Francesco Cilea

Francesco Cilea's last staged new opera was Gloria in 1907; he lived until 1950. Gloria, staged at La Scala in 1907, did not succeed, and he turned to teaching and to chamber, piano and vocal music, directing the conservatories of Palermo and then Naples for the better part of two decades. His operas include L'arlesiana, after Daudet, whose lament for Federico was made famous by Caruso, and above all Adriana Lecouvreur, first given in Milan in 1902, which takes the life of an eighteenth-century French actress as its subject. Born in Palmi in Calabria and trained at the Naples Conservatory, where his student three-act Gina drew the attention of the publisher Sonzogno, he wrote operas associated with verismo. He died in 1950. Sonzogno's interest brought a commission, La Tilda, first heard at the Teatro Pagliano in Florence in April 1892; L'arlesiana, to a libretto by Leopoldo Marenco, followed at the Teatro Lirico in Milan on 27 November 1897, with the young Caruso in the cast, and it was in the same theatre, again with Caruso, that Adriana Lecouvreur had its première on 6 November 1902, Arturo Colautti adapting Scribe. Toscanini conducted Gloria, which was withdrawn after two performances. Cilea spent his last years in Varazze, near Savona, which made him an honorary citizen, and died there.