Succeeding Puccini: The Operatic Career of Italo Montemezzi, 1875-1952

Celebrating the 150th anniversary of his birth, this first critical biography of Italo Montemezzi (1875-1952) offers fascinating new insights into the life and work of an important opera composer, seventeen years younger than Puccini, who became internationally famous with L'amore dei tre re (1913). From 1905, when he was signed up by Puccini's publisher, Casa Ricordi, Montemezzi was often seen as Puccini's heir apparent. Inspired most of all by late Verdi, and by Wagner's works, Montemezzi sought to create a distinctively new kind of Italian opera that was, in his own words, "different from anything that had been done before-a real Italian music drama, with dynamism, drama, poetry-all of it bathed in an atmosphere of musical rapture." To numerous critics, especially in America, Montemezzi achieved his lofty goal, many of them agreeing with fellow opera composer Vittorio Gnecchi that L'amore dei tre re was "the modern opera most deeply worthy of being considered a continuation of the shining path marked by Verdi." Yet after La nave (1918), the opera Montemezzi himself considered his masterpiece, his career faltered; his marriage to a New York heiress in 1921 removed any financial incentive to compose, and he found himself increasingly out of sympathy with musical developments in Fascist Italy. This book offers, for the first time, detailed discussion of all seven of Montemezzi's operas, as well as his other music, and sets the compelling story of his life and career-from his childhood in the agricultural Italian village of Vigasio to his final years of affluence in Beverly Hills, California-in the context of the tumultuous times in which he lived.

Table of Contents:
Chapter 1: "A simple man of the land": The Apprentice Composer, 1875-1900 Chapter 2: "The temperament of a born opera composer": Bianca and Giovanni Gallurese, 1901-1905 Chapter 3: "How many times I wept": Héllera and Illica, 1905-1909 Chapter 4: "A real Italian music drama": The Making of L'amore dei tre re, 1909-1912 Chapter 5: "The name of Montemezzi": L'amore dei tre re on Four Continents, 1913-1928 Chapter 6: "Enthusiasm for my Homeland": La nave and D'Annunzio, 1914-1919 Chapter 7: "Lost in looking for librettos": America, Marriage, Inertia, 1919-1926 Chapter 8: "A sort of loisir": Paolo e Virginia and La notte di Zoraima, 1927-1932 Chapter 9: "A world torn up by war": L'incantesimo, 1933-1942 Chapter 10: "The same Italianate song": Italia mia! Nulla fermeràil tuo canto!, 1943-1952 Epilogue: "The shining path"

About the Author :
David Chandler obtained his M.Phil and D.Phil at the University of Oxford and has been a Professor in the English Department, Doshisha University, Kyoto, since 2002. He is widely published in the areas of the literature and culture of the British Romantic period, and the history of musical theatre in Britain. He is a director of the record company Retrospect Opera and a regular contributor of reviews and features to Opera. Raffaele Mellace obtained his D.Phil in Musicology at the University of Bologna and has been a Professor in the DIRAAS, University of Genoa, since 2011, and the Dean of the School of Humanities from 2021 to 2024. He has also taught at the Università del Piemonte Orientale and the Università Cattolica, Milan. He is widely published on the history of opera since the eighteenth century, co-edits the journal Il Saggiatore musicale, is scientific advisor at the Teatro alla Scala, Milan, and the music critic of Il Sole 24 Ore.