his stay in Trieste, his compositions from Dalmatia to Vienna”
Trieste, “Franz Von Suppé: his stay in Trieste, his compositions from Dalmatia to Vienna”.
«Franz von Suppé: his stay in Trieste, his compositions from Dalmatia to Vienna» is the title of Rossana Poletti’s conversation on the calendar Monday 16 January at 5.30pmfor the billboard of «Schmidl Monday», edited by Stefano Bianchi, in the Sala “Bobi Bazlen” on the ground floor of Palazzo Gopcevich, as a sign of the collaboration between the Civic Theater Museum “Carlo Schmidl” and the Friuli-Venezia Giulia Section of the Italy-Austria Association. Considered the father of the Viennese operetta, Suppé was actually an Italian, indeed a Venetian-speaking Dalmatian. Francesco Ezechiele Ermenegildo Suppé – Demelli was born in Spalato in 1819, from an Austrian mother and a father of distant Belgian origins. He lived his childhood in Zara and then moved to study in Padua. From a very young age his great passion was music. His first composition was performed in 1832 in a Franciscan church in Zadar, the «Missa dalmatica». He then had a long and profitable career that will see him in Vienna as the founder of the Viennese operetta. His father had forced him to study law, the very young Suppé however did not fail to escape as soon as possible to Milan, to the Teatro alla Scala to attend the works of the great Italian composers, from Rossini and Donizetti, of which he was a distant relative, to the emerging Greens. As a young man he was Dulcamara in Donizetti’s Elisir d’amore, a bass role he was a tenor. A contemporary of Offenbach, the man who invented the operetta in France, followed in his footsteps and even challenged him in the titles: to the “Bella Elena” he ironically contrasts the “Bella Galatea”. Always in love with Italy and attached to it, he composed «Boccaccio», a tribute to the poet, to Tuscany and to the language of the nascent country. Yet he was the father of the Viennese operetta, even if he perfected German when his father died and his mother wanted to move the family to Vienna; here she supported herself by giving Italian lessons. Of him the «Light Cavalry» which hinted at a certain satire on the military system and for this was censored. Suppé was a quiet man, dedicated to good food and good drink, in Trieste he frequented the famous Osteria al Pappagallo, a meeting place for city artists. He died in Vienna in 1895, having given life to about thirty operettas and many other compositions. The historical context of Dalmatia and Trieste, under the control of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the nascent Italy, the comparison with the composers of his age, anecdotes, the life of Franz von Suppé, his music will be at the center of Rossana Poletti’s story, for twenty years engaged in the International Operetta Association of Trieste to revive the musical genre, which sent Trieste into worldwide vision. Event organizer, journalist and theater critic Rossana Poletti will be joined by Andrea Binetti who will propose and comment on musical pieces by the famous Dalmatian composer.