continued to compose after the premiere of Amleto, writing among other things a "Quartetto". Sometime in 1870 Giovanni Ricordi commissioned him to write a third opera, Patria, based on a play by Victorien Sardou. Verdi himself intervened on Faccio's behalf to try to secure the rights to the play, but Sardou, hoping that Verdi himself would set the drama to music, refused.

In 1874 a symphony Faccio had composed as early as 1859 was finally published, in piano duet reduction, by Ricordi.

In 1866 both Boito and Faccio joined the Italian army to fight alongside Garibaldi. In addition to his purely militaristic excursions, Faccio used the opportunity to travel extensively throughout Europe, perusing Beethoven's autograph of Fidelio in Berlin in addition to getting to know Tannhäuser and Lohengrin. As his European travels came to an end in 1867, he traveled to Copenhagen on a steamship named Hamlet, and was amused to see other ships named after Shakespeare's tragedy. While in Denmark, he made a special trip to Elsinore and visited the Royal Castle where he had the feeling that at any moment one could imagine seeing the "wandering and troubled shade of the assassinated king."[16]

The disastrous premiere of Boito's Mefistofele at La Scala in 1868 added to the growing necessity of a compositional success by Boito and Faccio, self-appointed representatives of the "Music of the future" in Italy.[2] In early 1870, the Gazzetta Musicale reported on the possibility (eventually unrealized) of staging Amleto in Florence.[17]

Revival of interest in Faccio's Amleto edit

In 2004, conductor Anthony Barrese had edited Amleto's score, produced a piano vocal score, and presented a scene from act 3 of the work on stage with the apprentices of the Sarasota Opera. At Sarasota he also recorded several arias and a scene from the opera.[18] Using this critical edition, the opera was revived in a semi-staged production by the Baltimore Concert Opera and then fully staged at Opera Southwest in Albuquerque, New Mexico in October 2014. Both were conducted by Barrese. In July, 2016, the opera was produced at the Bregenz Festival. A Unitel Blu-ray disc of the production was released in 2017.

Barrese also presented the "Marcia funebre" with the Dallas Opera Orchestra in 2007. This part of the opera is presented in Corfu each year during Easter, when the band of Philharmonic Society of Corfu performs it during the epitaph litany of Saint Spyridon on the morning of Holy Saturday.

Depictions in media edit

References edit

Notes

  1. ^ a b c Ashbrook, in Sadie, p. 101
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i Ashbrook, p. 102
  3. ^ Weaver (1994), "Introduction", p. xvii
  4. ^ Walker (1982), p. 449: The ode is quoted, with the line which annoyed Verdi: "Perhaps the man is already born who will restore art to its purity, on the altar now defiled like the wall of a brothel".
  5. ^ a b Barrese, "Amleto Project History: Composition and the Premiere" online at anthonybarrese.com/projects
  6. ^ DeRensis, Franco Faccio e Verdi, [page needed], in Barrese
  7. ^ Eugenio Terziani, Requiem Survey.
  8. ^ Budden, Julian (1984), The Operas of Verdi, Volume 2: From Il Trovatore to La Forza del destino. London: Cassell. ISBN 978-0-19-520450-6. p. 267.
  9. ^ Casaglia, Gherardo (2005). "Don Carlo, 10 January 1884". L'Almanacco di Gherardo Casaglia (in Italian).
  10. ^ a b Conati & Medici 1994, p. 42-43.
  11. ^ "Semaine Théatrale". Le Ménestrel (in French). 49 (29): 219b–220a. 10 June 1883.
  12. ^ "Semaine Théatrale". Le Ménestrel (in French). 49 (31): 243b–244a. 1 July 1883.
  13. ^ "Nouvelles Diverses: Étranger". Le Ménestrel (in French). 49 (32): 253b, 254a. 8 July 1883.
  14. ^ "Nouvelles Diverses: Étranger". Le Ménestrel (in French). 49 (37): 267, 295. 12 August 1883.
  15. ^ Conati, Marcello; Medici, Mario, eds. (1994). The Verdi-Boito Correspondence. Translated by William Weaver. University of Chicago Press. p. 147. ISBN 978-0-226-85304-8.
  16. ^ Nardi 1942, p. 72. Faccio to Countess Maffei, 30 June 1867: "Il Castello Reale splendido, grandioso, antichissimo monumento, ricco di baluardi e di piattaforme, sulle quali, ad ogni istante, si crederebbe di scorgere l'ombra errante ed affanosa del vecchio Re assassinato..."
  17. ^ Nardi 1942, p. 112
  18. ^ Barrese, The Amleto Project

