O opera
The musician who introduced the folk song to the Croatian opera.
Jakov Gotovac was a Croatian composer whose most famous work is the opera "Ero s onoga svijeta" from 1935. This most popular Croatian opera has been performed more than seven hundred times, has been translated into nine languages and performed in more than eighty countries around the world.
Gotovac was born in Split, where he completed his primary education and classical high school. At the age of fourteen, he started learning to play the cello. Although he was extremely musically talented, he enrolled at the Faculty of Law in Zagreb at the persuasion of his father. Staying in Zagreb, he secretly attends composition and music theory classes. Then he became interested in theater. With the beginning of the First World War, he was mobilized together with other young men. However, due to the fact that he suffered from scoliosis, he was spared military duty, after which he returned to Split.
During his studies, he composed his first musical works. In 1914, the Lisinski choir performed his first composition called "Tantum ergo". He is a representative of national musical realism, and he often used folk texts for his vocal works.
His most important works are the folk rite "Koleda" (1925) and "Symphonic Circle" (1926), and he also created stage music for Gundulić's "Dubravka" (1926). Among the folk operas, the already mentioned "Ero s onoga svijeta" and "Morana" (1930) are the most famous. From 1923 to 1958, he was an opera conductor in Zagreb, and he also led the "Vladimir Nazor" singing group.
He was a regular member of the Yugoslav Academy of Sciences and Arts, and in 1964 he was awarded the "Vladimir Nazor Award" for life's work.
