Franz von Suppe March from Boccaccio biography
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Although rarely mentioned in the history of opera, von Suppè’s light operas (or operettas) were performed around the world and could be said to be the influence that Gilbert and Sullivan pulled from in the second-half of the 19th century, their name a lasting face to the style of operetta. Music was also cut and roles recast for different voice parts, leading to general mayhem.
Initially, he considered studying medicine but soon turned his attention to music. He bought himself a country estate near the city, and composed until the end of his life.
It was his first successful attempt at a genuine Viennese operetta in answer to the phenomenally successful French operettas of Jacques Offenbach.
Suppé’s light and fluent style includes the ability to vary a phrase length or melodic and rhythmic figure in a personal and immediately effective way. Try to say the name of the composer Francesco Ezechiele Ermenegildo, Cavaliere Suppé-Demelli rapidly five times.
By the 1930s, however, the work was undergoing significant change as its operetta element (text and singing) was being changed to include sung recitative instead. His overtures are full of spirited energy and melodious charm, and their artistic instrumentation offers extended solos. Apparently, Donizetti supported the talents of the budding composer, and once his father had passed away, Suppé and his mother returned to Vienna.
“Die Afrikareise” (The African Journey) became a success in Germany in 1883, and he was working on another operetta at the time of his death. In Vienna, after studying with Ignaz von Seyfried and Simon Sechter, he conducted in the theater, without pay at first, but with the opportunity to present his own operas there.
The decline of the work’s popularity is in part due to the excessive modification of von Suppè’s original work, being reworked as early as 1885.
That modified version was the one presented by the Metropolitan Opera. In 1880, the work came to New York, although not yet the Metropolitan Opera House, and soon after during the 1880s going to six different countries including Italy, France, England, Amazonas, and even Australia. His Belgian ancestors may have emigrated there in the 18th century.[3] His father – a man of Italian and Belgian ancestry – was a civil servant in the service of the Austrian Empire, as was his father before him; Suppé's mother, Viennese by birth, came from a Polish and Czech background .[4] He was a distant relative of Gaetano Donizetti.
As a teenager in Cremona, Suppé studied flute and harmony. Suppé jumped at the opportunity and his first complete singspiel score “Jung Lustig” (Young and Merry) was given on 5 March 1841. The plot revolves around the public backlash against Boccaccio and his love for the Duke’s daughter Fiammetta.
Begun in the fall of 1878, the work was published and had its premiere on February 1st of 1879 at the Carl Theatre in Vienna (destroyed by a bomb in 1943).
During the 20th century, the work would also receive its fair share of international attention, the work making its Broadway debut in 1905. In 1931, the work finally received the Metropolitan Opera stage, being performed ten times during its time. During the late 1900s, the opera was “modernized” by directors but the work would never again reach the same level of popularity as it did at the turn of the 20th century.
His father was a civil servant in the service of the Austrian Empire, and his mother was Viennese by birth. His first extant composition is a Roman CatholicMass, which premiered at a Franciscan church in Zadar in 1832. He also put on some landmark opera productions, such as the 1846 production of Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots with Jenny Lind.[3]
Franz von Suppé died in Vienna on May 21, 1895, and is buried in the Zentralfriedhof.[3]
Works
Two of Suppé's comic operas – Boccaccio and Donna Juanita – have been performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, but failed to become repertoire works.