The gift for music
Gaspare Luigi Pacifico Spontini was born on November 14^th, 1774, in Maiolati, a “castles” in the countryside of Jesi, in the Marca of Ancona, second born son of Giambattista and Teresa Guadagnini. His family, that originally came from Albacina, belonging to Fabriano’s territory, was called Sponta, that means "spuntò il sol", (the sun rose), as the family’s coat of arms shows. Only later the diminutive was added, becoming Spontino. Driven by his father to embrace the religious life, following the example of his brothers, Gaspare Spontini, still child, was sent to the church of Santa Maria del Piano, in Jesi, by his fatherly uncle, don Giuseppe Spontini. After a short period of studies, personally supervised by his uncle, Spontini was admitted in the seminar of Jesi, as the headstones laid in 1850 inside the building testifies. Impatient to the ecclesiastical studies, the young Spontini succeeded in attending music lessons and overcoming the opposition of his father, that finally set him free to complete the musical education in Naples.

The Neapolitan education
In January 1793 Gaspare Spontini was admitted to one of the four Musical Conservatories active in Naples: The Conservatorio della Pietà dei Turchini. Some of the most famous musicians, as Paisiello and Cimarosa, lived in Naples in that period. In 1795 probably impatient to the education, Spontini decided to leave Naples and started touring several Italian venues: from Rome again to Naples, from Palermo to Florence and to Venice. A Roman impresario, a Mr Sigismondi or Sismondi, caught his talent and entrusted him the task to compose an opera, Li puntigli delle donne, performed for the first time in Rome, at the Teatro della Pallacorda, in Piazza Firenze, during the Carnival in 1796. The libretto, probably by Francesco Cerlone, is focused on a comic traditional vicissitude. The autographical score is preserved in the Library of the S. Pietro’ Conservatory in Majella of Naples. The debut revealed very positive: Spontini returned in fact to the Neapolitan Conservatory, obtained Cimarosa and Piccinni’s esteem, and above all obtained new artistic commissions: L’eroismo ridicolo in 1798 (Naples, Teatro Nuovo, on a libretto by Domenico Piccinni, brother of the famous composer Niccolò), adapted in the following year as La finta filosofa.

Spontini at the court of Napoleon
Arrived in 1803 in Paris, Gaspare Spontini succeeded in less than four years in entering in the court of the Count of Rémusat, friend of the future empress Giuseppina and of her daughter Hydrangea, both keen on singing, particularly romances, in fashion in Paris at that time. Then, thanks to emperor Bonaparte's support, he entered in the Académie Impériale de Musique (Grand Opéra de Paris). On December 31^st, 1803, he made his debut at the Theatre-Italien of Paris; on February 11^th, 1804, the comic opera La finta filosofa, already represented in Naples in 1799,  was staged in the same theatre, obtaining a big success. On May 12^th, 1804, Spontini performed also the comic opera La petite maison, whose score has not been found yet, but of which Berlioz spoke with eulogistic terms; on November 27^th of the same year the artist executed the Milton at the Feydeau Theatre, with a dedication to the empress Giuseppina: this is a work rich in Mozartian evocations, in games of timbre and in liederistic moments, with which he inaugurated his literary collaboration with Victor-Joseph-Etienne de Jouy.

Thanks to these affirmations of the comic operas in French, Spontini succeeded in entering into the Académie Impériale de Musique: in 1805 he was in fact appointed compositeur particulier de la chambre of Y.M. the empress.

