Teodulo Mabellini

[3][9] Immediately after graduating, he was hired as Master of Harpsichord at the Teatro dei Risvegliati in Pistoia and collaborated in productions such as La straniera di Vincenzo Bellini and Anna Bolena by Gaetano Donizetti.

[4] In 1840, his lyric opera Rolla, which is considered to be Mabellini’s greatest operatic success[9] and composed under the supervision of Mercadante, was staged in Torino (at Teatro Carignano[4]).

Rolla received the approval of the famous librettist Felice Romani and of the legendary pianist Carl Czerny, who reduced the main themes into a fantasia for piano.

[8] His operatic achievement suffered a temporary stop with the fiasco of I veneziani a Costantinopoli in Rome in 1844 (also the autograph of this opera has been lost, see Sources)[8] From then on, Mabellini remained in Florence.

He married Gabriella Ferrari, daughter of a Florentine pharmacist, in 1846, and wrote his last opera seria, Maria di Francia, on his honeymoon (performed at the Pergola in 1846) before accepting numerous commissions by the Grand Duke.

Mabellini was the last composer honored with this title (after the escape of Habsburg-Lothringen in 1859, the Cappella was not reinstated again), and was conformed to the desire to introduce sacred German compositions those in Tuscany.

[8][15] In the same year, Mabellini also set the Inno all'Italia: sorgi depressa Italia to music, and in 1859 he wrote a mass for the fallen soldiers of the Battle of Curtatone and Montanara, which was performed in the Basilica of Santa Croce.

[5] He continued to create new music, and in 1851 he composed a Messa da Requiem which was extremely successful all over Europe and a comic opera Il venturiero (performed in Livorno in 1851).

Here, often with the first national performances,[4] he decisively contributed to the diffusion in Tuscany and Italy of Austrian and German classical composers (Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Wagner)[3][7][17] as well as some French (Gounod e Meyerbeer).

From 1863 to 1880, Mabellini was called by Basevi to direct the Concerti popolari, during which numerous lyric operas and symphonies were performed in the Salone dei Cinquecento in Palazzo Vecchio and at the new Pagliano Theater.

Created by Basevi, Ferdinando Giorgetti, and publisher Giovanni Gualberto Guidi, the Concerti popolari were the pinnacle of the ten years spent constructing a space for big productions and often enormous concerts capable of allowing the masses to come closer to music.

The repertoire was composed of not only proclaimed Italian successes (who brought many operas that had been absent from the Florentine lyric scene back on stage, which was greatly appreciated by the home audience who created the proverb “Bellini is dead, but Ma-bellini is alive!”,[3] but also numerous foreign words (especially those of Meyerbeer, but also of Haydn, Mendelssohn, Schubert e Weber).

It was here that there was a meeting of tastes of the nourished cosmopolitan Florentine community, which was thickened precisely by the eco international aspect of the celebrations of Dante and of the urban renovation of Giuseppe Poggi for the transfer of the capital.

[8] In 1868, Mabellini accepted the summons of Giuseppe Verdi for a collective composition, by the most important Italian composers, of a Requiem for the death of di Gioacchino Rossini.

[8] Between 1870 and 1871 he was considered, along with many other composers such as Giuseepe Verdi, for the position of successor to Maestro Mercadante in the management of San Pietro a Majella Conservatory on Naples, which was given to Lauro Rossi[7] in the end.

This was a feeling also shared with the impresari (managers) who resumed his past success with mediocre secondary theater companies, which was a trend that the old maestro (Mabellini) couldn’t oppose.

[8] In 1880, he donated a mass to the Conservatory of Naples (see Sources), and continued to find commissions by aristocrats for a while (a Messa for the Duke of San Clemente in 1882, a Coro per voci bianche e pianoforte for the Demidoff family in 1885).

From a theatrical point of view, he was attracted to the belcanto style; he admired Vincenzo Bellini’s work,[7] of which he directed many Florentine operatic revivals and was fascinated by Gaetano Donizetti.

[23][24][25] These professionals, who were committed to the Cappella Orchestra and were also a musical group on their own, were called the Banda della Real Guardia,[26] and were the musicians the Mabellini composed many of his works for (the Gran fantasia of 1846 is actually dedicated to them), and it guaranteed an extremely high-quality standard.

In fact, his ideas regarding the instruments take on orchestral ideas from the other side of the Alps, that came about at the end of the 1700s (implemented above all by Haydn and Mozart and continued by Beethoven, Schubert, Méhul, Weber and Brahms:[27] authors that Mabellini often new thanks to his career as a conductor) and inserted them into the Italian musical atmosphere, in a way that almost anticipated not only Realism (Pietro Mascagni will continue to call the orchestral parts instrumental until his death in 1945,[28] perhaps because of Mabellini’s influence) but also many Post-Romantic European trends (for example Richard Strauss).

Other than his operas, Mabellini wrote a large amount of sacred music (many masses, oratorios, cantatas, and liturgical dramas); cantatas for choir, soloists and orchestra; a ballet; some anthems for the Risorgimento, patriotic songs for Tuscany often commissioned by the Grand Duke and his family; some pieces for celebrations of the Savoy family; at least two symphonies; some compositions for band; various songs; chamber music for different orchestral formations, and also for soloists.

In Florence there are also many printed compositions by the publisher Lorenzi, who was his friend in addition to being the archivist of the conservatory, In Pistoia, the autographs that his daughter, Eudossia, donated to her father’s birthplace in 1916 are preserved.

[5] In the collection, the autographs of the operas I veneziani a Costantinopoli (the only operatic fiasco by Mabellini) and Il Venturiero (written for Livorno in 1851 with Luigi Gordigiani) are not found.

[13][52] L'Archivio della Società filarmonica of Tremona (Svizzera) has two compositions for band edited by the Florentine publisher Lapini, Baldassar and Il battesimo, without a date.