NPR World of Opera
Anacreon, by Luigi Cherubini

If you're any kind of "classical" music fan, you've probably heard of Luigi Cherubini. But, have you ever actually heard Luigi Cherubini? That is, do you know any of his music? The fact is, Cherubini is one of those composers whose name is a lot more familiar than his music.

In a way that's understandable. Cherubini is a hard composer to pin down. We can tell from his name that he was Italian. He was born in Florence in 1760. Yet, most of his operas have French titles. That's because he worked in France for the last 57 years of his life - until he died, in Paris, in 1842. Those dates are another thing that makes Cherubini hard to figure. He was born during the Classical era, and died with 19th-century Romanticism in full swing. As an opera composer he lived through opera seria and bel canto, and into the age of German Romantic Opera and French Grand Opera. Maybe most ironically, given his Italian heritage and his mainly French career, his greatest influence may have been on German composers, like Weber, and Beethoven. On top of all that, while Cherubini achieved his greatest fame composing operas, he virtually gave up opera for the last three decades of his life, after a series of failures due in large part to inadequate librettos.

So, just what should we make of Cherubini? It's a tough question, but one that might be answered in part by today's opera, "Anacreon" or, "Love on the Run." Its premiere in 1803 was so unsuccessful that Anacreon is among the works that led Cherubini to give up on opera. Yet, despite its obscure storyline, Cherubini blessed the opera with some remarkable music - more than worthy of a composer who had a pronounced influence on nearly every form of opera he touched during one of music's most distinguished and far-reaching careers.

This week on NPR WORLD OF OPERA, with host Steve Curwood, we'll hear a rare production of Anacreon, from one of the world's most beautiful and historic opera houses, La Fenice, in Venice.

LINKS:

Luigi Cherubini: More on Cherubini
La Fenice: The official site of El Teatro Fenice di Venezia
Libretto: Libretto of the opera, Anacreon, in French and Italian
NPR's At the Opera