NEW YORK (NYT NEWS SERVICE ).- Composer Gaspare Spontini wasn’t known for his modesty.

In 1844, at 70, he traveled to Dresden, Germany, to conduct his opera “La Vestale” at the invitation of the young Richard Wagner. The older composer discouraged Wagner from a career as a dramatic artist, saying that he, Spontini, had brought the art of opera to such heights that any attempt to follow him could only have “ruinous consequences.”

But Wagner later wrote that, despite Spontini’s vanity, the meeting only raised his “high esteem for the master.” Berlioz, too, was a passionate admirer who devoted two chapters to Spontini in “Evenings with the Orchestra.”

In those days, Spontini was at the apogee of the opera world. Yet his reputation faded, along with those of other grand-opera stars.

“La Vestale,” a spectacular success at its 1807 premiere in Paris, has kept Spontini’s name alive, if barely. Maria Callas had a triumph in the title role at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan in the 1950s, and Riccardo Muti chose the opera to open that theater’s 1993-94 season.

“Spontini is one of my two gods, together with Cherubini,” Muti said in a telephone interview.

His admiration may be spreading. Last year, “Agnes von Hohenstaufen” was presented in Erfurt, Germany. In October, the Teatro del Maggio Musicale in Florence offered a rare staging of “Fernand Cortez,” and a new production of “La Vestale” just closed at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna. “Olimpie” has recently been excellently recorded, with Jérémie Rhorer conducting.

Spontini attended conservatory in Naples but, according to Berlioz, taught himself by studying Gluck’s scores. Unlike other Italian opera composers who came to Paris, he was little known on his arrival, in 1803, but soon he acquired the backing of Empress Josephine, who was instrumental in bringing “La Vestale” to the stage.

“We have an excellent idea of who Napoleon was from an artistic perspective because of painters such as David,” said Jean-Luc Tingaud, who conducted “Fernand Cortez.” “Spontini offers an opportunity for a similar understanding of Napoleon through music.”

When the victorious Roman general Licinius, in “La Vestale,” returns home to popular acclaim, a stirring chorus honors him while simultaneously reminding audiences of Napoleon’s military triumphs. “With Spontini, the chorus is no longer decorative or secondary,” said Patrick Barbier, a scholar of the composer, “but an essential protagonist.”

“La Vestale” has an aura of Gluckian Neo-Classicism, but, Muti said, is also “charged by flashes of Romanticism.” While the recitatives look back to the 18th century, other passages anticipate Berlioz and the grand opera of Meyerbeer. And Muti believes that Spontini’s mastery of large musical structures directly influenced Wagner.

Berlioz documented Spontini’s skills as an orchestrator. “His writing for winds and percussion is especially striking,” said Tingaud. Muti mentioned a celebrated passage from “Agnes” in which Spontini evokes the sound of an organ by cleverly scoring music for stage band.

Napoleon dictated the subject of Spontini’s next opera after “La Vestale.” Thinking that a music drama could bolster support for his Iberian campaign, he directed that a libretto about Hernán Cortés’s Mexican conquest be prepared and that Spontini write the music. The idea was that audiences would recognize in Cortés a liberator in the Napoleonic mold.

But the propagandistic content of “Fernand Cortez” seriously misfired. The Iberian campaign bogged down, and audiences identified Cortés with the courage of Napoleon’s opponents. The opera was ordered withdrawn, although it triumphed in a revised form in 1817, after Napoleon was sent into exile.

The Florence production revealed “Fernand Cortez” to be uneven — Act I is overweighted with ballet — but possessed of enough strong scenes to more than justify its revival. A heroic aura is never far away, but Italianate lyricism enriches the personal drama of Cortés and his Mexican lover, Amazily, while choral writing colorfully differentiates Spaniards and Mexicans. More than once, I was reminded of Berlioz’s “Les Troyens.”

The straightforward production, by Cecilia Ligorio, dealt astutely with the question of how to characterize Cortés, a figure now deplored as a brutal colonialist but revered as a hero when the opera was written. Ligorio essentially preserved the opera’s favorable portrayal of Cortés, but enlisted Cortés’ confidant, Moralez, as a silent conduit for dissent. At the beginning of acts and during the final ballet, texts drawn from or inspired by contemporaneous writers attacking Cortés’ fanaticism were projected as if they were Moralez’s thoughts, offsetting the laudatory libretto.

Spontini wrote one more grand opera for Paris, “Olimpie,” but a year after its unsuccessful 1819 premiere, he became general music director in Berlin. There, German Romantic opera was taking root, especially in works by Weber. After producing two operas on lighter subjects, Spontini made his mark in 1829 with “Agnes von Hohenstaufen,” a “grosse historische-romantische Oper” set in the Middle Ages. The hostilities he faced in Paris, however, persisted in Berlin and impeded the success of what Spontini considered his masterpiece. He eventually returned, disappointed, to Italy, where he died in 1851.

Muti pointed out that Spontini’s nationality counted against him. “The Germans wanted one of their own as their leading opera composer,” he said, “not an Italian who made his reputation in France.”

But Muti offered a tantalizing morsel. “It is possible,” he said, “that before I disappear from this planet, I will conduct ‘Agnes von Hohenstaufen’ with the original German text.”

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