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Life
[Michael William Balfe; Michael W. Balfe;] b. 15 May 1808, at 10, Pitt St., Dublin [renamed Balfe St. in 1917]; son of dancing master in Dublin and Wexford; a child prodigy; he studied music with James Barton and William Rooke (1794-1847) [var. O’Rourke]; possessed a good baritone voice; played in the Rotunda Concert Rooms on 30 May 1817; his first composition “The Lover’s Mistake” was published by Isaac Willis of Westmoreland St. in 1822; worked in London under Charles Edward Horn [son of Karl], and kept himself and his mother by playing violin in Drury Lane orchestra from 1824; |
discovered by a Count Mazzara, who took him to Rome, 1825, studying under Filippo Galli; met and worked with Luigi Cherubini; moved to Italy for two years and studied with Ferdinando Paer (1771-1839 and later with Vincenzo Federici (1764-1827) in Milan; commissioned to write music for ballet for La Scala (La Pérouse); introduced to Rossini by Cherubini on his return to Paris; invited to sing the part of Figaro in The Barber of Seville [Il barbiere di Siviglia], in Théatre des Italiens (Paris), 1827; Paris; |
returned to Italy, 1829; m. Lina Rosa, Hungarian singer, with whom a son Michael W. Balfe and dgs. Louise and Victorie; first opera, I Rivali di Se Stesso, Palmero 1830; returned to London, 1833; operas for Drury Lane include The Siege of Rochelle (1833); toured Ireland in 1838 and at several other times; founded an English opera company, 1841, which opened with Keolanthe and prove unsuccessful; moved to Paris and wrote Puits d’Amour (1843), a great success; best-known for The Bohemian Girl (Drury Lane, 27 Nov. 1843), libretto by Alfred Bunn; other operas include Falstaff (Her Majesty’s Theatre, 1838), Sicilian Bride (Drury Lane, 1852), also The Rose of Castile (1857), with libretto by Edmund Falconer [q.v.] - the firs of several collaborations; produced accompaniments to Moore’s Melodies; |
Balfe visited Petersburg, Vienna, and cities of Italy; bought Rowney Abbey, an estate in Hertfordshire; d. 20 Oct. 1870 at Rowney Abbey; commem. with a plaque in Westminster Abbey and a window in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, as well as statue in the foyer of Drury Lane Theatre; a marble bust was commissioned from Sir Thomas Farrell by the Balfe Memorial Committee and presented to NGI; his dg. Victorie sang successfully in Dublin, London, Paris, Turin, Milan and Madrid; The Rose of Castile was revived for the opening of the Wexford Opera Festival in Oct. 1951; Balfe is a recurrent point of reference in Joyce’s works [see infra]. ODNB DIB DIH BREF FDA OCIL |
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| ... and studies by H. J. St. Leger, and W. J. Lawrence; remarks in Irish Book Lover, Vol. 3. |
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Quotations
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Plot: The eponymous heroine, Arlene, is kidnapped from her noble family by gipsies; twelve years later, having matured into a beautiful woman with only vague memories of her origins, she falls in love with a Polish nobleman in exile who has become a gipsy. She is betrayed by the Queen of the Gipsies but recognised by her long lost father, the Count, who takes her home, where she dreams of her former life of freedom with her betrothed. (See Don Gifford, Joyce Annotated, California UP 1982, p.50.) |
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Available at Music in the Works of James Joyce - online; accessed 21.11.2010 [but erroneously assigned to The Colleen Bawn]. See also Don Gifford, Joyce Annotated [... &c.] (California UP 1982), p.100, and note that Falconer recycled “Killarney” in his own Eileen Oge, the Hour Before Dark (1871). |
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References
Dictionary of National Biography [ODNB] notes that he went to London with Count Mazzara [err.], and studied under C. E. Horn at Drury Lane Theatre; studied in France and Italy with Cherubini, Paer and others; engaged by Rossini and by Glossop, mgr. of La Scala; returned to London in 1833; wrote The Siege of Rochelle, produced at Drury Lane in 1835 with great success; other works include The Maid of Artois, Catherine Grey, Joan of Arc, Falstaff, The Merry Wives of Windsor and Diadeste; engaged in Dublin in 1838 and toured Ireland with his operas; founded own company in London with Keolanthe as the first production; produced Le Puits d’Amour in Paris, 1843; also in 1843, his famous Bohemian Girl (Drury Lane, 27 Nov. 1843), after a ballet by St. George, taken in turn from an original story in Cervantes; many decorations and honours in Europe, and a tablet in Westminster Cathedral; remarks, ‘[H]is brilliancy and fertility of imagination entitle him to a position beside Berlini, Rossini and Aube’, in spite of the intellectual
deficit of his operas.
