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Paolo Giorza and Music at Sydney's 1879 International Exhibition

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Paolo Giorza and Music at Sydney's 1879 International Exhibition ‘Pleasure of a High Order:’ Paolo Giorza and Music at Sydney’s 1879 International Exhibition Roslyn Maguire As Sydney’s mighty Exhibition building took shape, looking to the harbour from an elevated site above the Botanic Gardens, anxiety and excitement mounted. This was to be the first International Exhibition held outside Europe or America and musical entertainment was to be its greatest attraction.1 An average of three thousand people would attend each week day and as recent studies have shown, Sydney’s International Exhibition helped initiate reforms to education, town planning, technologies, photography, manufacturing and patronage of the arts, music and literature.2 Although under construction since January 1879, it was mid May before the Exhibition’s influential Executive Commissioner Patrick Jennings3 announced the appointment of his friend, Milanese composer Paolo Giorza4 as musical director: [H]is credentials are of such a nature both as a conductor, composer and artist, that I could not justly pass them over. I think that he should also be authorised to compose a march and cantata for the opening ceremony … Signor Giorza offers to give his exclusive services as composer and director and performer on the organ and to organise a competent orchestra of local artists for promenade concerts, and to conduct the same.5 The extent of Jennings’s personal interest in Exhibition music is evident in this report publicising Giorza’s appointment. It amounts to one of the colony’s most interesting cultural documents for the ideas, attitudes and objectives it reveals, including consideration of whether an ‘Australian School of Music, as distinguished from any of the well-defined schools’ existed. 1 See Roslyn Maguire, ‘Paolo Giorza, Director of Music—The Most Accessible Art’, Colonial City, Global City, Sydney’s International Exhibition 1879, ed. Peter Proudfoot, Roslyn Maguire, Robert Freestone (Sydney: Crossing Press, 2000) 129–47. 2 See various chapters in Colonial City. 3 A.H. Cahill, ‘Patrick Alfred Jennings 1831–1897’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, vol. 4 (Carlton: Melbourne UP, 1972) 477–79. 4 C. Sartori, ‘Paolo Giorza,’ Enciclopedia dello Spettacolo, ed. Silvio D’Amico (Roma: Casa Editrice Le Maschere, 1954–62) 1320–22; and Roslyn Maguire, ‘Paolo Giorza,’ Oxford Companion to Australian Music, ed. Warren Bebbington (Melbourne: Oxford UP, 1997) 239. 5 Town and Country Journal 17 May 1879: 930. 42 Context 22 (Spring 2001) The city’s small population had to visit over and over again if the event were to prove successful, Jennings insisted, while education and entertainment were regarded as among its chief guiding principles. It was said that for ‘colonial workmen of every grade and every kind the Garden Palace is a great school,’6 and, like the visual arts, music was believed to be ‘of unquestionable value as a refining and educational agency, as well as giving pleasure of a high order.’7 Inside this school, or theatre of education, Giorza held control of programming recitals of organ and piano, while he himself continued to demonstrate a talent for improvisation based on a clear preference for a ‘popular’ operatic repertoire, respected by audiences familiar with his performances.8 While exhibition rhetoric continually underlined the goals of education and improvement, the public had already become accustomed to free concerts at Intercolonial or New South Wales Agricultural Society exhibitions in the 1870s.9 But this grander seven-month undertaking required higher standards over a far longer period and, as one of few colonials who had actually experienced an International Exhibition—representing three Australian colonies at Philadelphia in 1876—Jennings knew of their musical highlight, a commissioned work by Wagner. He suggested privately, if not publicly, that none other than Giuseppe Verdi or Charles Gounod might be approached for a special opening ceremony work.10 Jennings’s favourite composers were Rossini and Verdi, he was said to possess a deep understanding of Italian music11 and he had often acted as patron of performances of Giorza’s compositions. It is worth noting that it was Giorza who ‘introduced Verdi’s Requiem Mass to the Sydney public [and] by his means … “Aida”was produced in Melbourne.’12 Well known as a pianist and opera conductor whilst living in Melbourne from 1872 to 1874, Paolo Giorza had formed close musical connections there as organist and choirmaster at St Francis’s Church. In Sydney in 1875, following his successful fulfilment of the role of Intercolonial Exhibition musical director, on his own initiative Giorza presented a series of free suburban concerts. He also took on the role of organist and choirmaster at St Patrick’s Church, which happened to house a Gray and Davison organ, the same make as the unfortunate second-hand purchase later installed in the northern nave of the 1879 Exhibition building.13 By 1877, when he moved to Adelaide, Giorza had been away from Italy for ten years, having spent time in Mexico and the United States before arriving in Australia in 1871. If we 6 Sydney Morning Herald 26 September 1879: 4. 