Marcos Portugal

Early life and education, 1762–1784

Marcos António Portugal was born in Lisbon on 24 March 1762 and was baptized at the Church of Santa Isabel on 20 April. He was the son of Manuel António da Ascensão, a musician at the Patriarchal Church, and Joaquina Teresa Rosa. His paternal great-grandfather had also been a professional musician. The surname Portugal came from his mother's family, whose fuller name was Joaquina Teresa Angélica da Fonseca Portugal.^[6][1]

On 6 August 1771, aged nine, Portugal entered the Royal Patriarchal Seminary as a boarding pupil. The seminary trained boys for the Patriarchal Church and gave its music students instruction in singing, counterpoint, composition, organ, keyboard playing and basso continuo.^[k] Portugal studied with João de Sousa Carvalho and probably with José Joaquim dos Santos. His own catalog begins with a Miserere written in 1776, when he was fourteen. A litany^[l] followed in 1779, and four of his works were performed publicly at the Patriarchal Church between 1780 and 1781.^[7]

Portugal probably completed his studies in 1782. On 17 August that year he was appointed organist of the Patriarchal Church. His first known commission from the royal household, a mass for the feast of Saint Barbara, was performed at the Palace of Queluz in December. He joined Lisbon's Brotherhood of Saint Cecilia as a composer and organist on 23 July 1783.^[8]

Teatro do Salitre and the Lisbon court, 1784–1792

Portugal had probably taken charge of the music at Lisbon's Teatro do Salitre by 1784, although the date of his appointment is unknown. The theater presented comic works in Portuguese that drew on Italian models. Portugal supplied short comedies and intermezzos, followed by the two-act burlettas^[m] A esposa fingida in 1790, Os viajantes ditosos in 1791 and O mundo da lua in 1792. He also wrote pieces for performances marking royal birthdays and other court occasions. His catalog lists eleven such works from 1787 to 1789.^[9]

His theater work did not replace his duties at the Patriarchal Church. His organist's pay continued, and from 1 September 1787 he received an annual supplement of 50,000 réis for his work as a composer. He composed sacred music for the royal chapels at Queluz and Ajuda, including masses written by order of the future John VI, who took charge of the government in 1792. By that year Portugal was working for the church, the public theater and the royal household.^[10]

Career in Italy, 1792–1800

On 11 September 1792 Portugal received a passport for Genoa. It stated that he was traveling through Italy to perfect his art, and he retained his Portuguese court appointments and pay while abroad. He traveled with Giovanni Torriani, an Italian singer who had worked at the Teatro do Salitre. Portugal's Italian career consisted of two stays, from late 1792 to the middle of 1794 and from the summer of 1795 to 1800, separated by about a year in Lisbon.^[11]

His first Italian opera, Le confusioni della somiglianza o siano i due gobbi, opened at the Teatro degli Intrepidi in Florence on 8 May 1793. Productions in Florence, Venice and Milan followed, among them Cinna, Rinaldo d'Aste, Lo spazzacamino principe, Demofoonte and La vedova raggiratrice. Portugal returned to Lisbon in 1794, where he prepared Portuguese versions of Lo spazzacamino principe and Rinaldo d'Aste and wrote music for the royal chapels.^[12]

A second passport, issued on 22 July 1795, named Portugal's wife, Maria Joana Portugal, his sister Clara Fortunata and a servant as his traveling companions. Venice became his main base, with productions also mounted in Naples, Florence, Verona, Ferrara and Milan. His output was concentrated in comic opera, including La donna di genio volubile, Le donne cambiate, L'oro non compra amore and La pazza giornata, ovvero Il matrimonio di Figaro. His final Italian premiere was the serious opera^[n] Idante, first given at La Scala in Milan on 13 February 1800. He had composed twenty-one operas for Italian theaters in less than seven years. Those works soon entered the repertory of opera houses elsewhere in Europe.^[13][3][14]

Return to Lisbon, 1800–1811

Portugal returned to Lisbon in the middle of 1800. On 31 August he conducted Gaetano Andreozzi's La principessa filosofa at the Teatro de São Carlos, where he soon became a music director. He was also appointed master of solfège^[o] at the Royal Patriarchal Seminary on 17 September, at a salary of 50,000 réis a month. The post ended his regular work as an organist, but he continued to compose for the royal household and its chapels.^[15]

