Manuel García (1775-1832) - La Declaracion (1799)
64★ Follow music ► https://www.instagram.com/reciclassicat/
Composer: Manuel García (1775-1832)
Work: La Declaracion (1799)
Performers: Ruth Rosique (soprano); Mark Tucker (tenor);
Orquesta Ciudad de Granada; Andrea Marcon (dirección)
Painting: Joaquín Domínguez Bécquer (1817-1879) - La Feria de Sevilla (1867)
HD image: https://flic.kr/p/2ihCtAw
Further info: https://www.discogs.com/es/release/15529467-Andrea-Marcon-Manuel-Garcia-El-Poeta-Calculista-El-Mayo-y-la-Maya
Listen free: https://open.spotify.com/album/0INZAYlycwJTc5vG9ASdjG
---
Manuel del Pópulo Vicente Rodriguez García
(Sevilla, 21 January 1775 - Paris, 10 June 1832)
Spanish opera singer, composer, impresario and singing teacher. He was baptized Manuel del Pópulo Vicente Rodríguez in the church of S María Magdalena on 23 January 1775, the son of a shoemaker, Gerónimo Rodríguez Torrentera (1743-1817), and Mariana Aguilar (1747-1821). The name ‘del Pópulo’ comes from the Augustinian convent (S María del Pópulo) near the family’s home. García seems to have lived a stable family life with his parents, maternal grandmother and sisters Maria and Rita until he was at least 14, when his name disappears from the parish censuses of S María Magdalena. After musical studies in Seville with Antonio Ripa and Juan Almarcha, García made his début in Cádiz, where he married the singer Manuela Morales in 1797. The next year the couple joined Francisco Ramos’s company in Madrid. García’s début with the company, in a tonadilla, took place on 16 May 1798 in the Teatro de los Caños del Peral. The premières of his own tonadillas, El majo y la maja and La declaración, followed in December 1798 and July 1799. After a fight with the military guard at the Teatro del Príncipe, for which he was briefly imprisoned early in October 1799, García left Madrid. In 1800-01 he was in Málaga, where he achieved considerable success as a composer and singer. García returned to Madrid as first tenor and sang the role of the Count in the Madrid première of Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaroon 20 May 1802. From this time until 1807 he dedicated himself to a rigorous schedule of singing, directing and composing. In 1808, he went to Paris, with previous experience as a tenor at Madrid and Cadiz. By that year, when he appeared in the opera Griselda in Paris, he was already a composer of light operas. He lived in Naples, Italy, performing in Gioachino Rossini's operas. These included the premières of Elisabetta, regina d'Inghilterra, in which he portrayed The Duke of Norfolk and The Barber of Seville, in which he portrayed the role of Count Almaviva. In 1816, he visited Paris and London, England.
Between 1819 and 1823, he lived in Paris, and sang in operas such as The Barber of Seville, Otello, and Don Giovanni. His elder daughter was the celebrated mezzo-soprano Maria Malibran, and his second daughter was Pauline Viardot, a musician of consequence and, as a singer, one of "the most brilliant dramatic stars" of her time. His son, Manuel Patricio Rodríguez García, after being a second-rate baritone, became a world-famous vocal pedagogue, "the leading theoretical writer of Rossini vocal school". In 1825, he and his company, four of eight of them Garcías, were recruited by a New York vintner Dominick Lynch, Jr. (1786–1857), who had been encouraged by Italian opera librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte, then a professor of Italian at Columbia College, to introduce New Yorkers to Italian Opera. They staged the first performances (a total of about 80) of Italian opera in New York. The García family took all the main parts in performances of The Barber of Seville, with García as Almaviva, his second wife Joaquina Sitchez (also called "la Briones") as Berta, Manuel Jr. as Figaro, and Maria as Rosina; Pauline was still very young at this time. Da Ponte particularly insisted on the company billing Don Giovanni, of whose libretto he was the author, and Mozart's opera was given its first American unabridged performance on 23 May 1826 in the presence of its librettist, with García singing the title role, la Briones as Donna Elvira, Maria as Zerlina, and Manuel Jr. as Leporello. They also performed in Mexico, and García recounted in his memoirs that while on the road between Mexico and Vera Cruz, he was robbed of all his money by brigands. García had planned to settle in Mexico, but following to political troubles, in 1829 he had to return to Paris, where he was once again very warmly welcome by the public. His voice, however, was being impaired by age as well as fatigue, and, never ceasing to compose, "he soon dedicated himself to teaching, for which he seems to have been specially gifted". After having his last appearance on stage in August 1831, he died on 10 June the following year and was buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery.