Бальдассаре Галуппи: Венецианский композитор и «отец комической оперы»

Italian composer (1706–1785)

Baldassare Galuppi (18 October 17063 January 1785) was a Venetian composer, born on the island of Burano in the Venetian Republic. He belonged to a generation of composers, including Johann Adolph Hasse, Giovanni Battista Sammartini, and C. P. E. Bach, whose works are emblematic of the prevailing galant music that developed in Europe throughout the 18th century. He achieved international success, spending periods of his career in Vienna, London and Saint Petersburg, but his main base remained Venice, where he held a succession of leading appointments. In his early career Galuppi made a modest success in opera seria, but from the 1740s, together with the playwright and librettist Carlo Goldoni, he became famous throughout Europe for his comic operas in the new dramma giocoso style. To the succeeding generation of composers, he was known as "the father of comic opera". Some of his mature opere serie, for which his librettists included the poet and dramatist Metastasio, were also widely popular. Throughout his career Galuppi held official positions with charitable and religious institutions in Venice, the most prestigious of which was maestro di cappella at the Doge's chapel, St Mark's Basilica. Galuppi's name persists in the English poet Robert Browning's 1855 poem "A Toccata of Galuppi's", but this has not helped maintain the composer's work in the general repertoire. Some of Galuppi's works were occasionally performed in the 200 years after his death, but it was not until the last years of the 20th century that his compositions were extensively revived in live performance and on recordings.

Galuppi was born on the island of Burano in the Venetian Lagoon, and from as early as age 22 was known as "Il Buranello", a nickname which even appears in the signature on his music manuscripts, "Baldassare Galuppi, called 'Buranello'." His father was a barber, who also played the violin in theatre orchestras, and is believed to have been his son's first music teacher. Although there is no documentation, oral tradition as related to Francesco Caffi in the nineteenth century says that the young Galuppi was trained in composition and harpsichord by Antonio Lotti, the chief organist at St Mark's Basilica. At the age of 15 Galuppi composed his first opera, Gli amici rivali, which, according to Caffi, was performed unsuccessfully at Chioggia and equally unsuccessfully in Vicenza under the title La fede nell'incostanza. The collaborators followed it with an opera seria, Dorinda, the next year. This, too, was modestly successful, and Galuppi began to receive commissions for operas and oratorios. Although he became internationally known as an operatic composer, he maintained a steady output of sacred music throughout his career. However, in Burney's view Galuppi's skills were still immature during his spell in London. Burney wrote, "He now copied the hasty, light and flimsy style which reigned in Italy at this time, and which Handel's solidity and science had taught the English to despise." On his return to Venice in May 1743, Galuppi returned to his employment with the Mendicanti, and to composing for the opera houses. The operatic fashion in Venice was on the point of changing from opera seria to a new style of comic opera, dramma giocoso.|group= n The latter believed firmly that the music was there to serve the text rather than vice versa. He grumbled about Galuppi in 1749, "He is, I presume, an excellent composer for violins, for cellos and for voices, but he is an exceedingly bad one for poets. When he writes he thinks as much about the words as you do about being elected Pope As far as the public is concerned, he is appreciated by those who judge with their ears but not their souls." Nevertheless, their joint work prospered, and was staged in other countries. In Vienna, their Demetrio and Artaserse were great successes, the former breaking all local box office records. Galuppi was fortunate that when he turned once more to comic opera in 1749 he collaborated with Carlo Goldoni. Although an established and eminent playwright by the time he worked with Galuppi, Goldoni was happy for his libretti to be subservient to the music. He was as warm in his regard for Galuppi as Metastasio was cold. In April 1762 Galuppi was appointed to the leading musical post in Venice, maestro di capella of St Mark's, Galuppi was reluctant, but Venetian officials assured him that his post and salary as maestro di cappella at St. Mark's were secure until 1768 as long as he supplied a Gloria and a Credo for the Basilica's Christmas mass each year. In June 1764 the senate granted Galuppi formal leave to go. He resigned his post at the Incurabili, made provision for his wife and daughters (who were to remain in Venice, while his son travelled with him), Galuppi took pride in his prestigious appointments; the title page of his 1766 Christmas mass for St Mark's describes him as: "First Master and Director of all the Music for Her Imperial Majesty the Empress of all the Russias, etc. etc. and First Master of the Ducal Chapel of St. Mark's in Venice. "|

Galuppi told Burney his definition of good music: vaghezza, chiarezza, e buona modulazione (beauty, clearness, and good modulation)". Burney commented on Galuppi's prodigious workload that in addition to his duties at St Mark's and the Incurabili, "he has a hundred sequins a year as domestic organist to the family of Gritti, and is organist of another church, of which I have forgotten the name". The last opera by Galuppi was La serva per amore, premiered in October 1773. In May 1782 he conducted concerts to mark a papal visit to Venice by Pope Pius VI. Thereafter he continued to compose, despite declining health. His last known completed work is the 1784 Christmas mass for St Mark's.

