Nabokov, Nicolas [Nikolay]

Nasimbeni, Stefano.

See Nascimbeni, Stefano.

Nasolini [Nazolin], Sebastiano

(b Piacenza or Venice, ?1768; d ?Venice, ? 1798 or 1799). Italian composer. He is said to be a native of Piacenza on the manuscript scores of several of his operas, but some printed librettos refer to him as ‘di Venezia’ or ‘maestro di cappella veneziano’. After musical training during the 1780s, probably in Venice, he was appointed maestro di cappella at the Cathedral of S Giusto in Trieste; he became maestro al cembalo at the Teatro S Pietro in Trieste before April 1789. According to Choron and Fayolle he died in Venice in 1798; Gervasoni placed his death in 1799. The production of several apparently new operas under his name between 1800 and 1816 has led some scholars (for example Jackman) to suggest that Nasolini may still have been alive in 1816; but a lack of evidence of his activities after 1799 supports the view that he died shortly before 1800. Some of the later operas attributed to him are probably the work of the prolific and long-lived Giuseppe Nicolini. Mount Edgcumbe, writing in the 1820s, remembered Nasolini as ‘a young composer of great promise, but who died at an early age’ (Musical Reminiscences, London, 1824).

Nasolini’s early operatic output suggests a devotion to serious opera. His first work, a setting of Metastasio’s Nitteti, was performed in Trieste during spring 1788. Following its success, he produced a number of other opere serie, only occasionally interrupted by comic operas, for the principal theatres of northern Italy (he seems not to have accepted commissions from southern cities, except for some Neapolitan operas of questionable attribution). By the time his Andromaca was performed in London in May 1790, the Public Advertiser could call him ‘the most fashionable composer now extant in Italy’. Only in the late 1790s did he give sustained attention to comic opera, working with Giovanni Bertati among other librettists.

Gli umori contrari (1798), a one-act opera to a libretto by Bertati, was one of the most often performed of Nasolini’s comic operas; the relatively large number of surviving manuscripts attests its popularity. Among his most successful serious operas was Merope (1796), a dramma per musica written for the soprano Elizabeth Billington, who created the title role in Venice and went on to sing it in Bologna, Bergamo, Livorno and Trieste; she triumphed with it in London in 1802.

WORKS

operas

dm	dramma per musica

La Nitteti (dm, 3, P. Metastasio), Trieste, S Pietro, 5 April 1788

Il Catone in Utica (dm, 3, Metastasio), Venice, S Samuele, carn. 1789, GB-Lbl*

Adriano in Siria (dm, 3, Metastasio), Milan, Scala, 26 Dec 1789, I-Mr

Andromaca (dm, 3, A. Salvi, after J. Racine), Venice, S Samuele, Feb 1790, F-Pn

Teseo a Stige (dramma tragico per musica, after C.I. Frugoni: Ippolito ed Aricia), Florence, Pergola, 28 Dec 1790, A-Wn, F-Pn, I-Fc

Ercole al Termodonte, ossia Ippolita regina delle Amazzoni (dramma, Sografi), Trieste, S Pietro, spr. 1791

La morte di Cleopatra (dm, 2, Sografi), Vicenza, Nuovo, 22 June 1791, D-Bsb, Dlb, F-Pn, I-Fc [also as La Cleopatra; Cleopatra regina d’Egitto]

La Calliroe (dm, 2, M. Verazi), Florence, Pergola, carn. 1792, Fc

La morte di Semiramide (tragedia in musica, 2, Sografi), Rome, Carn. 1792 [probably incl. music written for pasticcio of G. Pratti’s La vendetta di Nino, as La morte di Semiramide, Padua, 1790]

Eugenia (dramma, 3, G. Foppa, after P.-A. Beaumarchais), Venice, S Benedetto, aut. 1792

Gl’innamorati [Act 1] (dgm, 2, Foppa, after C. Goldoni), Venice, S Benedetto, 4 Feb 1793, B-Bc [also as Gli amici; Act 2 by V. Trento]

Tito e Berenice (dm, 2, Foppa), Venice, Fenice, Ascension 1793, F-Pn

Amore la vince (dg, Foppa, after Goldoni: La locandiera), Venice, S Benedetto, Oct 1793; reduced to 1 act by G. Artusi as La locandiera

