Presents
Jean Baptiste Singelée
Jean Baptiste Singelée (1817-1875) was born in the Belgian capital of Brussels and studied at the conservatory there before traveling to Paris where he studied with the famous French virtuoso, Pierre Baillot. A fine violinist, for most of his life, he served as concertmaster or solo violinist to many of the leading opera houses in France and Belgium. During the last decade of his life, he also served as a conductor in the opera houses of Marsailles, Brussels, Ghent, Antwerp and Ostend. A close friend of Adolphe Sax, inventor of the saxophone, Singelée was one of the first composers to take the instrument seriously and he wrote a considerable amount of music for it. However, most of his works were for his own instrument. As his entire career was spent either playing or conducting in major opera houses, it is perhaps not surprising that he decided to write fantasies for violin and piano on themes from the leading operas by such composers as Rossini, Donizetti, Verdi, Bellini, Meyerbeer, Gounod, Thomas, Mozart, Wagner and many others, Such works were much in vogue by soloists throughout the 19th century and Singelée wrote dozens of these, many achieving great popularity and often performed by the leading players of the day. Listeners and players alike recognized that Singelée’s fantasies were superior to those of most of his contemporaries because he included most of the themes from each opera he worked on and not just one theme or aria. And he included transitions between themes just as in the opera itself so that the listener experienced an entire opera performance in miniature but preserving all of the emotion and expressiveness of the larger work.
The opera Martha was the German composer Friedrich von Flotow’s best known opera and throughout the last part of the 19th century one of the most popular in the opera literature. It was composed in 1847. Singelée’s Fantasy uses virtually all of the best known themes from the opera. In its time, it was one of his most popular works. His fantasies are as long as the typical sonata and make excellent recital and competition pieces.
Parts: $19.95
