A surprising exclusion from the top-100, Offenbach is well-known for his grand opera, Tales of Hoffman, which is a staple in opera houses everywhere. He is also well-known for his light operetta, Orpheus in the Underworld, or at least from the famous Can-Can excerpt out of the final act. Altogether, he composed about 100 operettas, 2 operas, a ballet, and a number of miscellaneous works. Though much of his work might be considered “light,” it is of high quality and always entertaining.
Von Suppe is best known for his operettas, particularly for several overtures, including the Poet and Peasant Overture and the Light Cavalry Overture. He had a more serious side, having composed a fair amount of church music. The Requiem below is a fine example of the latter.
Like Brahms and late romantic Germans/Austrians, Lalo's music is solid, rich, and well worth listening to.
A renowned pianist, conductor and professor, Reinecke had a modest output, including four piano concertos and a variety of chamber music in grand romantic tradition. His work is interesting and enjoyable.
Like Franz Liszt, who was a few years older, Rubenstein was most famous as a virtuoso pianist, but few people realize he composed a great deal of amazing music as well.
Would Ponchielli be known as well today without the scene of dancing hippos and crocodiles vividly etched into our brains as children? Indeed, the inclusion of the ballet, Dance of the Hours, from his opera La Gioconda in Disney’s Fantasia was a real boost for Ponchielli’s name recognition. He is a good example of a composer known primarily for a single bit of music, though as with other opera composers, like Leoncavallo and Mascagni, it is a bit unfair. He was successful and popular in his time, with operas in the grand tradition of Verdi. La Gioconda has been modestly popular over the years, and the aria Cielo e Mar is one frequently included in albums of tenor favorites. Mascagni and Puccini were both admirers of his.
From
the few recordings we have of his other 10 operas and select arias, it is evident that
these are great works that have been sadly overlooked, likely for the same
economic reasons that afflicted so many fine opera composers (see comments
under Leoncavallo).
Delibes was a respected French composer of primarily opera and ballet. Many will know his opera, Lakme, or at least the duet, Flower Song, from that opera. The opera itself is said to have much in common with Bizet’s Carmen, with Delibes showing a similar ability with orchestral color and local flavor.
Delibes also wrote 3 ballets, two of which are relatively
popular, and also widely known from excerpts. This is in addition to the
ballets, mandatory for French audiences, included in his operas.
Balakirev is recognized as enormously influential on the development of Russian nationalistic music and a pioneer in the fusion of Russian folk music with conventional classical/romantic style. Among his students/protégées were Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin, Mussorgsky, and Tchaikovsky. Balakirev was surpassed by these younger composers and his very worthy music is not heard as often. You can hear in his work, however, the roots of the music of these better-known composers.
Svendsen was a contemporary and friend of his more famous countryman, Edvard Grieg. A renowned violinist, he was also greatly admired for his skills in orchestral writing.
The romantic style of Holmès was strongly influenced by Wagner, as well as by her primary teacher, Cesar Franck. She wrote several operas, of which none have been performed or recorded , until just recently. La Montagne Noire was just revived and performed in January of 2024.
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Carreño was a highly lauded international virtuoso pianist and conductor, and also an extraordinary composer. She was the first notable composer from Venezuela, and arguably still the most famous.
Many of you will immediately picture the popular British singer when you hear this name, but it belonged first, and more appropriately, to the German composer of the popular opera Hansel and Gretel. The British singer had an agent, who felt this name would stand out and attract more attention than his original name of Arnold George Dorsey, or an earlier stage name of Gerry Dorsey. It did.
Incidentally, the same agent had previously renamed another British singer, Tom Woodward to .. guess what?.. Tom Jones! It worked because it came on the heels of the enormously popular film of that name.
Chausson had a relatively short life and left only 39 catalogued works. He died in a bicycling accident just as his career was starting to pick up. Though he lived longer than Mozart, Schubert, or Felix Mendelssohn, composing was evidently a struggle for him. He studied with Massenet and Franck, who greatly influenced his early work, but his best works, mostly from the last decade of his life are Wagnerian both in style and scope. Some say that he merely imitated Wagner, and indeed in the beginning prelude to his opera, King Arthur, there is a clear allusion to the Ride of the Valkyries. However there are traces of his French connections, even some brief flashes of Hector Berlioz, and through it a budding individual style. He died at 45 and may simply not have arrived at his own maturity and musical personality.
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