Michael William Balfe: His Life and His English Operas (review)

By any standard, Dublin-born Michael William Balfe (1808-1870) had a remarkable musical career. He began as a violinist, becoming a member of the Drury Lane Theatre orchestra in London and occasionally conducting it while still in his teens. Shortly after making his debut as a singer at seventeen (as Kaspar in an English-language Der Freischütz in Norwich), he made his way to Italy, where he briefly studied composition with Ferdinando Paer and Francesco Federici and singing with Filippo Galli. In Paris he met Cherubini, who introduced him to Rossini, who in turn recommended him to the Théâtre des Italiens. After additional study with Giulio Bordogni, Balfe made his debut there as Figaro in Il barbiere di Siviglia. He was still some months short of his twentieth birthday. He continued with the company for two years, appearing in leading roles alongside such luminaries as Malibran, Grisi, Sontag, Rubini, and Lablache. His career took him next to Italy, where he continued to sing at leading houses and where his first three operas were produced: I rivali di se stessi (Palermo, 1830), Un avertimento ai gelosi (Pavia, 1831), and Enrico IV al passo della Marno (Milan, 1833).¹

Balfe returned to London in 1834, where he continued his career as a singer, conductor, and composer. His first English opera, The Siege of Rochelle (1835), was an enormous success, running for seventy-three performances in its first season. Over the next three decades, nineteen more operas to English texts followed, most of them favorably received by the public and critics. Several among the series are particularly notable. The Maid of Artois (1836), his second English opera, was written for Malibran and consolidated his success. Two others, Catherine Grey (1836) and The Daughter of St. Mark (1844), used recitative rather than spoken dialogue. The latter opera followed his best-known work, The Bohemian Girl (1843), which ran for over a hundred performances in its first season. An international hit, the opera quickly made its way across Europe and the Americas and is still heard occasionally today.

In addition to these opera in English, the cosmopolitan Balfe composed an Italian-language Falstaff for Her Majesty's Theatre (1838), in which the leading roles were undertaken by the so-called Puritani Quartet (Grisi, Rubini, Tamburini, and Lablache). He wrote three operas for Paris: Le puits d'amour (1843) and Les quatre fils Aymon (1844) were both given at the Opéra-Comique, and L'étoile de Séville (1845) was composed for the Opéra. All three operas were published in France in full score,² and the composer was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor by Napoleon III. Pittore e duca, to a libretto by Piave, was produced in Trieste in 1854, and Balfe's final opera was completed by Sir Michael Costa—evidently at the request of Christine Nilsson, who took a leading role in its eventual 1874 premiere as Il talismano. Also to be figured into an account of Balfe's career are his activities as the conductor of several London premieres of operas by Verdi and his single, disastrous attempt to manage an opera company. He was a prolific composer of songs as well, publishing more than two hundred during his lifetime.

As this sketch suggests, the life and music of Balfe offer many opportunities for students of music in nineteenth-century Britain, particularly in the realm of opera. In light of his obvious significance, Balfe has received surprisingly little scholarly attention, despite having been discussed in some detail within Eric Walter White's history of English opera, Nicholas Temperley's volume on nineteenth-century British music, and George Biddlecombe's study of English opera written between 1834 and 1864.³ As the first full-length study of Balfe and his English operas, then, William Tyldesley's monograph...