Vicente MartÃn y Soler
Vicente Martín y Soler ( born May 2, 1754 Valencia; † February 11, 1806 in Saint Petersburg ) was a Spanish composer.
Life and work
He wrote a variety of serious and comic operas and ballet music. Although today hardly known, was Vicente Martín y Soler compared to his time with Mozart and Mozart from Valencia called.
As a child, Vicente Martín y Soler chorister at the Cathedral of Valencia. After studying music with Giovanni Battista Martini in Bologna he moved in 1775 to Madrid. There, he led his first opera, possibly, Il tutore burlato on. Later he translated this into Spanish, introduced them in the form of a zarzuela and named it La Madrileña. In Madrid he won the favor of the later King Charles IV Finally, he went to Naples to assist in the local royal family, also Bourbons to work.
Between 1777 and 1785 worked Martín y Soler in Naples, where he consolidated his position and his fame as a composer. In 1779 he succeeded the premiere of his opera seria Iphigenia in Aulis in the Grand Teatro di San Carlo. In the following years, his operas were performed in other Italian cities, including Andromache, L' amore geloso, in amor ci vuol destrezza and Le burle per amore. In 1785 he finally accepted an offer to Vienna.
Martín y Soler Ponte in Vienna, at that time the center of the Italian opera, made friends quickly with the popular librettist Lorenzo da at, who also worked with composers such as Mozart and Salieri at the same time. From this collaboration came after numerous operas. 1786 found the first performances of his operas Il buon cuore di burbero Una cosa rara and place on texts by Lorenzo da Ponte, his greatest successes. The latter opera repressed even Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro from the Schedule of the Burgtheater. A melody from the finale of the first act of Una cosa rara cited Mozart in the table scene in the finale of the second act of Don Giovanni, along with a likewise made popular tune from his Figaro and a third melody then known opera by Giuseppe Sarti.
In the summer of 1788, he accepted an offer of Empress Catherine the Great, to become court composer in St. Petersburg. There he composed nine operas, including some in Russian.
From 1793 to 1796 he lived in London, where he premiered La capricciosa corretta, also on a text by Da Ponte. However, the opera was a failure and he returned as court composer back to Saint Petersburg. During his last years in Russia, he devoted himself mainly to teaching and composed comparatively little.