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3 unusual facts about Ferdinando Paër


Ferdinando Paer

Some consider his music highly imaginative and melodic, while others hear his most famous work, Leonora (due to its setting by Beethoven for his only opera a year later), as mere dull formula-writing.

His grandfather Michael Pär was a regimental band member from Peterwardein (today Petrovaradin, part of Novi Sad).

Jean-Nicolas Bouilly

His Leonor (1798) forms the basis for the libretto which Ludwig van Beethoven used for the opera Fidelio; it was also set by Pierre Gaveaux as Léonore, ou L’amour conjugal, by Simon Mayr as L'amor coniugale, and by Ferdinando Paer as Leonora.


Elisabetta Manfredini-Guarmani

In addition to the roles she created in Rossini's operas, she also sang in the world premieres of operas by several composers who are lesser known today, including Pietro Raimondi, Simon Mayr, and Ferdinando Paër.

Elizabeth Billington

At the end of her first season she went to Paris, and had lessons from the Antonio Sacchini, whose last pupil she was, and at different periods of her career she also studied with Morelli, Ferdinando Paer, and Friedrich Heinrich Himmel.

Samuel James Arnold

Other foreign operas of note, the Tarare of Antonio Salieri, The Freebooters by Ferdinando Paer, The Robber's Bride by Ferdinand Ries, and Heinrich Marschner's Der Vampyr, were afterwards produced at the English Opera House for the first time in England.


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