Alfredo Catalani was an Italian operatic composer.
Catalani was born in Lucca and trained at the Milan Conservatory under Antonio Bazzini.
Despite the growing influence of the verismo style of opera during the 1880s Catalani chose to compose in a more traditional manner.
As a result his operas have largely lost their place in the modern repertoire, even compared to those of Massenet and Puccini, whose style his works most closely resemble.
At the time, the 21-year old Catalani knew the earlier operas of Wagner and had heard some of the effects the older Massenet used, He composed mainly for the opera theatre, pruducing five works.
His first opera La Falce (
https://rutr.life/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4317398 ) was in effect a test-opera.
Catalani’s use of the orchestra is refined and far from the big guitar of some of his contemporaries.
He is best remembered for his operas Loreley
https://rutr.life/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4946349 (1890) and La Wally (1892), see also (
https://rutr.life/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4388500 )
Catalani's other operas were less successful, partly hampered by inferior libretti.
The influence of Amilcare Ponchielli can also be recognized in Catalani's work.
Like Ponchielli, Catalani's reputation now rests almost entirely on one work.
However, while La Wally enjoys occasional revivals, Ponchielli's La Gioconda (
https://rutr.life/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4813058 ) has always been the more popular opera.
La Wally is an opera in four acts composed on a libretto by Luigi Illica, first performed at La Scala in Milan on 20 January 1892.
The libretto is based on a hugely successful Heimatroman by Wilhelmine von Hillern (1836–1916) "Die Geyer-Wally", Eine Geschichte aus den Tyroler Alpen (literally: "The Vulture-Wally: A Story from the Tyrolean Alps").
The Geyer-Wally is a girl with some heroic attributes.
Wally is short for the name Wallburga. (There may have been an actual young woman Wallburga Stromminger on whom the legend is based.)
She gets her 'geyer' or 'vulture' epithet from once stealing a vulture's hatchling from her nest.
Von Hillern's piece was originally serialized in Deutsche Rundschau, and was reproduced in English in "A German Peasant Romance" in The Cornhill Magazine, July 1875.
The opera is best known for its aria "Ebben? Ne andrò lontana" ("Well, then? I'll go far away," act 1, sung when Wally decides to leave her home forever).
The American soprano Wilhelmenia Fernandez sang this aria in Jean-Jacques Beineix's 1981 movie Diva – a performance at the heart of the thriller.
Catalani had composed this aria independently as Chanson Groënlandaise in 1878 and later incorporated it into his opera.
The opera features a memorable operatic death in which the heroine throws herself into an avalanche.
It is seldom performed, partly because of the difficulty of staging this scene, but Wally's principal aria is still sung frequently.
