Teodulo Mabellini

Early education in Pistoia and Firenze

He was the son of Vincenzo, a strumentaio (maker of musical instruments) specialized in wind instruments. He took his very first music lessons from his father and from the flautist, Giovacchino Bimboni, (future music producer of brass instruments). The education he received from these first teachers was critical in forming the unique style of his orchestral compositions. He continued to have contact with Bimboni throughout his entire life, and together they developed a knowledge of composition for winds that was uncommon in this time period (see Style). In 1826, he was a member of the children’s choir (voci bianche) of the Pistoia Cathedral. The local newspapers of the time described him as a genial child prodigy. He continued his studies privately with Giuseppe Pillotti (the organist of the cathedral) and Giuseppe Gherardeschi. He had already, at the age of 12, composed vocal music, chamber music, military marches and band arrangements. In 1832, at the age of 15, Mabellini held a concert of his own compositions (of which only l'Estro armonico remains; the autograph can be found in Pistoia, see Sources) in Pistoia and Grosseto. The success of this concert convinced private citizens to donate “private offerings” so he could attend the Musical Institute in Florence, where he studied from 1833-1836. Immediately after graduating, he was hired as Master of Harpsichord at the Teatro dei Risvegliati in Pistoia and collaborated in productions such as La straniera di Vincenzo Bellini and Anna Bolena by Gaetano Donizetti. The operatic world inspired him to compose his first opera, Matilde e Toledo, which he wrote in only one month when he was just nineteen years old. He was able to have the opera performed at Teatro Alfieri in Florence on August 27, 1836. Its great success astounded the Grand Duke Leopold II of Lorraine, who in return presented Mabellini with a rather large monthly scholarship.

Studies with Mercadante and operatic success

After having just won his scholarship, he settled in Novara to study with Saverio Mercadante. The Napoletan maestro admired Mabellini’s dedication and talent, and the two remained in great and esteemed relations until Mercadante’s death in 1870. During his studies, Mercadante entrusted Mabellini with the reduction of voice and piano of Le illustri rivali, and brought Mabellini with him as the supervisor of the staging of many of his works in other cities, but especially in Venice. With Mercadante as his mentor, Mabellini developed his skills in sacred music as well, and composed a Mass, which was performed in Novara in 1838. In order to show his gratitude to the Grand Duke for the incredible opportunity to study with Mercadante, Mabellini dedicated the cantata La partenza per la caccia to him in 1839. In 1840, his lyric opera Rolla, which is considered to be Mabellini’s greatest operatic success and composed under the supervision of Mercadante, was staged in Torino (at Teatro Carignano). Rolla received the approval of the famous librettist Felice Romani and of the legendary pianist Carl Czerny, who reduced the main themes into a fantasia for piano. On the wave of his success, Mabellini was able to enter into the circle of the great impresario Alessandro Lanari, who, from then until 1857, guaranteed Mabellini the best productions and theater companies of their time. As a result of this new support, he wrote Ginevra di Firenze in one go (1841, for the Carignano of Turin), which was an opera that was reworked many times (the final version was entitled Ginevra degli Almieri), and Il conte di Lavagna, written on his return to Pistoia in 1842, dedicated to the Grand Duke, and performed with all honors at the Pergola in Florence in 1843.

The fiasco of Veneziani a Costantinopoli, the Florentine Cappella, and sacred music

His operatic achievement suffered a temporary stop with the fiasco of I veneziani a Costantinopoli in Rome in 1844 (also the autograph of this opera has been lost, see Sources) From then on, Mabellini remained in Florence. He married Gabriella Ferrari, daughter of a Florentine pharmacist, in 1846, and wrote his last opera seria, Maria di Francia, on his honeymoon (performed at the Pergola in 1846) before accepting numerous commissions by the Grand Duke. The new commissions were for sacred music above all (many cantate for local celebrations: Eudossia e Paolo for the patron of San Giovanni, L'ultimo giorno di Gerusalemme for various Florentine religious institutes), which were so well received that in 1847 he received the nomination of Master of the Court Cappella. Mabellini was the last composer honored with this title (after the escape of Habsburg-Lothringen in 1859, the Cappella was not reinstated again), and was conformed to the desire to introduce sacred German compositions those in Tuscany. He often performed liturgical works, for the first time in Italy, of foreign composers such as Mozart, Albrechtsberger, Hoffmann e Krommer. For the Cappella, from 1847 to 1859, Mabellini composed a large quantity of sacred music, becoming a sort of champion of the genre, and with his compositions he actively engaged in the debate on style and the correct way to compose a mass. This was a debate, which originated in those years, and one that argued for the return to a kind of purity of church music contrasting a pronounced theatrical style. Mabellini continued to dedicate himself to sacred music even after 1859, and produced a huge number of sacred compositions, which rendered him one of the most appreciated composers of this genre in his era. At the Cappella, there was an excellent instrumental ensemble composed of his previous maestro Bimboni, and other professionals such as flautist Cesare Ciardi, horn player Francesco Paoli, and trumpet player Enea Brizzi (each of whom was considered to be the best in their instrument at the time). With this ensemble, he was able to shape his orchestral composition style (see Style): especially for these artists, he wrote Gran fantasia for flute, clarinet, French horn, trumpet, trombone, and orchestra, which today is found in Florence and Fano (see Sources).

