Prosper Dérivis
Encyclopedia
Nicolas-Prosper Dérivis (28 October 1808 - 11 February 1880) was a French opera
tic bass
. He possessed a rich deep voice that had a great carrying power. While he could easily assail heavy dramatic roles, he was also capable of executing difficult coloratura
passages and performing more lyrical parts. Along with Nicolas Levasseur
, he was one of the greatest French basses of his generation.
, Dérivis was the son of operatic bass Henri-Étienne Dérivis. He studied singing at the Conservatoire de Paris
with Auguste Nourrit and Felice Pellegrini. He made his professional debut at the Paris Opera
in 1831 as Pharaon in Gioachino Rossini's Moïse et Pharaon. He remained committed to that opera house for the next ten years, notably performing in the world premieres of Fromental Halévy
's La tentation (1832), Daniel Auber
's Le serment (1832), Luigi Cherubini
's Ali-Baba (1833), Halevy's La Juive
(1835, the Herald), Giacomo Meyerbeer
's Les Huguenots
(1836, the Comte de Nevers), Louis Niedermeyer
's Stradella (1837), Halevy's Guido et Ginevra
(1838, the Duke of Ferrara), Hector Berlioz
's Benvenuto Cellini
(1838, Balducci), Gaetano Donizetti
's Les martyrs
(1840, Félix), and Ambroise Thomas
's Le comte de Carmagnola (1841). He was also heard successfully in Paris as Balthazar in Donizetti's La favorite
and in the title roles of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
's Don Giovanni
and Rossini's Guillaume Tell
.
In 1842-1843 Dérivis performed at La Scala
in Milan where he notably created roles in the world premieres of two operas by Giuseppe Verdi
: Zaccaria in Nabucco
(1842) and Pagano/Hermit in I Lombardi alla prima crociata
(1843). He also sang in the world premiere of Donizetti's Linda di Chamounix
at the Theater am Kärntnertor
in Vienna in 1842. In 1843-1844 he sang at the Teatro Regio di Parma
as Bertram in Robert le diable
, Duke Hamilton in Saverio Mercadante
's Il reggente, and Filippo Visconti in Beatrice di Tenda
. From 1845-1848 he was committed to the Théâtre-Italien in Paris. In 1846-1847 he was active at the Teatro Regio di Torino where he was heard as Alfonso D'Este in Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia
, Enrico Ashton in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor
, and Jefte in the world premiere of Giovanni Pacini
's Ester d'Engaddi (1848) among other roles. In 1847 he appeared at La Scala as Dom Juam de Sylva in Donizetti's Dom Sébastien
. He sang Zacharie in Meyerbeer's Le prophète
in 1851. He performed at the Paris Opera again 1856-1857, notably singing d'Aminta in the world premiere of Emanuele Biletta's La rose de Florence and Ferrando in Verdi's Il trovatore
.
After 1857 Dérivis' stage appearances became more rare. He performed at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna
in 1862 where he was heard as Samuel in Un ballo in maschera
, Sparafucile in Verdi's Rigoletto
and as Calistene in Donizetti's Poliuto
. One of his last performances was as Elmiro in Rossini's Otello
in 1870 at La Scala. After slowing down his stage career he taught singing at the Conservatoire de Paris. He died in Paris in 1880 at the age of 71.
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
tic bass
Bass (voice type)
A bass is a type of male singing voice and possesses the lowest vocal range of all voice types. According to The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, a bass is typically classified as having a range extending from around the second E below middle C to the E above middle C...
. He possessed a rich deep voice that had a great carrying power. While he could easily assail heavy dramatic roles, he was also capable of executing difficult coloratura
Coloratura
Coloratura has several meanings. The word is originally from Italian, literally meaning "coloring", and derives from the Latin word colorare . When used in English, the term specifically refers to elaborate melody, particularly in vocal music and especially in operatic singing of the 18th and...
passages and performing more lyrical parts. Along with Nicolas Levasseur
Nicolas Levasseur
Nicolas Levasseur was a French bass, particularly associated with Rossini roles.Born Nicolas-Prosper Levasseur at Bresle, Somme, he studied at the Paris Music Conservatory from 1807 to 1811, with Pierre-Jean Garat. He made his professional debut at the Paris Opéra in 1813, as Osman Pacha, in La...
