Antonio Bagioli - Coming To America

Coming To America

In 1832 Bagioli was appointed "gran maestro" (or conductor, or musical director) of the Italian opera company of Giacomo Montresor, a French tenor. This company was the first (or second) Italian opera company to ever visit the United States, and traveled to New York with the company. There, Bagioli called on Lorenzo Da Ponte, the noted music teacher, who had worked as Mozart's librettist on such works as The Marriage of Figaro, and who held the chair of Italian Literature at Columbia College (later Columbia University). Da Ponte's son, also named Lorenzo, and sometimes called Lorenzo the Younger, was a professor at New York University. There Bagioli met Maria (or Eliza) Cooke (1819–1894), who was the adopted and alleged "natural" child of Lorenzo Da Ponte, who would have been about 70 when he fathered her. Maria was from Croton Falls, in Westchester County, New York.

After a critically successful (but perhaps not financially successful) season the opera troupe went to Havana, Cuba, but Bagioli stayed in New York City, having apparently fallen in love with Maria, then still an adolescent and Da Ponte's ward. While courting Maria Cooke, Bagioli composed the score for Da Ponte's Hymn to America, with which he would later always open and close concerts. Sources place their marriage at about 1834. At about this time, Baglioli moved into the Da Ponte household and began to establish himself as a voice instructor. Their daughter, Teresa was born in 1836, when Maria was 17. During the rest of the 1830s, Bagioli's popularity and influence as a conductor and composer, as well as a voice instructor, was on the increase. His American students became well known performers, and Bagioli has been credited by some with spreading the popularity of Italian song and opera throughout America. He continued to work as an orchestral conductor as well.