At São Carlos, Portugal worked alongside the Italian composer Valentino Fioravanti. From 1803 to the Carnival season of 1807, Portugal was chiefly responsible for serious opera and Fioravanti for comic opera. Portugal wrote ten serious operas for the soprano^[p] Angelica Catalani between 1801 and 1806, including La morte di Semiramide, La morte di Mitridate and Artaserse. Catalani took arias from his operas into her concert repertory and sang them after leaving Portugal, helping to bring the music to audiences in London, Dublin and Paris.^[16]

The prince regent increasingly based his household at the Palace of Mafra from 1806. For services^[q] there, Portugal wrote more than twenty sacred works in 1806 and 1807, scored for the male voices of the Franciscan friars and the palace basilica's six organs. On 18 January 1807 he received the title of Master and Composer of the Royal Chamber. He was never formally appointed master of the Royal Chapel.^[17][18]

When the Portuguese court left for Brazil on 29 November 1807 to escape the French invasion, Portugal remained in Lisbon. The disruption closed the Patriarchal Seminary and halted part of his salary. In August 1808, under the French occupation, a general commissioned him to write a new setting of Demofoonte for Napoleon's birthday. The opera was performed at São Carlos on 15 August, two days before the Anglo-Portuguese victory at Roliça. After the French withdrawal, Portugal directed music for the thanksgiving celebrations held in Lisbon.^[19]

The government first placed Portugal on a list of musicians to be sent to Rio de Janeiro in August 1810. A personal summons from the prince regent followed on 7 January 1811. Portugal sailed from Lisbon in March aboard the frigate Princesa Carlota and reached Rio on 11 June.^[20][21]

The royal court in Rio de Janeiro, 1811–1821

On 23 June 1811, Portugal was confirmed as Master and Composer of the Royal Chamber and music teacher to the prince regent's children. He received 480,000 réis a year for those duties, a housing allowance of 240,000 réis and the salary still attached to his Lisbon seminary post. The royal household also provided a carriage for his teaching visits. Portugal suffered a stroke in October 1811 that impaired one arm, but he resumed his work.^[22]

Portugal did not displace José Maurício Nunes Garcia as master of the Royal Chapel.^[r] Nunes Garcia managed the chapel's personnel and routine services, while Portugal composed and directed music for royal ceremonies and other occasions of the highest rank. Fortunato Mazziotti joined the chapel's leadership in 1816. The familiar story of a personal feud between Portugal and Nunes Garcia first appeared after both men had died.^[23]

An order of 9 October 1811 gave Portugal authority over the music whenever the prince regent attended a public theater. He could choose the work, cast the singers, select the players and supervise rehearsals. The Real Theatro de São João opened in 1813 and staged operas he had written in Europe. He composed little new theatrical music in Rio. His stage works there included the short Portuguese farce A saloia namorada in 1812 and L'augurio di felicità, written for the 1817 marriage celebrations of Prince Pedro and Archduchess Leopoldina.^[24]

For his lessons, Portugal assembled a Breve e facil rezumo de todas as regras da cantoria and solfeggio exercises for the royal children. The teaching material drew on excerpts from his operas and included short songs and instrumental pieces. Copies made for the lessons bear the names of Pedro and the princesses Maria Isabel, Maria Francisca de Assis and Isabel Maria.^[18]

Sacred and ceremonial music formed the larger part of his new output in Rio. He wrote works for the Royal Chapel, the acclamation^[s] of John VI on 6 February 1818 and other state and dynastic ceremonies. A second stroke in late 1816 or early 1817 again interrupted his work. On 12 October 1820, John VI granted him a commandery^[t] in the Order of Christ, with an annual income of 16,000 réis. Portugal remained in Rio when the king and much of the court sailed for Lisbon on 26 April 1821. Why he stayed is unknown.^[25]

Imperial Brazil and final years, 1821–1830

Portugal continued to serve Prince Pedro, who declared Brazilian independence in 1822 and became emperor as Pedro I. By remaining in the country, Portugal became a Brazilian citizen under the Constitution of 1824. His known works from the decade include a setting of Evaristo da Veiga's Hino da Independência do Brasil and the Missa breve, written by imperial order in December 1824.^[26][27]