, he was one of the greatest French basses of his generation.
Life and career
Born in ParisParis
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, Dérivis was the son of operatic bass Henri-Étienne Dérivis. He studied singing at the Conservatoire de Paris
Conservatoire de Paris
The Conservatoire de Paris is a college of music and dance founded in 1795, now situated in the avenue Jean Jaurès in the 19th arrondissement of Paris, France...
with Auguste Nourrit and Felice Pellegrini. He made his professional debut at the Paris Opera
Paris Opera
The Paris Opera is the primary opera company of Paris, France. It was founded in 1669 by Louis XIV as the Académie d'Opéra and shortly thereafter was placed under the leadership of Jean-Baptiste Lully and renamed the Académie Royale de Musique...
in 1831 as Pharaon in Gioachino Rossini's Moïse et Pharaon. He remained committed to that opera house for the next ten years, notably performing in the world premieres of Fromental Halévy
Fromental Halévy
Jacques-François-Fromental-Élie Halévy, usually known as Fromental Halévy , was a French composer. He is known today largely for his opera La Juive.-Early career:...
's La tentation (1832), Daniel Auber
Daniel Auber
Daniel François Esprit Auber was a French composer.-Biography:The son of a Paris print-seller, Auber was born in Caen in Normandy. Though his father expected him to continue in the print-selling business, he also allowed his son to learn how to play several musical instruments...
's Le serment (1832), Luigi Cherubini
Luigi Cherubini
Luigi Cherubini was an Italian composer who spent most of his working life in France. His most significant compositions are operas and sacred music. Beethoven regarded Cherubini as the greatest of his contemporaries....
's Ali-Baba (1833), Halevy's La Juive
La Juive
La Juive is a grand opera in five acts by Fromental Halévy to an original French libretto by Eugène Scribe; it was first performed at the Opéra, Paris, on February 23, 1835.-Composition history:...
(1835, the Herald), Giacomo Meyerbeer
Giacomo Meyerbeer
Giacomo Meyerbeer was a noted German opera composer, and the first great exponent of "grand opera." At his peak in the 1830s and 1840s, he was the most famous and successful composer of opera in Europe, yet he is rarely performed today.-Early years:He was born to a Jewish family in Tasdorf , near...
's Les Huguenots
Les Huguenots
Les Huguenots is a French opera by Giacomo Meyerbeer, one of the most popular and spectacular examples of the style of grand opera. The opera is in five acts and premiered in Paris in 1836. The libretto was written by Eugène Scribe and Émile Deschamps....
(1836, the Comte de Nevers), Louis Niedermeyer
Louis Niedermeyer
Abraham Louis Niedermeyer was a composer chiefly of church music but also of a few operas, and a teacher who took over the Ecole Choron, duly renamed École Niedermeyer, a school for the study and practice of church music, where several eminent French musicians studied including Gabriel Fauré and...
's Stradella (1837), Halevy's Guido et Ginevra
Guido et Ginevra
Guido et Ginevra, ou La Peste de Florence is a grand opera in five acts by Fromental Halévy to a libretto by Eugène Scribe...
(1838, the Duke of Ferrara), Hector Berlioz
Hector Berlioz
Hector Berlioz was a French Romantic composer, best known for his compositions Symphonie fantastique and Grande messe des morts . Berlioz made significant contributions to the modern orchestra with his Treatise on Instrumentation. He specified huge orchestral forces for some of his works; as a...
's Benvenuto Cellini
Benvenuto Cellini (opera)
Benvenuto Cellini is an opera in two acts with music by Hector Berlioz and libretto by Léon de Wailly and Henri Auguste Barbier. It was the first of Berlioz's operas. The story is loosely based on the memoirs of the Florentine sculptor Benvenuto Cellini. The opera is technically very challenging...
