Licinio Refice

20th century composer Licinio Refice devised a new sacred music style that contained both innovative and conservative elements. His opera Cecilia (1934) gained considerable popularity in its time. Refice was born in Patrica, southeast of Rome, on February 12, 1883. As a child, he played the guitar. Refice studied at seminaries in Ferentino and Anagni in the 1890s, studying music as well as theology. Refice graduated in Anagni with degrees in philosophy (1901) and theology (1905); in the latter year, he was ordained as a priest at the cathedral of Ferentino. He continued to study music, taking classes in harmony and organ. He studied composition at the Liceo Musical of Santa Cecilia in Rome in 1907, and at the Accademia di Santa Cecilia, his motet Ad te, Domine was performed and was noted in the Official Gazette of the Kingdom of Italy. To fulfill the requirements of a composition diploma, Refice composed an oratorio, Chananaea. He was appointed professor at the Scuola Superiore di Musica Sacra in Rome in 1910 and became director of the Cappella musicale liberiana at the famed Santa Maria Maggiore church that same year. In 1912, his Missa Cantate Domino canticum novum was performed. Already in that mass, observers noted elements influenced by opera composer Richard Wagner, something of which church authorities did not always approve. Refice wrote numerous examples of the oratorio, a form that applies dramatic techniques to sacred stories, often using the Italian language instead of Latin as an aid to direct communication. Even his masses were noted for dramatic elements. Some aspects of his sacred music were conservative, though. He observed the reforms propagated by Pope Pius X regarding the revival of the ancient church modes. In 1924, Refice began to compose his opera Cecilia, which he termed, after Baroque practice, an "azione sacra" rather than an opera. The premiere of the opera had to wait until 1934, however, as Refice clashed with authorities over what they saw as neglect of his choir direction duties. When it was finally staged at the Teatro Reale dell'Opera, with opera star Claudia Muzio in the lead role of Saint Cecilia, Refice scored a major success as the opera was performed not only in Italy but in other European countries and was even staged on tour in Argentina and Uruguay. In 1935, Refice composed a song, Ombra di nube, which gained popular success in Italy. Refice wrote a second opera, Margherita da Cortona, in 1938 and began a third, Il Mago, in 1954. That work, however, was cut short by his death in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on September 11, 1954, during rehearsals for a new production of Cecilia, starring soprano Renata Tebaldi. Despite his considerable celebrity, Refice was forgotten after his death, and few of his compositions have been performed or recorded in the 21st century. Cecilia, however, has been recorded multiple times, and soprano Hera Hyesang Park included excerpts from it on her Deutsche Grammophon album Breathe in 2024.
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