Gaetano Zinetti
Gaetano Zinetti (Sanguinetto, November 5, 1873 – Sanguinetto, July 13, 1911) was the first of nine children of Francesco Zinetti, a carpenter and piano tuner, and Giulia Franceschini.
Born with a clear predisposition for music, at an early age he was entrusted to the teaching of Vincenzo Mela, a well-known composer from Isola della Scala, with excellent results: by the age of eleven he had already composed and published two polkas.
On October 17, 1885 he was admitted to the Conservatory of Milan, which he attended for four years with more than good results. Between 1890 and 1893 he studied Composition at the “Rossini” Musical Lyceum in Pesaro under its then director Carlo Pedrotti, a professor from Verona, and Organ with another well-known musician of the time, Arturo Vanbianchi.
On August 13, 1893 he obtained his diploma in Composition and Organ, and on October 28, 1893 he made his debut in the opera season of the Ristori Theatre in Verona (28 performances in 44 days), opening with Ruggero Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, followed by Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana and Donizetti’s La Favorita, with great success with both audiences and critics.
He was immediately engaged at the Municipal Theatre of Reggio Emilia for the 1893/1894 Carnival season: 32 concerts received triumphantly.
He then conducted in Lonigo (1894), Montagnana (1894), Vercelli (1894/1895), and Thiene (1895 and 1896). About thirty concerts followed for the 1895/1896 Carnival season in Ferrara, where Mascagni himself was present and publicly praised the Maestro. After Milan and Macerata, he returned to Ferrara by popular demand for the 1896 autumn season.
For the 1896/1897 Carnival season he was at the Sociale Theatre in Mantua, where he contributed to a memorable triumph of Giordano’s Andrea Chénier. Lecce, Trieste and again Reggio Emilia followed for the 1897/1898 Carnival season.
An unforgettable season was that of summer 1898 at the Politeama D’Azeglio in Bologna. After San Giovanni in Persiceto and Florence (autumn 1898), he returned to Bologna for the 1898/1899 Carnival. There, between one opera and the next, on February 4 Zinetti married Giuseppina Marconi, who would later become famous under her husband’s surname as an opera singer in the years following the Maestro’s death.
That same year he conducted in Livorno, Trieste, Bari and Venice, returning in the autumn to the Pagliano Theatre in Florence, his favourite musical city, where he conducted Aida and Guglielmo Tell with tremendous success. He then returned to Verona, at the Teatro Drammatico, for the 1899/1900 season.
He was at the Rossini in Venice for Lent 1900, emerging unscathed from a series of mishaps caused by the organiser, then in Este in the autumn and at the Duse Theatre in Bologna for the 1900/1901 Carnival season.
After the Paganini Theatre in Genoa in spring, in summer 1901 he conducted at the Buen Retiro Gardens Theatre in Madrid, receiving highly flattering reviews from the Spanish press. On July 12, present at a performance of Aida, the Queen conferred upon him the title of Knight.
Este, Padua, then his last engagement at the Municipal Theatre of Reggio Emilia (December 1901/February 1902).
He conducted two seasons (Lent and autumn 1902) at the Verdi Theatre in Florence, with an interlude in Chieti in May.
1903 was marked by the solemn evening for the inauguration of the Petruzzelli Theatre in Bari on February 14. He then went to Lugo and Correggio, closing the year at the Garibaldi Theatre in Padua.
In 1904 Zinetti was in Florence, Livorno, Genoa and Ancona. In December, at the Adriano Theatre in Rome, he conducted an extraordinary edition of Jules Massenet’s Werther, which the composer had rewritten for the occasion to give the leading role, rather than to the tenor, to the baritone Mattia Battistini, a clear sign of esteem.
After the Rossini Theatre in Venice (January/March 1905), in June he opened the summer season of the Adriano Theatre in Rome with the premiere of La Gioconda, which ended at two in the morning because of the excessive number of encores requested.
In August and September 1905 Zinetti was engaged by the Vespasiano Theatre in Rieti, while Leoncavallo telegraphed asking him to conduct his new opera Rolando in Berlin, due to open in the autumn at the San Carlo in Naples. Reluctantly, the Maestro had to decline as he was already committed to the Comunale in Modena (October/December). He would be at the San Carlo for a great Lent and Carnival season (14 operas on the bill) alongside Mascagni and Giordano.
After performances at the Verdi Theatre in Vicenza (May/June 1906), the Maestro’s health problems began, forcing him to suspend all activity and give up some important engagements; he withdrew to Sanguinetto until September 1907, when he managed to perform, for the first time in his own town, some evenings of Il barbiere di Siviglia at the Comunale Theatre, which would later be named after him.
Once recovered, he resumed conducting, first in Ascoli Piceno, then triumphantly at the Regio in Parma (Carnival 1907/1908), where he replaced a Mascagni who had been contested by that difficult audience.
He again received praise from the specialist press in Rome in June 1908, and returned to Sanguinetto with 10 performances of Bohème in October of that year.
After giving up, almost certainly for health reasons, an important season at the San Carlo in Lisbon, in September 1909 he conducted Traviata and Ernani in Sanguinetto for the inauguration of the new Comunale Theatre.
He was again at the Adriano in Rome in the autumn, then at the Bellini Theatre in Catania (February–April 1910), returning to Sanguinetto in September, to Rovereto in November, to Florence in December and to La Fenice in Venice for the 1910–1911 Carnival.
After Venice, the nephritis from which Zinetti had suffered for some years flared up again: the little great Maestro, as he was increasingly called, contrasting his slight build with his undisputed musical genius, retired permanently to Sanguinetto, where he died in the summer of 1911, not yet thirty-eight years old.