CONTEMPORARIES OF MOZART: Baldassare Galuppi (1706-1785)

[Gary Smith]

CONTEMPORARIES OF MOZART:

Baldassare Galuppi (1706-1785)

By Gary Smith

This is another posting in an irregular series on the various contemporary composers and personalities from Mozart's lifetime. The material is mostly derivative from general sources as noted. These are the people that Mozart:

Competed for work with.
Considered as friends and colleagues.
Knew from reputation.
Taught/nurtured as pupils and students.

Italian musical composer. In reality, Galuppi was really more Leopold and Haydn’s contemporary than that of Wolfgang, but he is certainly worthy of mention, if for no other reason than his being the composer whose comic operas have allowed him to acquire the title “father of opera buffa.

Galuppi was born on the 18th of October 1706 on the island of Burano near Venice, from which he was often known by the nickname of Il Buranello. His father, a barber, and violinist at the local theater, was his first teacher. Little is known of his early years, but as was usual for budding composers, the lure of opera and its ability to reward the musically talented obviously drew him to try his hand.

His first opera, composed at the age of sixteen, ended up being hissed off the stage. Undeterred, he determined to study composition seriously, and entered the Conservatorio degli Incurabili at Venice. Benedetto Marcello supposedly recommended him as a pupil to Antonio Lotti; with the latter the young Galuppi studied counterpoint, harmony, and keyboard playing. Possibly his first professional appointment was in Florence, where by 1726 he was a theater harpsichordist. After successfully producing two operas in collaboration with a fellow-pupil, G. B. Pescetti, in 1728 and 1729, he entered upon a busy career as a composer of operas for Venetian theaters, writing sometimes as many as five in a year. In 1729, in collaboration with Pescetti, Galuppi composed Dorinda for the Theatro San Samuele, an opera which was a considerable success and finally launched his theatrical career.

He visited London in 1741 and was invited to compose opere serie for the King's Theatre in the Haymarket. During his two years in England his operas were mostly successful, especially Scipion in Cartagana and Sirbace. As well, he arranged a pasticcio opera, Alexander in Persia, for the Haymarket. Burney considered his influence on English music to have been very powerful. Galuppi had his works published at John Walsh's, and for many years he remained one of London's favorite Italian composers. In 1740 he became vice-maestro di cappella at St Mark's in Venice and maestro in 1762.

Travelling to Vienna by 1748, he had a major success there with Demetrio and Artaserse on libtretti by Metastasio. In 1749 he began writing comic operas to libretti by Goldoni, which enjoyed an enormous popularity. Galuppi composed Arcadia in Brenta, the first comic-opera of the association Galuppi-Goldoni. Goldoni's libretto Il mondo della luna, first set by Galuppi, was later used by a number of other composers, including Joseph Haydn and Giovanni Paisiello. Initial favorites were Il conte Caramella (1749), Il mondo della Irma (1750), with subsequent operas including L'amante di tutte (1760) and I tre amanti ridicoli (1761), written on libretti by the composer's son Antonio Galuppi, who wrote under the name 'A. Liteo.'

Galuppi was invited to Russia by Catherine II. in 1766, where his operas made a favorable impression, and his influence was also felt in Russian church music. He returned to Venice in 1768, where he had held the post of director of the Conservatorio degli Incurabili since 1762. He died on the 3rd of January 1785.

Galuppi's best works are his comic operas, of which Il Filosofo di Campagna (1754), known in England as The Guardian Trick'd (Dublin, 1762) was the most popular. His melody is attractive rather than original, but his workmanship in harmony and orchestration is generally superior to that of his contemporaries. He seems to have been the first to extend concerted finales into a chain of several separate movements, working up to a climax, but in this respect he is much inferior to Sarti and Mozart. He was as well one of the earliest composers of opera to use the ensemble finale, in which all the characters appear in a musical ensemble that carries the action forward to the end of the act.

Robert Browning's famous poem, "A Toccata of Galuppi," does not refer to any known composition, but more probably to an imaginary extemporization on the harpsichord, such as was of frequent occurrence in the musical gatherings of Galuppi's day.

He composed more than 100 stage works; the most popular were Il conte Caramella (1749), Il mondo della Irma (1750), Il filosofo di campagna (1754), L'amante di tutte (1760), and Il marchese villano (1762). He also composed nineteen known cantatas, nearly thirty oratorios, many liturgical works, and some ninety keyboard sonatas.