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Calzabigi
Ranieri de' Calzabigi (; 23 December 1714 – July 1795) was an Italian poet and librettist, most famous for his collaboration with the composer Christoph Willibald Gluck on his "reform" operas. Born in Livorno, Calzabigi spent the 1750s in Paris, where he became a close friend of Giacomo Casanova. Here he explored his interest in opera, producing an edition of the works of Pietro Metastasio, the most famous librettist of opera seria. However, Calzabigi was also impressed by French tragédie en musique, and eager to reform Italian opera by making it simpler and more dramatically effective. In 1761 he settled in Vienna, where he met likeminded reformers: Gluck; Count Giacomo Durazzo, the theatre director; Gasparo Angiolini, the choreographer; Giovanni Maria Quaglio, the set designer; and the castrato Gaetano Guadagni. Together they worked on Gluck's groundbreaking ''Orfeo ed Euridice'' in 1762. Calzabigi then wrote the libretto for ''Alceste'', which further abandoned the practices ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Orfeo Ed Euridice
(; French: '; English: ''Orpheus and Eurydice'') is an opera composed by Christoph Willibald Gluck, based on the myth of Orpheus and set to a libretto by Ranieri de' Calzabigi. It belongs to the genre of the '' azione teatrale'', meaning an opera on a mythological subject with choruses and dancing. The piece was first performed at the Burgtheater in Vienna on 5 October 1762, in the presence of Empress Maria Theresa. ''Orfeo ed Euridice'' is the first of Gluck's "reform" operas, in which he attempted to replace the abstruse plots and overly complex music of ''opera seria'' with a "noble simplicity" in both the music and the drama. The opera is the most popular of Gluck's works, and was one of the most influential on subsequent German operas. Variations on its plot—the underground rescue mission in which the hero must control, or conceal, his emotions—can be found in Mozart's ''The Magic Flute'', Beethoven's ''Fidelio'', and Wagner's ''Das Rheingold''. Though originally s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Christoph Willibald Gluck
Christoph Willibald (Ritter von) Gluck (; ; 2 July 1714 – 15 November 1787) was a composer of Italian and French opera in the early classical period (music), classical period. Born in the Upper Palatinate and raised in Bohemia, both part of the Holy Roman Empire at the time, he gained prominence at the House of Habsburg, Habsburg court in Vienna. There he brought about the practical reform of opera's dramaturgical practices for which many intellectuals had been campaigning. With a series of radical new works in the 1760s, among them ''Orfeo ed Euridice'' and ''Alceste (Gluck), Alceste'', he broke the stranglehold that Metastasio, Metastasian ''opera seria'' had enjoyed for much of the century. Gluck introduced more drama by using orchestral recitative and cutting the usually long da capo aria. His later operas have half the length of a typical baroque opera. The strong influence of French opera encouraged Gluck to move to Paris in November 1773. Fusing the traditions of Italian ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gaetano Guadagni
Gaetano Guadagni (16 February 1728 – 11 November 1792) was an Italian mezzo-soprano castrato singer, most famous for singing the role of Orpheus at the premiere of Gluck's opera '' Orfeo ed Euridice'' in 1762. Career Born at Lodi, Guadagni joined the ''cappella'' of Sant'Antonio in Padua in 1746, but also made his public operatic debut at Venice that year, which was not met with ecclesiastical approval: he was dismissed from his position in Padua by 1748, and soon after appeared in London as a member of Giovanni Francesco Crosa ("Dr Croza")'s ''buffo'' (comic) company. He does not appear to have had the typical rigorous training that most castrati undertook (see castrato), which may account for his being described by the music historian Charles Burney as a "wild and careless singer" on his arrival in England. He was rapidly taken up in theatrical and musical circles in the capital, and also acquired a reputation for his sexual activities, as did many castrati. This was repor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Don Juan (ballet)
