Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari was born in
Venice in 1876, the son of German painter
August Wolf and Emilia Ferrari, from Venice. He added his mother's maiden name, Ferrari, to his surname in 1895. Although he studied piano from an early age, music was not the primary passion of his young life. As a teenager Wolf-Ferrari wanted to be a painter like his father; he studied intensively in Venice and
Rome and travelled abroad to study in
Munich. It was there that he decided to concentrate instead on
music, taking lessons from
Josef Rheinberger. He enrolled at the Munich conservatory and began taking counterpoint and composition classes. These initially casual music classes eventually completely eclipsed his art studies, and music took over Wolf-Ferrari's life. He wrote his first works in the 1890s. At age 19, Wolf-Ferrari left the conservatory and travelled home to Venice. There he worked as a choral conductor, married, had a son called Federico Wolf-Ferrari, and met both
Arrigo Boito and
Verdi. In 1900, having failed to have two previous efforts published, Wolf-Ferrari saw the first performance of one of his
operas,
Cenerentola, based on the story of Cinderella. The opera was a failure in Italy, and the humiliated young composer moved back to Munich. German audiences would prove more appreciative of his work; a revised version of
Cenerentola was a hit in Bremen in 1902, while the cantata
La vita nuova brought the young composer international fame. Wolf-Ferrari now began transforming the wild and witty farces of the 18th-century Venetian playwright Carlo Goldoni into comic operas. The resulting works were musically eclectic, melodic, and utterly hilarious; every single one became an international success. In fact, until the outbreak of World War I, Wolf-Ferrari's operas were among the most performed in the world. In 1902, he became professor of composition and director of the
Liceo Benedetto Marcello. In 1911, Wolf-Ferrari tried his hand at full-blooded
Verismo with
I gioielli della Madonna; a story of passion, sacrilege and madness. It was quite popular in its day and for a period after, especially in Chicago, where the great Polish soprano
Rosa Raisa made it a celebrated vehicle.
Maria Jeritza (and, later,
Florence Easton) triumphed in it at the
Metropolitan Opera, in an all-out spectacular production in 1926. World War I, however, was a nightmare for Wolf-Ferrari. The young composer, who had been dividing his time between Munich and Venice, suddenly found his two countries at war with each other. With the outbreak of the War, he moved to
Zürich and composed much less, though he still wrote another comedy,
Gli amanti sposi (1916). A new melancholy vein appeared in his post-war work; his operas grew darker and more emotionally complex. He did not really pick up his rate of output until the 1920s, when he wrote
Das Himmelskleid (1925) and
Sly (1927), the latter based on
William Shakespeare's
The Taming of the Shrew. In 1939 he became professor of composition at the
Mozarteum in
Salzburg. In 1946, he moved again to Zürich before returning to his home city of Venice. cemetery Wolf-Ferrari He died in Venice at
Palazzo Malipiero and is buried in
the San Michele cemetery on
Island of San Michele. ==Music==