(1838, Balducci), Gaetano Donizetti
Gaetano Donizetti
Domenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti was an Italian composer from Bergamo, Lombardy. His best-known works are the operas L'elisir d'amore , Lucia di Lammermoor , and Don Pasquale , all in Italian, and the French operas La favorite and La fille du régiment...
's Les martyrs
Poliuto
Poliuto is a tragedia lirica, or tragic opera, by Gaetano Donizetti. Salvadore Cammarano wrote the Italian libretto after Pierre Corneille's play Polyeucte . It was composed in 1838 and first performed on 30 November 1848 at the Teatro San Carlo, Naples...
(1840, Félix), and Ambroise Thomas
Ambroise Thomas
Charles Louis Ambroise Thomas was a French composer, best known for his operas Mignon and Hamlet and as Director of the Conservatoire de Paris from 1871 till his death.-Biography:"There is good music, there is bad music, and then there is Ambroise Thomas."- Emmanuel Chabrier-Early life...
's Le comte de Carmagnola (1841). He was also heard successfully in Paris as Balthazar in Donizetti's La favorite
La favorite
La favorite is an opera in four acts by Gaetano Donizetti to a French-language libretto by Alphonse Royer and Gustave Vaëz, based on the play Le comte de Comminges by Baculard d'Arnaud...
and in the title roles of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart , baptismal name Johannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart , was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical era. He composed over 600 works, many acknowledged as pinnacles of symphonic, concertante, chamber, piano, operatic, and choral music...
's Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni
Don Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and with an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the Teatro di Praga on October 29, 1787...
and Rossini's Guillaume Tell
William Tell (opera)
Guillaume Tell is an opera in four acts by Gioachino Rossini to a French libretto by Etienne de Jouy and Hippolyte Bis, based on Friedrich Schiller's play Wilhelm Tell. Based on the legend of William Tell, this opera was Rossini's last, even though the composer lived for nearly forty more years...
.
In 1842-1843 Dérivis performed at La Scala
La Scala
La Scala , is a world renowned opera house in Milan, Italy. The theatre was inaugurated on 3 August 1778 and was originally known as the New Royal-Ducal Theatre at La Scala...
in Milan where he notably created roles in the world premieres of two operas by Giuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century...
: Zaccaria in Nabucco
Nabucco
Nabucco is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Temistocle Solera, based on the Biblical story and the 1836 play by Auguste Anicet-Bourgeois and Francis Cornue...
(1842) and Pagano/Hermit in I Lombardi alla prima crociata
I Lombardi alla prima crociata
I Lombardi alla prima crociata is an operatic dramma lirico in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Temistocle Solera, based on an epic poem by Tommaso Grossi. Its first performance was given at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan on 11 February 1843...
(1843). He also sang in the world premiere of Donizetti's Linda di Chamounix
Linda di Chamounix
Linda di Chamounix is an operatic melodramma semiserio in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti. The Italian libretto was written by Gaetano Rossi. It premiered in Vienna, at the Kärntnertortheater, on May 19, 1842.-Performance history:...
at the Theater am Kärntnertor
Theater am Kärntnertor
Theater am Kärntnertor or Kärntnertortheater was a prestigious theatre in Vienna during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries...
in Vienna in 1842. In 1843-1844 he sang at the Teatro Regio di Parma
Teatro Regio di Parma
Teatro Regio di Parma is a famous 19th century opera house and opera company in Parma, Italy. The theatre was originally known as the Teatro Ducale....
as Bertram in Robert le diable
Robert le diable (opera)
Robert le diable is an opera by Giacomo Meyerbeer, often regarded as the first grand opera. The libretto was written by Eugène Scribe and Casimir Delavigne and has little connection to the medieval legend of Robert the Devil. Originally planned as a three-act opéra comique, "Meyerbeer persuaded...
, Duke Hamilton in Saverio Mercadante
Saverio Mercadante
Giuseppe Saverio Raffaele Mercadante was an Italian composer, particularly of operas. While Mercadante may not have retained the international celebrity of Gaetano Donizetti or Gioachino Rossini beyond his own lifetime, he composed as impressive a number of works as either; and his development of...
