Sujet
Grove Music Online
Objet
[extrait de:] Kurt MARKSTROM: 'Porpora, Nicola', Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed 18 June 2004), http://www.grovemusic.com :
"Porpora, Nicola (Antonio) (b Naples, 17 Aug 1686; d Naples, 3 March 1768). […]
[…] On 29 September 1696 he was enrolled at the Conservatorio dei Poveri di Gesù Cristo, where Greco is assumed to have been his composition teacher. […] His first commission was for an opera, L’Agrippina (1708), which was successful, although it was several years before he obtained another commission.
The first dozen years of Porpora’s career as an opera composer were rather lean, which was probably partly owing to Alessandro Scarlatti’s dominance of the Neapolitan scene. Moreover, the death of Porpora’s father and eldest brother in 1717 left him as head of the family. At this time he began his other career, as a music teacher, being appointed as maestro at the Conservatorio di S Onofrio in 1715; he also gave private lessons.
With Scarlatti’s return to Rome in 1719, new opportunities emerged. By the end of the year Porpora’s opera Faramondo was given its première in honour of the Empress Elizabeth’s nameday. For her birthday celebrations in 1720 and 1721, he composed the serenatas Angelica and Gli orti esperidi, both with texts by the young Metastasio, Angelica being his first libretto. One of his singing pupils, the castrato Farinelli, also made his début in the latter work. Porpora began to make his mark as a teacher; from his private singing classes there emerged both Farinelli and, several years later, Caffarelli.
[…] After fulfilling two commissions in 1723–4, he set out to try his fortunes in Germany and Austria.
Returning to Italy in early 1725, he collaborated with Metastasio in a new setting of Didone abbandonata for Reggio nell’Emilia. The libretto of Siface, one of his most successful works, lists Porpora’s new appointment as ‘maestro del pio Ospitale degli’Incurabili’. He settled down in Venice and for several years his operas featured prominently at the Teatro S Giovanni Grisostomo.
In 1733 Porpora resigned from the Incurabili and travelled to London, having received an invitation from a group of nobles intent on setting up an opera company to compete with the existing one under Handel. The new company, the so-called Opera of the Nobility, opened its first season in December 1733 with the première of his Arianna in Naxo. Over the next two and a half years he composed four more operas, an oratorio and a serenata; none of them, however, matched the success of Arianna, not even Polifemo, with which Farinelli made his London début. In spite of a superb team of singers, Porpora and the Opera of the Nobility did not establish superiority over Handel. […]
He returned to Venice [in 1736], resuming his old position at the Incurabili while the current maestro, Hasse, was on extended leave in Dresden. With a commission from the new Teatro S Carlo, he moved back home to Naples in October 1738 after a dozen years absence. […]
[In 1747] he was in Dresden as singing teacher to the Electoral Princess of Saxony, Maria Antonia Walpurgis, for whose birthday he composed the comic opera, Filandro, introducing his latest protégée Regina Mingotti. […] in April 1748 Porpora was appointed Kapellmeister. […] Porpora was pensioned off in January 1752 and left for Vienna.
During his years in Vienna Porpora gave singing lessons to various pupils, including Metastasio’s protégée, Marianne von Martínez. Metastasio was probably responsible for introducing the young Joseph Haydn to Porpora. Haydn became Porpora’s valet, pupil and his keyboard accompanist; […]
Porpora’s Dresden pension ended with the invasion of Saxony during the Seven Years War. […] His final years of retirement were spent in considerable poverty."
Utilisateur
AS