''Don Juan ou Le Festin de Pierre'' (''Don Juan, or the Stone Guest's Banquet'') is a ballet with a libretto by Ranieri de' Calzabigi, music by Christoph Willibald von Gluck, and choreography by Gasparo Angiolini. The ballet's first performance was in Vienna, Austria on Saturday, 17 October 1761, at the Theater am Kärntnertor. Its innovation in the history of ballet, coming a year before Gluck's radical reform of ''opera seria'' with his '' Orfeo ed Euridice'' (1762), was its coherent narrative element, though the series of conventional '' divertissement'' dances in the second act lies within the well-established ballet tradition of an ''entr'acte'' effecting a pause in the story-telling. The ballet follows the legend of Don Juan and his descent into Hell after killing his ''inamorata's'' father in a duel. Background The ballet ''Don Juan'' was based on Molière's '' Dom Juan ou le Festin de pierre'' of 1665. The 19th movement marked "Moderato" was used by Mozart in the t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pietro Metastasio
Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi (3 January 1698 – 12 April 1782), better known by his pseudonym of Pietro Metastasio (), was an Italian poet and Libretto, librettist, considered the most important writer of ''opera seria'' libretti. Early life Metastasio was born in Rome, where his father, Felice Trapassi, a native of Assisi, had taken service in the Corsican regiment of the papal forces. Felice married a Bolognese woman, Francesca Galasti, and became a grocer in the ''Via dei Cappellari''. The couple had two sons and two daughters; Pietro was the younger son. Pietro, while still a child, is said to have attracted crowds by reciting impromptu verses on a given subject. On one such occasion in 1709, two men of distinction stopped to listen: Giovanni Vincenzo Gravina, famous for legal and literary erudition as well as his directorship of the Academy of Arcadians, Arcadian Academy, and Lorenzini, a critic of some note. Gravina was attracted by the boy's poetic talent and per ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Georgina Schubert
Georgina (or Georgine) Schubert (28 October 1840 – 26 December 1878) was a German coloratura soprano and lieder composer who toured throughout Europe. Life Schubert was born in Dresden to violinist and composer François Schubert and his wife, soprano Maschinka Schubert. She was not related to the better-known composer Franz Schubert. Her maternal grandparents were also musicians: Kapellmeister Georg Abraham Schneider and his wife, Dresden Court Opera singer Caroline Portmann. Schubert’s first teacher was her mother. She later studied with Jenny Lind and Manuel Garcia. Schubert sang at major venues in England (Alexandra Palace and Grosvenor House). She appeared at the Lyric Theater in Paris, and at venues in the Netherlands and throughout Europe. She sang the role of Dinorah in Giacomo Meyerbeer’s ''Le Pardon de Ploermel'' more than 30 times. Compositions Schubert composed at least 12 lieder: * “Ave Maria” (text by Anonymous) * “Barcarole” (text by Carlo Pep ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
La Finta Giardiniera
' ("The Pretend Garden-Girl"), Köchel catalogue, K. 196, is an Italian-language opera by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Mozart wrote it in Munich in January 1775 when he was 18 years old and it received its first performance on 13 January at the in Munich. There is debate over the authorship of the libretto, written for La finta giardiniera (Anfossi), Anfossi's opera the year before. It is often ascribed to Ranieri de' Calzabigi, Calzabigi, but some musicologists now attribute it to Giuseppe Petrosellini, though again it is questioned whether it is in the latter's style. In 1780 Mozart converted the opera into a German Singspiel called ''Die Gärtnerin aus Liebe'' (also ''Die verstellte Gärtnerin''), which involved rewriting some of the music. Until a copy of the complete Italian version was found in the 1970s, the German translation was the only known complete score. Roles Synopsis :Time: 18th century :Place: Podestà's estate in Lagonero, near Milan Summary: The story follows C ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alceste (Gluck)