's Il reggente, and Filippo Visconti in Beatrice di Tenda
Beatrice di Tenda
Beatrice di Tenda is a tragic opera in two acts by Vincenzo Bellini, from a libretto by Felice Romani, after the play of the same name by Carlo Tedaldi-Fores...
. From 1845-1848 he was committed to the Théâtre-Italien in Paris. In 1846-1847 he was active at the Teatro Regio di Torino where he was heard as Alfonso D'Este in Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia
Lucrezia Borgia (opera)
Lucrezia Borgia is a melodramma, or opera, in a prologue and two acts by Gaetano Donizetti. Felice Romani wrote the Italian libretto after the play by Victor Hugo, in its turn after the legend of Lucrezia Borgia. Lucrezia Borgia was first performed on 26 December 1833 at La Scala, Milan with...
, Enrico Ashton in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor
Lucia di Lammermoor
Lucia di Lammermoor is a dramma tragico in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti. Salvadore Cammarano wrote the Italian language libretto loosely based upon Sir Walter Scott's historical novel The Bride of Lammermoor....
, and Jefte in the world premiere of Giovanni Pacini
Giovanni Pacini
Giovanni Pacini was an Italian composer, best known for his operas. Pacini was born in Catania, Sicily, the son of the buffo Luigi Pacini, who was to appear in the premieres of many of Giovanni's operas...
's Ester d'Engaddi (1848) among other roles. In 1847 he appeared at La Scala as Dom Juam de Sylva in Donizetti's Dom Sébastien
Dom Sébastien
Dom Sébastien, Roi de Portugal is a French grand opera in five acts by Gaetano Donizetti. The libretto was written by Eugène Scribe, based on Paul Foucher's play Don Sébastien de Portugal , a historic-fiction about King Sebastian of Portugal and his ill-fated 1578 expedition to Morocco...
. He sang Zacharie in Meyerbeer's Le prophète
Le prophète
Le prophète is an opera in five acts by Giacomo Meyerbeer. The French-language libretto was by Eugène Scribe.-Performance history:...
in 1851. He performed at the Paris Opera again 1856-1857, notably singing d'Aminta in the world premiere of Emanuele Biletta's La rose de Florence and Ferrando in Verdi's Il trovatore
Il trovatore
Il trovatore is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Salvadore Cammarano, based on the play El Trovador by Antonio García Gutiérrez. Cammarano died in mid-1852 before completing the libretto...
.
After 1857 Dérivis' stage appearances became more rare. He performed at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna
Teatro Comunale di Bologna
The Teatro Comunale di Bologna is an opera house in Bologna, Italy, and is one of the most important opera venues in Italy. Typically, it presents eight operas with six performances during its November to April season....
in 1862 where he was heard as Samuel in Un ballo in maschera
Un ballo in maschera
Un ballo in maschera , is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi with text by Antonio Somma. The libretto is loosely based on an 1833 play, Gustave III, by French playwright Eugène Scribe who wrote about the historical assassination of King Gustav III of Sweden...
, Sparafucile in Verdi's Rigoletto
Rigoletto
Rigoletto is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi. The Italian libretto was written by Francesco Maria Piave based on the play Le roi s'amuse by Victor Hugo. It was first performed at La Fenice in Venice on March 11, 1851...
and as Calistene in Donizetti's Poliuto
Poliuto
Poliuto is a tragedia lirica, or tragic opera, by Gaetano Donizetti. Salvadore Cammarano wrote the Italian libretto after Pierre Corneille's play Polyeucte . It was composed in 1838 and first performed on 30 November 1848 at the Teatro San Carlo, Naples...
. One of his last performances was as Elmiro in Rossini's Otello
Otello (Rossini)
Otello is an opera in three acts by Gioachino Rossini to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Berio di Salsi, based on Shakespeare's play Othello....
in 1870 at La Scala. After slowing down his stage career he taught singing at the Conservatoire de Paris. He died in Paris in 1880 at the age of 71.