The triumph of La Vestale
La Vestale, dated 1805, was staged in Paris on December 15^th, 1807, at the Théatre de L'Académie Impériale de Musique, in the presence of empress Giuseppina. Giulia, the vestal, was interpreted by the great soloist Caroline Branchu, together with the authoritative Etienne Lainez in the role of Licinio. Enriched by exceptional corps de ballet and by extraordinary instrumentalists, as the horn player Frédéric Duvernoy, which Spontini had entrusted the “solo" of Julia's aria in the second act, La Vestale received a clamorous success and had a run of two hundreds nights. Certain vocal lines, the fusion of the italianismis with the sensuality of French, the ancient set, rich in temples, imperial eagles, the iconographies of the ancient Rome: all constituted historical and ideological references in which Napoleon and the imperial court could perfectly recognize themselves. Napoleon’s divorce from his wife Giuseppina separated Spontini from his protectress, but not from the emperor who always placed faith and protection in him, as the following honours and offices awarded to the musician demonstrate: thanks to a suggestion of Napoleone himself, in 1809 it was commissioned to Spontini an opera of historical-commemorative character, the Fernando Cortez; in 1810 La Vestale received a prize as the best opera represented in the preceding decade; in the same year Spontini was named main conductor of the Théatre-Italien de Paris, position that will maintain up to 1812, and of the Theater of the Empress; in 1813 he was also named member of the jury entrusted to examine new librettos proposed to the Opera.

The Fernand Cortez
After the triumph that welcomed La Vestale, it was commissioned to Gaspare Spontini an opera of historical-commemorative character, the Fernando Cortez, by De Jouy. Napoleon himself suggested the musician the subject of this new opera that, as the previous one, was in a perfect wavelength as the imperial politics: it was in fact an opera considered as an effective political tool for the emperor’s venture in Spain, intended to enhance the contrast between the liberal and humanitarian feelings of Cortez and the religious fanaticism of Mexicans, establishing an ideal relationship and an historical transposition between the Spanish conquest of Mexico and the Napoleonic occupation of Spain. The opera was performed on November 28^th, 1809: rich and sumptuous in costumes, scenes and direction (the estimate of expenditures had been calculated on a base of 180 thousand francs), it determined Gaspare Spontini’s triumph in France and for this same reason it is considered the key-opera of the Empire’s French music. The opera was staged at the Imperial Academy of Music Theatre, in the presence of the emperor and of the kings of Sassonia and Westfalia: among the soloists appeared some interpreters of La Vestale, as the famous soprano Branchu. The opera definitely opened the way to the passage from the baroque opera with mythological subjects to the grand opéra of the romantic period, of which Gaspare Spontini is considered one of the brightest precursors. The warlike heroic aspects proposed by Cortez will become in fact a constitutive part of the XVII Century’s French music drama, as it is proved by the successes of Meyerbeer with the Huguenots, of Auber with La muette de Portici and of Berlioz with Troyens. In the drafting of the libretto, composers wanted to create a faithfulness account of the history of conquest and of Mexican customs’ representation, considering this one as an essential and necessary condition to pass from tragedy and myth, typical of the XVII Century opera, to epopee. As La Vestale, also Cortez remained for a long time in the Opera’s repertoire. On October 15^th, 1814, it was staged for the first time in Berlin, becoming soon a popular title; in Italy it was first performed in February 1820, at the S. Carlo theatre of Naples, receiving however a meagre success. Spontini revised the opera in 1817.

The marriage with Celeste Erard
On August 3^rd, 1811, Spontini, at the age of thirty-seven, married Maria Caterina Celeste Erard. Born in Paris on July 10^th, 1790, she was Giovanni Battista’s daughter and Sebastiano Erard’s niece, the two famous harps and pianos’ constructors. The marriage was particularly welcomed by the empress Giuseppina, so that the notarial act that regulates the economic relations among the married couple was signed by "Joséphine". Even if kept in his shade, Celeste had an important role inside the musician’s artistic life, so much that he dedicated to her his greatest work, Agnes von Hohenstaufen.

Spontini couple had no children, and this did not damage their relationship of love and harmony but on the contrary had as consequence the institution of a lot of charitable actions in favour of Jesi and Maiolati. After Spontini’s death, Celeste kept on with the administration of these charitable organizations,  revealing her sensibility and love for her beloved consort and for the small village that received his grave. Celeste, used to the sumptuous and refined life of the European courts, always deeply desired to live in Maiolati, in this small village among humble, but sincere, people. The following sentence testifies this feeling: “The huge city of London is... marvellous... Now, if I could, I would choice more gladly my little house of Majolati, than a building in this first capital of the world”.

