Alfredo Catalani

Born in Lucca (which is just outside Pisa) in 1854, Alfredo Catalani came from a family of locally respected musicians: it was therefore not surprising that, as a 17 year-old, he was dispatched to the local Institute of Musical Studies where he studied counterpoint and won composition prizes. On graduating, he travelled to Paris to attend the Conservatoire there for a year. His next stop was Milan, where he again attended composition classes. It was at this time that he was introduced to the music of Wagner.

It was in Milan, too, that he was introduced to the music publisher Giovanannina Lucca, who swiftly paid him a retainer to write a full-length opera. The result was Elda, published in 1876 but not performed until 1880. A second opera followed (Dejanice), performed in 1883 at La Scala. More operas then appeared on classical and Romantic themes. In 1886, he was appointed professor of composition at the Milan Conservatory.

Unfortunately for Catalani, the publishing houses of Lucca and Ricordi merged in 1888: this was a problem because Ricordi was totally absorbed with Verdi and Puccini, meaning he was not in the business of commissioning new operas from Catalani. Catalani had to pay for a revision to an earlier libretto, resulting in Loreley …which he then had to arrange by himself to get performed in Turin. He then again had to pay for Luigi Illica to prepare the libretto for La Wally, his most famous and enduring opera, which he composed throughout 1891. A successful premier took place at La Scala in 1892. He was in the middle of writing a new opera on a Tolstoy story when his health finally gave way (tuberculosis) and, after five days, he died in Milan, aged just 39.

Catalani is thus something of a one-hit wonder: he didn't write much in his short life, and of that output, only La Wally is still in the semi-permanent repertoire of most opera houses. The trouble would appear to be that he was a transitional figure: his high Romanticism was old-fashioned in a world where Puccini was writing verismo, and he couldn't bring himself to engage in the high melodrama of someone like Verdi. His work is thus curiously abstract and cerebral. Verdi dismissed him as a 'maestrino' and damned him as one trying to Germanise (i.e., Wagnerise!) Italian music. Puccini was similarly dismissive of him as being merely something of his understudy.

All that said, however, La Wally is worth a listen: it's most famous aria Ebben? Ne andrò lontana was used in the 1981 movie Diva as a crucial plot-point and is regularly trotted out as a dramatic soprano war-horse. Stagings of the whole opera remain rare, however, as it generally proves a bit tricky to stage an avalanche in most opera houses.

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