Le feste d’Iside (dm, 2, G. Rossi), Florence, Pergola, carn. 1794, Bc [also as Sesostri, ossia Le feste d’Iside]

Epponina (dm, P. Giovannini), Bergamo, Riccardi, Aug 1794, aria I-Gl, rondo Mc, aria PAc

I raggiri fortunati (farsa, 1, P. Chiari, after Il marchese villano), Venice, S Benedetto, 5 Feb 1795 [also as La contessa di Sarzana, ossia Il maritaggio in contrasto]

Merope (dm, 3, M. Botturini), Venice, S Benedetto, 21 Jan 1796, D-DS, F-Pn, GB-Lbl, I-Fc, Nc, US-Wc [also as Merope e Polifonte]

La morte di Mitridate (tragedia per musica, Sografi), Trieste, S Pietro, aut. 1796, D-Mbs, F-Pc, GB-Lbl, I-Fc, MOe [also as Vonima e Mitridate; Il Mitridate]

Gl’Indiani (dm, 2, Botturini), Venice, S Benedetto, 9 Dec 1796

Zaira (dm, 2, ?Botturini), Venice, S Benedetto, 22 Feb 1797

Alzira, Bologna, Pubblico, spr. 1797, collab. N. Zingarelli; rev. of Zingarelli’s 1794 setting

Il medico di Lucca (dgm, 1, G. Bertati), Venice, S Samuele, aut. 1797, B-Bc, D-Dl, F-Pc, GB-Lbl [also as Il medico universale; Il medico dei bagni; Il medico ai bagni]

Timoleone (dramma serio per musica, 2, Sografi), Reggio Emilia, Moderno, 29 April 1798, I-REm

Gli umori contrari (dgm, 1, Bertati), Venice, S Cassiano, June 1798, A-Wgm, B-Bc, F-Pc, I-Fc, Nc; rev. as Gli opposti caratteri, ossia Olivo e Pasquale (farsa, 1, Foppa and G. Artusi), Venice, S Samuele, 15 Oct 1799 [also as I temperamenti contrari]

Melinda (favola romanzesca in musica, 2, Bertati), Venice, S Benedetto, 12 Sept 1798

Il trionfo di Clelia (dramma, 2, Sografi), Milan, Scala, 26 Dec 1798, Mc

Il torto immaginario (farsa giocosa in musica, 1, Foppa), Venice, S Moisè, aut. 1800

Music in: La morte di Semiramide, Padua, 1790, Venice, 1791; Vasco di Gama, 1792; Pirro, 1793; Ines di Castro, 1795

Works attrib. Nasolini dating from after his supposed death: Gli sposi infatuati (farsa giocosa per musica), 1801; Tersandro in Eleusi (dramma serio per musica), Florence, Pergola, 1807; L’Achille (dramma serio per musica), Florence, Pergola, 1811; I riti d’Efeso, 1812; Il ritorno di Serse (dm), Naples, Fondo, 1816; La morte di Patroclo (dramma serio), Milan, Carcano, 1819

other works

Eurilla (cant., S.A. Sografi), Venice, S Benedetto, 1794

Il voto di Jefte (orat) mentioned in Anguissola

Della conversione di S Agostiono (orat); score, I-Pca

Laudate Dominum, Dilexi quoniam, both D-Mbs; Salmo, S, B, org, A-Wgm; Gratias agimus tibi

Concerto per saltero, Sinfonia: I-Gl

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Choron-FayolleD

Grove6 (J.L. Jackman)

C. Gervasoni: Nuova teoria di musica (Parma, 1812/R)

E. de Giovanni: Giuseppe Nicolini e Sebastiano Nasolini (Piacenza,1927)

C. Anguissola: Geminiano Giacomelli e Sebastiano Nasolini, musicisti piacentini (Piacenza, 1935)

J.A. Rice: Emperor and Impresario: Leopold II and the Transformation of Viennese Musical Theater, 1790–1792 (diss., U. of California, Berkeley, 1987), 269–98 [on Teseo a Stige]

M. Nocciolini: ‘Circolazione di un melodramma e rivolgimenti politici (1796–1799): La morte di Cleopatra’, Studi musicali, xxiii (1994), 329–65

JOHN A. RICE