Francesco Cilea

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Francesco Cilea, (Palmi, near Reggio Calabria, July 26, 1866 - Varazze, near Savona, November 20, 1950) was an Italian opera composer, whose early success was not sustained, as taste in music changed. In 1913, after his symphonic choral poem honoring Giuseppe Verdi was performed at the Carlo Felice Theatre in Genoa, Cilea devoted himself to managing music conservatories and teaching. He taught at Florence and Palermo and finally Naples, where he taught from 1916 and retired in 1936. Cilea also published pieces for pianoforte. His chamber music is not widely known.

The Reggio Calabria State Conservatory of Music and the Reggio Calabria Municipal Theater are named in honor of Francesco Cilea.

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Operas

Gina (9.2.1889 Teatro Conservatorio S. Pietro alla Majella, Naples). This first melodramatic opera (melodramma idilico), written while Cilea was still a Conservatory student, attracted the notice of the publishers Sonzogno, who arranged for a second production, at Florence, in 1892. Gina had a libretto by Enrico Golisciani, adapted from an old French play, Catherine, ou La Croix d'or by Baron Anne-Honoré-Joseph Duveyrier de Mélésville (1787—1865).
La Tilda (7.4.1892 Teatro Pagliano, Florence). A melodrama in three acts, composed on a libretto by Angelo Zanardini; the same year, it was also produced in Vienna.
L'Arlesiana (27.11.1897 Teatro Lirico, Milan). Leopoldo Marenco's libretto was based on the play by Alphonse Daudet, which had been only modestly successful in Paris in 1872, in spite of the incidental music composed for it by Georges Bizet. The romanza," Federico's lament", was a concert vehicle for Enrico Caruso who sang at the premiere. Cilea continued to doctor the weak libretto.
L'Arlesiana [revision] (22.10.1898 Milan)
Adriana Lecouvreur (6.11.1902 Teatro Lirico, Milan). This verismo opera to a libretto adapted by Arturo Colautti from the costume melodrama by Eugène Scribe is the only lasting work for which Cilea is remembered.
Gloria (15.4.1907 Teatro alla Scala, Milan). Toscanini conducted the premiere, but it was a failure and was withdrawn after two performances. Cilea's revision of it later was not more successful.
(Il ritorno dell'amore ca. 1908; not completed)
L'Arlesiana [second revision] (1910)
Gloria [rev] (1932)
L'Arlesiana [third revision] (1937)