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Arrigo Boito

 
Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Arrigo Boito
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(born Feb. 24, 1842, Padua, Lombardy-Venetia — died June 10, 1918, Milan, Italy) Italian composer and librettist. As a composer, he is remembered for his opera Mefistofele (1868). He wrote the text for Giuseppe Verdi's Inno delle nazioni (1862) and revised the libretto for his Simon Boccanegra (1881), tasks that led to his writing the celebrated texts for Verdi's masterworks Otello (1887) and Falstaff (1893). He was also the librettist of Amilcare Ponchielli's La Gioconda (1876). His own opera Nerone was left unfinished at his death.

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Music Encyclopedia: Arrigo Boito
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(b Padua, 24 Feb 1842; d Milan, 10 June 1918). Italian librettist, composer and critic. He is best remembered for his one completed opera, Mefistofele, and for his collaborations with Verdi. He studied composition and aesthetics at the Milan Conservatory, then travelled, meeting Verdi in Paris. In Milan from 1862, and associated with the Scapigliatura, a radical literary movement, he wrote ironic poetry and erudite criticism decrying the state of Italian art. Although the first version of the five-act Mefistofele had a catastrophic première under his own direction in 1868, with revisions the work triumphed at Bologna, Venice and, in 1881, La Scala. It was through the efforts of the publisher Giulio Ricordi in 1879 that a successful Shakespearean collaboration, and what was to be a deepening friendship, began between Verdi and Boito. The librettos for Otello (1887) and Falstaff (1893), the second even more polished than the first, are remarkable for their fidelity to Shakespeare, sense of proportion, wit and vividness. His other well-known librettos include those for La Gioconda (set by Ponchielli,1876) and for the 1881 revision of Verdi's Simon Boccanegra. In the 1890s Verdi encouraged Boito to complete his own second opera, Nerone, but he never did, lacking the confidence and musical proficiency to realize his ambitions (the work was performed in an edited version in 1924). As a music critic in the 1860s, he praised Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer and treated Verdi with respect; later he was less than enthusiastic about Wagner and showed antipathy for Richard Strauss.


 
Columbia Encyclopedia: Arrigo Boito
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Boito, Arrigo (ärrē'go bô'ētō), 1842-1918, Italian composer and librettist. His opera Mefistofele (1868, rev. 1875), influenced by Wagner's music-drama, helped to bring about a new dramatic style in Italian opera. Its first performance, at La Scala, Milan, caused a riot, but it subsequently became very popular. Another opera, Nerone, was posthumously finished and produced by Toscanini in 1924. Many consider Boito's masterpieces to be the librettos for Verdi's Otello and Falstaff. He also was librettist for Ponchielli's La Gioconda and wrote novels and poems.
Dictionary: Bo·i·to   (bō'ē-tō') pronunciation, Arrigo
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1842-1918.

Italian composer, librettist, and writer best known for his romantic opera Mefistofele (1868).


Artist: Arrigo Boito
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  • Period: Romantic (1820-1869)
  • Country: Italy
  • Born: February 24, 1842 in Padua, Italy
  • Died: June 10, 1918 in Milan, Italy
  • Genres: Opera

Biography

Poet, novelist, and composer, Boito is known for the single opera he completed, Mefistofele. Like Rossini, who wrote three dozen operas by his mid-thirties and spent the next 40 years of his life unable or unwilling to complete another, Boito underwent some kind of crisis early, and worked for 54 years, unsuccessfully, at completing his second opera.

Arrigo Boito was born Enrico Boito in Padua, Italy, on February 24, 1842. His father was Silvestro Boito, a minor painter, and his mother was Josephine Radolinska, a Polish noblewoman. Silvestro abandoned the family while his son was still a small boy. When Enrico showed musical ability, his mother encouraged it, then, partly by telling her tale of poverty and desertion, managed to get him into the Milan Conservatory on scholarship. As a student at the Milan Conservatory, Boito was awarded a stipend after winning composition prizes that enabled him to travel and study abroad for two years. He took advantage of the prize to visit Poland, his mother's birthplace, as well as England, Germany, and France. He was much impressed during these sojourns with the dramatic power of the operas of Beethoven and especially of Wagner. Boito had a brilliant and wide-ranging mind, with a devouring appetite for classical literature. He changed his name to Arrigo about the time he received a scholarship for study in Paris. He wrote numerous cantatas, some operas, and other music, and he conceived plans for operas based on Nero and Goethe's Faust.

