View source for Luigi Lablache

{{Use dmy dates|date=October 2019}}
{{short description|Italian opera singer 1794-1858}}
[[File:Luigi Lablache.jpg|thumb|{{center|Portrait of Luigi Lablache by [[Josef Kriehuber]] (1827)}}]]

'''Luigi Lablache''' (6 December 1794 – 23 January 1858) was an Italian [[opera]] singer of French and Irish ancestry. He was most noted for his comic performances, possessing a powerful and agile [[Bass (voice type)|bass]] voice, a wide range, and adroit acting skills: Leporello in ''[[Don Giovanni]]'' was one of his signature roles.<ref name=EB1911>{{cite EB1911 |wstitle=Lablache, Luigi |volume16 |page=6}}</ref>

== Biography ==
Luigi Lablache was born in [[Naples]], the son of Nicolas Lablache, a merchant from [[Marseille]], France, to an Irish lady Rose Anne Maguire. He was educated from 1806 at the [[Conservatorio della Pietà de' Turchini]] in Naples, where Gentili taught him the elements of music, and [[Giovanni Valesi]] instructed him in singing, while at the same time he studied the violin and cello. He fled the Conservatorio five times in order to pursue an acting career, but each time he was brought back in disgrace.<ref name=grove>[[Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians]], 5th ed., 1954, [[Eric Blom]], ed.</ref> His voice was a beautiful [[contralto]], and just before it [[Puberty#Voice change|broke]] he sang the solos in [[Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart|Mozart]]'s ''[[Requiem (Mozart)|Requiem]]'' on the death of [[Joseph Haydn]] in 1809.

Before long he became possessed of a magnificent bass, which gradually increased in volume until at the age of twenty it had attained a compass of two octaves from E-flat below to E-flat above the [[Clef#Bass clef|bass stave]].<ref name=EB1911/> In 1812, when only eighteen, he was engaged at the [[Teatro di San Carlo]], Naples, and appeared in [[Valentino Fioravanti]]'s ''La Molinara''. From 1812 to 1817, he sang at [[Palermo]].<ref name=grove /> In 1817, at [[La Scala]] in Milan, he took the part of Dandini in [[Gioachino Rossini|Rossini]]'s ''[[La Cenerentola]]''. The opera ''[[Elisa e Claudio]]'' was written for him in 1821 by [[Saverio Mercadante]] and his position was assured. His reputation spread throughout Europe.
[[File:Giulia Grisi et Luigi Lablache dans Les Puritains de Bellini.jpg|thumb|left|[[Giulia Grisi]] as Elvira and Luigi Lablache as Sir Giorgio in [[Vincenzo Bellini|Bellini]]'s ''[[I puritani]]'' at [[The King's Theatre]] in London, 1835]]

From Milan he went to Turin, returned to Milan in 1822, then appeared at Venice, and in 1824 at Vienna. Going back to Naples after an absence of twelve years, he created a great sensation as Assur in Rossini's ''[[Semiramide]]''. On 30 March 1830, under Ebers's management, he was first heard in London as Geronimo in [[Domenico Cimarosa|Cimarosa]]'s ''[[Il matrimonio segreto]]'' and thenceforth appeared there annually, also singing in many provincial festivals. In 1827 [[Franz Schubert]] wrote three songs in Italian (Op.&nbsp;83, D.&nbsp;902) for Lablache, marvellous exercises in Rossinian [[pastiche]]; they are among the last songs he ever wrote.

A physically imposing man, his voice was at all times extraordinarily powerful; but he could produce comic, humorous, tender, or sorrowful effects with equal ease and mastery. As an actor, he excelled equally in comic and tragic parts. His chief rôles were [[Don Giovanni|Leporello]] (his greatest part), Geronimo the Podestà in ''[[La gazza ladra]]'', Dandini in ''La Prova d' un' Opera Seria'', Henry VIII in ''[[Anna Bolena]]'' the Doge in ''[[Marino Faliero (opera)|Marino Faliero]]'',<ref name=EB1911/> and Oroveso in ''[[Norma (opera)|Norma]]''. He created the title role in Donizetti's ''[[Don Pasquale]]'' in 1843 and Massimiliano in Verdi's ''[[I masnadieri]]'' in 1847.  Towards the close of his career he played two new characters of quite different types with great success, [[William Shakespeare|Shakespeare's]] [[Caliban]] in [[Fromental Halévy]]'s ''La Tempesta'' and Gritzenko, the Kalmuck, in [[Eugène Scribe|Scribe's]] and [[Giacomo Meyerbeer|Meyerbeer's]] ''[[L'étoile du nord]]''.

At the funeral of [[Ludwig van Beethoven|Beethoven]] in 1827 he was one of the thirty-two torchbearers who surrounded the coffin, and he also sang in Mozart's ''Requiem''. He sang the same ''Requiem'' at [[Frédéric Chopin|Chopin]]'s funeral in 1849. He was the soloist, singing a ''[[Lacrimosa (Requiem)|Lacrimosa]]'', at [[Vincenzo Bellini|Bellini]]'s funeral in 1835.

In 1836/37 he taught singing to Princess Victoria of the United Kingdom, the later [[Queen Victoria]].

Luigi Lablache died at Naples on 23 January 1858, and was buried at [[Maisons-Laffitte]], near Paris.<ref name=EB1911/>
[[File:Luigi Lablache (by Bouchot).jpg|thumb|200px|Portrait of Luigi Lablache, by [[François Bouchot]] (1831)]]
Lablache had married the singer Teresa Pinotti in 1813, and they had thirteen children; several of them, notably [[Frederick Lablache]], were also singers. His eldest daughter, Francesca (Cecchina), married the pianist [[Sigismond Thalberg]] in 1843, and his younger daughter, Therese, married the opera singer [[Hans von Rokitansky]]. The actor [[Stewart Granger]] was his great-great-grandson, and the BBC TV Antiques Roadshow expert [[Bunny Campione]] is also a descendant.

==References==
'''Notes'''
{{reflist}}
'''Sources'''
*{{DNB|wstitle=Lablache, Luigi}}

==External links==
{{Commons category}}
*{{Cite NIE|wstitle=Lablache, Luigi|short=x}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lablache, Luigi}}
[[Category:1794 births]]
[[Category:1858 deaths]]
[[Category:Singers from Naples]]
[[Category:Italian basses]]
[[Category:19th-century Italian male opera singers]]
[[Category:Musicians from the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies]]
[[Category:Italian people of Irish descent]]
[[Category:Italian people of French descent]]