Amilcare Ponchielli

Amilcare Ponchielli (, ; 31 August 1834 – 16 January 1886) was an Italian opera composer, best known for his opera La Gioconda. He was married to the soprano Teresina Brambilla.

Life and work Born in Paderno Fasolaro (now Paderno Ponchielli) near Cremona, then Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia, Ponchielli won a scholarship at the age of nine to study music at the Milan Conservatory, writing his first symphony by the time he was ten years old. The ballet Le due gemelle (1873) confirmed his success.

The following opera, I Lituani (The Lithuanians) of 1874, had a three-night run in 1903 at La Scala, where the casting was particularly poorly reviewed; it was scheduled for performances in 1939 that did not take place because the Second World War broke out, and it was not performed again until 1979, when RAI recovered the score. It has been revived several times since then. His best-known opera is La Gioconda (1876), which his librettist Arrigo Boito adapted from the same play by Victor Hugo that had been previously set by Saverio Mercadante as Il giuramento in 1837 and Carlos Gomes as Fosca in 1873. The opera contains the famous ballet Dance of the Hours as the third act finale. It was first produced in 1876 and revised several times. The version that has become popular today was first given in 1880.

In 1876, he started working on I Mori di Valenza, although the project dates back to 1873. It was an opera that he never finished, although it was completed later by Arturo Cadore and performed posthumously in 1914.

Ponchielli's grave at the Monumental Cemetery of Milan, Italy. After La Gioconda, Ponchielli wrote the monumental biblical melodrama in four acts, Il figliuol prodigo, given in Milan at La Scala on 26 December 1880, and Marion Delorme, from another play by Victor Hugo, which was presented at La Scala on 17 March 1885. In spite of their rich musical invention, neither of these operas met with the same success, but both exerted great influence on the composers of the rising generation, such as Giacomo Puccini, Pietro Mascagni, and Umberto Giordano.

In 1881, Ponchielli was appointed maestro di cappella of the Bergamo Cathedral, and from the same year, he was a professor of composition at the Milan Conservatory, where among his students were Puccini, Mascagni, Emilio Pizzi, and Giovanni Tebaldini.

He died of pneumonia in Milan in 1886 and was interred in the city's Monumental Cemetery.

Legacy

Although in his lifetime Ponchielli was very popular and influential (and introduced an enlarged orchestra and more complex orchestration), only one of his operas, La Gioconda, is regularly performed today. It contains a strong and memorable aria for contralto, 'Voce de donna o d'angelo' (the Rosary song); the great tenor romanza "Cielo e mar"; a well-known duet for tenor and baritone titled "Enzo Grimaldo, Principe Di Santafior"; the soprano aria "Suicidio!"; and the ballet Dance of the Hours, which is widely known thanks in part to its having been featured in Walt Disney's Fantasia in 1940, in Allan Sherman's novelty song "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh", and in numerous other popular works.