Luigi Cherubini

Luigi Cherubini (1760–1842) was an Italian Classical and Romantic composer. His most significant compositions are operas and sacred music. Beethoven regarded Cherubini as the greatest of his contemporaries. His operas were heavily praised and interpreted by Rossini. Cherubini was born Maria Luigi Carlo Zenobio Salvatore Cherubini in Florence. In 1780, he was awarded a scholarship by the Grand Duke of Tuscany to study music in Bologna and Milan. Cherubini's early opere serie used libretti by Apostolo Zeno, Metastasio (Pietro Trapassi), and others that adhered closely to standard dramatic conventions. His music was strongly influenced by Niccolò Jommelli, Tommaso Traetta, and Antonio Sacchini, who were the leading Italian composers of the day. Feeling constrained by Italian traditions and eager to experiment, Cherubini traveled to London in 1785 where he produced two opere serie and an opera buffa for the King's Theatre. In the same year, he made an excursion to Paris with his friend the violinist Giovanni Battista Viotti, who presented him to Marie Antoinette and Parisian society. Cherubini received an important commission to write Démophoon to a French libretto by Jean-François Marmontel that would be his first tragédie en musique. Except for a brief return trip to London and to Turin for an opera seria commissioned by King Victor Amadeus III, Cherubini spent the rest of his life in France where he was initiated into Grand Orient de France "Saint-Jean de Palestine" Masonic Lodge in 1784. Cherubini's music began to show more originality and daring. His first major success was Lodoïska (1791), which was admired for its realistic heroism. This was followed by Elisa (1794), set in the Swiss Alps, and Médée (1797), Cherubini's best-known work. Les deux journées (1800), in which Cherubini simplified his style, was a popular success. The fallout from the French Revolution affected Cherubini until the end of his life. Politics forced him to hide his connections with the former aristocracy and seek governmental appointments. Although Napoleon found him too complex, Cherubini wrote at least one patriotic work per year for more than a decade. He was appointed Napoleon's director of music in Vienna for part of 1805 and 1806, whereupon he conducted several of his works in that city. After Les deux journées, Parisian audiences began to favor younger composers such as Boieldieu. Cherubini's opera-ballet Anacréon was an outright failure and most stage works after it did not achieve success. Faniska, produced in 1806, was an exception, receiving an enthusiastic response, in particular by Haydn and Beethoven. Les Abencérages (1813), an heroic drama set in Spain during the last days of the Moorish kingdom of Granada, was Cherubini's attempt to compete with Spontini's La vestale; it received critical praise but few performances. Cherubini's Requiem in C minor (1816), commemorating the anniversary of the execution of King Louis XVI of France, was a huge success. The work was greatly admired by Beethoven, Schumann and Brahms. In 1836, Cherubini wrote a Requiem in D minor to be performed at his own funeral. It is for male choir only, as the religious authorities had criticised his use of female voices in the earlier work. In 1822, Cherubini became director of the Conservatoire and completed his textbook, Cours de contrepoint et de fugue, in 1835. His role at the Conservatoire brought him into conflict with the young Hector Berlioz, who portrayed the old composer in his memoirs as a crotchety pedant. Some critics, such as Basil Deane, maintain that Berlioz's depiction has distorted Cherubini's image with posterity. Cherubini died in Paris in 1842 at age 81 and is buried at Père Lachaise Cemetery, just four metres from his friend Chopin. His tomb was designed by the architect Achille Leclère and includes a figure by the sculptor Augustin-Alexandre Dumont representing "Music" crowning a bust of the composer with a wreath.