Arrigo Boito

Biography

Born in Padua, the son of Silvestro Boito, an Italian painter of miniatures and his wife, a Polish countess, Józefina Radolińska, Boito studied music at the Milan Conservatory with Alberto Mazzucato until 1861 and where a friend was Albert Visetti. His older brother, Camillo Boito, was an Italian architect and engineer, and a noted art critic, art historian and novelist.

In 1866 he fought under Giuseppe Garibaldi in the Seven Weeks War in which the Kingdom of Italy and Prussia fought against Austria, after which Venice was ceded to Italy.

Between 1887 and 1894, he had an affair with celebrated actress Eleonora Duse. Their relationship was carried out in a highly clandestine manner, presumably because of Boito's many aristocratic friends and acquaintances. (Despite this, their voluminous correspondence over the years survives.) The two remained on good terms until his death.

Towards the end of his musical career, Boito succeeded Giovanni Bottesini as director of the Parma Conservatory after the latter's death in 1889 and held the post until 1897. He received the honorary degree of doctor of music from the University of Cambridge in 1893, and when he died in Milan, and was interred there in the Cimitero Monumentale. He was an atheist.

A memorial concert was given in his honor at La Scala in 1948. The orchestra was conducted by Arturo Toscanini. Recorded in very primitive sound, the concert has been issued on CD.

Career in music

Boito wrote very little music, but completed (and later destroyed) the opera, Ero e Leandro, and left incomplete a further opera, Nerone, which he had been working at, on and off, between 1877 and 1915. Excluding its last act, for which Boito left only a few sketches, Nerone was finished after his death by Arturo Toscanini and Vincenzo Tommasini and premiered at La Scala, 1924. He also left a Symphony in A minor in manuscript.

Mefistofele

His only finished opera, Mefistofele, based on Goethe's Faust, was given its first performance on 5 March 1868, at La Scala, Milan. The premiere, which he conducted himself, was badly received, provoking riots and duels over its supposed "Wagnerism", and it was closed by the police after two performances. Verdi commented, "He aspires to originality but succeeds only at being strange." Boito withdrew the opera from further performances to rework it, and it had a more successful second premiere, in Bologna on 10 April 1875. Boito's revised and drastically cut version also changed Faust from a baritone to a tenor. Mefistofele is the only work of his performed with any regularity today, and Enrico Caruso included its two tenor arias in his first recording session. The Prologue to the opera, set in Heaven, is a favorite concert excerpt.

Librettos

Boito's literary powers never dried up. As well as writing the libretti for his own operas, he wrote them for other composers. As "Tobia Gorrio" (an anagram of his name) he provided the libretto for Amilcare Ponchielli's La Gioconda.

Collaboration with Verdi

His rapprochement with Verdi, whom he had offended in a toast to his long-time friend, the composer (and later conductor) Franco Faccio shortly after they had collaborated on Verdi's Inno delle nazioni ("Anthem of the Nations", London, 1862), was effected by the music publisher Giulio Ricordi whose long-term aim was to persuade Verdi to write another opera. Verdi agreed to Boito revising the libretto for the original 1857 Simon Boccanegra, which musicologist Roger Parker speculates was based on a desire to "test the possibility" of working with Boito before possibly embarking on the larger project, which eventually became Otello. The revised Boccanegra premiered to great acclaim in 1881. With that, their mutual friendship and respect blossomed.

Although Verdi's aim to write the music for an opera based on Shakespeare's King Lear never came to fruition—despite the existence of a libretto—Boito provided subtle and resonant libretti for Verdi's last two masterpieces, Otello (which was based on Shakespeare's play Othello) and Falstaff based on The Merry Wives of Windsor and parts of Henry IV. After their years of close association, when Verdi died in 1901, Boito was at his bedside.

Libretti by Boito

The years given are those of the premieres. Boito also provided the text to Verdi's cantata Inno delle Nazioni which was first given on 24 May 1862 at Her Majesty's Theatre, London.

Recordings

Recordings of two operas exist:

Depictions in media