Errico Petrella 1813-1877

[giles.enders]

Errico Petrella  Born 10 December 1813  Palermo, Italy   Died 7 July 1877 Genoa, Italy 

He was the son of a Neapolitan naval officer who happened to be in Palermo when he was born.  He studied at The Naples Conservatory under Vincenzo Bellini, Ruggi and Niccolo Zingarelli.  He was expelled from the conservatory as a result of writing his first opera buffa, which was a big hit.  Petrella had one of the most successful careers in Italy of any opera composer particularly between the years  1850-70 and was much admired as a composer throughout his life. However Verdi was very critical of him alleging that Petrella's music could not sustain a dramatic flow.  Petrella's gift was 'melodic inspiration'

Orchestral

Gran marcia cavalleresca  in E flat major  1868   pub. by F Lucca

Opera/Opera Buffa

Il Diavolo color di rosa  1829
Il giorno delle nozze  1830
Lo Scroccone  1834
La Cimodocea  1835
Il Pirati Spagnuoli  1837
Le Miniere di Frieberg  1839
Galeotto Manfredi  1843
Il Carnivale di Venczia, ossia le precauzioni  1851   pub. by F Lucca, Milano
Le Preccauzioni  1851
Elena di Tolosa  1852   available from IMSLP
Marco Visconti  1854   pub. by F Lucca, Milano
L'assedio di Leida  1856   available from IMSLP
Ione (Jone)  1858 (The dead march from this is still often played at Italien funerals)   pub. by T Cottram, Napoli
Il Duca di Scilla  1859
Morosina  1860   pub. by F Lucca, Milano
Il folletto di Gresy  1860 (lyrical comedy)   pub. by F Lucca, Milano
Virginia  1861
La Contessa d'Amalfi  1864   pub. by Guidici e Strada, Torino
Celinda  1865  (This was heavily influenced by French Grand Opera)   available from IMSLP
Caterina Howard  1866
I Promessi Sposi  1866
Giovanna II di Napoli  1869
Manfredo  1872
Bianca Orsini  1874  available from IMSLP
Diana  1876

Opera Ballett

Salumbo

Vocal

Funeral mass for Angelo Mariani  1873
Inno a Vittorio Emanuelle II  1860

[alberto]

I never had the occasion of hearing one note by Enrico Petrella.
If I remember well, when Toscanini was presented with a score of the (then new) Mahler's Fifth Symphony, he said (in sign of disesteem) that the new score first movement reminded him of the funeral march from Petrella's "Jone".

[eschiss1]

According to Wikipedia, the preferred? spelling of the first name was Errico? (Apparently the one complete opera performance of his available on CD is, indeed, one of Jone. See also Jone (opera).)

If you are at all curious about seeing, anyway  the funeral march from Jone/Ione (in vocal score), or 9 other works by Petrella, see IMSLP. (YouTube turns up a fair number of hits for Errico Petrella, also.)

[Derek Hughes]

Wagner saw Petrella's Il Duca di Scilla at La Scala in March 1859: 'an unbelievably worthless and incompetent operatic effort by a modern composer whose name I have forgotten'. Petrella died of diabetes,  in poverty . Verdi did not rate him as a composer but, hearing of his plight, sent him some money, which arrived the day after his death. The fullest account of him that I have found (in Italian) is http://www.primonumero.it/musica/classica.php?id=143. He had a penchant for operas about 'donne perverse e sensuali' and 'amava molto le donne e la vita brillante'. Hence, it is implied, his miserable death. A lesson to us all.

[pcc]

Premiere Opera in NYC has Petrella's late I PROMESSI SPOSI from a 1951 Italian performance (the last of any of his works in Italy) on CD.  The sound is pretty awful, but the opera works well and is much more "advanced" and unified in structure than JONE (which if you look hard enough you can download from a 1981 performance in Caracas).  JONE is a rough-n-ready meller with great tunes and enormous energy; I like it a lot.  It's much more polished than Apolloni's contemporary hit L'EBREO, which, however, is not saying much; but I also enjoy that as well.

[edurban]

The Caracas Jone is a blast, decent sound, good provincial cast...and lots of unsubtle energy, just like the opera.  Jone is the Last Days of Pompeii story (by way of Bulwer-Lytton, which isn't the case with Pacini's version) and naturally all ends with destruction and crashing tam-tams. The once famous dead march wheezes along like a Sicilian town band playing at a funeral  As pcc says, there are great tunes, some looking back to Bellini and some more toward middle Verdi, and they come along regularly.  The Caracas audience loves it, and so do I.  Not opera as Art, but opera as popular entertainment.

Incidently, the Caracas production was mounted in 1981 to commemorated the opera house's centennial, the opening opera having been...Jone.  And my copy of the libretto was published at the old NYC Academy of Music on 14th street in 1863.  So Petrella's hit really did make the rounds.

[edurban]

Any possibility of correcting the heading of this thread to Errico Petrella?

[Mark Thomas]

Done, Giles.

[pcc]

Gottschalk refers several times to JONE on NOTES OF A PIANIST as "noisy" and "detestable", though the printed version doesn't mention his attending the New York performances (which he could have easily done in 1863).  The piece was probably too forthright and rackety for him, though I enjoy it each time I throw my CDs of it on because it is so direct and unsubtle, but not uninventive.  There are some really great "big" tunes (the Act II lfinale is very rich and ends wonderfully headlong without a concluding stretta), the grand F major duet in the last act is thrilling, and it ends appropriately cataclysmically. I think the parts for that Academy of Music staging are, or used to be, in Mapleson's library on Long Island, though I remember their catalogue listing them as "incomplete".

[eschiss1]

National Library of Australia seems to have a lot of the parts needed for a production of Jone (mid-19th century published parts from F. Lucca, Milan.) (They also have parts to his opera buffa La Precauzioni. Both of them in their "J.C. Williamson collection of performance materials.", which, like the Fleisher Collection, seems worth knowing about in such a connection.)

[pcc]

I'd travel a good distance to see it in a heartbeat!