Crossword-Solution: PONCHIELLI 10 letters, 1 clue 🏆 scrabble score: 17

Then he set to work upon a two-act opera, "Il Filanda." His uncle died, and a Count Florestan (here is another Beethovenian echo!) sent him to the Conservatory at Milan, where, like nearly all of his native contemporaries, he imbibed knowledge (and musical ideas) from Ponchielli.

The story is not as filthy as the other plots rehearsed elsewhere, but in it there is the same striving after sharp ("piquant," some will say) contrasts, the blending of things sacred and profane, the mixture of ecclesiastical music and dances, and--what is most significant--the generous use of the style of melody which came in with Ponchielli and his pupils.

This notion, equally convenient to an indolent man or a colossal egoist--I do not believe that Boito is either--has been nurtured by many pretty stories; but, unhappily, we have had nothing to help us to form an opinion of Boito as a creative artist since "Mefistofele" appeared, except the opera books written for Verdi and Ponchielli and the libretto of "Ero e Leandro." Boito's father was an Italian, his mother a Pole.

The score of "La Gioconda" is full of ingeniously applied harmonical and orchestral devices, but they are all such as were learned from Ponchielli's great predecessor and successor, Verdi.

Ponchielli makes a little use of a recurring melodic phrase from La Cieca's "Voce di donna," but he pursues the device even less consistently than Verdi, and in a manner that is older than Meyerbeer.