In 1868 he premiered his Mefistofele at La Scala. The highly literary and literate Boito also wrote the work's libretto. At its premiere performance (more than six hours long), a pious contingent, objecting to the thematic modernism of Boito's version of the Faust legend, demonstrated angrily. After the second performance was likewise ill-received, Boito withdrew the opera and undertook modifications to appease criticism. Mefistofele has become a staple of the repertoire, one of the most exciting and compelling of all operas. Later in life he came close to completing another opera, Nerone. The conductor Toscanini championed the work, but it has not found a secure foothold in the repertory. Dry as his font of musical inspiration became, Boito nevertheless retained his literary powers in full. He wrote librettos for Ponchielli's La Gioconda and for Verdi's great late-life Shakespearean operas, Falstaff and Othello. Boito's poetry has never fallen out of favor, and his letters reveal unusual gifts as well. Seldom, if ever, has anyone else secured a seemingly imperishable niche in musical history with so little output. ~ Douglas Purl, All Music Guide
Wikipedia: Arrigo Boito
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Arrigo Boito

Arrigo Boito (24 February 1842 – 10 June 1918), aka Enrico Giuseppe Giovanni Boito, pseudonym Tobia Gorrio, was an Italian poet, journalist, novelist and composer, best known today for his opera libretti and his own opera, Mefistofele.

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Biography

Arrigo Boito.

Born in Padua, the son of Silvestro Boito, an Italian painter of miniatures and his wife, a Polish countess, Józefina Radolińska, Boito studied music at the Milan Conservatory until 1861. In 1866 he 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.

The premiere of his only finished opera, Mefistofele, based on Goethe's Faust, took place 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." Boito withdrew the opera from further performances to rework it, and it had a more successful second premiere, in Bologna on 10 April 1875. Boito's revised and drastically cut version also changed Faust from a baritone to a tenor, and it is still frequently performed and recorded today.

Other than Mefistofele, Boito wrote very little music. He completed (but later destroying) another opera, Ero e Leandro, and left incomplete a further opera, Nerone, which he had been working at, on and off, from 1877 to 1915. Excluding the last act, for which he left only a few sketches, it was finished after his death by Arturo Toscanini and Vincenzo Tommasini and premiered at La Scala, 1924. Mefistofele is the only work of his performed with any regularity today. The Prologue to the opera, set in Heaven, is a favorite concert piece. He also left a Symphony in A minor in manuscript[1].

Boito's literary powers never dried up. As well as writing the libretti for his own operas, Boito wrote them for other composers. As "Tobia Gorrio" (an anagram of his name) he provided the libretto for Amilcare Ponchielli's La Gioconda. His rapprochement with Verdi, whom he had offended in a toast shortly after they had collaborated on Verdi's Inno delle Nazioni ("Anthem of the Nations", London, 1862), was effected by the music publisher Giulio Ricordi. Boito successfully revised the libretto for Verdi's unwieldy Simon Boccanegra, which then premiered to great acclaim in 1881. With that, their mutual friendship and respect blossomed and, though Verdi's projection for an opera based on King Lear never came to anything, Boito provided subtle and resonant libretti for Verdi's last masterpieces, Otello (1887) and Falstaff (1893). When Verdi died, Boito was there at his bedside.

Boito was director of the Parma Conservatoire from 1889 to 1897. He received the honorary degree of doctor of music from the University of Cambridge in 1893. He died in Milan and was interred there in the Cimitero Monumentale.

A memorial concert was given in his honor at La Scala in 1948. The orchestra was conducted by Arturo Toscanini. Recorded in very primitive sound, the concert has been issued on CD.

Camillo Boito, Arrigo's older brother, was an Italian architect and engineer, and a noted art critic, art historian and novelist.

Opera libretti

The years given are those of the premieres.

Boito also provided the text to Verdi's cantata Inno delle Nazioni (24 May 1862, Her Majesty's Theatre, London).

See also

References

  1. ^ Boito, Arrigo; Przeslica, Agnieszka, ed. "Publication of Boito's A minor Symphony". Boccaccini E Spada. http://boccacciniespada.com/shop/product_info.php?manufacturers_id=42&products_id=159. Retrieved 2008-11-01. 
  • Arrigo Boito at the Stanford University: OperaGlass Composer index
  • Mefistofele Creative Commons MP3 Recording
  • Costantino Maeder, Il real fu dolore e l'ideal sogno. Arrigo Boito e i limiti dell'arte, Cesati: Firenze, 2002.
  • Emanuele d'Angelo, Arrigo Boito, in Encyclopedia of Italian Literary Studies, edited by Gaetana Marrone, New York, Routledge, 2007, 1, pp. 271-274.
  • Riccardo Viagrande, Arrigo Boito "Un caduto chèrubo", poeta e musicista, Palermo, L'Epos, 2008.

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

 
 

 

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