Amilcare Ponchielli

Amilcare Ponchielli (, ; 31 August 1834 – 16 January 1886) was an Italian opera composer, best known for his opera La Gioconda. He was married to the soprano Teresina Brambilla. Life and work Born in Paderno Fasolaro (now Paderno Ponchielli) near Cremona, then Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia, Ponchielli won a scholarship at the age of nine to study music at the Milan Conservatory, writing his first symphony by the time he was ten years old. The ballet Le due gemelle (1873) confirmed his success. The following opera, I Lituani (The Lithuanians) of 1874, had a three-night run in 1903 at La Scala, where the casting was particularly poorly reviewed; it was scheduled for performances in 1939 that did not take place because the Second World War broke out, and it was not performed again until 1979, when RAI recovered the score. It has been revived several times since then. His best-known opera is La Gioconda (1876), which his librettist Arrigo Boito adapted from the same play by Victor Hugo that had been previously set by Saverio Mercadante as Il giuramento in 1837 and Carlos Gomes as Fosca in 1873. The opera contains the famous ballet Dance of the Hours as the third act finale. It was first