Adam, Adolphe

Adolphe Charles Adam, best known to American audiences as the composer of the Christmas carol O Holy Night, was born in Paris on July 24, 1803.  His father, Johann Ludwig Adam, was a composer and music professor at the Paris Conservatoire; his mother was the daughter of a notable physician. He eventually entered the Paris Conservatoire in 1821, where he studied organ and harmonium under the celebrated opera composer François-Adrien Boieldieu. Adam also played the triangle in the orchestra of the Conservatoire; however, he did not win the Grand Prix de Rome, and his father discouraged his pursuit of a musical career.  By age 20 Adam was writing songs for Parisian vaudeville houses and was playing in the orchestra at the Gymnasie Dramatique, where he would later become chorus master.

In 1825 Adam helped Boieldieu with the preparation of his opera La Dame blanche, which he also transcribed to piano for popular sale. With money he made from this enterprise Adam traveled to Belgium, Holland, Germany and Switzerland. In Geneva he met Eugène Scribe, author of the play that would eventually inspire Verdi’s Un Ballo in maschera, with whom he would collaborate on numerous operas over the coming 30 years.

Adam's first solo ballet composition was Faust in1833 for choreographer André Deshayes at the King's Theatre in London. His first work for the Paris Opera was the music for the ballet La Fille du Danube for Taglioni in 1836. He traveled to St. Petersburg to present the same work, a new ballet, L'écumeur de mer, and an opera for the court of Tsar Nicholas I.  Adam's next important work was the music for the ballet Giselle, for which he is probably best known today. It premiered at the Paris Opéra June 28, 1841.

Shortly after the successful Giselle, a new director was in place at the Opéra with whom Adam had serious quarrels. It was made known that a work of his would never again be performed at the theater. Adam invested his own money and borrowed heavily to open a third opera house of his own. In 1847 Adam opened the Théâtre National, in Paris, as a showcase for young composers. The Théâtre was forced to close the following year due to the Revolution, leaving Adam in huge debt. Assigning all his royalties to pay off the debt, he turned to journalism to earn some money. In 1849 Adam became Professor of Composition at the Conservatoire, a position he held until his death. All the while he continued his compositions; among others his ballet Le Corsaire premiered in January 1856. Eventually, through hard work, he paid off all the debts but at the cost of his own health.

Adolphe Adam died May 3, 1856 in Paris having written 40 operas, 14 ballets and numerous light operas and vaudevilles.  He was buried in the cemetery at Montmartre, Paris. 

Gilbert & Sullivan

Often referred to by their initials, G&S, William Schwenck Gilbert and Arthur Seymour Sullivan have left an indelible mark on the world of theater. This remarkable pairing created some of the greatest hits in operetta that are still regularly performed around the world; The Mikado, H.M.S. Pinafore, and The Pirates of Penzance, to name a few.

Sir William Schwenck Gilbert was born on November 18, 1836 in London, England to a retired naval surgeon and his wife. He went spent much of his youth touring Europe with his family, returning to London in 1849. William began his education at the Great Ealing School and went on to King's College. He entered into the legal profession although he had little success there. He did gain a thorough understanding of legal quirks that he later used in his biting satire.

William eventually left his legal career to pursue writing. In 1869, his first piece for the Gallery of Illustration was produced and met with some success. He wrote a total of six musical plays for the Gallery. Gilbert was also gaining some practical experience in stage direction. He started to direct his own plays that opened doors to him creatively. His first contact with Sullivan came as a collaborative Christmas play, Thespis, in 1871. That same year was a tremendous success for Gilbert; seven of his plays had their premieres, and he was writing constantly in many different genres including farces, fairy comedies, novel adaptations, etc. Eventually, Gilbert and Sullivan were drawn together again by the influential impresario, Richard D'Oyly Carte. D'Oyly Carte suggested Gilbert take his libretto for Trial by Jury to Arthur Sullivan. It was an immediate hit.

Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan was born on May 13, 1842, also in London, to the royal bandmaster and his wife. By the age of 8, Arthur could play most of the instruments in the band. After he finished his studies at a private school, Arthur received an appointment at the Chapel Royal. He then received the Mendelssohn scholarship and attended the Royal Academy of Music until 1858. Arthur left England to study at the Leipzig conservatory. Leipzig had a profound impact on the young composer. When he returned to England in 1862, he composed an orchestral suite to William Shakespeare's The Tempest. After that premiere, Arthur found himself being hailed as the new hope of serious English music.

In 1866, the premiere of Arthur's Symphony in E flat was a tremendous success. The next several years produced orchestral overtures, concertos, oratorios and several Christian hymns, including Onward, Christian Soldiers. He also held several positions in London including organist, conductor and the principal of the National Training School. In 1867, Arthur composed a one-act musical Cox and Box and a full-length musical work, The Contrabandista.

In 1871, Sullivan was introduced to Gilbert through singer Fred Clay. Thespis was the outcome of that initial meeting, but it wasn't until 1875 and the meeting with D'Oyly Carte that launched this successful pairing. Trial by Jury was an immediate success and led to further collaborations as well as the formation of the D'Oyly Carte comic opera company in 1876. In 1877, the G&S team created The Sorcerer, followed by H.M.S. Pinafore (1878), the latter running for almost two years to full houses. In 1879, a copyright dispute brought G&S to America along with their Pinafore and Pirates of Penzance, which were huge hits in New York.

In 1884, a most famous feud took place; Sullivan refused to write anything more for D'Oyly Carte's Savoy Theater. He left for a five-week tour of Europe; upon his return, both D'Oyly Carte and Gilbert tried to persuade him to continue his collaborations. Gilbert, initially insisting on a plot with a magic pill, finally came up with plot when a Japanese sword hanging on the wall of his study crashed to the floor, catching his attention. He came up with the plot that would become The Mikado and Sullivan agreed to compose the music.

After The Gondoliers, Gilbert and Sullivan had another parting of the ways over some of the expenses the Savoy Theater was incurring. D'Oyly Carte purchased an extremely expensive carpet for the theater; Gilbert felt it was an unnecessary extravagance. Gilbert and D'Oyly Carte had words and ultimately Sullivan ended up siding with D'Oyly Carte.

After this split, both Gilbert and Sullivan explored other areas but neither was as successful individually as they had been togeher. They twice attempted reuniting and collaborating, but both experiments failed to capture the audience that previous G&S works had. Sullivan went on to write an opera, Ivanhoe, and several operettas. Gilbert completed several plays including The Fortune Hunter (1897) and The Hooligan (1911).

Sullivan's health went into decline at the turn of the century, and he became addicted to morphine to relieve his pain. Sir Arthur Sullivan died on November 22, 1900 in London. Neither of his closest friends, Gilbert and D'Oyly Carte, was with him when he died. Gilbert was out of town and read about Sullivan's death in a newspaper, and D'Oyly Carte was in poor health. A few months later, D'Oyly Carte passed away. Gilbert lived until 1911 when a swimming accident took his life. 

Charles Gounod (June 18, 1818 – October 18, 1893) is perhaps best known to American audiences as the composer of the Funeral March for a Marionette, the iconic theme song of Alfred Hitchcock Presents.  Born in Paris, he was the son of a talented but unsuccessful painter who died when Gounod was four. Gounod's mother, also an artist, kept up his father's classes while also giving music lessons.

Earning admission to the prestigious Paris Conservatory in 1836, Gounod became a very successful student. Three years later, in 1839, at the age of 21, Gounod won the prestigious Prix de Rome, a feat Hector Berlioz had achieved just 9 years earlier.  As a winner of the Prix de Rome, Gounod was granted a scholarship to study in Rome by the French government.  While there, he developed a great fascination for religious music of the sixteenth century, particularly that of Palestrina. The beauty of the sacred music prompted Gounod to lifelong religious interests, and he had difficultly deciding between entering the church and continuing with secular music.

In 1843, Gounod returned to Paris to accept his first position as musical director of the Chapel for Foreign Missions. Still in a state of religious confusion, Gounod entered the Carmelite monastery as a noviate in 1847. Gounod was not entirely suited to the religious profession, though, and was referred to by some as "the philandering monk."

