Cherubini, Luigi

Luigi Cherubini – Le Crescendo. Overture

(b. Florence, 14. September 1760 – d. Paris, 15. March 1842)

Preface (by Laura Fehr, 2018)
Luigi Cherubini, an Italian-born composer, played a significant role in late 18th-century Parisian musical life. Having spent much of his adolescence in Italy studying with Giuseppe Sarti, Cherubini absorbed the styles and structures of the Neapolitan music to which he was exposed. In the summer of 1776, the composer moved to Paris where he became rapidly immersed in Parisian musical life by joining the musical circle of his first patron, Queen Marie Antoinette. While in Paris, Cherubini helped establish and served as the musical director of a new opera company, the Théâtre de Monsieur (later reopened under the name Théâtre Feydeau), which performed Italian comic operas and earned the reputation of being the best opera company in Paris. Due to the tumultuous political climate of the French Revolution and Cherubini’s close relations with the French monarchy, he composer chose to take refuge outside of Paris until 1793 when he resumed his career by composing patriotic works for festivals as well as comic operas. In addition to being a well-respected composer, Cherubini was a monumental figure in Parisian music education. As teaching inspector and director of the Conservatoire National de Musique, Cherubini helped the institution to establish its distinguished position in Europe. However, it was Cherubini’s success with operatic compositions during the revolutionary period that helped him to achieve international fame.

As a composer, Cherubini was part of the operatic vanguard as he took his individual style, well established in classical traditions, and pushed boundaries that broached romantic aesthetics. People living in Paris during his time considered him to be a prodigy whose works would assist in ushering French music into the nineteenth century. Cherubini was determined to create operas that were free from the restrictions and rigidity of traditional French opera to create a genre that could be freely molded with the unique subject of every libretto. The composer’s music was lauded by great musicians throughout Europe. Beethoven, in particular, considered Cherubini to be the greatest living musician during his lifetime and wrote his only opera, Fidelio (1805), after finding inspiration in Cherubini’s famous opera, Lodoïska (1791). …

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