Mercadante, Saverio

He received his musical education at the Royal Conservatory in Naples, where he studied with Fedele Fenaroli , Giovanni Furno , Giacomo Tritto and Nicolo Antonio Zingarelli .

In 1818 , Mercadante wrote his first opera: Apoteosi d'Ercole ( Apotheosis of Hercules ), which, like the subsequent ones, was a great success in Italy. His works were performed in opera houses in Italy ( La Scala , Milan; Teatro San Carlo , Naples; La Fenice , Venice ; and others), Spain , Portugal , Austria , France . After a stay in 1827-1829. in Spain and Portugal from 1833 to 1840 he was the bandmaster of the cathedral in Novara .
In 1832, he married a young Genoese widow with three children, Sophia Gambaro, from a marriage with which three more children were born - Serafina, Ozvino and Saverio.
In 1836, at the invitation of Rossini, he arrived in Paris , where his opera I briganti (The Robbers ) was staged at Théâtre Italien . Among the operas of Mercadante, “ Il Giuramento ” (“ Oath ”), written in 1837 (premiered in La Scala , Milan, was also staged in Rome, and in 1858 on the stage of the Italian Opera in Paris), is especially notable.
Since 1839, Mercadante began to lose his sight and, at the end of his life, became completely blind.
For 30 years, from 1840 until his death, he was director of the Conservatory in Naples. He was an excellent professor of singing and harmony (among his students were Antonio Brancaleone Gandolfo and Jaime Nuno ).
In 1876, a marble monument was erected to him in Naples.
The great-grandchildren of Mercadante were the brothers Ernesto de Curtis and Jambattista de Curtis , the authors of many world-famous Neapolitan songs.

• About 60 operas,
• 4 ballets
• concerts for various instruments:

Concert for clarinet and orchestra,
Concert for French Horn and Orchestra,
3 concerts for flute and orchestra (D-dur, e-moll (1823), E-dur (1824)),
Big duet F-dur for 2 flutes with orchestra,
Fantasia Concertante for flute dʻamur, flute and string orchestra,

• Garibaldi Symphony dedicated to Italy,
• 3 Symphonies of a concerto for flute, 2 clarinets and a string orchestra,
• overtures
• Te Deum ,
• Messa di Gloria ,
• Mottetto per San Gaudenzio ,
• chamber vocal music:

Cantata Virginia for soprano and piano,
Il Sogno (" Dream ") for soprano, flute and piano,
6 chamber ariettes for soprano, flute and piano,

• chamber works for various instrumental compositions,
• theater music
• hymns
• fantasies
• divertissements

• Solovyov N.F. Mercadante, Saverio // Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary : in 86 volumes (82 volumes and 4 additional). - SPb. , 1890-1907.
• Mercadante. Complete libretto of operas in Russian
• Saverio Mercandante - biography in Russian / Special Radio, 2009