Ferdinando Fontana
Ferdinando Fontana (30 January 1850 – 10 May 1919) was an Italian journalist, dramatist, and poet. He is best known today for having written the libretti of the first two operas by Giacomo Puccini – Le Villi and Edgar. • Illustration — Portrait of Ferdinando Fontana by Vespasiano Bignami
Ferdinando Fontana
Vespasiano Bignami · Archivio Storico Ricordi · Archivio Storico Ricordi, Collezione Digitale Ricordi · CC BY-SA 4.0
- Born
- Ferdinando Fontana was born on 30 January 1850. · Milan.
- Died
- Ferdinando Fontana died on 10 May 1919. · Lugano.
- Nationality
- Kingdom of Italy.
- Occupation
- librettist, writer, translator, playwright, journalist and poet.
- Languages
- French and Italian.
Reference Check
Propose documentary evidence for Ferdinando Fontana. A contribution is never written directly as fact: identity, source, rights and evidence gates still decide.
Sign in to contribute
World of VALÉORINE
Documentary connections
Only confirmed graph relationships appear here. Images are shown only when their identity and reuse rights both pass the documentary gate.
Documentary evidence
Documentary basis
Authority files
wikidata · Q653839 · wikipedia · Ferdinando Fontana
In this article
Biography
Biography
• Illustration — Notice in Gazzetta Musicale di Milano (1884) announcing Ricordi's publication of Le Villi and their contract with Puccini to write a second opera with Fontana. Born in Milan, then part of the Austrian Empire, into a family of artists - both his father Carlo and his brother Roberto were painters - he entered a Barnabite school at the age of seven and then went on to study at the Collegio Zambelli. He was forced to abandon his studies while still young to provide for himself and his two younger sisters following the death of their mother. During that period, he worked in a series of menial jobs before becoming a copy editor for the newspaper Corriere di Milano. This brought him into contact with the world of journalism and literature, which was to become his career. An exponent of the second Scapigliatura artistic movement, Fontana was a very versatile writer. Apart from his plays and opera libretti, he wrote poems (in both Italian and Milanese dialect), travel books, and articles in various Italian newspapers, including the Milanese daily Corriere della Sera. From 1878 to 1879 he was the Berlin correspondent for the Gazzetta Piemontese (today La Stampa) in Turin. In 1881–1882, Fontana with his colleague Dario Papa (it), an influential editor of the Corriere della Sera, made a journey through the United States from New York to San Francisco. In New York he befriended Adolfo Rossi, the editor-in-chief of the Italian language newspaper Il Progresso Italo-Americano and contributed to the recently established daily. As a journalist, he wrote such books as Un briciolo di mezzaluna (A Fragment of the Crescent); Montecarlo; Tra gli Arabi (Among the Arabs); New-York (1884, jointly with Dario Papa); and a collection of Viaggi (Travels) in two volumes, published in Milan in 1893. • Illustration — Ferdinando Fontana (left) with Giacomo Puccini. During his time in Milan, Fontana wrote two plays in Milanese dialect, La Pina Madamin and La Statôa del sciôr Incioda. Both had considerable success and starred Edoardo Ferravilla, considered one of the greatest comic actors in Milanese theatre. He wrote numerous libretti, including two for Alberto Franchetti (Asrael and Zoroastro) and two for Puccini (Le Villi and Edgar). He wrote the libretto for Edgar in Caprino Bergamasco, where fellow librettist Antonio Ghislanzoni ran a hotel for artists. He also translated several operetta libretti for performance in Italy, including Franz Lehár's Die lustige Witwe (The Merry Widow) and Der Graf von Luxemburg (The Count of Luxembourg), Oskar Nedbal's Polenblut (Polish Blood), and Edmund Eysler's Der Frauenfresser (The Woman-Eater). Early in his career, Fontana's output was prodigious: an 1886 article in La Stampa said that at the time, 13 new libretti by Fontana were being composed by 12 different composers. A committed and passionate socialist, he took part in the Milanese demonstrations in 1898 which led to the Bava-Beccaris massacre. Because of the repressions which followed, he fled to Switzerland where he first lived in Montagnola, a small town near Lugano. He remained in Switzerland until his death, living a modest life, and greatly reducing his literary activities. Fontana died in Lugano in 1919, at the age of 69.
Life and career
Dated record
Life and career
The full dated record · 2 entries
1850
Ferdinando Fontana was born on 30 January 1850.
1919
Ferdinando Fontana died on 10 May 1919.
Places
Named by the record
Places
Only places the record itself states, plotted where the house gazetteer settles their coordinates. Nothing is inferred from a name or a nationality.
Ferdinando Fontana was born at Milan.
Birthplace
Ferdinando Fontana died at Lugano.
Deathplace
Milan.
Birth place
Lugano.