A decree of 10 December 1824 confirmed Portugal as music teacher to the imperial family from 1 January 1825, with an annual salary of 480,000 réis. He also received 625,000 réis for work connected with the Imperial Chapel. He taught Pedro's daughters, including the future Maria II of Portugal and Januária, and continued to direct music for imperial ceremonies. An English visitor, Robert Walsh, saw him giving Januária a lesson in April 1829.^[28][18]

Portugal died after a third stroke at his home in Rua do Lavradio, Rio de Janeiro, on 17 February 1830. He was buried the next day at the Convent of Santo António, dressed in the robes of a knight of the Order of Christ.^[29]

Dramatic works

Sacred music

Lisbon and Mafra

Portugal began writing for the Patriarchal Church while he was a pupil at its seminary. His early church music normally uses four-part mixed voices and basso continuo, alternating solo or small-group passages with the full choir. He also wrote in the contrapuntal stile pieno^[ab] when the service called for it, as in an eight-voice Dixit Dominus of 1781. The psalm settings join that training in counterpoint to close treatment of Latin accent and syntax. Instrumental scoring depended on the chapel and occasion. Some royal services used an orchestra, while works for Queluz could use two cellos, two bassoons and organ or voices with continuo alone.^[35]

The Missa Grande in E-flat, probably written between 1782 and 1790 for Queluz, is an early example of his large concerted style.^[ac] It calls for six soloists, choir and orchestra, sets an extended Gloria in contrasting movements, and uses fugue^[ad] in the choral writing. Portugal later reduced the orchestral version for organ or continuo. The alternative scoring made the work usable by a royal chapel, parish church or provincial ensemble.^[36]

At Mafra, Portugal wrote about thirty works between 1804 and November 1807, chiefly during the court's residence there in 1806 and 1807. They were scored for the male voices of the Arrábida friars and the basilica's six organs. The music includes masses, psalms and matins.^[ae] Portugal later recast thirteen Mafra pieces for the Royal Chapel in Rio, replacing the all-male voices and organ ensemble with mixed voices and orchestra, or with the smaller combination of two cellos, two bassoons and organ.^[37]

Secular vocal, ceremonial and pedagogical music

Keyboard and organ music

Portugal's keyboard music is found in six manuscripts. A nineteenth-century manuscript titled Sonata e variações contains three separate pieces, a sonata in D major, a rondo in C major and a theme with six variations in E-flat major.^[aq] An organ sonata in D major was probably written during the first decade of the nineteenth century. The Sinfonia para seis órgãos adapts the overture to L'oro non compra amore for the six organs of the Basilica of Mafra. It was probably prepared for Mafra in 1806 or 1807, although Portugal's authorship of the arrangement cannot be confirmed. The other manuscripts contain two overture reductions and ten motivos prepared for the royal children, as well as two minuets,^[ar] one for four hands and one for solo keyboard.^[49]

Contemporary European reception

Portugal's first Italian opera, Le confusioni della somiglianza o siano i due gobbi, opened in Florence in May 1793. The Gazzetta Universale reported repeated applause and encores. Before the end of the year, the opera had reached nine other Italian cities and Dresden. Barcelona, Corfu and Vienna followed in 1794, and German performances continued into the 1810s. Lo spazzacamino principe drew such enthusiasm at the Teatro San Moisè in Venice in 1794 that the management restored it after an attempted replacement. Productions reached Lisbon, Barcelona, Saint Petersburg, Hamburg, Leipzig and London, and the opera returned to Milan in 1819.^[4]

The Venetian run of La donna di genio volubile began uncertainly in 1796. Portugal and librettist Giovanni Bertati replaced the entire second act after the first three performances, and the revised opera received another 39 performances by 9 December. It became the most widely staged opera of his Italian period. Le donne cambiate received 52 performances from October to December 1797 and another 14 during the following Carnival. These figures did not mean that later audiences heard the original works unchanged. Companies translated texts, cut numbers, added arias and expanded one-act farsas. A review of Le donne cambiate in Dresden in 1800, for example, praised a version with additions by the local composer Adalbert Gestewitz.^[4]

