BOTTESINI, GIOVANNI (18231889)

This article appears in Volume V04, Page 306 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: BOS-BRI

BOTTESINI, GIOVANNI (18231889) , Italian contrabassist and musical composer, was born at

Crema

CREMA

in Lombardy on the 24th of December 1823. He studied music at the

Milan

MILAN
MILAN (Ital. Milano, Ger. Mailand, anc. Mediolanum, q.v.)

Conservatoire, devoting himself especially to the

double

bass

, an

instrument

INSTRUMENT (Lat. instrumentum, from insincere, to build up, furnish, arrange, prepare)

with which his name is principally associated. On leaving

Milan

MILAN
MILAN (Ital. Milano, Ger. Mailand, anc. Mediolanum, q.v.)

he spent some time in America and also occupied the position of principal

double

bass

in the theatre at Havana. Here his first opera, Cristoforo Colombo, was produced in 1847. In 1849 he made his first

appearance

APPEARANCE (from Lat. apparere, to appear)

in England, playing double-bass solos at one of the Musical Union concerts. After this he made frequent visits to England, and his extraordinary command of his unwieldy

instrument

INSTRUMENT (Lat. instrumentum, from insincere, to build up, furnish, arrange, prepare)

gained him

great

GREAT

popularity in London and the provinces. Apart from his triumphs as an executant, Bottesini was a conductor of European reputation, and earned some success as a composer, though his

work

WORK

had not sufficient individuality to survive the changes of taste and fashion. He was conductor at the Theatre des Italiens in Paris from 1855 to 1857, where his second opera, L'Assedio di Firenze, was produced
at Barcelona. During these years he diversified the toils of conducting by repeated concert tours through the principal countries of Europe. In 1871 he conducted a season of Italian opera at the Lyceum theatre in London, during which his opera Ali Baba was produced, and at the close of the year he was chosen by Verdi to conduct the first performance of Aida, which took place at Cairo on 27th December 1871. Bottesini wrote three operas besides those already mentioned: Il

Diavolo

DIAVOLO, FRA (1771-1806)

della Notte (Milan, 1859); Vinciguerra (Paris, 1870); and Ero e Leandro (Turin, 1880), the last named to a libretto by Arrigo Boito, which was subsequently set by Mancinelli. He also wrote The Garden of Olivet, a devotional oratorio (libretto by Joseph Bennett), which was produced at the Norwich festival in 1887, a concerto for the double-bass, and numerous songs and

minor

instrumental pieces. Bottesini died at Parma on the 7th of July 1889.

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