''Alceste'', Wq. 37 (the later French version is Wq. 44), is an opera by Christoph Willibald Gluck from 1767. The Italian libretto was written by Ranieri de' Calzabigi and based on the play '' Alcestis'' by Euripides. The premiere took place on 26 December 1767 at the Burgtheater in Vienna. The famous preface When Gluck published the score of ''Alceste'' in Vienna in 1769, he added a famous preface in Italian almost certainly written by Calzabigi, which set out their ideals for operatic reform, whose programmatic points follow those exposed by Francesco Algarotti in his ''Saggio sopra l'opera in musica'' (''Essay on opera in music'', 1755), namely: * no da capo arias, * no opportunity for vocal improvisation or virtuosic displays of vocal agility or power, * no long melismas, * a more predominantly syllabic setting of the text to make the words more intelligible, * far less repetition of text within an aria, * a blurring of the distinction between recitative and aria, decl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paride Ed Elena
' (; ''Paris and Helen'') is an opera by Christoph Willibald Gluck. It is the third of Gluck's so-called reform operas for Vienna, following ''Orfeo ed Euridice'' and '' Alceste'', and the least often performed of the three. Like its predecessors, the libretto was written by Ranieri de' Calzabigi. The opera tells the story of the events between the Judgment of Paris and the flight of Paris and Helen to Troy. It was premiered at the Burgtheater in Vienna on 3 November 1770. Roles Synopsis The hero Paris is in Sparta, having chosen Aphrodite above Hera and Athena, sacrificing to Aphrodite and seeking, with the encouragement of Erasto, the love of Helen. Paris and Helen meet at her royal palace and each is struck by the other's beauty. She calls on him to judge an athletic contest and when asked to sing he does so in praise of her beauty, admitting the purpose of his visit is to win her love. She dismisses him. In despair Paris pleads with her, and she begins to give way. E ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Livorno
Livorno () is a port city on the Ligurian Sea on the western coast of the Tuscany region of Italy. It is the capital of the Province of Livorno, having a population of 152,916 residents as of 2025. It is traditionally known in English as Leghorn (pronounced , "Leghorn" in the Oxford Dictionaries Online. or ). During the Italian Renaissance, Renaissance, Livorno was designed as an "ideal town". Developing considerably from the second half of the 16th century by the will of the House of Medici, Livorno was an important free port. Its intense commercial activity was largely dominated by foreign traders. Also the seat of consulates and shipping companies, it became the main port-city of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. The high status of a multiethnic and multicultural Livorno lasted until the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1714 Births
Events January–March * January 21 – After being tricked into deserting a battle against India's Mughal Empire by the rebel Sayyid brothers, Prince Azz-ud-din Mirza is blinded on orders of the Emperor Farrukhsiyar as punishment. * February 7 – The Siege of Tönning (a fortress of the Swedish Empire and now located in Germany in the state of Schleswig-Holstein) ends after almost a year, as Danish forces force the surrender of the remaining 1,600 defenders. The fortress is then leveled by the Danes. * February 28 – (February 17 old style) Russia's Tsar Peter the Great issues a decree requiring compulsory education in mathematics for children of government officials and nobility, applying to children between the ages of 10 and 15 years old. * March 2 – (February 19 old style) The Battle of Storkyro is fought between troops of the Swedish Empire and the Russian Empire, near what is now the village of Napue in Finland. The outnumbered Swedish forces, under the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Opera Seria
''Opera seria'' (; plural: ''opere serie''; usually called ''dramma per musica'' or ''melodramma serio'') is an Italian musical term which refers to the noble and "serious" style of Italian opera that predominated in Europe from the 1710s to about 1770. The term itself was rarely used at the time and only attained common usage once ''opera seria'' was becoming unfashionable and beginning to be viewed as something of a historical genre. The popular rival to ''opera seria'' was ''opera buffa,'' the 'comic' opera that took its cue from the improvisatory commedia dell'arte. An opera seria had a historical or Biblical subject, whereas an opera buffa had a contemporary subject. Italian ''opera seria'' (invariably to Italian libretto, libretti) was produced not only in Italy but almost throughout Europe, and beyond (see Opera in Latin America, Opera in Cuba e. g.). Among the main centres in Europe were the Royal court, court operas based in Warsaw (since 1628), Bavarian State Opera, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