London critics disagreed about Le confusioni when it arrived in March 1796. The Times found little musical or theatrical appeal, while the Morning Chronicle praised its tuneful and accessible writing. The singer Angelica Catalani brought Portugal a warmer London reception after 1806. She made "Son regina" from La morte di Semiramide, "Frenar vorrei le lagrime" and "Per queste amare lacrime" regular parts of her stage and concert repertory. Reviews usually concentrated on Catalani's vocal and dramatic command, so Portugal's standing there depended heavily on her performances.^[4]

Parisian audiences were cooler. Five of his operas reached the city, but early runs were short and critics compared them unfavourably with works by Paisiello and Cimarosa. Reviewers nonetheless praised individual ensembles, melodic writing and orchestral detail. Parisian productions were often heavily cut or filled with music by other composers, which limits what their reviews can show about Portugal's scores. La donna di genio volubile and La morte di Semiramide received longer runs in the 1810s, the latter again with Catalani.^[4]

Portugal was proposed as a foreign correspondent of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in April 1816, after its secretary wrote that French composers ranked him among the artists who honored their art. He lost the election to the painter Charles Thévenin. The frequent claim that the Académie elected Portugal arose from later biographies and inscriptions.^[50]

Reception in Portugal and Brazil

Reports dating back to 1817, praised Marcos work in the Lusophone world and beyond, particularly the operas performed by Catalani. Adrien Balbi similarly praised his gift for melody and his success in Italy in 1822. Vincent Novello later recalled that Portugal's masses and other sacred works were regularly performed in Lisbon and Brazil before 1830. He particularly remembered the enthusiastic reception of a Mass in G major at the chapel of the Portuguese embassy in London, where he had served as organist.^[50]

The response in Rio did not match the hostile image published decades afterward. An obituary in the Diário Fluminense on 5 March 1830 called Marcos Portugal a faithful friend, an enemy of intrigue and a teacher who had worked for the "glory of Brazil". It predicted that his death would remain an object of "justa saudade", or rightful remembrance. At the coronation of Pedro II in 1841, his name was included in the temporary "Gallery of the Amazon" among figures honored for their work in Brazil. His music also remained in the Imperial Chapel. After an Easter performance of Victimae paschali in 1851, the Correio da Tarde wrote that the piece still pleased listeners more than thirty years after its composition.^[51]

Opera and church music then followed different paths. European theaters had largely stopped mounting Portugal's operas by the 1820s. Copies, arrangements and four nineteenth-century print editions kept parts of the sacred repertory in circulation, chiefly in Portugal and Brazil. Church performances continued into the second decade of the twentieth century.^[4][52]

Personal life and death

Portugal was married to Maria Joana Portugal. His passport of 22 July 1795 is the earliest known reference to her. She survived him and petitioned Pedro I for a pension on 26 March 1830, writing that her husband's death had left her without adequate support. No children are securely documented.^[53]

In 1928 his remains were sent from the Convent of Saint Anthony in Rio to Lisbon for burial in the National Pantheon. Newspaper articles at the time disputed his character and patriotism, and the government postponed the burial. The urn was placed in the Church of Santa Isabel in 1931, the Lisbon parish where he had been baptized.^[50]

Historiography and the José Maurício narrative

The familiar story of a personal contest between Portugal and José Maurício can be traced to an article published in Paris in 1834 by Manuel de Araújo Porto-Alegre, Francisco de Sales Torres Homem and Gonçalves de Magalhães. It presented the untravelled Brazilian as a youthful genius opposed by a jealous Portuguese court composer whose church and theater styles were indistinguishable. Porto-Alegre gave a less coherent account in 1856. He called Portugal jealous in his dealings with Sigismund von Neukomm and Francisco Manuel da Silva, but also called him José Maurício's defender and friend. Writers from the late nineteenth century onward turned these passages and the hostile private letters of the librarian Luís Joaquim dos Santos Marrocos into a simpler opposition between a wronged Brazilian and a privileged Portuguese.^[51]

