AMILCARE PONCHIELLI

A Small Village and a Big Scholarship

I was born on 31 August 1834 in Paderno Fasolaro, a village near Cremona that now carries my name, which I try not to let go to my head. At nine years old I won a scholarship to the Milan Conservatory, and I walked in there in November 1843. I stayed for more than ten years, until September 1854, learning how music is put together, note by note and brick by brick. My first opera, I promessi sposi, based on Manzoni's novel, was staged in Cremona in 1856, so I was already a working composer not long after I left school.

The Second Time Lucky

A breakthrough doesn't always arrive on time, and mine certainly took its leisure. In 1872 I came back to I promessi sposi, revised it heavily, and it opened at the Teatro Dal Verme in Milan as a great success. Two years later, in March 1874, my opera I Lituani had its first night at La Scala, which is about as grand a stage as an Italian composer can ask for. After that, people stopped asking who I was and started asking what I was writing next.

Bandmaster, Husband, Milanese

Before the big theatres, I earned my living as a bandmaster in Piacenza and in Cremona. It's a very practical school, because you learn quickly what a crowd in a town square actually wants to hear. Milan became the center of my working life, and La Scala was the stage where my biggest successes happened. I also married the soprano Teresina Brambilla, who came from a well-known musical family, so you could say music followed me home as well.

The Opera and the Ballet Everyone Knows

My best-known opera is La Gioconda, first performed at La Scala on 8 April 1876, with a libretto by Arrigo Boito after a play by Victor Hugo. The most famous piece of it is the Danza delle Ore, the ballet that closes the third act, and it's a wonderful bit of music: it starts softly and gracefully, then gathers speed until the whole orchestra is whirling. I wrote it as part of an opera, so I was quite surprised to learn that Walt Disney borrowed it for his film Fantasia in 1940. Later, Allan Sherman set the words of his novelty song "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh" to the same melody, and I take that as a compliment, since a tune only gets borrowed twice if people can't get it out of their heads.

The Composer Who Couldn't Leave Well Enough Alone

I was never quite satisfied with my own work, and La Gioconda is the best proof of it. After its first night in 1876 I revised it several times, and it only stayed unchanged after 1880. The same habit shows in I promessi sposi, which I rebuilt so thoroughly that the 1872 version was almost a new opera. I'd call that perfectionism rather than doubt, though I admit a tired singer might have called it something less polite.

Teaching and Last Bows

In 1881 I became maestro di cappella at Bergamo Cathedral, which meant writing and directing music for the church as well as the theatre. That same year I became professor of composition at the Milan Conservatory, the school where I had once been a boy with a scholarship. My opera Marion Delorme had its first performance on 17 March 1885, and I still had plans for more. But I died of pneumonia in Milan on 16 January 1886, at the age of 51, which is far too young for a man with so much left to write.

Famous Students, Famous Tunes

If you ask what I left behind, I'm proudest of my pupils, among them Giacomo Puccini and Pietro Mascagni. Both went on to write operas that audiences still love, and I like to think I taught them a little about how to hold a theatre in the palm of the hand. I rest in the Monumental Cemetery in Milan, the city that gave me my training and my triumphs. My own music lives on in La Gioconda and above all in the Danza delle Ore, which turns up in places I could never have imagined.

What I'd Like You to Take Away

I'd like you to know that you don't need any training to enjoy opera or ballet music. When you listen to the Danza delle Ore, just let it carry you from its quiet opening to its dizzy finish. If it makes you smile, or even makes you want to dance around the kitchen, then it has done exactly what I wrote it to do. And if you later find yourself curious about La Gioconda, the whole opera is waiting for you, with a good deal more drama than the ballet.