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Featured
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Rarita' cdc 027
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Twenty-five
years go by from the Tartini's death and, this time in the deepest
south of Italy, another talented musician is born who makes his
first steps holding a violin and then lands, as a composer, in the
world of opera: Giuseppe Saverio Raffaele Mercadante. |
Another period in time, other musical demands, other expectations. He
is born in Altamura, and to be able to enrol in the Real Collegio di Musica
S. Sebastiano he has to pretend to be from Naples and to be two years
younger than what he actually is. He is accepted and also manages to attend
the school without paying a tuition. He studies violin and, at the same
time, harmony and composition. Nicola Zingarelli, the skilful director
of the Conservatory, where composers such as Vicenzo Bellini and Errico
Petrella have studied, takes Mercadante under his wing and soon the young
man becomes his favourite disciple. It does not take him long to emerge:
at twenty years of age he is already conductor of the Conservatory's orchestra,
attracting the attention of Rossini and then obtaining the assignment
of writing some ballets for the S. Carlo Theatre of Naples. His choice
is made from this moment on, his attention will principally be turned
to music dramas and, like the most part of musicians of his generation,
he will be following Rossini's footsteps. His operas, and he composes
over fifty of them, are successful and go beyond the national boundaries.
He travels all over Eurospe and stages his operas in Paris, London, Vienna,
Barcelona, Madrid and Lisbon. But his authoritative creative personality
is not only confined to the music drama sphere: his works, vast and worthy
of attention, also turn to the composition of Oratories, sacred music,
Symphonies, Concertos and Variations.
© P&P - Promozione e Produzione, Rome.
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