Teodulo Mabellini (2 April 1817 – 10 March 1897) was an Italian composer.
Life
Early education in Pistoia and Firenze
Teodulo Mabellini was the son of Vincenzo, a strumentaio (maker of musical instruments) specialized in wind instruments.Francesco Bussi, Mabellini, Teodulo, in Dizionario enciclopedico universale della musica e dei musicisti, edited by Alberto Basso, serie II: Le biografie, vol. 4: JE-MA, Torino, UTET, 1986, pp. 540–41. He took his very first music lessons from his father and from the flautist, Giovacchino Bimboni, (future music producer of brass instruments).Claudio Paradiso, Mabellini, Teofilo, in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, vol. 66, Roma, Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana, 2006, available on-line at Treccani.it (Italian language). The education he received from these first teachers was critical in forming the unique style of his orchestral compositions. He continued to have contact with Bimboni throughout his entire life, and together they developed a knowledge of composition for winds that was uncommon in this time period (see Style). In 1826, he was a member of the children’s choir (voci bianche) of the Pistoia Cathedral. The local newspapers of the time described him as a genial child prodigy.Gabardo Gabardi, Ricordo dei parentali a Teodulo Mabellini in Pistoia, Firenze, Tipografia cooperativa, 1899. He continued his studies privately with Giuseppe Pillotti (the organist of the cathedral) and Giuseppe Gherardeschi. He had already, at the age of 12, composed vocal music, chamber music, military marches and band arrangements.Claudio Paradiso, Teodulo Mabellini: la vita, in ID. (ed.), Teodulo Mabellini, il protagonista dell'Ottocento musicale toscano, Pistoia, Brigata del Leoncino, 2005, pp. 37–195. In 1832, at the age of 15, Mabellini held a concert of his own compositions (of which only l'Estro armonico remains; the autograph can be found in Pistoia, see Sources) in Pistoia and Grosseto. The success of this concert convinced private citizens to donate “private offerings” so he could attend the Musical Institute in Florence, where he studied from 1833-1836.Francesco Bussi, Mabellini, Teodulo, in The New Grove of Music and Musicians. Second Edition, edited by Stanley Sadie, executive editor John Tyrrell, vol. 15: Liturgy to Martinů, London, Macmillan, 2001-2002, pp. 444–45. 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.Jean Grundy Fanelli, A Chronology of Operas, Oratorios, Operettas, Cantatas and Miscellaneous Stage Works with Music performed in Pistoia (1606-1943), Bologna, Pendragon, 1998. The operatic world inspired him to compose his first opera, Matilde e Toledo, which he wrote in only one month when he was just nineteen years old. He was able to have the opera performed at Teatro Alfieri in Florence on August 27, 1836. Its great success astounded the Grand Duke Leopold II of Lorraine, who in return presented Mabellini with a rather large monthly scholarship.Sebastian Werr, Mabellini, Teodulo, in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Allegemeine Enzyklopädie der Musik begründet von Friedrich Blume, edited by musicologist Ludwig Finscher, serie I: Personenteil, vol. 11: Les-Men, Kassel-Basel-London-New York-Praha, Bärenreiter/Stuttgart-Weimar, Metzler, 2004, colonne 682–83.
Studies with Mercadante and operatic success
After having just won his scholarship, he settled in Novara to study with Saverio Mercadante. The Napoletan maestro admired Mabellini’s dedication and talent, and the two remained in great and esteemed relations until Mercadante’s death in 1870. During his studies, Mercadante entrusted Mabellini with the reduction of voice and piano of Le illustri rivali, and brought Mabellini with him as the supervisor of the staging of many of his works in other cities, but especially in Venice. With Mercadante as his mentor, Mabellini developed his skills in sacred music as well, and composed a Mass, which was performed in Novara in 1838. In order to show his gratitude to the Grand Duke for the incredible opportunity to study with Mercadante, Mabellini dedicated the cantata La partenza per la caccia to him in 1839. In 1840, his lyric opera Rolla, which is considered to be Mabellini’s greatest operatic success and composed under the supervision of Mercadante, was staged in Torino (at Teatro Carignano). 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. On the wave of his success, Mabellini was able to enter into the circle of the great impresario Alessandro Lanari, who, from then until 1857, guaranteed Mabellini the best productions and theater companies of their time. As a result of this new support, he wrote Ginevra di Firenze in one go (1841, for the Carignano of Turin), which was an opera that was reworked many times (the final version was entitled Ginevra degli Almieri), and Il conte di Lavagna, written on his return to Pistoia in 1842, dedicated to the Grand Duke, and performed with all honors at the Pergola in Florence in 1843.
