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Composer of the Week

Music: Classical

Composer of the Week - Brand

An informative guide to composers' lives and their music.

An informative and accessible guide to composers' lives and their music.

Composer of the Week: Luigi Cherubini (1760-1842)

Composer of the Week: Luigi Cherubini (1760-1842): Episode 5

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Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Luigi Cherubini (1760-1842)

Episode 5

BBC Radio 3 - Composer of the Week, Luigi Cherubini (1760-1842), Episode 5

Donald Macleod focuses on Cherubini's last 20 years.

Donald Macleod focuses on Cherubini's last 20 years, when he reformed the Paris Conservatoire and composed his last, unsuccessful opera, Ali Baba.

Donald Macleod concludes his week-long exploration of the life and work of Luigi Cherubini with a look at the composer in his last 20 years. In 1822 - by now firmly ensconced as the grand old man of French music - he was appointed Director of the Paris Conservatoire, where he set about introducing a programme of radical reforms, including the recruitment of more female students; by the time of his death, women numbered half the student body. A related reform famously caused ructions with the young Hector Berlioz, who one day in 1822 mistakenly entered the Conservatoire through a door newly designated for the use of women only. Cherubini was informed of this infraction and turned up in person to deliver a reprimand to the young whippersnapper. When Berlioz dared to answer back, Cherubini, by then in his sixties, ended up chasing him furiously around the library, knocking over tables, chairs and piles of books, to the dismay of the other readers. Donald imagines this scene set to the "jingling-jangling, crashing, banging" overture to Cherubini's opera, Ali Baba. This was the most ambitious score he had ever created, given a commensurately extravagant production by the Paris Opera in the summer of 1833 - and a commensurately emphatic thumbs-down by audience, critics and cognoscenti alike. Ali Baba was a gigantic turkey, running for just 11 performances, none of which its composer could bear to attend. He never wrote another opera, turning instead to the medium of the string quartet, which he had briefly essayed some 20 years earlier. And he returned again to sacred music with a second Requiem, composed this time with a very special dedicatee in mind - himself.

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Donald Macleod investigates the life and work Luigi Cherubini

Donald Macleod investigates the life and work Luigi Cherubini, a composer often spoken of as 'an Italian composer writing German opera for a French audience'

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