According to The Musical Times Galuppi, with 109 operas, was the sixth most prolific opera composer. His output was exceeded by his contemporaries Draghi, Piccinni, Paisiello, Guglielmi, and the most prolific of all, with 166 operas, Wenzel Müller; the only composer of later generations who approached his output was Offenbach 100 years later. Like most of his contemporaries, Galuppi did not hesitate to re use his own music, sometimes simply transplanting it and at other times reworking it substantially. He was called "the father of comic opera" by musicians of the generation that followed him.|group= n

Galuppi's music for his comic operas is described by Luisi as "largely syllabic designed to enhance the intelligibility of the text without impairing the fluidity of the melodic lines."

Among the corpus of Galuppi's authenticated sacred works are at least 284 works: 52 masses and movements pertaining to the mass, 73 settings of psalms and music for the offices, 8 motets, and 26 uncategorized works, including hymns, versetti, a setting of St. John's Passion for women's voices, and a Baccanale for the church of San Rocco. The largest repository of manuscripts outside of Italy is the Sächsische Landesbibliothek – Staats und Universitätsbibliothek in Dresden, but manuscripts are also found in collections in Munich, Paris, Prague, Vienna, and New York, among others. In recent years Ines Burde, Franco Passadore, and Franco Rossi have all made progress toward a comprehensive catalogue of Galuppi's sacred music, but a complete inventory is still out of reach due to the large number of lost or missing manuscripts, spurious attributions, and forgeries. In his religious works, Galuppi mixed modern and antique styles. Several works long attributed to Galuppi by publishers were shown to be the work of Vivaldi. In 2003, a Nisi Dominus previously thought to be by Galuppi was reattributed to Vivaldi. The music of the latter, a generation earlier than Galuppi, had gone out of fashion after his death, and unscrupulous copyists and editors found that Galuppi's name on the title page increased a work's appeal. Three other works in the Saxon State Collection have also been reattributed from Galuppi to Vivaldi: a Beatus Vir, a Dixit Dominus and a Laetatus sum.

Galuppi was much admired for his keyboard music. Few of his sonatas were published in his lifetime, but many survive in manuscript. Some of them follow the Scarlatti single movement model; others are in the three movement form later adopted by Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and others. It is no surprise that a number of Galuppi's keyboard works should make it into print during his lifetime, including two sets of six sonatas, published in London as opus 1 (1756) and opus 2 (1759) respectively. Felix Raabe mentions the round number of 125 "sonatas, toccatas, divertimenti and etudes" for keyboard, based on Fausto Torrefranca's 1909 thematic catalogue of Galuppi's cembalo works. However, given some of the outrageous assertions on this topic that Torrefranca makes elsewhere (such as that the classical sonata form was created by Italian keyboard composers) the accuracy of this figure must be accepted only cautiously. Galuppi's seven experimental Concerti a quattro are particularly innovative chamber music pieces that foreshadow the development of the classical string quartet. Each of the concerti is a three movement work for two violins, viola and cello that integrates the counterpoint of the sonata da chiesa with daring chromatic twists and harmonic detours that become more pronounced as the set progresses quartet by quartet. Innovations such as the chromatically raised 5th that Burney singled out in Galuppi's arias of the 1740s appear, and many harmonic features of the late classical period are foreshadowed, such as the final deceptive cadence in which an augmented sixth chord is substituted before the ultimate resolution. Among other instrumental compositions by Galuppi, Grove's Dictionary lists sinfonias, overtures, trios and string quartets, and concerti for solo instruments and strings. The poem inspired a 1989 setting, in modern idiom but with musical quotations from Galuppi's works, by the composer Dominick Argento. Browning's poem was followed by a few revivals of Galuppi works, and the composer's music was played at memorials for the poet, both in church and in the concert hall. But performances of Galuppi's music remained sporadic. La diavolessa was revived for the first time at the Venice Music Festival in 1952; Il filosofo di campagna was revived in 1959, starring Ilva Ligabue and Renato Capecchi, and was staged at the Buxton Festival in 1985.

From the late 20th century onwards an increasing number of Galuppi's works have been committed to disc. Among the opera recordings on CD or DVD are Il caffè di campagna (2011), La clemenza di Tito (2010), La diavolessa (2004), Didone abbandonata (2007), Il filosofo di campagna (1959 and 2001), Gustavo primo re di Svezia (2005), Il mondo alla roversa (2007), and L'Olimpiade (2009). Three series of recordings of the keyboard sonatas have been launched, by Peter Seivewright on the Divine Art label, Matteo Napoli on Naxos. and motets (2001).