The Pergola and the Risorgimento

His great work at the Cappella convinced the Grand Duke to nominate Mabellini as Director of the Pergola Theater in 1848. Here, he was respected as professional conductor of an orchestra, one of the first true conductors (not instrumentalists), and one of the first in Italy, alongside Angelo Mariani, able to define himself both concertatore and conductor. His choices regarding the artistic direction continued with the Florentine tradition, but began to open up to foreign Romantic experiments, and he staged many operas by Giacomo Meyerbeer, Charles Gounod and Richard Wagner, but perhaps for political reasons, he didn’t neglect the operas by Giuseppe Verdi; for example, he staged La battaglia di Legnano in the middle of the First Italian War of Independence. In spite of the absence of patriotic allusions in his theatrical works, as well as in the commissions by the Grand Duke, Mabellini demonstrated his spirit of the Risorgimento on other occasions. In 1847, one year before the beginning of the bourgeois revolution, a time which is flooded with patriotic choirs, Mabellni wrote L'Italia risorta, a compositions that precedes Michele Novaro’s setting to music of Canto degli Italiani by Goffredo Mameli by only a few months, as well as the attempt by Giuseppe Verdi to put Mazzini's Suona la tromba to music. In the same year, Mabellini also set the Inno all'Italia: sorgi depressa Italia to music, and in 1859 he wrote a mass for the fallen soldiers of the Battle of Curtatone and Montanara, which was performed in the Basilica of Santa Croce. His political behavior was, however, always moderate; for example, he found some of the anti-aristocrat opinions to be exaggerated, he defended many composers who remained in contact with Austria and therefore liable of accusations of reactionary behavior, and he always remained friends of the Grand Duke. Probably he daydreamed about a Risorgimento led by Leopold II and not by Victor Emanuel, a Risorgimento with Tuscany in charge of unification and not Piedmont. In Florence others wished the same, for example Giovan Pietro Vieusseux and Daniele Manin. Mabellini wrote an Inno nazionale toscano (Tuscan National Anthem) in 1858, according with his fantasy of a Tuscan Risorgimento (the anthem was published by Lorenzi).

The end of his theatrical career, the Philharmonic Society and teaching

He continued to create new music, and in 1851 he composed a Messa da Requiem which was extremely successful all over Europe and a comic opera Il venturiero (performed in Livorno in 1851). For the Pergola, he composed a sacred drama Baldassarre in 1852, and in 1857 he wrote, with the collaboration of Luigi Gordigiani, the comic opera Fiammetta. This final comic opera marked the end of his compositions for the theater. From that moment on he sacrificed his operatic career, and dedicated himself to composing sacred music, organizing events, orchestral conducting, and teaching. With Abramo Basevi, he became the most important musician in the city. From 1859 to 1887, he taught composition at the same Musical Institute from which he had previously graduated. Some of his students were Salvatore Auteri Manzocchi, Emilio Usiglio, Gaetano Palloni (1831-1892), Luigi and Marino Mancinelli, Guido Tacchinardi, Ettore De Champs, and Luigi Bicchierai. In 1859, he became the director of the Philharmonic Society. Here, often with the first national performances, he decisively contributed to the diffusion in Tuscany and Italy of Austrian and German classical composers (Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Wagner) as well as some French (Gounod e Meyerbeer).

