Main city of the Apulia region in southern Italy. The first records of musical activity there date from the 11th and 12th centuries, when the Cathedral of S Nicola founded its schola cantorum, still active in training choristers and providing music at the services. There are also records of dramatic performances of the Easter sequence during High Mass; laude and sacre rappresentazioni were performed during the 14th and 15th centuries, following Neapolitan practice and probably imported as a result of the Aragonese domination of the area. The schola cantorum had its finest period between the late 15th century and the early 17th. Music flourished under Isabella of Aragon, who ruled Bari from 1501; she had been brought up at the courts of Aragon and Milan, where music had a prominent place, and she encouraged local musicians, probably also inviting others from Milan and Naples. She was succeeded by her daughter Bona, who ruled until 1557 and offered the city similarly favourable conditions for musical development.
Among prominent maestri di cappella at S Nicola were G.G. de Antiquis (c1574), Stefano Felis (1585), Giovanni de Marinis (1593) and Giuseppe Colaianni (1603). Antiquis published two volumes of Villanelle alla napolitana (Venice, 1574) which contain, besides 13 of his own villanellas, works by 16 other composers employed in Bari, including Felis, Colaianni, Marinis, Simon de Baldis, G.F. Capuano, G.P. Gallo, Pomponio Nenna, C.M. de Pizzolis and Cola Nardo de Monte; the collection testifies to the vitality of the local madrigal school.
At the beginning of the 17th century Bari came under Spanish rule within the jurisdiction of a Neapolitan viceroy; this was detrimental to the musical life of Apulia, and most of the composers born there transferred their activity to the Naples Conservatory, including Giacomo Insanguine, Tommaso Traetta, Niccolò Piccinni, Giacomo Tritto, Giuseppe Millico and Francesco Rossi. Among Apulia’s many distinguished performers Caffarelli and Farinelli were prominent; famous 19th-century composers from the region included Saverio Mercadante and Mauro Giuliani.
Although many musicians left Bari, either by choice or from necessity, the city remained musically active, as indicated by the large number of theatres established there from the 17th century onwards; their history, however, is poorly documented. The privately run Teatro del Torrione di S Scolastica became active in the 17th century, performing ‘comedies in music and in recitative style’. The Teatro del Sedile (references to which date back to the 15th century) presented opera from the beginning of the 19th century, but was declared unsafe and closed in 1835. A new, larger theatre was planned to replace it; until this was officially inaugurated as the Teatro Comunale Piccinni with a performance of Donizetti’s Poliuto in 1854, operas were performed in a circus tent, known because of its shape as the Teatro della Zuppiera (‘soup tureen theatre’). With Italian unification and the ascendancy of the Teatro S Carlo in Naples, the role of the Teatro Comunale Piccinni diminished; the repertory was traditional and the performers mediocre. Popular demand for a new and larger theatre led to the construction of the Politeama Petruzzelli (cap. 4000), the fourth largest theatre in the country, which was inaugurated in 1903 with Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots. After the death of its first impresario, Antonio Quaranta, in 1928, the quality of performances dropped. From the late 1970s, however, the theatre saw some courageous new ventures, especially in dance. In 1986 it gave Piccinni's Iphigénie en Tauride and revived the original 1835 version of Bellini's I puritani. The following year the company performed a memorable Aida in Egypt, at the foot of the pyramids. On 27 October 1991 a fire completely destroyed the Politeama Petruzzelli.
Bari’s leading musical associations are the Accademia Polifonica Barese (founded 1926), the Antica e Nuova Musica ensemble, the Fondazione Piccinni and the Conservatorio di Musica Niccolò Piccinni (founded 1925).
ES (G. Bozzo, V. Raeli)
GroveO (P. Moliterni)
RicordiE
G. Petroni: Del Gran Teatro di Bari (Bari, 1854)
M.A. Bellucci: ‘I musicisti Baresi’, Rassegna pugliese di scienze, lettere ed arti, ii (1885), 196
I. Ludovisi: Le accademie di Bari dal secolo 14. al sec. 18. (Bari, 1903)
A. Vinaccia: ‘Il nuovo Politeama Petruzzellis’, Rassegna tecnica pugliese, ii (1903), 65, 81
Accademia polifonica barese … nel 25. annuale della sua fondazione (Bari, 1951)
N. Cosmo: ‘Il Liceo Piccinni di Bari’, S. Carlo, ii/2 (1960), 26
V. Melchiorre and L. Zingarelli: Il Teatro Piccinni di Bari (Bari, 1983)
P. Moliterni, V. Attolini and E. Persichella: Vissi d'arte: gli 80 anni del Petruzzelli: il mito e le vicende (Bari, 1983)
F. Picca: Bari ‘capitale’ a teatro: il Politeama Petruzzelli 1877–1914 (Bari, 1987)
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