Faà di Bruno, Giovanni Matteo [Horatio, Orazio] Fabbri, Anna Maria

Florimo, Francesco

In his old age Florimo turned to historical writing. His Cenno storico sulla scuola musicale di Napoli (Naples, 1869–71) and the supplementary Cenni storici sul Collegio di musica S. Pietro a Majella in Napoli (Naples, 1873) were enlarged as La scuola musicale di Napoli e i suoi conservatorii (Naples, 1880–82/R). In sending the first volume to Verdi in 1869, Florimo wrote: ‘Without being either a man of science or a man of letters, I have ventured to write a book. If the world only regards my good intentions, then it will have indulgence for me, otherwise I shall be lost’. Florimo’s failings as a historian are great, but his collection of unsorted fact, legend and error remains unreplaced and indispensable.

Most of Florimo’s other writings are on Bellini. His Traslazione delle ceneri di Vincenzo Bellini (Naples, 1877; Florimo arranged for the body to be moved from Paris to Catania) was reprinted with a biography, anecdotes and letters in Bellini, memorie e lettere (Florence, 1882). Besides authentic material he published letters, parts or the whole of which he had invented, and made assertions based on ‘remembered conversations’ that could not have taken place; these for many years bedevilled studies of Bellini. On the occasion of the first Bayreuth Festival Florimo wrote a short, highly antagonistic pamphlet, Riccardo Wagner ed i wagneristi (Naples, 1876). After Wagner’s visit to Naples in 1880, when he astutely declared to Florimo his predilection for Bellini, Florimo published a much longer second version (Ancona, 1883) in which he praised Wagner and criticized only his fanatical followers.

Florimo was on friendly terms with many figures of his time, including Rossini, Donizetti and Verdi. His view of Italian musical development was that Rossini had been the great revolutionary who had put an end to the old Neapolitan school, but that his style had been replaced by Bellini’s, and the Bellinian reform had been carried on by Donizetti and completed by Verdi in Don Carlos and Aida. His relations with Mercadante were at times strained during the latter’s directorship of the conservatory (1840–70). As Walker pointed out, the praise of Mercadante in the Cenno storico was much toned down in the second edition, published after Mercadante’s death, and in some cases simply reversed by the addition of ‘not’. In 1870–71 Florimo unsuccessfully tried to persuade Verdi to become director. Even in extreme old age he continued to live in his beloved conservatory and bequeathed to it 37 volumes of his correspondence, an important source that has only begun to be drawn on by historians; some of these documents showed up his own published falsifications.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

DENNIS LIBBY/JOHN ROSSELLI