Alfredo Catalani

Catalani Alfredo (born: Lucca, 19 June 1854; died: Milan, 7 Aug 1893). Italian composer. After studying in Lucca, Paris and Milan, he became associated with the Scapigliatura, an artistic and literary reform movement, and with the music publisher Lucca, for whom he wrote Elda (1876, rev. as Loreley, 1888), Dejanice (1883)and Edmea (1886). He achieved a personal style most successfully in La Wally (1892). Boito and Toscanini championed him but he was dismissed by Verdi, Puccini and the publisher Ricordi. He stressed orchestration and atmosphere over characterization and was old-fashioned in his high Romanticism. Yet his operas were among the most important in the period preceding the verismo school. He was professor at the Milan Conservatory from 1886.

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