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Gennaro Manna
Gennaro Manna (12 December 1715 - 28 December 1779) was an Italian composer based in Naples. He was a member of the Neapolitan School. His compositional output includes 13 operas and more than 150 sacred works, including several oratorios. Life The son of Giuseppe Maria Manna and Caterina Feo (sister of the composer Francesco Feo), he received his musical training at the in Naples, where his uncle Francesco Feo was ''primo maestro''. He made his operatic debut at the Teatro Argentina in Rome with ''Tito Manlio'' on 21 January 1742. Thanks to its success, he received a new commission from the Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo in Venice for the carnival of the following year, where he gave ''Siroe re di Persia''. After his return to Naples, he composed ''Festa teatrale per la nascita dell'Infante'' with Nicola Bonifacio Logroscino, which was never staged. In 1744, he was appointed ''maestro di cappella'' of the Senate of Naples, succeeding Domenico Sarro, and in January 1745, w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Naples
Naples ( ; ; ) is the Regions of Italy, regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 908,082 within the city's administrative limits as of 2025, while its Metropolitan City of Naples, province-level municipality is the third most populous Metropolitan cities of Italy, metropolitan city in Italy with a population of 2,958,410 residents, and the List of urban areas in the European Union, eighth most populous in the European Union. Naples metropolitan area, Its metropolitan area stretches beyond the boundaries of the city wall for approximately . Naples also plays a key role in international diplomacy, since it is home to NATO's Allied Joint Force Command Naples and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Mediterranean. Founded by Greeks in the 1st millennium BC, first millennium BC, Naples is one of the oldest continuously inhabited urban areas in the world. In the eighth century BC, a colony known as Parthenope () was e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Naples Cathedral
The Naples Cathedral (; ), or the Cathedral of the Assumption of Mary (), is a Roman Catholic cathedral, the main church of Naples, southern Italy, and the seat of the Archbishop of Naples. It is widely known as the Cathedral of Saint Januarius (), in honour of Saint Januarius, the city's patron saint. History The present cathedral in Capetian House of Anjou, Angevin Gothic style () was commissioned by King Charles I of Anjou. Construction continued during the reign of his successor, Charles II of Naples, Charles II (1285–1309) and was completed in the early 14th century under Robert of Anjou. It was built on the foundations of two palaeo-Christian basilicas, whose traces can still be clearly seen. Underneath the building excavations have revealed Greek and Roman artifacts. The Archbishop's Palace (Naples), Archbishop's Palace adjoins the cathedral. Interior and artwork The cathedral gives access to the archaeological remains in the crypt of the neighbouring original palaeoch ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Teatro Regio Di Torino
The Teatro Regio (Royal Theatre) is a prominent opera house and opera company in Turin, Piedmont, Italy. Its season runs from October to June with the presentation of eight or nine operas given from five to twelve performances of each. Several buildings provided venues for operatic productions in Turin from the mid-16th century, but it was not until 1713 that a proper opera house was considered, and under the architect Filippo Juvarra planning began. However, the cornerstone was not laid until the reign of Charles Emmanuel III in 1738 after Juvarra's death. The work was supervised by Benedetto Alfieri until the theatre was completed and decorated by Bernardino Galliari. Puccini premiered his ''La Bohème'' in 1896 in the Teatro Regio. Teatro Regio, 1740 to 1936 The Teatro Regio (Royal Theatre) was inaugurated on 26 December 1740 with Francesco Feo's ''Arsace''. It was a sumptuously built facility, seating 1,500 and with 139 boxes located on five tiers plus a gallery. Howe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Annibale Pio Fabri
Annibale Pio Fabri (1697 in Bologna – 12 August 1760 in Lisbon), also known as ''Balino'', from ''Annibalino'', diminutive of his first name, was an Italian singer and composer of the 18th century. One of the leading tenors of his age in a time dominated by the castrati, Fabri is now best known for his association with the composer George Frideric Handel, in whose operas Fabri sang. Early career He was one of many famous pupils of the composer, singer and teacher Francesco Pistocchi. His dramatic career began in 1711 in Rome, and during the course of the decade he sang at Venice, Bologna, and Mantua, creating, among others, the title role in Vivaldi's ''L'incoronazione di Dario''. He joined the ''Accademia Filarmonica'' of Bologna as a composer of oratorio ''circa'' 1719 and was named its ''Principal'', or president, in 1725, 1729, 1745, 1747, and 1750. During the 1720s he reached the upper echelons of the Italian singers of the time, singing in works by Leonardo Vinci and Domen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Apostolo Zeno
