Stefano Gobatti

Stefano Gobatti was born in Bergantino, in the province of Rovigo, in 1852. He soon moved to Emilia Romagna, where he privately studied with Giuseppe Busi and Lauro Rossi in Parma. Later, he moved to Naples to follow his teacher, who had become the director of the Conservatory. There, he began working on his first opera, I Goti (a lyrical tragedy in four acts, with a libretto by S. Interdonato). Although I Goti was rejected by La Scala, its premiere took place at the Teatro Comunale in Bologna on November 30, 1873, with Leonia Levielli Coloni in the role of Amalasunta, S. Rossi Romiati as Teodato, and L. Bolis as Sveno. The opera was a resounding success, earning Gobatti honorary citizenship of the city, as well as enthusiastic praise from critics and musicians alike.
Hailed at his compositional debut as a new champion of modernity, Gobatti, in I Goti, actually employed a musical language that, due to its lack of a defined identity, can be partly related to early Wagner (whom Gobatti approached without in-depth study, using only piano reductions of Lohengrin and Tannhäuser).

Upon closer examination, however, his style is more firmly rooted in the Italian melodramatic tradition of the previous decades, with its closed forms that had been criticized but never fully abandoned. Paradoxically, this very aspect contributed to his immediate success with an audience that was not yet ready to grasp the essence and novelty of Wagnerian music, but more receptive to easy, dramatic effects and simple, catchy melodies.
The hostility that his later works encountered led to his gradual withdrawal from social life and significant financial difficulties. Struggling with paranoia, he was eventually forced to accept a position teaching singing in elementary schools. Later in life, he was admitted to the care facility at the Rizzoli Institute in Bologna, where he died on December 17, 1913.
Stefano Gobatti remains an unresolved figure in music history to this day.