Profile of Franco Alfano on Famous Like Me

Franco Alfano (March 8, 1875 - October 27, 1954) was an Italian composer and pianist.

He was was born in Posillipo, near Naples. Today he is perhaps best known for completing Giacomo Puccini's unfinished opera Turandot in 1926. Alfano died in San Remo. [Konrad Dryden, cpo recoding of CYRANO DE BERGERAC gives this information] Studied in Naples, conservatory San Pietro a Majella. Leipzing 1895, where he met his idol, Edvard Grieg. Numerous piano and orchestral pieces; completed his first opera, still unpublished, MIRANDA (1896). LA FONTE DI ENSCHIR refused by Ricordi, appeared in Breslau as Die Quelle von Enschir (1898). In 1918, Director of Conservatory of Bologna; 1923,led Turin COnservatory. [FANFARE Sept/Oct 98-99 gives the following information.] Alfano's reputation suffered because (a) he should not be judged as a composer on the basis of the task he was given in completing TURANDOT (La Scala, Paril 25, 1926), (b) "we almost never hear everything he wrote for TURANDOT--the standard ending heavily edits Alfano's work." [in the cpo opera set of CYRANO DE BERGERAC, Andreas K.W. Meyer, translated into English by Susan Marie Praeder,pp. 29-30, adds] (c)"...it is not his conclusion that is performed in productions of TURANDOT but only what the premiere conductor Arturo Toscanini included from it...Puccini had worked for nine months on the following concluding duet and at his death had left behind a whole ream of sketches....Alfano had to reconstruct ...according to his best assessment...and with his imagination and magnifying glass" since Puccini's material "had not really been legible." [Konrad Dryden, cited supra, p. 33, adds that the project, reluctantly undertaken, resulted in "near blindness in his right eye, requiring three months spent in darkened rooms."] Fogel: "Alfano's reputation has also suffered [IC:along with Mascagni], understandably, because of his willingness to associate himself closely with Mussolini's Fascist government." RISURREZIONE(1904), based on Tolstoy, is his early success. Cyrano de Bergerac, persumably composed to the French libretto by Henri Cain, had its Italian version premiere in January 1936, and its French version premiere four months later. Alfano's--24.195.144.148 19:11, 14 September 2005 (UTC)--24.195.144.148 19:11, 14 September 2005 (UTC) third important opera appeared as La leggenda di Sakùntala in 1921, presented revised in 1952 as Sakùntala. 24.195.144.148 19:11, 14 September 2005 (UTC)ravkein

Works

Symphonies 1 and 2 [reviewed by Barry Brenesal in the same issue of Fanfare, pp. 103-4].

Operas

• I cavalieri e la bella
• Cyrano de Bergerac
• Il dottor Antonio
• La fonte di Enschir
• La leggenda di Sakuntala
• Madonna Imperia(1927)
• L'ombra di Don Giovanni
• Il principe di Zilah
• Risurrezione
• L'ultimo Lord(1931)
• I Cavalieri e la bella (unfinished)

Ballets

• Napoli(1901)
• Lorenza(1901)
• VesuviusVesuvio (1933)

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