Irish composer Michael William Balfe is largely known for his operas, particularly The Bohemian Girl.
After dabbling with the violin for a while, Balfe decided to sing opera as he composed music. His prolific career lasted over four decades, during which time he wrote several cantatas, about 250 songs, and at least 29 operas. Not only that, but he was a renowned conductor who held many positions, including seven years as director of Italian opera at Her Majesty's Theatre.
By 1846, Balfe
Balfe was born and raised on Pitt Street in Dublin; in 1917, the street was renamed Balfe Street to remember him. Both his father, a dance instructor and musician, and the composer William Rooke helped nurture his early musical talents. As a young boy, Balfe and his family relocated to Wexford. Balfe created a polacca when he was seven years old and played the violin for his father's dancing courses from 1814 to 1815.
'Young Fann'y' was the name of his first public violin performance in 1817, and 'The Lovers' Mistake,' when performed by Madame Vestris in Paul Pry, was his second creation that year. Balfe relocated to London in 1823, when he was a teenager, when his father passed away. He took a position as a violinist in the orchestra of the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. He rose through the ranks to become the orchestra's conductor. At St. George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, he studied composition with Charles Frederick Horn, who was also the organist, beginning in 1824, and violin with Charles Edward Horn.
Balfe continued to play the violin and later sought a singing career in opera. At Norwich, he made his debut in Carl Maria von Weber's Der Freischutz, but it was a failure. He met Luigi Cherubini in 1825 when his rich patron, Count Mazzara, sent him to Rome to study voice and music. While in Italy, Balfe composed his first dramatic piece, La Perouse, a ballet. He continued to pursue composition as a career. He was Rossini's protégé and made his operatic debut as Figaro in the Parisian Italian production of The Barber of Seville towards the year's end 1827.
For the following eight years, Balfe lived in Italy, where he sang and composed operas. He returned to Italy not long after. While performing at the Paris Opera at the time, he met Maria Malibran. Soprano Giulia Grisi, who was 18 years old in 1829 when Balfe wrote her first cantata, sang it in Bologna. It was a smashing hit when she sang it with tenor Francesco Pedrazzi. During the carnival season of 1829–30, Balfe staged I rivali di se stessi, his first full-length opera, in Palermo.
Around 1831, he wed Lina Roser in Lugano, Switzerland. She was a vocalist with Hungarian and Austrian ancestry whom he had met at Bergamo. Two boys and two girls were born to the union. Their little son, Edward, passed away. Michael William Jr., their eldest son, passed away in 1915. They have two children, Victoire and Louisa. While he was committed to perform Rossini's Otello with Malibran at La Scala in 1834, Balfe composed Enrico Quarto in Milan and Un avvertimento ai gelosi in Pavia. In a controversial effort to "improve" Giacomo Meyerbeer's opera Il crociato in Egitto, Balfe threw off his commitment at Venice's La Fenice theater.
Creating a masterpiece
In London, Balfe
In May of 1835, Balfe brought his wife and baby daughter back to London. His first major hit didn't come until a few months later, on October 29, 1835, at Drury Lane, with the debut of The Siege of Rochelle. In 1836, buoyed by his success, he composed The Maid of Artois, the first of his English-language operas.
Based on The Merry Wives of Windsor, Balfe wrote a new opera, Falstaff, in July 1838, for The Italian Opera House. S. Manfredo Maggione wrote the libretto in Italian. Among his acquaintances, the cast included Giulia Grisi, Giovanni Battista Rubini, Antonio Tamburini, and Luigi Lablache, who played the lead part. In 1835, the same quartet debuted Bellini's I puritani at the Parisian Italian Opera.
The National Opera, which Balfe established in 1841 at London's Lyceum Theatre, was a bust. His opera Keolanthe had its world debut in that very year. After relocating to Paris, he created operas for the Opera-Comique and the Opera, respectively, based on the works of Les quatre fils Aymon and L'etoile de Seville. In early 1843, he presented Le Puits d'amour. Among others, Eugene Scribe wrote the libretti for these works. At the same time, Balfe went back to London in 1843 and staged his greatest hit, The Bohemian Girl, at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, on November 27, 1843. New York, Dublin, Philadelphia, Vienna, Sydney, and other cities throughout the globe quickly staged productions of the play after it played for more than 100 nights. The 1854 Trieste staging of La Zingara, an Italian translation, was a smashing success, and it, too, went on to stages worldwide in Italian and German. A four-act French adaptation, La Bohemienne, premiered in 1862 and was as well-received.
Later in life
Balfe was named main conductor and musical director of the Italian Opera at Her Majesty's Theatre from 1846 until 1852, while Max Maretzek was his assistant. In London, he staged Verdi's operas for the first time. Jenny Lind's opera debut and several subsequent performances were conducted by him.
Interred with other tombstones is an obelisk of woven granite.
London's Kensal Green Cemetery, where Balfe's tombstone rests
In 1851, Balfe wrote an original cantata called Inno Delle Nazioni, which was performed by nine female vocalists, one from each nation, in preparation for the Great Exhibition in London. In addition to writing hundreds of songs like "When Other Hearts," "I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls," "Come Into the Garden, Maud," "Killarne'y," and "Excelsior," he continued to create new operas in English, including The Armourer of Nantes. The Knight of the Leopard, his last opera, was almost finished when he passed away; it was a huge hit in Italy under the title Il Talismano.
After Balfe's retirement in 1864, he rented a rural home in Hertfordshire. He was laid to rest at London's Kensal Green Cemetery with fellow Irish composer William Vincent Wallace, who had also passed away five years earlier, after passing away at the age of 62 in 1870 at his residence at Rowney Abbey, Ware, Hertfordshire. Westminster Abbey unveiled a medallion depiction of him in 1882. Balfe is remembered at 12 Seymour Street, Marylebone, with a plaque installed in 1912 by the London County Council.
Balfe wrote a minimum of 29 operas. Not only that, but he composed a symphony and other cantatas. Balfe's most famous opera, The Bohemian Girl, is also his sole large-scale work that is still performed today.
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