Michael William Balfe



Irish composer Michael William Balfe is largely known for his operas, particularly The Bohemian Girl.

Balfe opted to sing opera and composing music after playing with the violin for some time. Over the course of his forty-plus year career, he composed over twenty-five operas, two hundred and fifty songs, and a number of cantatas. Beyond that, he was a famous conductor who served in several capacities, including a seven-year tenure as the director of Italian opera at Her Majesty's Theatre.

In honor of Balfe Balfe, who was born and brought up on Dublin's Pitt Street in 1846, the street was rechristened Balfe Street in 1917. Composer William Rooke and his father, a dance teacher and pianist, both had an important role in developing his son's early musical abilities. The Balfe family moved to Wexford when Balfe was a little lad. Balfe composed a polacca at the tender age of seven and, from 1814 to 1815, accompanied his father on violin in his dance classes.

at 1817, he made two creations for the violin: "Young Fann'y" for his first public performance and "The Lovers' Mistake" for Madame Vestris's performance at Paul Pry. After his father died in 1823, while Balfe was a teenager, the family moved to London. He became a violinist with the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane orchestra. He worked his way up to conductor of the orchestra. Commencing in 1824, he studied composition under Charles Frederick Horn, who was also the organist of St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, and violin with Charles Edward Horn.

Even after pursuing a career in opera singing, Balfe kept playing the violin. His initial performance, in the disastrous Der Freischutz by Carl Maria von Weber, occurred at Norwich. Count Mazzara, who was a wealthy patron, sent him to Rome to study voice and music in 1825, where he met Luigi Cherubini. Balfe wrote his first theatrical work, the dance La Perouse, while in Italy. As a career, he persisted in composing. As Figaro in the 1827 Parisian Italian staging of The Barber of Seville, he made his operatic debut under Rossini's tutelage.

During the next eight years, Balfe resided in Italy and worked as an opera singer and composer. Not long after that, he went back to Italy. Maria Malibran was someone he met while playing with the Paris Opera. Balfe composed her first cantata in 1829 when the soprano Giulia Grisi was just 18 years old; she sang it at Bologna. Her duet with singer Francesco Pedrazzi made it a huge success. In 1829 and 1830, during Palermo's carnival season, Balfe performed his first full-length opera, I rivali di se stessi.

around Lugano, Switzerland, he tied the knot with Lina Roser sometime around 1831. He met the singer in Bergamo; her family had been Hungarian and Austrian. The couple had a set of twins, a boy and a girl. Their little son, Edward, died. Their firstborn son, Michael William Jr., died in 1915. Victoire and Louisa are their two daughters. Balfe wrote Un avvertimento ai gelosi in Pavia and Enrico Quarto in Milan in 1834, while he was engaged to sing Rossini's Otello at La Scala with Malibran. The contentious attempt by Balfe to "improve" Giacomo Meyerbeer's opera Il crociato in Egitto at Venice's La Fenice theater was an abdication of his contractual obligation.

Finishing a work of art

There, Balfe

Balfe returned to London with his wife and little daughter in May 1835. His initial performance of The Siege of Rochelle, which took place at Drury Lane on October 29, 1835, was his first big hit a few months later. His 1836 success encouraged him to write his first opera in English, The Maid of Artois.

Written in July 1838 for The Italian Opera House, Balfe's new opera Falstaff was based on The Merry Wives of Windsor. S. Manfredo Maggione penned the Italian text. Cast members included Luigi Lablache (who performed the principal role), Giulia Grisi, Giovanni Battista Rubini, Antonio Tamburini, and others he knew. At the Italian Opera in Paris, the same foursome made its debut in 1835 with Bellini's I puritani.

It everything went wrong for Balfe's 1841 National Opera, which he launched at London's Lyceum Theatre. In that exact year, his opera Keolanthe made its world premiere. Shortly after moving to Paris, he adapted Les quatre fils Aymon and L'etoile de Seville into operas for the Opera-Comique and the Opera, respectively. Le Puits d'amour was his first presentation in 1843. Eugene Scribe was among those who contributed to the libretti of these pieces. Also in 1843, Balfe returned to London and, on November 27, 1843, at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, produced his most popular play, The Bohemian Girl. The play ran for over a hundred nights, and immediately afterward, theaters in New York, Dublin, Philadelphia, Vienna, and Sydney, among other global cities, began staging performances. The 1854 Italian translation of La Zingara had a resounding success in Trieste and thereafter toured the globe in both Italian and German. The 1862 French debut of La Bohemienne, a four-act version, was just as successful.

Along with Max Maretzek as his assistant, Balfe was then designated principal conductor and musical director of the Italian Opera at Her Majesty's Theatre from 1846 until 1852. He was the first to present operas by Verdi in London. In addition to conducting Jenny Lind's opera debut, he also conducted other following performances.

An obelisk made of braided granite is interred among other tombstones.

the Kensal Green Cemetery in London, where Balfe's gravestone is located

Balfe composed the original cantata Inno Delle Nazioni in 1851 for the Great Exhibition in London, and nine female vocalists—one from each nation—performed it. Aside from penning many melodies such as "When Other Hearts," "I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls," "Come Into the Garden, Maud," "Killarne'y," and "Excelsior," he persisted in penning new English operas, such as The Armourer of Nantes. Before he died, he had nearly completed his last opera, The Knight of the Leopard, which had been a smashing success in Italy under the title Il Talismano.

In 1864, after Balfe retired, he leased a house in the countryside of Hertfordshire. His resting place was in London's Kensal Green Cemetery, beside that of fellow Irish composer William Vincent Wallace, who had also died five years before. He had lived at Rowney Abbey, Ware, Hertfordshire, and died at the age of 62 in 1870. His likeness was included on a medallion that was unveiled in 1882 at Westminster Abbey. The London County Council placed a plaque in 1912 to commemorate Balfe at 12 Seymour Street, Marylebone.

Balfe composed at least 29 operas. Along with other cantatas, he also created a symphony. Still performed today is Balfe's only large-scale piece, the world-famous opera The Bohemian Girl.


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