Sources

External links edit

Preceded by
Eugenio Terziani
 Music Director, La Scala
1871–1889 		Succeeded by

January 01, 1970
franco, faccio, francesco, franco, antonio, faccio, march, 1840, july, 1891, italian, composer, conductor, born, verona, studied, music, milan, conservatory, from, 1855, where, pupil, stefano, ronchetti, monteviti, scholar, william, ashbrook, notes, where, str. Francesco Franco Antonio Faccio 8 March 1840 21 July 1891 was an Italian composer and conductor Born in Verona he studied music at the Milan Conservatory from 1855 where he was a pupil of Stefano Ronchetti Monteviti and as scholar William Ashbrook notes where he struck up a lifelong friendship with Arrigo Boito two years his junior and with whom he was to collaborate in many ways 1 Franco FaccioFaccio at the time of composing AmletoBorn8 March 1840VeronaDied21 July 1891NationalityItalianAlma materMilan ConservatoryOccupationscomposer conductor Initially he became known as the composer of two operas and in his years 1871 1889 as music director of the Teatro alla Scala opera house Faccio became known as a conductor of Verdi s music at La Scala in different parts of Italy and abroad Contents 1 Professional career 1 1 Operas 1 2 As a conductor 2 Faccio s other activities 3 Revival of interest in Faccio s Amleto 4 Depictions in media 5 References 6 External linksProfessional career editAfter finishing his studies he began his career as a composer His first collaboration with Boito was on a patriotic cantata Il quattro giugno in 1860 when Boito also wrote some of the music as well as the text 1 and this was followed by a sequel La sorelle d Italia also in the spirit of the movement towards Italian unification With these pieces both young men received entrees into Italian society hence Faccio s association with Countess Maffei and the letters of introduction which followed which allowed both him and Boito access to Rossini in Paris in 1862 1 Operas edit Both men began work on new operas Boito s eventually becoming Mefistofele Faccio returned to Milan to write his first opera I profughi fiamminghi which was based on a text by Emilio Praga and written for La Scala where it was presented on 11 November 1863 Not a success it survived for only five performances 2 However its failure was followed by a celebratory party given for Faccio by his friends The event included Boito s reading of the infamous Ode saffica col bicchiere alla mano which infuriated Giuseppe Verdi 2 3 4 nbsp Faccio in 1887 Faccio s second opera Amleto one of the many operas based on William Shakespeare s Hamlet was written for Genoa s Teatro Carlo Felice and was given its premiere on 30 May 1865 The cast included some of the finest singers of the day As Ashbrook notes while its innovatory libretto was written by Boito there was dismay at the score s paucity of melody 2 but he does add that Ophelia s funeral march the Marcia Funebre won general approval 2 However the critics were unanimous in their praise of the promise shown in the young composer and in the following contemporary accounts the audience appears to have shown its pleasure at what they had heard On 31 May the Gazzetta di Genova wrote The opera was generally applauded at the end of the first act at Ofelia and Amleto s duet at the finale of the second act at Ofelia s canzone in the third and at the funeral march of the fourth The young maestro was called to the stage many times 5 In a letter to Faccio s Milan teacher Ronchetti Monteviti Alberto Mazzucato wrote of the premiere Amleto aroused unusual and profound emotions in the Genovese public which celebrated your distinguished student with every type of flattering reception The curtain calls for the maestro and the performers were unanimous insistent continuous and ever warmer as the imaginative work unfolded before the eyes of the listeners who were highly surprised with the truth of its conception the newness of form the passion of the melodies the ensemble harmony and of the robust skill that dominates the whole score 5 6 As a conductor edit Faccio left Italy for two years and honed his skills as an opera conductor in Scandinavia but secured a post at the Teatro Carcano on his return to Milan in the Autumn of 1868 2 He also taught composition at the Milan Conservatory for the following ten years In 1871 after working as an assistant conductor under Eugenio Terziani 7 at La Scala he was named as music director of that house which mounted a revised version of Amleto on 12 February that year It was not a success and was never performed again during Faccio s lifetime At La Scala he conducted the first Italian performance of Aida in 1872 2 and this was followed by the first performance of Verdi s Otello in 1887 2 which starred his long time lover Romilda Pantaleoni as Desdemona Francesco Tamagno as Otello and Victor Maurel as Iago Other premieres of the revised versions which he conducted included Simon Boccanegra in 1881 8 and Don Carlo in 1884 9 Faccio helped to launch Puccini s career conducting his graduation piece from the Milan Conservatory Capriccio sinfonico in 1884 10 When Victor Maurel was planning to revive the Theatre Italien company at the Theatre des Nations in Paris in 1883 it was hoped that Faccio would be chief conductor 11 12 He was hoping for not less than 100 000 francs However the managers at La Scala the Corti brothers agreed a new contract with Faccio which kept him in Milan 13 In the end Gialdino Gialdini was engaged instead with a young Arnaldo Conti as assistant conductor Faccio only conducted four of the eight performances of Simon Boccanegra in Paris through the 1883 1884 season 14 nbsp Faccio s grave at the Monumental Cemetery of Milan He continued to have an active conducting career in several