The Italian Kingdom, celebrations of Dante, and the Concerti popolari

The annexation to the Italian Kingdom, although inspiring some personal drama (see preceding paragraphs), didn’t cause him to decrease his activities; on the contrary, he also composed for the Savoy (e.g. the Feste fiorentine for the arrival of Vittorio Emanuele II to Florence in 1860, and Ave Maria for Princess Margherita in 1867) and participated in the Savoy cultural unification policy, with a peak in the period when the capital was transferred to Florence (1865-1870). Some of the first events of “Italian” Florence were: the celebration of the 600-year birthday of Dante Alighieri in 1865, which Mabellini actively contributed to with his cantata Lo spirito di Dante, the first performance of the Sinfonia Dante by Giovanni Pacini, conducted by Mabellini at the Pergola. From 1863 to 1880, Mabellini was called by Basevi to direct the Concerti popolari, during which numerous lyric operas and symphonies were performed in the Salone dei Cinquecento in Palazzo Vecchio and at the new Pagliano Theater. Created by Basevi, Ferdinando Giorgetti, and publisher Giovanni Gualberto Guidi, the Concerti popolari were the pinnacle of the ten years spent constructing a space for big productions and often enormous concerts capable of allowing the masses to come closer to music. The repertoire was composed of not only proclaimed Italian successes (who brought many operas that had been absent from the Florentine lyric scene back on stage, which was greatly appreciated by the home audience who created the proverb “Bellini is dead, but Ma-bellini is alive!”, but also numerous foreign words (especially those of Meyerbeer, but also of Haydn, Mendelssohn, Schubert e Weber). It was here that there was a meeting of tastes of the nourished cosmopolitan Florentine community, which was thickened precisely by the eco international aspect of the celebrations of Dante and of the urban renovation of Giuseppe Poggi for the transfer of the capital.

The Burial of Rossini

In 1868, Mabellini accepted the summons of Giuseppe Verdi for a collective composition, by the most important Italian composers, of a Requiem for the death of di Gioacchino Rossini. He contributed with the Lux aeterna, but the project initiated by Verdi remained unfinished, and for the burial of Rossini in the Basilica of Santa Croce, a few months after the funeral in Paris, Mabellini performed Mozart's Requiem, with serious limits imposed by the Archbishop, who prohibited women from the choir (they were substituted at the last minute by a children’s choir from Lucca). Mabellini also dedicated the cantata Feste rossiniane from 1873 (performed at the Pagliano Theater) to Rossini.

Last years and death

Between 1870 and 1871 he was considered, along with many other composers such as Giuseepe Verdi, for the position of successor to Maestro Mercadante in the management of San Pietro a Majella Conservatory on Naples, which was given to Lauro Rossi in the end. In 1874, he was fired by the Philharmonic Society after thirty years of contribution, and replaced by Jefte Sbolci. From that moment on, Mabellini began a sort of decline. He expressed the desire to compose new operas, but the librettists found him to be outdated after having been absent from the theatrical scene for almost twenty year. This was a feeling also shared with the impresari (managers) who resumed his past success with mediocre secondary theater companies, which was a trend that the old maestro (Mabellini) couldn’t oppose. In 1874, he composed a Danza dei folletti, and in 1878 he wrote the cantata Michelangelo Buonarroti, but from then on, he found little support even in publishing (two of his editors, Guidi from Florence and Lucca from Milan, who also found themselves in a downfall, which eventually brought them to the merger with Tito Ricordi). In 1880, he donated a mass to the Conservatory of Naples (see Sources), and continued to find commissions by aristocrats for a while (a Messa for the Duke of San Clemente in 1882, a Coro per voci bianche e pianoforte for the Demidoff family in 1885). He also composed for the city (the Inno all'Arte for the unveiling of the new face of the Duomo by Emilio De Fabris in 1886), before abandoning compositions altogether in 1887 (this was the year of his last composition: a cantata based on a character of Dante’s for Ugo Martini, see Sources). From then on, even though in retirement, he continued to preside over some exams at the Musical Institute until 1894, when he was struck by a progressive paralysis that restricted him to bed, until his death in 1897.

