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Without doubt, Michael William Balfe (1808-1870) was the most successful composer of English opera in the mid nineteenth century. During his lifetime he enjoyed an international reputation and worked with some of the leading singers of the time, including Jenny Lind, Malibran and Grisi. Drawing on previously unused source materials such as letters, legal documents and playbills, this biography of Balfe and in-depth study of his English operas overturns many of the previously accepted 'facts' of the composer's lifestyle. Using London as his base, Dublin-born Balfe spent long periods in Paris and travelled widely in Europe. William Tyldesley discusses the continental influences evident in Balfe's operas and offers new suggestions as to the draw that Paris held for the composer. Far from leading a fairly prosperous and unexceptional life, Balfe is shown to have found himself in financial straits on more than one occasion, and to have employed possibly unethical means of extracting himself from them. Those wishing to perform Balfe's works or to do further research into them, will find Tyldesley's re-examination of the composer a necessary first port of call.
Reprint of the original, first published in 1875.
Excerpt from A Memoir of Michael William Balfe Street, Dublin. It is often said that distinguished men derive their intellectual gifts rather from the mother than the father: but Balfe's mother, whose maiden name was Ryan, seems to have been no other wise remarkable than for the beauty of her person, which is said to have been of the most striking kind. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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Michael William Balfe (1808-1870) rose to fame in London in 1835 immediately after the premiere of his first opera, The Siege of Rochelle. For the next thirty-five years, this unique Dublin-born musician was destined to be the most important operatic composer in Victorian Britain. He was to music in Victorian Britain what his renowned contemporary, Charles Dickens, was to literature. The popularity of their respected works reached far beyond London, Dublin, and New York in the English speaking world. Balfe also personally achieved great success in places such as Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Bologna, Palermo, Trieste, and St. Petersburg in Russia. In all, he composed twenty-eight operatic works over his lifetime. However, when his French, Italian, and German language versions are added, he actually can be credited with forty-three operas. For over fifty years, his opera, The Bohemian Girl, swept around the globe with great success, having been translated into many different languages. This definitive biography took seven years of international research and is long overdue. It corrects many anecdotal errors of previous books. It documents Balfe the man, his work, his descendents, his legacy, and influence. The biography unearths many new facts about this important Victorian composer, his music, his family, and his role as a music director at London's Italian Opera House, where he directed the local premieres of several Verdi operas. It lists all of his operas with premiere casts and the principal arias. It also identifies the current location of all known Balfe's scores and music, including his early Italian compositions which have been deemed "lost" by most scholars. ~