Wikipedia:
Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari (* January 12, 1876 in Venice; † January 21, 1948 ibid.) was a German-Italian composer.
Born Hermann Friedrich Wolf, Wolf-Ferrari was the son of August Wolf, a painter from Weinheim an der Bergstrasse, and Emilia Ferrari, a Venetian, whose birth name he added to his surname from 1895. Although he received piano lessons at an early age, he seemed to follow in his father's footsteps and studied at the ''Accademia di Belle Arti'' in Rome in 1891-92. However, he then transferred to the Royal Academy of Music in Munich and became a student of Joseph Rheinberger. In 1895 he returned to Venice without graduating, and from 1896 directed a German choir in Milan, where he met Arrigo Boito and Giulio Ricordi, who, however, refused to publish his first compositions.
In 1897 Wolf-Ferrari married the singer Clara Kilian and in 1900, after the failure of his first performed opera ''Cenerentola'', relocated again to Munich. His early instrumental works, such as the ''Sinfonia da camera'' op. 8 (1901) and the ''cantata La vita nuova'' op. 9 (1901) after Dante, were indebted to the German Romantic tradition of Mendelssohn, Schumann and Brahms. But it was in Germany that he had his greatest successes, turning to a revival of opera buffa, with which his name is primarily associated. After ''Le donne curiose'' (The Inquisitive Women, 1903), based on Goldoni, the operas ''I quattro rusteghi'' (The Four Ruffians, 1906), also based on Goldoni, and ''Il segreto di Susanna'' (Susanna's Secret, 1909) became his greatest successes. They were all premiered in Munich, although Wolf-Ferrari was director of the ''Liceo Musicale'' in Venice from 1903-1909. He then lived in Munich, Riemerling (since 1915), Zurich and Zollikon (since 1916), Riemerling (since 1921), Ottobrunn (since 1926), Krailling (since 1931), Munich-Bogenhausen (since 1942), Altaussee and Venice (since 1947).
The opera ''I gioielli della Madonna'' (The Jewels of the Madonna), premiered in 1911, can be seen as an excursion into a lurid verismo, but with ''L'amore medico'' (The Love Doctor, 1913), based on Molière's comedy ''L'amour médecin'', Wolf-Ferrari turned again to comic opera. The grayness of World War I, however, plunged the German-Italian into a severe creative crisis that lasted almost ten years and was exacerbated by marital problems. He fled to Zurich during the war years and married his second wife Wilhelmine Christine Funck in 1921. Among his late operas, ''Sly'' (1927) became the most famous after Shakespeare, but none of them could match the successes before the war. Eventually Wolf-Ferrari turned again more fully to instrumental music, with the ''Idillio Concertino'', Op. 15 (1933), and the ''Violin Concerto'', Op. 26 (1946). These compositions were written in a melodic post-romantic tonal language without reference to contemporary modernist trends.
In 1939 Wolf-Ferrari became a professor of composition at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. He suffered psychologically from National Socialism in Germany, Fascism in Italy, and from the war that began again, in which his house was destroyed. Again he fled to Switzerland and after the war returned to his native Venice, where he died in 1948 in Palazzo Malipiero.[1] His grave is on the cemetery island of San Michele north of Venice.
Note: Translated from the German version of Wikipedia into English.