Death place
Texts set to music
• Illustration — Caricature of Fontana by the Italian composer, Antonio Cagnoni (1828-1896) Unless indicated otherwise, the texts were opera libretti. • El marchionn di gamb avert, from the poem Lament del Marchionn di gamb avert by Carlo Porta, set to music by Enrico Bernardi (Milan, 14 July 1875) • Il conte di Montecristo, completion of a libretto by Emilio Praga, music by Raffaele Dell'Aquila (Milan, 14 June 1876) • Maria e Taide, music by Nicolò Massa (August 1876) • Il violino del diavolo, music by Agostino Mercuri (Cagli, 12 September 1878) • Aldo e Clarenza, music by Nicolò Massa (11 Aprile 1878) • La Simona, music by Benedetto Junck (Milan, 1978) • Odio, from Victorien Sardou's play La Haine (Hatred), for Amilcare Ponchielli but never composed (written between 1878 and 1879) • Maria Tudor (attributed to Emilio Praga, completed after his death by Arrigo Boito, Angelo Zanardini, and Fontana) music by Antônio Carlos Gomes (Milan, 27 March 1879) • Il bandito, music by Emilio Ferrari (Casale Monferrato, 5 December 1880) • La leggenda d'un rosajo, cantata, music by Enrico Bertini (1883) • Anna e Gualberto, music by Luigi Mapelli (Milan, May 1884) • Le Villi, music by Giacomo Puccini (Milan, 31 May 1884) • Il Natale, stories set to music by Giulio Ricordi under the pseudonym of Jules Burgmein (1884) • Il Valdese, music by Giuseppe Ippolito Franchi-Verney (Turin, 3 December 1885) • Flora mirabilis, music by Spiro Samara (Milan, 16 May 1886) • Il bacio, music by Enrico Bertini, never performed (written 1886) • Il profeta del Korasan (or Mocanna), music by Guglielmo Zuelli, never performed (written 1886) • Notte d'aprile, music by Emilio Ferrari (Milan, 4 February 1887) • Colomba, music by Vittorio Radeglia (Milan, 15 June 1887) • Annibale, ballo, music by Romualdo Marenco (1888) • Asrael, music by Alberto Franchetti (Reggio Emilia, 11 February 1888) • Edgar, music by Giacomo Puccini (Milan, 21 April 1889) • Zoroastro, music by Alberto Franchetti, never performed (written 1890) • Il tempo, dance, music by Riccardo Bonicioli (3 January 1891) • Lionella, music by Spiro Samara (Milan, 4 April 1891) • Theora, music by Ettore Edoardo Trucco (14 February 1894) • Duettin d'amore, written with Gaetano Sbodio, music by Emilio Ferrari, (1895) • La forza d'amore, music by Arturo Buzzi-Peccia (Turin, 6 March 1897) • Il signor di Pourceaugnac, based on Molière's play Monsieur de Pourceaugnac, music by Alberto Franchetti (Milan, 10 April 1897) • Mal d'amore, based on Paolo Ferrari's La medicina d'una ragazza malata, music by Angelo Mascheroni (Milan, 30 April 1898) • La lampada, music by Ubaldo Pacchierotti (16 December 1899) • La dea della montagna, ovvero I minatori, music by Ivan Zajc (composition completed 31 January 1899; unperformed) • La notte di Natale, music by Alberto Gentile (29 December 1900) • Il calvario, music by Edoardo Bellini (Milan, 25 June 1901) • La nereide, music by Ulisse Trovati (14 November 1911) • Sandha, music by Felice Lattuada (Genoa, 21 February 1924) • Maria Petrovna, music by João Gomes de Araújo (composed in 1903 but not performed until January 1929) • Elda (written in Switzerland) • La Simona, lyric poem based on the Seventh Tale of the Fourth Day in Boccaccio's Decameron, music by Benedetto Junck (date unknown) • Inno del Canton Ticino (Anthem of Canton Ticino) as well as songs and romanzas set to music by various composers, including Nicolò Massa and Francesco Paolo Tosti. Fontana supplied the poems for three songs by Tosti – "Senza di te!", "È morto Pulcinella!", and "Nonna,... sorridi?...".
Text attribution
Licensing
Text attribution
Part of the biographical narrative on this page reuses licensed material. Its origin, revision and licence are recorded here.
The biographical narrative on this page is based on the Wikipedia article Ferdinando Fontana, revision 1357545845 (EN edition), by its contributors. VALÉORINE has edited that text and built its own documentary record around it. The reused material is available under CC BY-SA 4.0, and this page's reuse of it is offered under the same licence. Everything else on this page — the chronology, the holdings, the evidence, the plates and the connections — is VALÉORINE's own record. Sources and licences.
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Wilson, Conrad. Giacomo Puccini. Phaidon Press. 75. 2008. 9780714847757.
- 2.Tredici nuovi libretti di Fernando Fontana. La Stampa (Gazzetta Piemontese). 3. 30 Jan 1886.
- 3.cited in Gallini, (1955)
- 4.Sanvitale (2004), p. 115.
References
Citations
References
Each reference names the institution holding it, so a reader may go to the document itself.
reference work
Secondary witnessreference work
Secondary witness
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 14 August 2026.
Elsewhere in Books
39,529 published records in this field, each with its sources named.
- Ferdinand ReyherAuthor
- Ferdinand TönniesAuthor
- Ferdinand von MuellerAuthor
- Ferdinand von SaarAuthor
- Ferdinando GalianiAuthor
- Ferdinando MartiniAuthor
- Ferdinando Petruccelli della GattinaAuthor
- Ferdinando RussoAuthor
Best supported in this field
For owners
Own a work by Ferdinando Fontana?
A specialist will read what you send and tell you what the house can establish, what it cannot, and whether the object is suited to sale. There is no charge and no obligation. The object stays with you throughout; nothing is shipped to us unless it is arranged in writing beforehand.