Nabokov, Nicolas [Nikolay]

Nantier-Didiée, Constance (Betzy Rosabella)

(b St Denis, Ile de Bourbon [now Ile de la Réunion], 16 Nov 1831; d Madrid, 4 Dec 1867). French mezzo-soprano. She studied with Duprez at the Paris Conservatoire and in 1849 won the premier prix for opera. In 1850 she made her début at the Teatro Carignano, Turin, as Emilia in Mercadante’s La vestale. She appeared in Luisa Miller at the Théâtre Italien in 1852, and the next year began a three-year engagement at Covent Garden, where she made her début as Gondì in Maria di Rohan and sang in the English premières of Rigoletto and Benvenuto Cellini. In 1854–6 she sang in Spain and North America, then for two years at the Théâtre Italien. On 15 May 1858 she returned to Covent Garden to sing Urbain (Les Huguenots) at the gala opening of the present theatre, where she continued to appear until 1864. Meyerbeer and Gounod wrote her additional music for productions there of Dinorah (1859) and Faust (1863). She was the first Preziosilla in La forza del destino (1862, St Petersburg), and had a wide repertory of comic, dramatic and travesty roles. (H.F. Chorley: Thirty Years’ Musical Recollections, London, 1862/R, abridged 2/1926/R by E. Newman)

PHILIP ROBINSON

Nao.

Chinese cymbals. See Cymbals, §3.

Napier, William

(b ?1740/41; d Somerston [? Somers Town, London], 1812). Scottish musician and music publisher. He is first recorded in 1758 as a violinist in the Canongate Theatre orchestra, Edinburgh. By 1765 he had moved to London, where in September that year he became a member of the Royal Society of Musicians. He married Jane Stewart on 8 January 1766. For a number of years he played in the private band of George III and in the Professional Concert, led the band at Ranelagh Gardens and led the violas at the 1784 Handel Commemoration, but gout in the hands forced him to give up playing in about 1795. He set up as a publisher in 1772, and in 1784 established a circulating music library. The music publisher George Smart was employed in Napier's shop for a time, as was the caricaturist James Gillray. Napier apparently had good relationships with composers, including J.C. Bach and J.S. Schroeter, and published instrumental music, dance collections and sheet songs in addition to the popular ballad operas of the day such as Shield's The Flitch of Bacon, The Maid of the Mill and Rosina. Some of these copyrights, together with plates and stock, he sold to Joseph Dale about 1785 for £450, a sign perhaps of his mounting financial difficulties. A benefit concert for his 11 surviving children was given under Cramer's direction on 11 June 1788, but this and a further one on 17 June 1789 did not prevent his bankruptcy in 1791. Haydn, on his first London visit in the same year, helped Napier to re-establish himself by contributing the accompaniments to a second volume of Napier's best-known publication, A Selection of the Most Favourite Scots Songs. This second volume appeared in 1792 as A Selection of Original Scots Songs … the Harmony by Haydn, and like the first it bore a frontispiece engraved by Bartolozzi. Its success allowed Napier to pay Haydn for his contribution and to commission from him a third volume, which he published in 1795; the three volumes eventually went through three issues. Napier continued in business until 1809.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BDA

Humphries-SmithMP

KidsonBMP

Neighbour-TysonPN

C. Hopkinson and C.B. Oldman: ‘Haydn's Settings of Scottish Songs in the Collections of Napier and Whyte’, Edinburgh Bibliographical Society Transactions, iii/2 (1954), 87–120

FRANK KIDSON/H.G. FARMER/PETER WARD JONES

Naples

(It. Napoli).

City on the south-west coast of Italy. During the era of Spanish domination and the Bourbon Kingdom (16th to 18th centuries) it was considered one of the capitals of European music. This myth survives to the present day, along with the controversial definition of a ‘Neapolitan school’.