The Olimpie
Spontini started in 1815 working on the Olimpie, whose libretto, based on Voltarire’ tragedy, had been written by Dielafoi and Brifaut. The composer was really close to this new opera: staged on December 22^nd, 1819, at the Royal Academy of Music’s Theatre, with again the soprano Branchu in the main role, the opera was suspended for the murder of the Dutch of Berry (1820), nephew of Louis XVIII. Spontini did not lose heart but took advantage of this interruption to revise the opera and eliminate what the public less appreciate: the double catastrophe. The Olimpie, with happy end, was dedicated to Frederick William III of Prussia and appeared in May 1821 on the stages of Berlin, where Spontini had moved, receiving a big success. The Olimpie, the third Spontini’s epic opera, is structured on a sequence of stately key-scenes with processions, orgy and battles, where Spontini musically sketches situation of extreme emotional and gestural concentration. Since the initial ouverture, the sense of beauty, grandeur, expressive cordiality and immediateness, can be feel, already noticed in the two previous heroic ouvertures of La Vestale and Cortez. Among the characters, Statira’s personality detaches: worthy heroin of Alexander Magno, strong as Cherubini’s Medea or Gluck’s Armida. The same must be underlined for Olimpia, graceful and transparent figure, symbol of love.

Spontini in Berlin
Spontini examined the offers of Frederick William III of Prussia, who in 1814 attended at the Opera the representations of La Vestale and Cortez, and in 1820 went to his court in Berlin. Here the Olimpie, translated in German by Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann, was performed in the definitive version, that joins the French grand-opéra and the German dramatic lyricism and that determines its boundary nature (Lorenzo Tozzi), so often forgotten for the understanding of so much European music. The composer was entrusted with the office of First Master of Chapel and with the general superintendence of the music, with the title of General Director of Music (General-Musik-Direktor) and with the authorization to be titled, outside Prussia, General Superintendent of Music of the King. The first opera composed by Spontini in Berlin was a Festpiel, Lalla Rookh (1821). The following year he provided the adaptation of Lalla Rookh to create a lyric drama in two acts: Nurmahal oder das Rosenfest von Kaschmir. Spontini spent the rest of the year, the 1822, on leave and in the month of July he arrived in Italy. He went to the places of his childhood and in the occasion of his return the Municipality of Jesi decreed the composer’s aggregation at the local patriciate. Again at the court, the musician started the creation of a new great opera commissioned by the king: the Alcidor, a Zauberoper appreciated by the court’s and aristocracy’s tastes, structured in three acts and represented for the first time at the Koniglisches Opernhaus of Berlin on May 23^rd ,1825. Placed in an imaginary country of southern Asia, Alcidor represents the conjunction between the fantastic-esoteric opera, in the wake of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, and northern culture’s images.

Agnes von Hohenstaufen
The Agnes von Hohenstaufen, based on a libretto by Ernst Raupach, was staged on June 12^th, 1829, at the Konigliches Theater of Berlin. The Agnes, a real Grosse historisch-romantische Oper, appeared in its definitive version on December 6^th, 1837, again in Berlin, structured in three acts, after a revision made by the baron Karl August von Lichtenstein, obtaining a clamorous success. The Agnes von Hohenstaufen, that the musician considered his masterpiece, was an absolute reference model for Wagner’s Rienzi (finished in 1840), Tannhauser (the first version so called "of Dresden" dated 1843-1845) and Lohengrin (1845-1848); Spontini’s opera opened as well the way to the Italian and European music drama. Part of the critic has underlined as the Agnes anticipates the aura of the greatest historical dramas of Giuseppe Verdi, as Don Carlo and Simon Boccanegra (Q. Principe).