Despite incredible talent, Gounod’s musical career was very slow to take off.  His Messe Sollennelle (premiere 1851) and Faust (1859) were his first real successes, and Faust remains his best-known work to this day.  In fact, Faust was such a remarkable step beyond Gounod’s previous work that, by one possibly apocryphal account, a critic claimed Gounod could not possibly have written it.  According to the story, Gounod was so deeply offended he challenged the critic to a duel.

Gounod was to spend the remainder of his lifetime attempting unsuccessfully to produce an opera as well received as Faust. Gounod produced thirteen operas; his favorite opera, La Reinen de Saba (1862,) did not fare well with critics. Mireille (1863) and Roméo et Juliette (1864) were highly praised by European critics, but never enjoyed the popularity of Faust.  Other notable works include his setting of Ave Maria (1859) and the Inno e Marcia Pontificale (1869), written for the Golden Jubilee of Pope Pius IX’s priesthood, and in use since Christmas Eve 1949 as the official national anthem of Vatican City.

In the last years of his life, Gounod returned to religious music. He became very successful in England where he enjoyed a notorious association with Mrs. Georgina Weldon, wife of Captain George Weldon. Gounod moved in with the couple at Tavistock House in England. This association created quite a scandal, of which Gounod eventually tired. He returned to Paris where he died peacefully on October 18, 1893.

Puccini, Gioacchino

Puccini emerged into the twentieth century music world as the "King of Verismo," not through the conducting background of Mascagni or through the skilled compositional ability of Giordano, but as a master of theater. Puccini wrote solely for the operatic stage and he understood the dramatic intensity and melodic poignancy of real life subject matter. Critics have sometimes dismissed his work as overly impassioned, melodramatic, and sentimental. The composer himself proclaimed, "The only music I can make is that of small things," although he admired the grander stylistic abilities of Verdi and Wagner.

Despite that admiration, Puccini chose to concentrate on life's familiar bittersweet passions and intense emotional storms. Puccini was born in Lucca, Italy and descended from a long line of musicians, conductors, and composers. It was assumed he would inherit the talent and interest to continue in his family's chosen craft. At the tender age of six years, upon his father's premature death, he fell heir to the position of choirmaster and organist at San Martino Church and professor of music at Collegio Ponziano. However, plans to preserve these posts for the young Puccini may as well have been canceled the day he hiked thirteen miles to the city of Pisa to witness a production of Giuseppe Verdi's latest work, Aida. He determined his own future at that moment, falling completely under the spell of opera, never to recover.

A stipend from a wealthy great-uncle and a scholarship from Queen Margherita herself supported Puccini in his education at the music conservatory in Milan. The great composers Antonio Bazzini and Amilcare Ponchielli taught the young musician; Ponchielli eventually encouraging Puccini's participation in a one-act opera competition sponsored by the publishing house of Sonzogno. Friends of Ponchielli even provided the libretto. Unfortunately, Puccini's first opera, La Villi, didn't take the prize. However, the powerful critic/librettist, Arrigo Boito, raised funds for its performance before appreciative audiences at La Scala and Ricordi published the score. The modest success bolstered Puccini's confidence, but provided little compensation. A second opera, Edgar, failed as the result of a poor libretto.

Puccini's persistence was rewarded with the production of Manon Lescaut. Premiered in February 1893 in Turin, the opera proved a resounding triumph. Puccini was suddenly established as a wealthy composer and artistic successor to Maestro Giuseppi Verdi. The two operas that followed, La Bohème and Tosca, achieved success gradually with Bohème peaking after three productions and Tosca, after five years of presentations throughout Europe.

