Persiani, Giuseppe

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Persiani, Giuseppe

Persiani, Giuseppe, Italian composer; b. Recanati, Sept. 11,1799; d. Paris, Aug. 13,1869. As a youth he played violin in theater orchs. in Rome and Naples, where he studied with Zingarelli and Tritto. In 1830 he married Fanny Persiana (née Tacchinardi ), who became famous as “La Persiani”; her illustrious name completely eclipsed his, yet he was a notable composer whose dramatic opera Ines de Castro, produced in Naples on Jan. 27, 1835, scored great success and was performed all over Europe. The celebrated soprano Malibran sang the title role, and Czerny wrote a piano paraphrase on themes of the opera. Persiani’s other operas were Attila (Parma, Jan. 31, 1827), II Solitario (Milan, April 26,1829), II Fantasma (Paris, Dec. 14,1843), and Eufemio di Messina (Lucca, Sept. 20, 1829; perf. also under the alternative titles La distruzione di Catania and I Saraceni a Catania).

Bibliography

P. Ciarlantini, G. P. e Fanny Tacchinardi: Due Protagonisti del Melodramma Romantico (Ancona and Bologna, 1988).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire