Bidspirit auction | ALBERTO FRANCHETTI - OLD HANDWRITTEN

ALBERTO FRANCHETTI - OLD HANDWRITTEN LETTER - Alberto Franchetti (Turin, 18 September 1860 – Viareggio, 4 August 1942) was an Italian composer belonging to the veristic school; he was also an exponent of the so-called Giovane Scuola. He was born to Raimondo Franchetti and Luisa Sara Rothschild in a Sephardic Jewish family that had obtained the title of baron (granted to Abramo Franchetti in 1858 by Vittorio Emanuele II). In 1888 he married Margherita Levi (the two divorced in 1897) with whom he had Raimondo, a famous explorer. He studied in Venice, Dresden (with Felix Draeseke) and at the Munich Conservatory under the guidance of Josef Rheinberger. In 1886 he established himself with a Symphony, preserving in his vast production the musical imprint of German culture, the current of renewal started in Italy. The explosion of the verismo movement and the historical events in which the last years of his life took place contributed to making him a reclusive musician, who survived the recognition bestowed upon him especially in the late 1800s. Equipped with a sure orchestral technique, learned at the German school, Franchetti tried to reconcile the melodic eloquence of Italian melodrama with the great sounds and spectacular effects typical of German opera, on the model of Meyerbeer and Wagner. Consequently, his lyrical works are characterized by the magniloquence of the form and the lyrical emphasis, which however do not prevent a moderate realism of accents, for which he could be associated with the verismo of the young Italian school. Franchetti composed Don Bonaparte, his last opera, between 1939 and 1941. The text of the opera was by Giovacchino Forzano, who had already written a play on the subject. However, the opera remained at the manuscript level because it was never performed. After composing many works in the period 1888-1924, towards the end of the 1920s he retired to private life and died almost forgotten in Viareggio, where he was buried in the local Jewish cemetery. IMPORTANT DOCUMENT FOR COLLECTORS