Teatro Grattacielo
2 Riverside Drive
2C
New York, NY
10023
212-595-7127

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Cast - Synopsis - Historical Photos

Riccardo Zandonai
(1883-1944)

Composer, violinist, conductor, Riccardo Zandonai was born in Rovereto, Italy in 1883. At the age of 11 he began music studies there, and later studied in Pesaro under Pietro Mascagni. He quickly took an interest in the musical stage, and by the age of 24 had written two operas, the second of which, Il Grillo del Focolare (The Cricket on the Hearth, based on a Dickens story), was published by Ricordi, Puccini's publisher. Zandonai's work embraced the same tenets of verismo as the operas of Puccini and his former teacher Mascagni, but never achieved the international sensation of a Cavalleria Rusticana.

Nonetheless he continued to write for the operatic stage, and enjoyed considerable success with Conchita (1911), and then the work for which he is best known today, Francesca da Rimini, (1914), with a libretto by Gabriele D'Annunzio. These two works toured Europe and South America, solidifying Zandonai's reputation. It was also during the first run of Conchita that he met his future wife in Tarquinia Tarquini, who played the lead role in England and America as well as throughout Italy.

Between the wars, Zandonai wrote two major works, Giulietta e Romeo, which was popular mainly in Italy, and the revolutionary I Cavalieri di Ekebù, based on the world-famous prize-winning novel Gösta Berling's Saga by Selma Lagerlöf. A high point in his life was the opportunity to travel and conduct the Swedish première of the opera, with Lagerlöf in attendance.

Zandonai wrote many orchestral works as well, including a violin concerto, as well as chamber and sacred music; he wrote dozens of songs and hymns and scored five films as well, between 1938-1941.

As the global crisis increased in Italy, it became more and more difficult to stage operas in general, and Zandonai suffered particularly because of it. Having composed a dozen operas, many critics said that his eleventh, La Farsa Amorosa, was a masterpiece. It was performed with great success in Italy, often with Zandonai conducting. His health was fragile much of his life, and the onslaught of the war, including the near-destruction of his home and the need to move from city to city only exacerbated his illness. He died in 1944 with his last opera still unfinished.

Thanks to a revival at the Metropolitan Opera in 1976 of Francesca da Rimini, Zandonai's work is becoming better known in America. His restless, romantic sound is highly distinctive, and his work deserves to be rediscovered in its entirety.

Operas

L'Uccellino d'Oro (1907)
Il Grillo del Focolare (1908)
Conchita (1911)
Melenis (1912)
Francesca da Rimini (1914)
La Via della Finestra (1919)
Giulietta e Romeo (1922)
I Cavalieri di Ekebù (1925)
Giuliano (1928)
Una Partita (1933)
La Farsa Amorosa (1933)
Il Bacio (posth.) (1954)