As Puccini acquired substantial wealth, he took on the persona that accompanied him throughout the rest of his life as the "grand seigneur." He built a reputation as a dedicated game hunter, collector of cars and motorboats, and a great romantic figure. "I am almost always in love!" he declared, and defined himself as "a mighty hunter of wild fowl, operatic librettos and attractive women." His appreciation and compassion for women abounds in the substance of his operatic heroines, their valiant struggles and, most often, melancholy demise. He created these elegant, three-dimensional characters with the material of sweet and haunting melody. The innocent Mimi, embattled Tosca, abandoned Butterfly, embittered Turandot - each one a fascinating study in feminine psychology, each the perfect counterpart to an equally interesting tenor role. Puccini's own stormy relationship with Elvira Gemignani evoked a certain horror in fans and attracted something of a lurid interest from the general public. A married woman, she eloped with the composer and they were not married until some time after her husband's death. Seemingly an uninteresting and strangely unchallenging partner, she is said to have limited Puccini intellectually and emotionally, inexplicably cutting him off from most personal relationships with friends and other artists.

Eventually, she embroiled the household in scandal, hounding a young maid unmercifully with accusations of a liaison with her husband. The girl committed suicide and Elvira was jailed for five months. The Puccinis separated, then reconciled, but their relationship was forever damaged. Puccini fought hard to keep his difficult private life private, against impossible odds. "What a subject for an opera!" one social columnist exclaimed. During this tragic episode, despite his obvious emotional turmoil, the composer completed the opera La Fanciulla del West, which met with immediate acclaim.

In general, Puccini seems to have lived in artistic isolation. Even a productive relationship with Arturo Toscanini blew hot and cold. In one comic exchange, Puccini forgot he and Toscanini were currently estranged and sent a Christmas panettone. Realizing the error, Puccini wired Toscanini with an explanation:

PANETTONE SENT BY MISTAKE, PUCCINI.

Toscanini immediately replied:

PANETTONE EATEN BY MISTAKE, TOSCANINI.

It was Toscanini who conducted the famous opening night of Madama Butterfly, which ran in its original form for that one performance only. After serious reworking, including changing the basic framework from two acts to three and replacing some objectionable arias with more melodic ones, Butterfly triumphed in a new opening under the baton of Arturo Toscanini.

In the single decade before his death, Puccini completed La Rondine, and the trilogy of Il Tabarro, Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi. He was in the process of finishing Turandot, the opera he considered his crowning achievement, when a persistent throat ailment was diagnosed as cancer. He died a few days after surgery and completion of the work was left to colleague, Franco Alfano. Shortly before his death, Puccini wrote that the music audience had lost its taste for melody and tolerated music devoid of logic and sensibility. He predicted "the end of opera" and, in fact, Turandot was the last opera to rank as an internationally accepted standard repertory piece. No one since Puccini has enjoyed such a following.

Tchaikovsky, Peter Ilyich

If Puccini was the Master of Verismo and Verdi the King of Italian opera, then Tchaikovsky was the Champion of Paradox. A musical genius and a national hero, Tchaikovsky struggled with his many personal demons, including his homosexuality, his intense emotionality, and his headstrong impetuousness. On his other side, Tchaikovsky was well known for his candor and modesty, his acceptance of criticism and his workmanship. Unfortunately, he was never able to reconcile these two sides and this ultimately led to his very unhappy and tortured life.

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born on May 7, 1840 at Votkinsk, in the government of Vyatka, Russia. He was close to his family - his father (a mine inspector), his mother, four brothers, and a sister. At the age of five, he began to study piano, soon revealing his amazing gifts. It wasn't until he was 21, however, that he began to study music seriously.

In 1863, Tchaikovsky entered the St. Petersburg Conservatory and undertook some private training. The young Tchaikovsky was a master at improvisation, but so unschooled he was unaware of such simple musical tenets as the possibility of modulating to different keys.

Tchaikovsky frequently attended the opera and fell in love with the music of Mozart. His diligence became apparent when his composition teacher, Anton Rubinstein, assigned variations as homework. Tchaikovsky sat up all night and prepared 200.

In 1866, Tchaikovsky moved permanently to Moscow where he accepted a teaching position in a new conservatory established by Anton Rubinstein's brother, Nicholas. It was there that his First Symphony was created, receiving a warm reception by Moscow audiences in 1868. It was also there that Tchaikovsky had his first nervous breakdown, due to the stress of composing the First Symphony. Interestingly, Tchaikovsky had asked his former teacher, Anton Rubinstein, to premiere the work in St. Petersburg, a request that was ultimately denied.