Spontini and Wagner
In 1840 Frederick William III, Gaspare Spontini’s principal support in Berlin, died. In 1841, after continuous disputes with the Theater von Redern’s new superintendent, Gaspare Spontini was accused of lase-majesty and sentenced, in July, to nine month’s imprisonment. In 1842, dismissed the musician from the office, Frederick William IV assigned him a pension. The musician had also to suffer the humiliation to see his charge submitted to the fierce enemy Meyerbeer. In Germany, during these years of burning disappointments, it is the city of Dresden to bestow him a great honour: La Vestale produced in Dresden in 1844 was in fact welcomed in an enthusiastic way. In this occasion Spontini met and collaborated with Richard Wagner. In the same year Spontini is honoured with the papal title of Sant'Andrea. "The widely fame of Italian opera’s composers, as Cherubini and Spontini, could not arise from the German operetta, but it could only spring in Italy .... Auber, Boieldieu and finally me too, we all learned a lot from it...” (Richard Wagner, Vita, Torino, 1953). In November 1844, after the triumph of La Vestale in Copenhagen, Spontini went to Dresden where Wagner, Director at the Court’s Theater, had been entrusted to stage the magnificent Spontini’s opera. Richard Wagner was impressed and dazzled by Gaspare Spontini’s request to be allowed to use a black, with white endings, baton of ebony, instead of a light one, as usual: the musician distinguished himself at Wagner’s eyes for the strength with which he held the baton at half hilt, and for the vehemence, worthy of a marshal, with which he ordered more than conduced the orchestra. Richard Wagner’s autobiography is plenty of memoirs dedicated to Gaspare Spontini; these are exceptional and enlightening memoirs with which the German musician succeeds in penetrating and fixing forever the moral and musical stature of our Maestro from the Marche. Wagner photographed  Gaspare Spontini’s anguish when he realized not to be able anymore, after the Agnese, to venture in the orchestration of another opera that could exceed his so beloved masterpiece, and experienced thoroughly the author’s observation that after La Vestale there was not any theatre work not inspired by his scores (an example is the Barber of Seville, that contains sixteen beats similar to Spontini’s opera). Another surprising quotation is the one concerning R. Wagner’s persuasion that without the sixth exceeding beat of La Vestale would not exist at all the whole modern melody; and also another one, containing Spontini’s bitter assertion against that nation, Germany, considered more careful in appreciating F. J. Mendelssohn Bartholdy and F. Liszt, at the King of Prussia’s court in Berlin, than in becoming a centre of European music’s renovation.

The last years
In the summer 1838, during the long period of dismissal authorized by the king of Prussia, Spontini went to England where was welcomed with great honours at  the court by Queen Victoria, for which he wrote some cantatas. He went then to Paris and finally to Italy. On October 30^th he reached Jesi and stayed there for forty days, starting the setting up of a Mountain of Pity for Jesi and Maiolati’s indigents,   donating thirty thousand francs. During his permanence in Jesi, Spontini took some conversations with Cardinal Ostini, archbishop of Jesi, to which followed Cardinal’s issuing of the edict "against the abuse of theatrical music introduced in churches” (November 27^th, 1838).

Spontini studied in depth the matter up to compile a vast and organic plan of reform of the church music that culminated in the Report about the Reform of sacred music (1839). Gaspare Spontini cared a lot about his theoretical work and, tirelessly,  he did not lack to promote it and to regret Pio IX’s decision, in 1847, to entrust other people for the reform of the desecrated religious church music. In 1847 he concluded his artistic activity with the conduction of the Olimpie at the Musical Festival of the Lower Rhine in the city of Cologne.

Spontini, together with his consort, reached Jesi in 1850, welcomed with grandiosely honours and celebrations; from Jesi he went to Maiolati, to not leave it again. On January 24^th, 1851, elderly, for pulmonary complications, Gaspare Spontini died into Celeste Erard’s arm, at the age of 76 years-old. His body, in the winter uniform of Academician of France, was laid in Saint Stephen’s Church of Maiolati, waiting to be moved to the sepulchre in S. Giovanni’s Church, as he desired.