Errico Petrella

Errico Petrella (10 December 18137 April 1877) was an Italian opera composer. Life and career Petrella was born at Palermo, capital of the Kingdom of Sicily. A conservative of the Neapolitan school, he was the most successful Italian composer, second only to Verdi, during the 1850s and 1860s. He also earned the latter’s scorn for his compositional and dramatic crudities, which nonetheless played well on the stage. Petrella was a popular composer in his day, both of opera buffa and more serious work. His best opera, Jone, has considerable melodramatic force and vitality, and Petrella’s melodic style, though old-fashioned in comparison with Verdi’s operas of the 1850s, is still appealing. None of his early works, premiered between December 1829 and 1839, were particularly successful. It was not until Il carnevale di Venezia (Naples, Nuovo, 20 May 1851) that he really became noticed. Elena di Tolosa (Naples, Fondo, 12 August 1852) followed. Finally, in 1854, he took the Italian operatic world by storm with Marco Visconti (Naples, San Carlo, 1854) based on the novel of the same title by Tommaso Grossi. L’assedio di Leida (La Scala, 1856) was his fourth straight triumph, while Jone (La