Other works followed with less success, including Tchaikovsky's first opera, The Voyevoda, in 1869, later re-worked into The Oprichnik in 1874. By then Tchaikovsky's Second Symphony had begun winning acclaim, as had his First Piano Concerto. Following these compositions were his Third Symphony and Swan Lake, the tone poem Francesca da Rimini in 1875, and the Rococo Variations for cello and orchestra in 1876. Near the end of 1876 Tchaikovsky was contacted by a wealthy admirer, Nadejda Fillaretovna von Meck, who gave him several commissions and became his sponsor for the next 12 years.

Throughout this period, Tchaikovsky continued to struggle with his homosexuality. Although Tchaikovsky had a brief affair with opera singer Desiree Artot, he was clearly inclined to deny his own nature. In a letter to his brother, Tchaikovsky wrote, "I am aware that my inclinations are the greatest and most unconquerable obstacle to happiness; I must fight my nature with all of my strength. I shall do everything possible to marry this year."

Indeed, he did marry a young woman, Antonina Ivanovana Milyukoff, on July 6, 1877. However, within a month, he discovered they were incompatible and spent the next few months running away from his new wife. He also made a failed attempt at suicide by walking into the Moska River in the hopes of contracting pneumonia. It was at this point, in the late 1870s, that he wrote some of his greatest works, the opera Eugene Onegin, the Violin Concerto, and the Fourth Symphony.

Based on Alexander Pushkin's novel in verse, Eugene Onegin (1878) tells the story of a girl fascinated by a man who ultimately rejects her and his later remorse. That same year, Tchaikovsky also wrote the Violin Concerto. He wrote Manfred in 1885; the Fifth Symphony in 1888; another successful opera, Pique Dame (The Queen of Spades) in 1890; and the Casse-Noisette (Nutcracker) ballet in 1891. These successes made Tchaikovsky famous throughout the world. He temporarily conquered his stage fright and, in 1888, made an international conducting tour. In 1891, Tchaikovsky came to New York and conducted his own works at the ceremonies of the opening of Carnegie Hall.

By 1890, the inevitable break with Madame von Meck had occurred and, while Peter gained his financial independence, he felt his loss on a more personal than professional level. Madame von Meck, in addition to an income of 6,000 roubles, had provided Tchaikovsky an outlet to air his opinions, beliefs, hopes, and dreams. There has been no particular reason recorded as to why the break between them occurred.

In 1893, Tchaikovsky completed the Pathetique Symphony (No. 6) and conducted it at St. Petersburg to a rather apathetic response. Unfortunately, Peter would not live to see its ultimate success. By most accounts, Tchaikovsky drank an unsterilized glass of water, contracted cholera, and died on November 6, 1893. In recent years, some have proffered another theory: that Tchaikovsky was forced to take arsenic to preserve his school's honor when his homosexuality was to become public.  However Tchaikovsky died, 8,000 mourners attended his funeral as he was buried at St. Petersburg's Alexander Nevsky Monastery. 

Giuseppe Verdi 

Born in 1813 in the Italian village of Le Roncole near Busseto, Giuseppe Verdi spent his early years studying the organ. By the age of seven, he had become an organist at San Michele Arcangelo. It was there that the young Verdi was an altar boy and, according to myth, his mother saved him from the French in 1814. In 1823, Verdi moved to Busseto and attended the music school run by Antonio Provesi. By the age of 13, he was an assistant conductor of the Busseto orchestra. After finishing the school, Verdi applied for admission to the Milan Conservatory. He was rejected for admission, although one of the examiners suggested that he "forget about the Conservatory and choose a maestro in the city." Verdi studied composition in Milan with Vincenzo Lavigna, a composer and the maestro at La Scala. Verdi bounced back and forth between Milan and Busseto until he was named maestro of the Busseto Philharmonic in March 1836.

