Personne : Niccolò Piccinni

Titre Date Rôle
Didon 1783-10-16 compositeur
Le Fat en bonne fortune 1787-04-30 compositeur
Lucette 1784-12-30 compositeur
Le Mensonge officieux 1787-03-16 compositeur
Le Cigisbé 1782 compositeur
Le Dormeur éveillé 11-1764 compositeur
Pénélope 1785-11-02 compositeur
Diane et Endymion 1784-09-07 compositeur
La Buona figliuola 1771-06-17 compositeur
Atys 1780-02-22 compositeur
Roland 1777-01-17 compositeur
Le Faux lord 1783-12-05 compositeur
Adèle de Ponthieu 1772-12-01 compositeur
Clytemnestre Inconnue compositeur
Phaon 09-1778 compositeur
Le Fat méprisé 1779-05-16 compositeur
Iphigénie en Tauride 1781-01-23 compositeur

Performance Rôle Troupe Date
Concert avec la participation de Piccinni (1777-01-06) musicien Concert des amateurs (Paris) 1777-01-06

  • Sujet Grove Music Online
    Objet Dennis LIBBY/Julian RUSHTON: 'Niccolò Piccinni', Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed 18 June 2004), http://www.grovemusic.com :
    "Niccolò [Nicola] (Marcello Antonio Giacomo) Piccinni [Piccini] (b Bari, 16 Jan 1728; d Passy, nr Paris, 7 May 1800). He was one of the central figures in Italian and French opera.
    Although his father was a musician and his mother the sister of the composer Latilla, he was destined originally for the church. His precocious musical talent, however, would not be suppressed. […] Piccinni is said to have entered the S Onofrio conservatory in Naples in May 1742 and to have studied there until 1754, under Leo (d 1744). and then under Durante, who had a special affection for him. Prota-Giurleo has published documents (1954) that throw doubt on this by indicating that Piccinni became a resident of Naples only in 1753. But Piccinni himself called Durante his teacher […]
    In 1754 Piccinni embarked on a career of almost exclusively operatic composition. Beginning with comic works, as was the custom, he quickly gained a following in Naples […] In 1756 he married one of his singing pupils, the 14-year-old Vincenza Sibilla, who sang his music exquisitely in private but never appeared on the stage.
    The rapid growth of Piccinni’s reputation is indicated by the commission from Rome in 1758 for Alessandro nelle Indie. His second Rome opera, La buona figliuola (1760), created a furore and began a period in which he remained the undisputed favourite of the reputedly fickle Roman public. […] Piccinni produced new works in Rome at every Carnival up to 1773 except that of 1767. His fertility became legendary a period when prolific operatic composition was by no means unusual. Burney reported Sacchini’s assertion that Piccinni had written 300 operas. More sober commentators, like La Borde (or Ginguené), gave a figure of 130 that is not much exaggerated.
    Piccinni’s position in Rome was suddenly undermined by a craze, which began in 1773, for Anfossi, an inferior composer who, although a year Piccinni’s senior, had been his pupil in Naples and at first his protégé in Rome. Piccinni’s fall was sudden and cruel; a cabal hissed his last Rome opera and he returned to Naples and fell seriously ill. […] However, he maintained his reputation in Naples with a second Alessandro nelle Indie and the successful comedy I viaggiatori, and by 1776 a superficially more alluring prospect had already arisen in Paris. In 1774 the Neapolitan ambassador there, Caraccioli, had commended Piccinni to the court, and negotiations began. A delay was imposed by the death of Louis XV, but in 1776, with the promise of an annual ‘gratification’, revenue from his operas and employment by the court and nobility, Piccinni left Naples (16 November). He reached Paris on the last day of the year, suffering cruelly from the cold, knowing no French and with little idea of what was in store.
    The italophile party was large and influential, and Piccinni soon found friends. […] Roland, performed early in 1778, won both respect and affection from the public.
    In 1778–9 Piccinni was engaged to direct a troupe of Italians, giving performances of opere buffe at the Académie Royale. The repertory included works by Anfossi, Paisiello, Sacchini and Traetta, as well as Piccinni himself […] Later in his Paris sojourn Piccinni was in charge of singing instruction at the Ecole Royale de Musique et de Déclamation, and he undertook private teaching […]
    In 1784 the rival attraction of Sacchini became serious, and Salieri’s Les Danaïdes diverted attention further from Piccinni. He was no longer a novelty; not only did the dramatically weak Diane et Endymion fail to please but he suffered a quite unmerited failure with Pénélope in 1785 […] With the Revolution and the withdrawal of his pension, his position became precarious, and in 1791 he left for Naples, where he was warmly welcomed. In 1792 his daughter indiscreetly married a Frenchman of Jacobin leanings. Deemed guilty by association in the tense and reactionary atmosphere of Naples in those years, Piccinni, on returning from Venice where he had staged two new works, was quite unjustifiably placed under house arrest in 1794. He remained there in indigence and misery for four years, composing psalms, until political changes enabled him to return to France; his family followed as soon as they could. Financially he fared little better; his pension was only partly restored and he was forced to appeal to Bonaparte. By the time he was granted the post of sixth inspector at the Conservatoire he was too ill to benefit from it."
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