1. Antiquity and the Middle Ages.

2. The Aragonese monarchy (1443–1503).

3. The Spanish era (1503–1734).

4. The Kingdom of the two Sicilies (1734–1860).

5. From 1860.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

RENATO DI BENEDETTO/DINKO FABRIS (text), GIULIA ANNA ROMANA VENEZIANO (bibliography)

Naples

1. Antiquity and the Middle Ages.

Founded by Greek settlers from nearby Cuma about the 6th centurybce and under Roman rule from 326bce, Naples kept the original features of a Greek city well into the late imperial period. As a favourite resort of Roman patricians, it must have been the seat of an intense artistic and theatrical life, as is demonstrated by the numerous archaeological discoveries of vases bearing musical images. Statius noted the existence of two theatres, one in the open air, the other covered; Suetonius and Tacitus reported that Nero, on a journey to Greece, chose to stop in Naples, ‘quasi graeca urbs’, in order to sing there. The fall of the Roman Empire at first strengthened the city's links with Greek culture because when the troubled period of barbaric invasions was over, Naples came under Byzantine rule; from the end of the 6th century, however, the city enjoyed some degree of autonomy, and was an independent duchy in the 8th century. Defence of that independence induced the Neapolitan bishops and dukes to draw increasingly close to Rome, and this resulted in the adoption of Roman liturgy by the Neapolitan church: in the 7th century a number of Neapolitan clerics were sent to Rome to be trained at the Schola Cantorum. There was also a Schola Cantorum in the Neapolitan church at the beginning of the 6th century. The early Neapolitan rite also travelled to distant churches, such as those in Ireland, but there are no sources predating the 11th century. In the centuries following, some manuscripts were compiled (such as the Innario in I-Nn), which are valuable because they predate Archbishop Giovanni III Orsini's reform of the Neapolitan rite in 1330; this reform prevented Naples from retaining its own ancient rite in the 16th century, according to the decrees of the Council of Trent. There must in any case have been a scriptorium in Naples for the compilation of liturgical manuscripts such as those which produced the treasures of Beneventan music in Bari and Benevento. After the Norman unification of southern Italy and Sicily in the first half of the 12th century, Naples became part of that kingdom, but remained peripheral to Palermo, its principal political and cultural centre. Frederick II of Swabia was among the first to give significant stimulus to Neapolitan cultural life; in 1224 he issued a decree founding the university, the oldest in southern Italy.

The decisive turning-point, however, was when Charles of Anjou overpowered the Norman-Swabian dynasty (1266) and, having seized the kingdom, moved its capital from Palermo to Naples. In 1283 Adam de la Halle went to Naples and remained there between two and five years, and the Jeu de Robin et de Marion was performed at court. A period of intense artistic and cultural activity ensued, which came to full splendour during the reign of Roberto ‘Il Saggio’ (1309–43): the influence of French culture, already lively during the preceding dynasty, was consolidated, but close relations with towns of central and northern Italy were also established, favoured by the king's key position in the Italian political life of his day. Naples thus became a melting-pot for cultural influences that left their mark on literary life (as witness the visits of Boccaccio and Petrarch to the court of Anjou), and on both the figurative arts and architecture. Musical documentation from this period is fragmentary. The few surviving documents from this period (I-Na ‘Registro angioini’ 256) record the names of two pulsatores viole, two pulsatores organorum, one pulsator salteriorum, two nactarii and four tubatores active at court in 1324, while in 1343 there is mention of other singers, musicians and ‘canzonette’. Many of these musicians came from Germany, Tuscany and from various places in southern Italy. During the reign of Roberto the Neapolitan court rang to the sound of ‘various feasts, new games, beautiful dances, endless instruments of amorous songs … made, played and sung’ (as Boccaccio describes it in the Elegia di Madonna Fiammetta and in the Ninfale d'Ameto). Philippe de Vitry dedicated a motet to Roberto (Ivrea manuscript) and Marchetto da Padova (who was in Naples before 1319) dedicated his treatise Pomerium ‘ad superi regis laudem et gloriam’. In the King's funerary monument in the church of S Chiara there is sculpted a roll of square notation which is perfectly legible and which can be found in a contemporary manuscript held in Prato.

Between the end of the 14th century and the beginning of the 15th the first group of native Neapolitan composers are known, including Anthonello and Philippus de Caserta (the latter also a theorist), Niccolo da Aversa and Niccolò da Capua. All their works reflect strong French influence.

Naples