José Maurício faced racial and social discrimination as a man of mixed ancestry born in Rio, while Portugal had the advantages of being white, European-born and close to the royal family. Portugal did not arrive in 1811 to take a single musical office held by José Maurício. Court music was divided among chapel, chamber and theater. José Maurício was confirmed in November 1808 as music master and organist of the Royal Chapel, with responsibility for teaching. Portugal arrived as composer of the Royal Chamber and music master to the royal children. Bernardo José de Souza Queiroz and Fortunato Mazziotti had already joined court and theater music in 1809 and 1810.^[5]

Portugal received dynastic commissions and supervised theater performances attended by the royal family. José Maurício's dated compositions decline in number in 1811, partly because Portugal assumed some of the court's demand for new music. Much of José Maurício's music is undated, and he kept his chapel office, salary and other musical work. He directed court musicians at public religious ceremonies in 1816 and 1819. No appointment made Portugal master of the Royal Chapel on his arrival. Official notices called him "Mestre de Suas Altezas Reais", or music master to the royal children. The 1829 almanac and chapel payroll are the first documents to give him the chapel-master title.^[5][51]

There was professional competition. An anonymous report in the Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung in 1820 said that Portugal was reluctant to allow other music beside his own. The same report noted a successful performance of Mozart's Requiem and preparations by Neukomm and José Maurício for Haydn's The Creation. A German visitor heard masses by Mozart, Portugal and Neukomm at the chapel in 1819. Their duties overlapped, access to patronage was unequal and tension sometimes arose. Their private relationship is unknown, and the personal feud found in histories published after 1890 cannot be verified.^[51][5]

Another line of error began with François-Joseph Fétis. His widely read Biographie universelle des musiciens gave Portugal the false family name Simão, sent him to a Lisbon convent and Madrid, moved his first Italian journey to 1787, made him a royal chapel master, placed him on the court's voyage to Brazil in 1807 and returned him to Lisbon before his death. Porto-Alegre published Portugal's own work list in 1859. Inocêncio Francisco da Silva used it and other documents to refute Fétis in 1868. Joaquim de Vasconcelos and Ernesto Vieira added information but repeated parts of the older account. Manoel Pereira Peixoto d'Almeida Carvalhaes's study of the dramatic music in 1910, with a supplement in 1916, supplied the first sustained documentary study of the operas.^[50]

Modern scholarship, editions and revivals

The Marcos Portugal Project at NOVA University Lisbon's Centre for the Study of the Sociology and Aesthetics of Music, known as CESEM, has cataloged sources, prepared editions and organized conferences and performances. The 250th anniversary of Portugal's birth in 2012 brought a 26-chapter edited volume, António Jorge Marques's thematic catalog of the sacred music and a 302-page exhibition catalog from the National Library of Portugal.^{[50][54][55][56]}

Critical editions have returned large sacred works to concert use. Marques edited the Missa Grande in 2009. The Chorus of the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos and the Portuguese Symphony Orchestra performed its complete original orchestral version at the Centro Cultural de Belém in 2014 under Pedro Neves. In 2017 the National Library, CESEM and the Lisbon Chamber Choir issued critical editions of four sacred works that had been printed in the nineteenth century. The same musicians recorded them for a disc released in 2019.^[50][57][52]

Stage revivals have drawn on new performing editions. Bampton Classical Opera gave the first production of La pazza giornata, ovvero Il matrimonio di Figaro since 1800 in 2010, using an edition prepared by a Lisbon university team led by David Cranmer, and returned to it at the Buxton Festival in 2012. CESEM and the University of São Paulo mounted the Portuguese O basculho de chaminé in Ribeirão Preto in 2013. The work was staged at the Casa da Ópera in Ouro Preto in 2022 through a partnership involving the Funarte and the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. In 2023 the Baroque Orchestra of Mateus mounted the Portuguese version of As damas trocadas from the manuscript parts held at the Ducal Palace of Vila Viçosa.^{[58][59][60][61]}

Dramatic works

Sacred and ceremonial works

The selected sacred works run from Portugal's first dated composition in 1776 to his last dated score in December 1824. MarP numbers use António Jorge Marques's thematic catalog.^[30][37]

Portugal also composed secular music for royal birthdays, military events, dynastic ceremonies and the independence of Brazil. Four ceremonial hymns are extant.^[43]