Vives, Amadeo

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Vives, Amadeo

Vives, Amadeo, Spanish composer; b. Collbato, near Barcelona, Nov. 18, 1871; d. Madrid, Dec. 1, 1932. He was a pupil of Ribera and then of Felipe Pedrell in Barcelona, and with L. Millet he founded the famous choral society Orfeó Català (1891). In his first opera, Artus (Barcelona, 1895), he made use of Catalonian folk songs. Subsequently he moved to Madrid, where he produced his comic opera Don Lucas del Cigarral (Feb. 18,1899); his opera Euda d’Uriach,originally to a Catalan libretto, was brought out in Italian at Barcelona (Oct. 24, 1900). Then followed his most popular opera, Maruxa (Madrid, May 28, 1914); other operas are Balada de Carnaval (Madrid, July 5, 1919) and Doña Francisquita(Madrid, Oct. 17, 1923). The style of his stage productions shared qualities of the French light opera and the Spanish zarzuela; he wrote nearly 100 of these, and also composed songs and piano pieces. He publ. a book of essays, Sofia (Madrid, 1923).

Bibliography

A. Sagardia, A. V: Vida y obra (Madrid, 1971).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire