Museo Giovan Battista Rubini, Romano di Lombardia

The Museum is named after Giovan Battista Rubini, a virtuoso of bel canto, who lived between 1794 and 1854, a son of artists.

After his professional debut at the S. Moisè in Venice in 1815, he moved to Naples, with engagements at the S. Carlo theater. Supported by impresario Barbaya, he quickly obtained important contracts in Vienna and Paris in the mid-1820s, where he established himself as the undisputed interpreter of Rossini’s opera. But it was Vincenzo Bellini’s music that brought Rubini to full maturity: the triumph at La Scala in Milan in 1827 consecrated him as a leading tenor in romantic melodrama.

From the 1830s, the singer went from success to success for fifteen years, touring on the stages of the main European theaters from France, certainly the most frequented country, to England, from Prussia to the Netherlands, from Spain to Russia, with an enviable repertoire capable of spanning from eighteenth-century opera to Rossini’s to the avant-garde compositions of Bellini and Donizetti.

Everything in the house-museum established by the testamentary will of his wife in 1872 speaks of a life devoted to music, from the rich decoration of the rooms to the numerous memorabilia. Naturally, portraits of the tenor are frequent, including two paintings by Pietro Lucchini (1799-1883), a Bergamasco artist well introduced to the musical environment as the brother-in-law of the singer Domenico Donzelli. The older of the two canvases, portraying Rubini in bust at the height of his years, dates back to 1832: executed in Paris, it was exhibited at the Brera Academy in Milan in the same year. Later, in 1850, and also by Lucchini, who evidently maintained lasting relations with the tenor, is the full-length portrait (kept in the Hall of the Pirate) in which Rubini appears with the uniform of Colonel of the Musicians of all the Russias, awarded to him by the Tsar, after successes in Moscow and St. Petersburg. It is a typical set portrait in which every detail, from the piano, to the musical score, to the honors, contributes to creating an image of the tenor in his professional role.

Numerous are the portraits of family members; but the most recurring image is that of the wife, depicted both on canvas, by G. Bonchot in 1828 – the painting is kept in the room called “the Billiard Room” – and in miniature. Comelli is also portrayed, using poorer techniques, in widely distributed repertory images. This is the case with the lithograph in which she appears in stage costume at Rubini’s feet during the interpretation of Bellini’s Pirate, one of her husband’s greatest successes. Among the most precious memorabilia in memory of the joint careers of Adelaide and Giovan Battista Rubini in favor of bel canto deserves mention the beautiful neoclassical-style medal with two profile portraits, made in bronze, silver, and gold, struck by the Philharmonic Union of Bergamo in 1830. Unfortunately, nothing remains of the fabulous Rubini Treasure dispersed at a public auction at the end of the nineteenth century to meet the complex testamentary wishes of Adelaide Comelli, who arranged, honoring her husband’s wishes, the establishment of three demanding institutions – a boys’ orphanage, a secondary school, and a home for music artists. The Treasure, of which there is evidence in the inventories drawn up for the auction, consisted of jewelry and valuables accumulated by the couple throughout their life, marked not only by brilliant professional successes but also by extraordinary economic recognitions.