Michele Bolaffi

Michele Bolaffi (1768–1842) was an Italian Jewish musician and composer associated with the Livornese synagogue tradition and with a wider European career as a singer and music director. He is best remembered for synagogue compositions that circulated in 19th‑century Italian communities, including a setting of Psalm 121 sung in Florence at Shavuot and Sukkot.

Career and synagogue music​

Bolaffi was active in Livorno in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, a period when the city’s synagogue music blended multiple Sephardic traditions and increasingly adopted choral and instrumental elements. In 1793 he composed music for Simchat Mitzva, a religious drama by Rabbi Daniel Terni written for the inauguration of the new synagogue in Florence. Although the music has not survived, contemporaries described him as a leading musician of the time.

In Livorno, Bolaffi’s compositions were performed well into the 19th century. His synagogue works appear in manuscript collections from other Italian communities, including Casale Monferrato, and two Livornese manuscripts dated 1821 and 1826 preserve a body of his liturgical settings. A later series of fourteen settings from the Sabbath liturgy survives in the Birnbaum Collection in Cincinnati. His setting of Psalm 121 became a standard festival piece in the Florence synagogue.

Secular music and international activity​

Bolaffi also pursued a secular career across Europe. In 1809 he was active in England as Musical Director to the Duke of Cambridge and published a sonnet for voice and keyboard on the death of Joseph Haydn. He later toured in 1816 with the soprano Angelica Catalani, was appointed Königlicher Kapellmeister in Hanover, and served in the court of Louis XVIII in France with the title Musicien de S.M. le Roi de France. His secular works include the opera Saul, a Miserere for three voices and orchestra (1802), and a number of songs and vocal pieces.

Writings and translations​

Alongside his musical output, Bolaffi published Italian translations of major literary and religious works. He produced an Italian adaptation of Solomon ibn Gabirol's Keter Malkhut under the title Teodia (1809), and translations of Jacques Delille (1813) and Voltaire’s Henriade (1816). These works reflect his engagement with both Jewish liturgical tradition and contemporary European literary culture.

Legacy​

Bolaffi’s synagogue compositions mark a transitional moment in Italian Jewish music, when choral and instrumental resources were increasingly incorporated into synagogue practice. While his secular career was peripatetic and unevenly documented, his liturgical settings remained influential in Italian communities and form a significant part of the surviving Livornese musical repertoire.