Carlo Evasio Soliva (27 November 1791 – 20 December 1853) was a Swiss-Italian composer of opera, chamber music, and sacred choral works. Soliva was born in Casale Monferrato, Piedmont to a family of Swiss chocolatiers who had emigrated from the canton of Ticino. He studied pianoforte and composition at the Milan Conservatory.
A contemporary of Gioacchino Rossini, he is best known for his 1816 opera La testa di bronzo ("The head of bronze"), which prompted Stendhal’s immediate enthusiasm: “Ce petit Soliva a la figure chétive d'un homme de génie.” (“That little Soliva has the scanty figure of a man of genius.”)[1] After a life spent composing, teaching and conducting in Italy, Poland, Russia, Switzerland and France he died in Paris at the age of 62.
The "Carlo Evasio Soliva Competition for Piano and Chamber Music", organized by the Istituto Musicale Soliva, is held annually in the town of his birth.
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At the Milan Conservatory he came top of his class. He quickly became a conductor at La Scala and "drew inspiration for his music from Mozart, whose music was then fashionable in Milan"[2] with performances of those composer's operas being given frequently from 1807 onwards. When La Scala organised a competition for new librettists in April 1816, the jury gave the top proze to Felice Romani but chose the novice Carlo Soliva to compose the music. His work was in Mozart's style, and it was well received by local audiences. The following year, his first opera, La testa di bronzo o sia La capanna solitaria, was an immediate and resounding success, but it marked the apex of his popularity. The opera received a record 47 performances in the 1816-1817 season. In 1817 his second opera, Berenice d'Armenia received its premiere in Turin and his third, La zingara delle Asturie played at La Scala. Neither were received with great warmth, but in 1818 Giulia e Sesto Pompeo was quite a fiasco at La Scala.
But, as has been noted:
In 1821 he moved to Poland and became director of singing at the conservatory in Warsaw. There he married one of his students, Maria Kralewska, and became friendly with Frédéric Chopin. He was the conductor in November 1830 for the first performance of Chopin’s piano concerto in E minor. In the turmoil which followed the defeat of the November Uprising, Soliva moved to St Petersburg where he took up posts as conductor of the Royal Chapel and director of the Imperial Singing School and had contact with Mikhail Glinka.
From 1841 he lived in the Ticinese village of Semione in the Val di Blenio, where his father had been born.
Subsequently he moved to Paris where he met Chopin again along with George Sand and probably moved in the circle of Cristina Trivulzio Belgiojoso. He dedicated a Salve Regina to her husband.