Michael Balfe

Life
1808-1870 [Michael William Balfe]; b. 15 May, at 10 Pitt Street, 10, Pitt St., Dublin [Balfe St. since 1917]; son of dancing master in Dublin and Wexford; child prodigy; study music with James Barton, William Rooke (1794-1847) [var. O’Rourke]; possessed a good baritone voice; played in 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 Theatre 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; produced accompaniments to Moore’s Melodies; visited Petersburg, Vienna, and cities of Italy; bought Rowney Abbey, an estate in Hertfordshire; d. 20 Oct., 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; d. 20 Oct., on his estate at Rowney Abbey, Herts., England; his dg. Victorie sang successfully in Dublin, London, Paris, Turin, Milan and Madrid; his aria “I Dreamt I Dwelt ...”, is sung by Maria in Joyce’s story “Clay”, while one of the Morkan sisters is said to have been trained by Balfe in “The Dead”; The Rose of Castile - another Joycean point of reference - was revived for the opening of the Wexford Opera Festival in Oct. 1951. DNB DIB DIH BREF FDA OCIL

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Criticism

• C. L. Kenney, Memoir of Michael William Balfe (1875);
• L. William Alexander Barrett, Balfe, His Life and Work (London: William Reeves 1882);
• H. O. Brunskill, ‘Michael William Balfe’, Dublin Historical Record, Vol. 16 No. 2 (October 1962), pp.58-64;
• H. J. St. Leger and W. J. Lawrence and remarks in Irish Book Lover, Vol. 3;
• Nicholas Temperley, ed., Music in Britain: The Romantic Age 1800-1914 (London: Athlone Press 1981);
• Eric Walter White, The History of English Opera (London: Faber & Faber 1983).

Notes
Dictionary of National Biography 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.

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.

Seamus Deane, gen. ed., 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 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).

A website is maintained at www.britishandirishworld.com by Basil Walsh (Palm Beach, Florida), author of Catherine Hayes: The Hibernian Prima Donna (IAP 2000).

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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.

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 Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, 1991, Vol. 2, p.1044.)

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 from the second act in “Clay”, 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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The Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)