7 P.A. Jennings, introduction, Official Record of the Sydney International Exhibition, 1879 (Sydney: Government Printer, 1881) xxxiii. 8 For a review of Giorza’s April 1879 concert, see Town and Country Journal 3 May 1879: 857. 9 See Diary of Catherine Deakin, entries November 1872, recording about twelve visits to Melbourne’s Intercolonial Exhibition [Deakin Papers MS4913, National Library of Australia]. The Diary of Agnes Stephen, September 1879 to 1 January 1880, records no less than fourteen visits [MS 777/4 Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW]. 10 W.B. Dalley, letter to Thomas Butler, 15 February 1879, Document 3383, Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW. 11 See Cahill, ‘P.A. Jennings’, Australian Dictionary of Biography; P.A. Jennings, letter to W.B. Dalley, 11 June [1879], Document 3384, Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW. 12 The Australian: A Monthly Magazine 1 (1878): 441. Aida premiered in Melbourne in 1877 and Verdi’s Requiem was performed at a Good Friday concert, at the Victoria Theatre, Sydney, in 1875. See Sydney Morning Herald 26 March 1875: 2. 13 Purchased in England it was in need of urgent, costly repairs before it could be installed just in time for the opening; see Maguire, ‘Paolo Giorza’ 136, and Graeme D. Rushworth, Historic Organs of New South Wales, the Instruments, their Makers and Players 1791–1940 (Sydney: Hale & Iremonger, 1988) 95–6. Pleasure of a High Order 43 look at his productive Italian career we find compositions for more than thirty Grand Ballets performed at La Scala from 1853 (when he was 21 years of age). He soon became La Scala’s most respected composer in the genre, but admired too in all the northern Italian opera houses— Genoa, Parma, Bologna, Florence, Venice and Trieste—as well as at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples.14 Nationalism and/or patriotism came naturally to the middle-aged Giorza who until the age of 35 composed numerous marches for piano, or in parts for military bands, to celebrate Garibaldian victories throughout Italy’s struggle for independence and unity.15 To this day the Milanese sing his patriotic La Bella Gigogin, composed and taken up in 1859.16 An earlier work known to relate to an exhibition was Giorza’s La prima Esposizione Italiana Album published around 1862 by F. Lucca of Milan.17 As soon as it was decided to hold an International Exhibition in Sydney, Giorza’s Mass No. 3 18 was presented at the Victoria Theatre on Christmas night 1878, with Jennings as patron. Prior to the announcement of his appointment as Exhibition musical director a free public concert was arranged in April 1879 by a group of influential Giorza supporters including acting Governor Sir Alfred Stephen. Among the popular operatic pieces that made up the programme, he featured a fully orchestrated version of his new Sydney International Exhibition March.19 Rehearsal time had been brief for the forty-two musicians selected to form an orchestra, yet critics enthusiastically predicted a new musical ‘epoch.’20 As part of the city’s pre-Exhibition festive mood, Sydney audiences could attend their first production of a Wagner opera in a W.S. Lyster season that also gave them premieres of Carmen and Aida. The Garden Palace dome brought architectural status to the colonial city—in size it warranted comparison only with the world’s greatest domes like St Pauls in London and St Sophia in Constantinople. This international comparison lent lustre to the reception of Giorza’s Cantata written for the opening of the exhibition. Yet ten days before the opening when a general choir of about 350 voices, plus a children’s choir of 300, held a full rehearsal,21 only fourteen or fifteen violins and wind instruments were up to standard, far short of the thousand voices and two hundred instruments at the Philadelphia opening.22 By way of contrast, La Scala’s orchestra numbered ‘ninety six of the best musicians.’23 Sydney and its suburbs were said to have at least thirty brass bands,24 but unlike Melbourne where a Philharmonic Society 14 Titles and premiere dates of Paolo Giorza’s ballets are listed in ‘Paolo Giorza’, Enciclopedia dello Spettacolo; and a shorter version in The Australian: A Monthly Magazine 3 (November 1865): 297–301. 15 For example, L’Italia riconoscente Dedicata all’Imperatore Napoleone III, Op. 61 and Va la vilan coi bocu, Op. 62, both in parts for military bands. [‘Catalogo delle Opere di Paolo Giorza, Publicate da Francesco Lucca di Milano,’ back cover, Esposizione Internazionale di Sydney Marcia (Milan: F. Lucca) 34943 for piano 2 hands, 34944 for piano 4 hands, collection Conservatorio di Milano].
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