Niccolò Vito Piccinni
Niccolò Vito Piccinni is an Italian type-setter born with Bari (Italy) on June 16th 1728 and died in Passy (Paris) on May 7th 1800.
It is sometimes fore-mentioned Nicola and its name is also written Piccini .
Biography
Raise with the academy of Naples, it has as professors Leonardo Leo and Francesco Lasting and like fellow student Pasquale Anfossi. It composes its first opera, Donne dispettose , in 1754. In 1758, it writes a new opera, Alexandre in the Indies on a booklet of Métastase. Then, Piccinni moves with Rome, and knows there a considerable success with, for example, the good girl (1760), drawn from a work of Carlo Goldoni. It composed then more than fifty new lyric works, and altered Alexandre in the Indies in 1774. But he was especially appreciated thanks to his comic operas. In 1773, its reputation in Rome started to fade in front of that of Anfossi and in 1776, it accepted an invitation of the court of France and became professor of song of the queen Marie-Antoinette and director of the Theater-Italian. It then decided to be devoted mainly to the writing of operas and, in 1778, it composed its first French opera, Roland , which brought an important fame to him.
It is in Paris that it met another type-setter, with which it had a well-known competition: Gluck. This last reformed the opera with an aim of introducing there more dramatic truth. This quarrel artists increased the notoriety of Piccinni, but it turned to the advantage of Gluck. The opera Iphigénie in Tauride of Piccinni (1781) was played two years after the homonymous work of its competitor.
It was in 1783 that Piccinni makes play Didon , its work considered as most successful. The same year, he sees himself granting a pension of the court of France. But starting from 1784, it knows one difficult period, the competition of Antonio Sacchini and Antonio Salieri putting it in difficulty and several of its operas being public failures, in particular its Pénélope in 1785. Knowing some troubles at the time of the French revolution, its pension is removed to him in 1791, and the marriage of his/her daughter with a Jacobin being worth a stay in prison to him, it sets out again in Naples and from there with Venice, where it composes Griselda (1793). Then, in 1798, it goes back to Paris, where it is named inspector with the Academy, the sixth of the name. Its health then became very precarious and it cannot ensure the duties of its load.
Piccinni is the author mainly of vocal works (especially of the operas), but also of some parts for Clavecin and of crowned Musique.
External bonds
- Biography of Piccinni (at the origin of this article).
- http://www.hoasm.org/VIIIB/Piccinni.html