The fiasco of I Veneziani a Costantinopoli, the Florentine Cappella, and sacred music
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) 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. The new commissions were for sacred music above all (many cantate for local celebrations: Eudossia e Paolo for the patron of San Giovanni, L'ultimo giorno di Gerusalemme for various Florentine religious institutes), which were so well received that in 1847 he received the nomination of Master of the Court Cappella. 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. He often performed liturgical works, for the first time in Italy, of foreign composers such as Mozart, Albrechtsberger, Hoffmann and Krommer. For the Cappella, from 1847 to 1859, Mabellini composed a large quantity of sacred music, becoming a sort of champion of the genre, and with his compositions he actively engaged in the debate on style and the correct way to compose a mass. This was a debate, which originated in those years, and one that argued for the return to a kind of purity of church music contrasting a pronounced theatrical style. Mabellini continued to dedicate himself to sacred music even after 1859, and produced a huge number of sacred compositions, which rendered him one of the most appreciated composers of this genre in his era. At the Cappella, there was an excellent instrumental ensemble composed of his previous maestro Bimboni, and other professionals such as flautist Cesare Ciardi, horn player Francesco Paoli, and trumpet player Enea Brizzi (each of whom was considered to be the best in their instrument at the time). With this ensemble, he was able to shape his orchestral composition style (see Style): especially for these artists, he wrote Gran fantasia for flute, clarinet, French horn, trumpet, trombone, and string orchestra, which today is found in Florence and Fano (see Sources).
The Pergola and the Risorgimento
His great work at the Cappella convinced the Grand Duke to nominate Mabellini as Director of the Pergola Theater in 1848. Here, he was respected as professional conductor of an orchestra, one of the first true conductors (not instrumentalists), and one of the first in Italy, alongside Angelo Mariani, able to define himself both concertatore and conductor. His choices regarding the artistic direction continued with the Florentine tradition, but began to open up to foreign Romantic experiments, and he staged many operas by Giacomo Meyerbeer, Charles Gounod and Richard Wagner, but perhaps for political reasons, he didn’t neglect the operas by Giuseppe Verdi; for example, he staged La battaglia di Legnano in the middle of the First Italian War of Independence. In spite of the absence of patriotic allusions in his theatrical works, as well as in the commissions by the Grand Duke, Mabellini demonstrated his spirit of the Risorgimento on other occasions. In 1847, one year before the beginning of the bourgeois revolution, a time which is flooded with patriotic choirs, Mabellni wrote L'Italia risorta, a compositions that precedes Michele Novaro’s setting to music of Canto degli Italiani by Goffredo Mameli by only a few months, as well as the attempt by Giuseppe Verdi to put Mazzini's Suona la tromba to music.An account of the troubled prima of the hymn at the Pergola is in Marcello De Angelis, Le carte dell'impresario. Melodramma e costume teatrale nell'Ottocento, Firenze, Sansoni, 1982, p. 121. 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. His political behavior was, however, always moderate; for example, he found some of the anti-aristocrat opinions to be exaggerated, he defended many composers who remained in contact with Austria and therefore liable of accusations of reactionary behavior, and he always remained friends of the Grand Duke. Probably he daydreamed about a Risorgimento led by Leopold II and not by Victor Emanuel, a Risorgimento with Tuscany in charge of unification and not Piedmont. In Florence others wished the same, for example Giovan Pietro Vieusseux and Daniele Manin.A look into Tuscan Risorgimento is in Pasquale Siano, A Firenze letteratura e poesia, in Marcello Vannucci, I Lorena, granduchi di Toscana. Dal Settecento all'unità d'Italia, avvenimenti, protagonisti e curiosità di oltre un secolo di storia, attraverso le alterne vicende dei successori dei Medici, Roma, Newton & Compton, 1998, pp. 233–40; 236. Mabellini wrote an Inno nazionale toscano (Tuscan National Anthem) in 1858, according with his fantasy of a Tuscan Risorgimento (the anthem was published by Lorenzi).
The end of his theatrical career, the Philharmonic Society and teaching