Italian cities as well as abroad where Otello was given its premiere These included London on 5 July 1889 2 with Tamagno repeating his triumph as the Moor and the Italian premiere of Richard Wagner s Die Meistersinger 10 But by late 1889 his health was having a profound effect on his work Verdi arranged for a less stressful post in Parma but even that was too much 15 After a diagnosis related to syphilis he was institutionalized in Monza and died there Faccio s other activities editFaccio also continued to compose after the premiere of Amleto writing among other things a Quartetto Sometime in 1870 Giovanni Ricordi commissioned him to write a third opera Patria based on a play by Victorien Sardou Verdi himself intervened on Faccio s behalf to try to secure the rights to the play but Sardou hoping that Verdi himself would set the drama to music refused In 1874 a symphony Faccio had composed as early as 1859 was finally published in piano duet reduction by Ricordi In 1866 both Boito and Faccio joined the Italian army to fight alongside Garibaldi In addition to his purely militaristic excursions Faccio used the opportunity to travel extensively throughout Europe perusing Beethoven s autograph of Fidelio in Berlin in addition to getting to know Tannhauser and Lohengrin As his European travels came to an end in 1867 he traveled to Copenhagen on a steamship named Hamlet and was amused to see other ships named after Shakespeare s tragedy While in Denmark he made a special trip to Elsinore and visited the Royal Castle where he had the feeling that at any moment one could imagine seeing the wandering and troubled shade of the assassinated king 16 The disastrous premiere of Boito s Mefistofele at La Scala in 1868 added to the growing necessity of a compositional success by Boito and Faccio self appointed representatives of the Music of the future in Italy 2 In early 1870 the Gazzetta Musicale reported on the possibility eventually unrealized of staging Amleto in Florence 17 Revival of interest in Faccio s Amleto editIn 2004 conductor Anthony Barrese had edited Amleto s score produced a piano vocal score and presented a scene from act 3 of the work on stage with the apprentices of the Sarasota Opera At Sarasota he also recorded several arias and a scene from the opera 18 Using this critical edition the opera was revived in a semi staged production by the Baltimore Concert Opera and then fully staged at Opera Southwest in Albuquerque New Mexico in October 2014 Both were conducted by Barrese In July 2016 the opera was produced at the Bregenz Festival A Unitel Blu ray disc of the production was released in 2017 Barrese also presented the Marcia funebre with the Dallas Opera Orchestra in 2007 This part of the opera is presented in Corfu each year during Easter when the band of Philharmonic Society of Corfu performs it during the epitaph litany of Saint Spyridon on the morning of Holy Saturday Depictions in media editThe play After Aida a 1985 play with music by Julian Mitchell depicts the struggle of Faccio and the music publisher Giulio Ricordi amongst others to get the retired Verdi to collaborate with the young librettist Arrigo Boito on a new project the result of which became Otello References editNotes a b c Ashbrook in Sadie p 101 a b c d e f g h i Ashbrook p 102 Weaver 1994 Introduction p xvii Walker 1982 p 449 The ode is quoted with the line which annoyed Verdi Perhaps the man is already born who will restore art to its purity on the altar now defiled like the wall of a brothel a b Barrese Amleto Project History Composition and the Premiere online at anthonybarrese com projects DeRensis Franco Faccio e Verdi page needed in Barrese Eugenio Terziani Requiem Survey Budden Julian 1984 The Operas of Verdi Volume 2 From Il Trovatore to La Forza del destino London Cassell ISBN 978 0 19 520450 6 p 267 Casaglia Gherardo 2005 Don Carlo 10 January 1884 L Almanacco di Gherardo Casaglia in Italian a b Conati amp Medici 1994 p 42 43 Semaine Theatrale Le Menestrel in French 49 29 219b 220a 10 June 1883 Semaine Theatrale Le Menestrel in French 49 31 243b 244a 1 July 1883 Nouvelles Diverses Etranger Le Menestrel in French 49 32 253b 254a 8 July 1883 Nouvelles Diverses Etranger Le Menestrel in French 49 37 267 295 12 August 1883 Conati Marcello Medici Mario eds 1994 The Verdi Boito Correspondence Translated by William Weaver University of Chicago Press p 147 ISBN 978 0 226 85304 8 Nardi 1942 p 72 Faccio to Countess Maffei 30 June 1867 Il Castello Reale splendido grandioso antichissimo monumento ricco di baluardi e di piattaforme sulle quali ad ogni istante si crederebbe di scorgere l ombra errante ed affanosa del vecchio Re assassinato Nardi 1942 p 112 Barrese The Amleto Project Sources Ashbrook William 1998 Faccio Franco in Stanley Sadie Ed The New Grove Dictionary of Opera Vol Two London Macmillan Publishers Inc 1998 ISBN 0 333 73432 7 ISBN 1 56159 228 5 Barrese Anthony The Amleto Project at anthonybarrese com DeRensis Rafaello L Amleto di A Boito con lettere inedite di Boito Mariani e Verdi Ancona La Lucerna 1927 DeRensis Raffaello Franco Faccio e Verdi carteggi e documenti inediti Milano Fratelli Treves Editori 1934 Walker Frank The Man Verdi 1982 New York Knopf 1962 Chicago University of Chicago Press ISBN 0 226 87132 0External links edit The Amleto Project at anthonybarrese com Amleto Audio and piano vocal score excerpts Amleto Complete libretto in Italian and English Works by or about Franco Faccio at Internet Archive Preceded byEugenio Terziani Music Director La Scala1871 1889 Succeeded byArturo Toscanini Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Franco Faccio amp oldid 1219729926, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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