José Melchor Gomis

José Melchor Gomis y Colomer (Onteniente, Valencia, 1791 – Paris, 1836) was a Spanish composer whose career unfolded between the Valencia of his youth, London and, above all, Paris, where he achieved recognition in the musical theatre of the 1830s. His significance lies both in his output for the French stage and in his role as a musician committed to Spanish liberalism.

His training began in the Valencian musical chapel: as a boy he entered as a seise and, at fifteen, was already directing a choir. During the Napoleonic Wars he served as musical director of an artillery regiment in 1812. Around 1817 a melodrama for solo voice and orchestra was performed in Valencia, which probably corresponds to Sensibilidad y prudencia, o La aldeana, first performed in Madrid in June 1821; the identification, however, remains conjectural.

Following the restoration of absolutism by Ferdinand VII, he was forced to flee to France in 1823. Earlier, during the liberal rebellion of the Trienio, he had joined the army of General Riego and composed music for patriotic songs, among them, probably, a version of the popular Himno de Riego. In Paris he met Manuel García and received the support of Rossini. In 1826 he settled in London, where he taught singing, published airs, boleros and romanzas, and saw his cantatas L'inverno and La primavera performed by the Philharmonic Society. That same year his Méthode de solfège et de chant appeared in Paris.

Back in Paris shortly before the July Revolution of 1830, he wrote songs and choruses for Martínez de la Rosa's drama Aben Humeya. Between 1831 and 1836 he composed four operas for the Opéra-Comique: Le diable à Seville; Le revenant, based on an episode of Scott's Redgauntlet; Le portefaix, his greatest success; and Rock le barbu. He left La damnée and other projected works unfinished, and died of laryngeal tuberculosis. Louis Philippe awarded him the Legion of Honour, and Berlioz wrote his obituary.

Gomis is today a minor figure, but he is representative of those Spanish musicians exiled for political reasons who carried their craft into the European theatre of the first half of the nineteenth century.