Amilcare Ponchielli

Born in Paderno Fasolaro (now Paderno Ponchielli) near Cremona, then Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia, Ponchielli won a scholarship at the age of nine to study music at the Milan Conservatory, writing his first symphony by the time he was ten years old. The ballet Le due gemelle (1873) confirmed his success. The following opera, I Lituani (The Lithuanians) of 1874, had a three-night run in 1903 at La Scala, where the casting was particularly poorly reviewed; it was scheduled for performances in 1939 that did not take place because the Second World War broke out, and it was not performed again until 1979, when RAI recovered the score. It has been revived several times since then. He died of pneumonia in Milan in 1886 and was interred in the city's Monumental Cemetery. ==Legacy==

, Italy. Although in his lifetime Ponchielli was very popular and influential (and introduced an enlarged orchestra and more complex orchestration), only one of his operas, La Gioconda, is regularly performed today. It contains a strong and memorable aria for contralto, 'Voce de donna o d'angelo' (the Rosary song); the great tenor romanza "Cielo e mar"; a well-known duet for tenor and baritone titled "Enzo Grimaldo, Principe Di Santafior"; the soprano aria "Suicidio!"; and the ballet Dance of the Hours, which is widely known thanks in part to its having been featured in Walt Disney's Fantasia in 1940, in Allan Sherman's novelty song "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh", and in numerous other popular works. ==See also==