FANTASIA ON VERDI’S OPERA LA SONNAMBULA, arr. double bass and piano

Giovanni Bottesini
(b. Crema, Italy, December 22, 1821; d. Parma, July 7, 1889)

Composed c. 1845; 8 minutes

At 14, faced with competing for one of two scholarships, it came down to a choice between bassoon and double bass. The young Giovanni Bottesini played neither. But the violin student from Crema in Northern Italy had already proved himself a quick study with his vocal skill and his ability to play timpani in various local theaters. So, Bottesini quickly found his way around the double bass and, within a few weeks, won a scholarship to the Milan Conservatory. There, he excelled, graduated at 18 and put his conservatory prize money towards a fine three-string bass by Carlo Testore. He was to keep this 1716 instrument throughout a long career which was launched with his concert début at the Teatro Comunale, Crema, in 1840. By now he was tuning the instrument a tone (or more) higher than usual for his solo work. [That’s standard practice among solo bass players to this day]. By 1846, he was in Cuba as principal bass at the Teatro de Tacón, giving recitals and conducting the première of Cristoforo Colombo, the first of 14 operas he would compose. 

Bottesini played with the overhand (French-style) bow grip which he popularized, as opposed to the underhand (German) grip. He soon became known as the ’Paganini of the double bass.’ Although an international career as bass soloist, composer and conductor took Bottesini throughout Europe, to North, Central and South America, and even Egypt (at the invitation of his friend Verdi, to direct the 1871 première of Aida to mark the opening of the Suez Canal), it is for his legendary contribution to the technique of the double bass that he is best remembered. 

Bottesini’s Fantasia on Verdi’s opera La Sonnambula falls agreeably somewhere between opera house and concert hall and, as with much Bottesini, proves that the double bass need not play second fiddle to violin as a vehicle for virtuosity. Appropriately, perhaps, Bottesini is buried close to Paganini in Parma’s Villetta cemetery.