By May 1836, he had married childhood sweetheart, Margherita Barezzi, his greatest benefactor's daughter. He returned to Milan several years later, this time with a young family.

Verdi's first opera, Oberto, was brought to the stage at La Scala in November 1839 and ran for multiple performances. The noted Ricordi firm published Oberto and, based upon his initial operatic effort, Verdi won a contract for three additional operas. He began work on his next opera, Un Giorno di Regno, but was interrupted when, one by one, the Verdis fell ill. A little over the course of a year, Verdi lost his son, his daughter, and his beloved wife to illness. Unfortunately, Un Giorno was a complete failure.

Verdi vowed never to compose another comedy and developed a fatalistic belief in inescapable destiny. Even so, the director at La Scala kept faith with Verdi, who later declared that with his next work, Nabucco, "my musical career really began." At dress rehearsals for Nabucco in the La Scala theater, carpenters making repairs to the house gradually stopped hammering and, seating themselves on scaffolding and ladders, listened with rapt attention to what the composer considered a lackluster chorus rendering of "Va, pensiero." At the close of the number, the workers pounded the woodwork with cries of "Bravo, bravo, viva il maestro!" The opening of Nabucco was a triumph. Verdi was famous, commanding a higher fee than any other composer of his time.

I Lombardi followed Nabucco and won an unprecedented victory over Austrian censors. Verdi's triumph in retaining the libretto and melodic themes the censors had hoped to ban as "religious" in nature forged the composer's lifelong reputation as an ideological hero of the Italian people. This would be the first of his many battles with censors for artistic freedom.

Over the next seven years, the composer penned ten additional operas of varied success, gradually making the transition between two distinct eras of Verdi composition. Initially captive of the "bel canto" style and heir to Donizetti's artistic throne, Verdi continually experimented to produce his own operatic genre in which melodic drama and identifiable musical essence of character took center stage as an equal to vocal purity and elegance.

It was an inspired stroke of boldness about which Verdi commented in explaining the innovative core of his work, Il Trovatore, "I think (if I'm not mistaken) that I have done well; but at any rate I have done it in the way that I felt it." In saying so, he defined his own creative hallmark. Although a musical genius, Verdi composed spontaneously from the heart. A brilliantly schooled musician, he placed emotional sensibility above intellect in all that he wrote. In the process, he created the remarkable marriage of dramatic characterization and vocal power, an indelible artistic signature.

The creation of an operatic tour de force based upon his ingenious artistic formulation assured Verdi's immortality, beginning in 1851 with Rigoletto, followed soon after by Il Trovatore, La Traviata, and ultimately in 1871, by Aida. Even without the masterpieces that followed - Simon Boccanegra, Un Ballo in Maschera, La Forza del Destino, and Don Carlos or his great Requiem Mass - the Maestro could have afforded to rest on his musical achievements and stand unchallenged as the premier operatic composer of any age. In fact, with the success of Aida, Verdi seemed to have abandoned composing altogether, producing no new works for fifteen years.

Fortunately for posterity, an electrifying libretto, Otello, created by poet Arrigo Boito, brought the composer out of his self-imposed retirement. The opening of Otello in February of 1887 attracted an international audience to Milan for a dramatic event which ended only after the citizenry had showered Verdi with gifts and applause throughout twenty curtain calls and towed his carriage to the hotel. Public festivities continued until dawn.

In 1893, with the premiere of Falstaff, Verdi and his adoring audience repeated the entire sequence of events at La Scala - all in honor of a comedy he had vowed as a young man never to write. The maestro finally retreated to his country home in Sant' Agata with his second wife, singer Giuseppina Strepponi. They spent several peaceful years in retirement until her death in 1897. His wife's death left Verdi in a state of unbearable grief. He immediately fled Sant' Agata for the Grand Hotel in Milan and, after four unhappy years, Verdi died in 1901, the victim of a massive stroke. Verdi's death left all Italy in mourning. He still is revered throughout the music world as the greatest of operatic composers and, more particularly, in Italy as a patriotic hero and champion of human rights.