Apostolo Zeno (11 December 1668 – 11 November 1750) was a Venetian poet, librettist, journalist, and man of letters. Early life Apostolo Zeno was born in Venice to a Kingdom of Candia#Establishment_of_Venetian_rule, colonial branch of the Zeno family, an ancient Venetian patrician family. His family had been transplanted from Venice to the Kingdom of Candia in the 13th century in order to maintain Venetian order and suppress any rebellious subjects. Following the Siege of Candia, assault on the island by the Ottoman Empire, the remaining members of his family returned to Venice. Upon return they were not readmitted to the patrician class, but were only able to obtain status as ordinary citizens. His father was Pietro Zeno, a doctor of medicine, and his mother, Caterina Sevasto, belonged to an illustrious and powerful family from Heraklion, Candia, Crete. Having lost his father at an early age, he was left to the care of his mother, who remarried to Venetian senator Pier Ant ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ranieri De' 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 prac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leonardo Vinci
Leonardo Vinci (1690 – 27 May 1730) was an Italian Baroque composer known chiefly for his 40 or so operas; comparatively little of his work in other genres survives. A central proponent of the Neapolitan School of opera, his influence on subsequent opera composers such as Johann Adolph Hasse and Giovanni Battista Pergolesi was considerable. Life and career He was born at Strongoli and educated at Naples under Gaetano Greco in the Conservatorio dei Poveri di Gesù Cristo. He first became known for his ''opere buffe'' (comic operas) in the Neapolitan language in 1719; he also composed many '' opere serie'' (dramatic operas). He was received into the Congregation of the Rosary, a lay religious and burial fraternity, at Formiello in 1728. He died in May 1730. Vinci is rumoured to have been poisoned by a jealous husband in the wake of an ill-advised affair, a story which is given by several reliable authorities without evident contradictions. Music Vinci's ''opere buffe, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Artaserse (Vinci)
''Artaserse'' is an opera (''dramma per musica'') in three acts composed by Leonardo Vinci to an Italian libretto by Pietro Metastasio. This was the first of many musical settings of Metastasio's libretto Artaserse. Vinci and Metastasio were known to have collaborated closely for the world premiere of the opera in Rome. This was the last opera Vinci composed before his death, and also considered to be his masterpiece. It is known among Baroque opera enthusiasts for its florid vocal lines and taxing tessituras. It premiered during the carnival season on 4 February 1730 at the Teatro delle Dame in Rome. As women were banned from the opera stage in Rome in the 18th century, all the female roles in the original production were taken up by castrati. However, subsequent 18th-century productions outside Rome included women in the cast. ''Artaserse'' continued to be popular for a while after Vinci's death, but has since faded into obscurity. The first modern revival of ''Artaserse'' was ... [...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] |
Galant Music
In music, galant refers to the style which was fashionable in the upper-class societies of Western Europe from the 1720s to the 1770s. On the other hand, the term found a narrowing in musicology in the 19th and 20th centuries: the focus is on compositions that can be seen as moving away from the Baroque in its more rhetorical formal language, but which at the same time only display qualities that can be attributed to the pre-classical period to a limited extent. At this point, the galant style can be seen as a step towards the formally freer, sensitive style, '' Empfindsamkeit,'' that prepared the early classical period. Music styles This movement featured a return to simplicity and immediacy of appeal after the complexity of the late Baroque era. This meant simpler, more song-like melodies, decreased use of polyphony, short, periodic phrases, a reduced harmonic vocabulary emphasizing tonic and dominant, and a clear distinction between soloist and accompaniment. C. P. E. Bach a ... [...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] |
Opera Buffa
Opera buffa (, "comic opera"; : ''opere buffe'') is a genre of opera. It was first used as an informal description of Italian comic operas variously classified by their authors as ''commedia in musica'', ''commedia per musica'', ''dramma bernesco'', ''dramma comico'', ''divertimento giocoso''. Especially associated with developments in Naples in the first half of the 18th century, whence its popularity spread to Rome and northern Italy, ''buffa'' was at first characterized by everyday settings, local dialects, and simple vocal writing (the basso buffo is the associated voice type), the main requirement being clear diction and facility with patter song, patter. ''The New Grove Dictionary of Opera'' considers ''La Cilla'' (music by Michelangelo Faggioli, text by , 1706) and Luigi Ricci (composer), Luigi and Federico Ricci's'' Crispino e la comare'' (1850) to be the first and last appearances of the genre, although the term is still occasionally applied to newer work (for example E ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
