Gaetano Braga

Gaetano Braga was born in Giulianova, near Teramo, on 9 June 1829, and died in Milan on 21 November 1907. An Italian cellist and composer, he spent almost his entire career outside Italy, which largely explains the way he is remembered today.

He entered the Naples Conservatory in 1841 to study the cello with Ciandelli and composition with Mercadante, and showed aptitude in both disciplines. In 1852 he obtained the diploma of «Maestrino di violoncello» and embarked on numerous concert tours across Europe and the United States. In Vienna he briefly became a member of the Mayseder Quartet.

His first opera, Alina, was premiered in Naples in 1853. Over the following twenty years, with Paris and London as his principal bases, he composed eight further operas. Some reached the stage in Vienna, Paris and Lisbon, but they did not fulfil the promise of his early years, and none remained in the repertoire. A rejection by La Scala in 1868, which preferred Marchetti's version of Ruy Blas, left the work unperformed and unpublished and weighed on his decision to remain abroad for some thirty years, while he maintained a career as a soloist and composer. As a singing teacher he was in great demand, and he worked with Erminia Frezzolini and Adelaide Borghi-Mamo.

Today his reputation rests chiefly on the Leggenda valacca, known as «La Serenata» or «The Angel's Serenade», a song with an obbligato accompaniment for cello or violin. Although the composer himself described it as a cloying melody, by 1914 HMV listed as many as four recordings of it, made by performers such as Gluck, Zimbalist, McCormack and Kreisler.