Sir Julius Benedict

Julius Benedict (Stuttgart, 1804 or 1804–1885, London) was a composer, pianist and conductor who, though born in Germany, spent most of his career in England. His birth date is given in different ways: 27 November or 24 December 1804, and the second seems to have been the more widely accepted. His career, which spans much of the nineteenth century, helps to show how Italian opera and British musical life became intertwined at the time.

He first trained with Ludwig Abeille in Stuttgart and, at the age of fifteen, moved to Weimar to study with Hummel, who introduced him to Beethoven. In 1821 his father took him to Dresden, and Hummel persuaded Weber to accept him as a pupil. He accompanied his teacher to Vienna in 1823 for the premiere of Euryanthe, and there he witnessed the famous meeting between Weber and Beethoven at Baden. Later, thanks to Barbaia, he obtained a conducting post at the Kärntnertortheater and, from 1825, spent nine years in Naples as conductor, pianist and teacher. There he wrote three operas in a distinctly Rossinian style. In 1835 he settled in London, where he lived for the rest of his long career.

In the British capital he conducted at the Lyceum and was musical director at Drury Lane between 1838 and 1848, during the management of Alfred Bunn. He staged three English operas of his own, though with less success than those of Balfe or Wallace. In 1848 he conducted Mendelssohn's Elijah at Exeter Hall and in 1850 accompanied Jenny Lind on her tour of the United States. After his return, he worked at Her Majesty's and at Covent Garden. His opera The Lily of Killarney brought him the greatest popularity and is said to be regarded as the first Irish national opera, though without political connotations.

For decades he was a regular figure at provincial festivals, above all the Norwich Festival, which he conducted from 1845 to 1878. In 1855 he founded a choral society inspired by the German Gesangverein and conducted it for ten years at the Crystal Palace. He was knighted in 1871 and, in his final years, suffered financial difficulties that led to a support fund under royal patronage. He died suddenly of heart failure.

His legacy rests mainly on his piano music, in which he displayed a light, virtuosic style inherited from Field, Hummel and Weber, and on his editions of Beethoven's works. Much of his piano output was written to commission, although some of his lyrical pieces remain of interest. His biography of Weber, published in 1881, is still an important source for the study of that composer.