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| Composers Biography |
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Italo Montemezzi
[ Life | Operas | Photo Gallery | Home Page] |
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| Italo Montemezzi was born at Vigasio, near Verona, on May 31 1875 and died at Vigasio on May 15 1952. He began studying engineering before entering the Milan Conservatory, where he took a diploma in 1900 and then taught harmony for a year. Thereafter he was able to live entirely as a composer, and he never again held an official teaching opst. From 1939 to 1949 he resided largely in California. His greatest work is the opera "L'amore dei tre re", which has been persistently successful. But his best qualities were already evident in "Giovanni Gallurese": sound craftsmanship, a theatrical instinct, appropriate touches of local colour (in this case Sardinian) and a judicious use of Wagnerian harmony and orchestration within a framework that is traditionally Italian and voice-centred - a tendency sometimes reminiscent of Catalani. Wagnerian tendencies became more pervasive in "Hellera" (1909) and "L'amore dei tre re" (1913); there are even parallels of plot between the latter workand "Tristan". The opera contains real tragic power, as in Archibaldo's formidable cry of desperation at the end of Act I. "La Nave" (1918) is a forceful work, enriched with occasional Straussian devices.
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| The Operas of Italo Montemezzi
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