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Ann Stewart, ed., Diary (National Gallery of Ireland 1986) remarks that he supported his mother on his father’s death by playing violin in Drury Lane, aged 16; a Russian count [Mazzara], moved by his resemblance to a lost son, brought him to Italy; was chosen by Rossini to sing Figaro in The Barber of Seville in Paris; fnd. the unsuccessful English Opera Company in London.
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Seamus Deane, gen. ed., The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 2, remarks that Moore’s Melodies had to compete with songs from the three genuine operettas that became such an integral part of Dublin musical life by the turn of the century, The Bohemian Girl (1843) by Balfe, The Lily of Killarney (1862) by [Sir] Julius Benedict (1804-85), and Maritana (1845) by William Vincent Wallace (1814-65). Balfe’s “I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls”, Benedict’s “The Moon has raised her lamp above”, and Wallace’s “Yes, let me like a soldier fall” and “There is a flower that bloometh” became, with Moore’s songs, part of the standard repertoire of those ubiquitous Irish tenors [in] a specifically middle-class musical world (Deane, ed.; p.4).
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A Balfe website is maintained by Basil Walsh (Palm Beach, Florida), author of Catherine Hayes: The Hibernian Prima Donna (IAP 2000), at BritishandIrishworld.com [link].
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Notes
Bohemian boy: Balfe appears in Bohemian dress in a portrait in chalk and charcoal by John Wood in the National Gallery of Ireland. There is a window dedicated to his memory in St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, showing Erin leaning on a harp together with a bust from a portrait supplied by his wife and inscribed ‘The most celebrated, genial and beloved of Irish musicians ...[&c.]’ A marble bust by Sir Thomas Farrell (1827-1900) was commissioned by the Balfe Memorial Committee and presented to National Gallery of Ireland (1879) [See Ann Cruikshank and the Knight of Glin, Irish Portraits 1600-1860, 1969, p.89]. A cover to selections from The Bohemian Girl arranged as ‘duet for two ladies voices’ [sic] is reprinted in Brian de Breffny, Cultural Encyclopaedia of Ireland, p.161, which also copies an engraving by Auguste Husfener.
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Clerical censor: “I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls” is sung by the Curate and the narrator in Canon Sheehan’s My New Curate (1900), whereas Fr. Dan Hanrahan condemns it as ‘operatic rubbish [not] genuine Irish music, with the right lilt and the right sentiment.’ (Cited in The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, 1991, Vol. 2, p.1044.)
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Joyce Connection: In James Joyce’s short story “Eveline” in Dubliners, the heroine is taken to see The Bohemian Girl by her sailor Frank. Maria sings the aria “I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls” from the second act in “Clay” - causing Joe to feel very moved (i.e., drunk) and to say, ‘there was no time like the long ago, and no music for him like poor old Balfe’ - while one of the musical Miss Morkans in “The Dead” (Dubliners), is said, improbably, to have been trained by Balfe. The Last Rose of Castile is the subject of a pun in Ulysses, while Balfe is also mentioned in the “Sirens” episode, and later in Finnegans Wake where reference is made to ‘a balfy bit ov old Jo Robidson’ (p.199) - ‘balfy’ combining ‘lovely and of Balfe-like’.
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