Nicolò Gabrielli

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Count Nicolò Gabrielli di Quercita was born on 21 February 1814 in Naples, at the time capital of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. The scion of a distinguished yet decayed aristocratic family originally from Gubbio and settled thereafter in Tropea, he showed since his early childhood a talent for music that led him to enter the Naples conservatory where he studied under the supervision of Nicola Zingarelli and Gaetano Donizetti. He dedicated himself especially to musical composition, and debuted in August 1835 with a melodrama in Neapolitan dialect, I dotti per fanatismo.

Nicolò Gabrielli was a very prolific composer, and between 1835 and 1854 worked at many opera buffas, commedias and farsas, including La lettera perduta (1836), Il Cid (1836), L'americano in fiera ossia Farvest Calelas (1837), L'affamato senza danaro (1839), Edvige o il sogno (1839), Il padre della debuttante (1839), La marchesa e il ballerino (1839), Nadan o l'orgoglio ferito (1839), Il bugiardo veritiero (1841), Il condannato di Saragozza (1842), Sara ovvero la pazza di Scozia (1843), Il gemello (1845), Una passeggiata sul palchetto a vapore (1845), Giulia di Tolosa (1847), Fiorina (1849), La regina delle rose (1852). He also worked at several ballets, including Ester d'Engaddi (1837), Il rajah di Benares (1839), that was composed and represented in occasion of the birthday of Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies, Amore alla prova (1839), L'assedio di Schiraz ossia l'amor materno (1840), Il duca di Ravenna (1841), Giaffar (1841), Basilio III Demetriovitz (1841), Olga di Cracovia (1841), L'istituto delle fanciulle (1841), Il gobbo del Giappone (1841). Other ballets were: L'orfanella africana, Le spose veneziane, Stefano re di Napoli, La conquista del Messico, Ruggero e Bradamante, La stella del marinaio.

In 1840 he had been appointed musical director of the Royal Theatres of San Carlo in Naples, a position that enabled him to travel all over Italy and abroad and make acquaintance with the international society. In 1854 he was invited by Napoleon III to join the imperial court in Paris, where he debuted at the Opéra with a ballet, Gemma (1854). Other works followed, including Les elfes (1856), Don Grégoire ou Le précepteur dans l'embarras (1859), Le petit cousin (1860), L'étoile de Messine (1861), Les memoirs de Fanchette (1865). His last work to be represented in a theatre was La fin du monde (1865).

The popularity of the comte Gabrielli, as he has known in the aristocratic and artistic circles du tout Paris, gradually decreased after the fall of Napoleon III and the advent of the Third French Republic. A staunch Bonapartist, he composed the military march Simon Bolívar (1883), and dedicated it to the dictator of Venezuela, Antonio Guzmán Blanco. A cantique composed by Nicolò Gabrielli was adopted by the Protestant communities of the French-speaking part of Switzerland as their unofficial hymn and was later included in the work Chants populaires de Suisse romande pour voix mixtes, Genève 1887.

Nicolò Gabrielli died in Paris on 14 June 1891 and is buried in the Montparnasse cemetery.