Style

From a theatrical point of view, he was attracted to the belcanto style; he admired Vincenzo Bellini’s work, of which he directed many Florentine operatic revivals and was fascinated by Gaetano Donizetti. A mutual respect bonded him to Giuseppe Verdi, which is demonstrated in the promotion of Verdi’s operas by Mabellini at the Pergola Theater, their collaboration in the incomplete Messa for Rossini, and the fantasies Mabellini wrote on Verdi’s theme for instruments (see Sources). In some ways, Mabellini developed a serious admiration of Verdi, and at a certain point he almost wanted to consider himself Verdi’s successor before his conducting activities brought him away from the theater in 1857. With regard to sacred music, Mabellini elaborated and matured a classical composition style: Haydn and Mozart were his point of reference in this area, and the conducting positions at the Habsburg Cappella put him in contact with foreigners (Krommer) and previous Italians (for example the sacred production of Benedetto Marcello and Giovanni Battista Martini) as well. We can also trace many influences by Rossini in his later messe. As mentioned in the biography, the sacred music by Mabellini reflects the theoretical oscillation or uncertainty about composing the messe to perfection, which was a point of reflection at the time, and one which he participated in firsthand. His sacred music production, precisely because of its connection to the Zeitgeist was one of the most appreciated of his era. (see also Fortune). One unique characteristic of the compositional style tout court of Mabellini concerns the use of the orchestra. He intended it to be like an ensemble of winds in which the violins were almost always secondary; therefore, he trusted the melodic parts to the wind instruments, which followed a more European practice than Italian one. He was able to compose in this way because of being inspired by the musicians at his disposal in the Florentine Court: Gioacchino Bimboni (trombonist), Cesare Ciardi (flutist), Francesco Paoli (horn player), Enea Brizzi (trumpet player). These professionals, who were committed to the Cappella Orchestra and were also a musical group on their own, were called the Banda della Real Guardia, and were the musicians the Mabellini composed many of his works for (the Gran fantasia of 1846 is actually dedicated to them), and it guaranteed an extremely high-quality standard. It is also thanks to them that Mabellini was able to use the orchestra in a European way. In fact, his ideas regarding the instruments take on orchestral ideas from the other side of the Alps, that came about at the end of the 1700s (implemented above all by Haydn and Mozart and continued by Beethoven, Schubert, Méhul, Weber and Brahms: authors that Mabellini often new thanks to his career as a conductor) and inserted them into the Italian musical atmosphere, in a way that almost anticipated not only Realism (Pietro Mascagni will continue to call the orchestral parts instrumental until his death in 1945, perhaps because of Mabellini’s influence) but also many Post-Romantic European trends (for example Richard Strauss).

Fortune

He was very famous in his time period: the Messa da Requiem of 1851 caused him to receive honors in Spain and in France, and the opera Rolla was performed successfully many times throughout his life. His conducting career rendered him one of the most famous and appreciated people of his time period, also thanks to his production during the time when Florence was the capital. The testimony of the popularity of his compositions is seen in the many elaborations of his operas for marching bands present at the time, as well as the many borrowings and arrangements of his works by other composers. As mentioned previously, Carl Czerny wrote a successful transcription for piano of the themes from Rolla and Antonio Bazzini reduced the same into a composition for voice and piano for Ricordi puclishers. In the realm of sacred music, Mabellini remained an international point of reference throughout his life. His biography written by François-Joseph Fétis and Luigi Ferdinando Casamorata in 1863 remembers him both as a composer for opera as a liturgical composer, and in his necrology, he is almost more remembered as a composer of sacred works than as a composer for the theater or as a conductor. However, his cease of production after the Fiammetta in 1857 made him remain in the background of the theatrical world, and he was never able to return to the «A league». In some ways, his friendship with Verdi, ended in a sort of absorption: the old operas by Mabellini, such as Il conte di Lavagna, were devoured analogous opera by Verdi, and the operas that were even older, written before the Risorgimento, were perceived as unfashionable. The audience noticed that the operas of Bellini, Donizetti and Verdi, which Mabellini constantly directed, were similar in style and composition, and therefore ended in concluding that Mabellini was deprived of his own individual style. In performances today, there is no trace of his compositions, neither those that gave his fame during his lifetime nor of his great production of sacred music which has been completely forgotten (so that still today a scientific study of his works, which would allow us to identify and number the many sacred music drafts present in Fano, has not been done. See List of sacred music). In his honor, the public school of music and dance in Pistoia "T. Mabellini" originally founded in 1858 as the School of Violin and other Instruments was renamed after him in 1945.

List of Operas

When not otherwise specified, the autographs of the operas are preserved in Fano.

List of sacred music

As aforementioned, Mabellini’s sacred music has long been forgotten. In 2005, Gabriele Moroni and Claudio Paradiso took the first step in a systematic study of this music, examining the pages at the Federiciana Library in Fano. When it is other specified, the autographs of the following compositions are preserved in Fano.

Dated Compositions

Undated composition (alphabetical order)

Recordings

There have been no recordings found of any of Mabellini’s lyric operas. The parts composed for the incomplete Mass for Rossini commissioned by Verdi were recorded in 1989 by Helmuth Rilling and Stuttgart Orchestra of the Südwestrundfunk (Radio-Sinfonieorchester Stuttgart des Südwestrundfunk) for Hänssler Classic label, with the following soloists: Gabriela Beňačková, Florence Quivar, James Wagner, Aage Haugland and Alexandru Agache (the recording can be listened to on-line). In 1980, in the Auditorium della Discoteca di Stato in Rome, Walter Vagnozzi (baritone) and Loris Gavarini (pianist) recorded a series of Italian patriotic songs composed between 1847 and World War I, one of which was La buona andata by Mabellini (composed in 1848 to the text of Giuseppe Tigri, published by the Guidi Publishers of Firenze, of which the autograph can be found in Fano).