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''L'ultimo giorno di Pompei'' ("The last day of Pompeii") is an opera (''dramma per musica'') in two acts composed by Giovanni Pacini to an Italian libretto by Andrea Leone Tottola. It premiered to great success at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples on 19 November 1825 followed by productions in the major opera houses of Italy, Austria, France, and Portugal. When Pacini's popularity declined in the mid-19th century, the opera was all but forgotten until 1996 when it received its first performance in modern times at the Festival della Valle d'Itria in Martina Franca. ''L'ultimo giorno di Pompei'' influenced either directly or indirectly several other 19th-century works, most notably Karl Bryullov's 1833 painting, ''The Last Day of Pompeii''. ==Background and performance history== ''L'ultimo giorno di Pompei'' was the third of Pacini's operas to premiere at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples. It was commissioned to celebrate the name day of Queen María Isabella of the Two Sicilies. The libretto itself was written by Andrea Leone Tottola. However, the basic outline of the story and the idea of setting it in Pompeii at the time of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD came from the Teatro San Carlo's resident scenographer, Antonio Niccolini.〔Gardner Coates, Lapatin, and Seydl p. 197〕 Although the setting and the English translation of its title are similar to that of Bulwer-Lytton's novel ''The Last Days of Pompeii'', the opera predates the novel by almost 10 years and has a completely different plot. The opera premiered to great success on 19 November 1825. Nicolini's production was an expensive extravaganza involving numerous changes of sets, complex lighting, and the use of real explosives. The spectacular climax depicting the fiery eruption of Mount Vesuvius was accompanied by a simulated earthquake and lightning as nine gauze curtains painted with clouds of ash and fire were raised one after the other to reveal the volcano.〔 According to a contemporary account, when molten lava appeared to flow towards the front of the stage, the effect was so realistic that people in the stalls were terrified. The set designs for the Naples premiere have been lost. However, multiple copies of Alessandro Sanquirico's designs for the 1827 La Scala production have been preserved. Kenneth Lapitan, a curator at the J. Paul Getty Museum, has proposed that Sanquirico's designs probably followed Nicolini's production quite closely.〔 The day after the premiere, King Francis I of the Two Sicilies sent Pacini a congratulatory letter expressing his great pleasure with the performance. He appointed Pacini to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts and ordered that Tottola be granted a bonus of 30 ducats.〔 In his 1865 memoirs, Pacini described ''L'ultimo giorno di Pompei'' as the greatest triumph of his early career.〔Pacini pp. 49–50〕 The opera ran for four seasons at the San Carlo and was subsequently performed at La Scala in Milan and the Theater am Kärntnertor in Vienna (1827), the Theatro de São Carlos in Lisbon (1828), the Théâtre-Italien in Paris (1830), and La Fenice in Venice (1832).〔Casaglia〕 The reception at La Scala was as enthusiastic as it had been in Naples, and on the strength of the opera's success there, the impresario Domenico Barbaia offered Pacini a nine-year contract as the artistic director of his theatres with a commission to compose two operas a year.〔 Pacini's popularity had declined in the mid-19th century. By the time of his death in 1867, ''L'ultimo giorno di Pompei'' was all but forgotten until August 1996 when it received its first performance in modern times at the Festival della Valle d'Itria in Martina Franca.〔Gelli and Poletti〕 The production then transferred to the Teatro Massimo Bellini in Catania for performances in September of that year. A live recording of the Martina Franca performance was released by Dynamic Records in 1997 and re-released in 2012. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「L'ultimo giorno di Pompei」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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