Tag: Italian Composer

I have so much music at this point, there’s probably no way I’ll ever be able to listen to all of it. Certainly, there are records and CDs I own that I will never hear again. But it is gratifying to have such an extensive library. It marks me as something of a dinosaur, I know, in this age of digital downloads and streaming.

And I am at a point of life now that it vexes me to wonder who will be around to appreciate it all when I am gone. Even if I were to bequeath it to some institution or other, I envision everything being scanned into a computer and the physical media winding up in a thrift shop or a landfill. My own fault, I suppose, for not cultivating any heirs. I guess I’ll just have to have it all bundled up and carted off with me to my pyramid.

Meditations on the impermanence of things aside, one of the delights of having such a vast collection is stumbling across music I didn’t even know I owned. As a patron of Princeton Record Exchange, I frequently walk out of the store with shopping bags full of CDs marked down to a dollar or two, and being involved with radio and the press for so long, I receive promos in the mail all the time. Is it any wonder I have only the vaguest idea of what I own?

At some point during the pandemic, I was eyeballing the shelves and happened across a Naxos album of works by Luigi Mancinelli (1848-1921). I didn’t know the first thing about the composer. In fact, I had never even heard his name.

Mancinelli was a cellist and composer, but in his lifetime, apparently, he received most of his recognition as a conductor. He held principal conducting posts at home (that is to say, in Italy) and abroad, scoring great success at both the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and New York’s Metropolitan Opera. He also held appointments in Madrid, Rio de Janeiro, and Buenos Aires. He inaugurated the Teatro Colón with a performance of Verdi’s “Aida” in 1908.

Arrigo Boito called him the ideal interpreter of “Mefistofele,” and he was highly regarded as a Wagner conductor, even receiving the endorsement of the composer himself. Mancinelli introduced Verdi’s “Falstaff” at both Covent Garden and the Met. He also conducted the first Met performances of “The Magic Flute,” “Don Giovanni,” and “La bohème.”

Mancinelli composed several operas himself. Sadly, none of his works, operatic or otherwise, have entered the repertoire. I find it surprising that one of the criticisms leveled against him in the “Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians” is an inability to craft memorable melodies, since one of the things that struck me immediately, based on the works on this CD (issued in 2013), is Mancinelli’s distinctly Italianate flair for long-limbed, singable tunes.

“Scene veneziane” (1889), in particular, is a winner, a piece I would program happily on any radio air shift. It would make an absolutely charming addition to any mid-morning, or perhaps even dinner hour. Mancinelli’s mastery of the orchestra is colorful and felicitous. The opening sounds like something out of Respighi’s “Three Botticelli Pictures,” though predating that other work by nearly 40 years!

But don’t take my word for it. Give a listen for yourself.