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Intermedio
The intermedio (also intromessa, introdutto, tramessa, tramezzo, intermezzo, intermedii), in the Italian Renaissance, was a theatrical performance or spectacle with music and often dance, which was performed between the acts of a play to celebrate special occasions in Italian courts. It was one of the important precursors to opera, and an influence on other forms like the English court masque. Weddings in ruling families and similar state occasions were the usual occasion for the most lavish intermedi, in cities such as Florence and Ferrara. Some of the best documentation of intermedi comes from weddings of the House of Medici, in particular the 1589 Medici wedding (between Christina of Lorraine and Ferdinando I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany), which featured what was undoubtedly both the most spectacular set of intermedi, and the best known, thanks to no fewer than 18 contemporary published festival books and sets of prints that were financed by the Grand Duke. Interm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Masque
The masque was a form of festive courtly entertainment that flourished in 16th- and early 17th-century Europe, though it was developed earlier in Italy, in forms including the intermedio (a public version of the masque was the pageant). A masque involved music, dancing, singing and acting, within an elaborate stage design, in which the architectural framing and costumes might be designed by a renowned architect, to present a deferential allegory flattering to the patron. Professional actors and musicians were hired for the speaking and singing parts. Masquers who did not speak or sing were often courtiers: the English queen Anne of Denmark frequently danced with her ladies in masques between 1603 and 1611, and Henry VIII and Charles I of England performed in the masques at their courts. In the tradition of masque, Louis XIV of France danced in ballets at Versailles with music by Jean-Baptiste Lully. Development The masque tradition developed from the elaborate pageants and co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dafne
''Dafne'' is the earliest known work that, by modern standards, could be considered an opera. The libretto by Ottavio Rinuccini, based on an earlier intermedio created in 1589, "Combattimento di Apollo col serpente Pitone," and set to music by Luca Marenzio, survives complete. The opera is considered to be the first "modern music drama." The mostly lost music was completed by Jacopo Peri, but at least two of the six surviving fragments are by Jacopo Corsi. ''Dafne'' was first performed during Carnival of 1598 (1597 old style) at the Palazzo Corsi. History Most of Peri's music has been lost, despite its popularity and fame in Europe at the time of its composition, but the 455-line verse libretto was published and survives. Florence's ruling Medici family was sufficiently taken with ''Dafne'' to allow Peri's next work, ''Euridice'', to be performed as part of Marie de' Medici and Henry IV's wedding celebrations in 1600. The opera was written for an elite circle of humanists i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jacopo Peri
Jacopo Peri (20 August 156112 August 1633) was an Italian composer, singer and instrumentalist of the late Renaissance music, Renaissance and early Baroque music, Baroque periods. He wrote what is considered the first opera, the mostly lost ''Dafne'' (), and also the earliest extant opera, ''Euridice (Peri), Euridice'' (1600). He is sometimes known by the byname lo Zazzerino (). Life and career Jacopo di Antonio di Franceso Peri was born in either Rome or Florence to a middle-class family. Peri himself claimed to be from Rome, but considering the pro-Roman sentiments of the reigning Ferdinando I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, Fernando de'Medici, it was a disadvantage to be known as a Florentine, which may have motivated Peri to lie about his true birthplace. Nonetheless, he was employed to sing at the Servite monastery of SS. Annunziati in the city of Florence. He likely received an education from the monastery school as well. Due to its size and favour with the Medici cou ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Renaissance Music
Renaissance music is traditionally understood to cover European music of the 15th and 16th centuries, later than the Renaissance era as it is understood in other disciplines. Rather than starting from the early 14th-century ''ars nova'', the music of the Trecento, Trecento music was treated by musicology as a coda to medieval music and the new era dated from the rise of triad (music), triadic harmony and the spread of the ''contenance angloise'' style from the British Isles to the Burgundian School. A convenient watershed for its end is the adoption of basso continuo at the beginning of the Baroque music, Baroque period. The period may be roughly subdivided, with an early period corresponding to the career of Guillaume Du Fay (–1474) and the cultivation of cantilena style, a middle dominated by Franco-Flemish School and the four-part textures favored by Johannes Ockeghem (1410s or '20s–1497) and Josquin des Prez (late 1450s–1521), and culminating during the Counter-Reformat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Isabella D'Este
Isabella d'Este (19 May 1474 – 13 February 1539) was the Marchioness of Mantua and one of the leading women of the Italian Renaissance as a major cultural and political figure. She was a patron of the arts as well as a leader of fashion and her innovative style of dressing was emulated by many women. The poet Ariosto labeled her as the "liberal and magnanimous Isabella", while author Matteo Bandello described her as "supreme among women". Diplomat Niccolò da Correggio went even further by hailing her as "The First Lady of the world". She served as the regent of Mantua during the absence of her husband Francesco II Gonzaga and during the minority of her son Federico. She was a prolific letter-writer and maintained a lifelong correspondence with her sister-in-law Elisabetta Gonzaga. Isabella grew up in a cultured family in the city-state of Ferrara. She received a fine classical education and she met many famous humanist scholars and artists. Due to the vast amount of e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Madrigal Comedy
Madrigal comedy is a term for a kind of entertainment music of the late 16th century in Italy, in which groups of related, generally ''a cappella'' madrigals were sung consecutively, generally telling a story, and sometimes having a loose dramatic plot. It is an important element in the origins of opera. The term is of 20th-century origin, popularised by Alfred Einstein. The first collection of madrigals, sung as a set and telling a coherent (and highly comic) story, was ''Il cicalamento delle donne al bucato'' (the gossip of women at the laundry), by Alessandro Striggio, which was written in 1567. Later madrigal comedies are sometimes divided into acts, including a prologue, and while not "acted" in the sense of an opera, they may have been performed on stage with elaborate painted backdrops (for example, the woodcut showing the prologue of Orazio Vecchi's '' L'Amfiparnaso'' (1597): a singer is evidently in costume in a backdrop showing a city street). Vecchi's direction in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Monody
In music, monody refers to a solo vocal style distinguished by having a single melody, melodic line and instrumental accompaniment. Although such music is found in various cultures throughout history, the term is specifically applied to Italy, Italian song of the early 17th century, particularly the period from about 1600 to 1640. The term is used both for the style and for individual songs (so one can speak both of monody as a whole as well as a particular monody). The term itself is a recent invention of scholars. No composer of the 17th century ever called a piece a monody. Compositions in monodic form might be called madrigal (music), madrigals, motets, or even concertos (in the earlier sense of "concertato", meaning "with instruments"). In poetry, the term monody has become specialized to refer to a poem in which one person laments another's death. (In the context of ancient Greek literature, monody, , could simply refer to lyric poetry sung by a single performer, rather ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Proscenium Arch
A proscenium (, ) is the virtual vertical plane of space in a theatre, usually surrounded on the top and sides by a physical proscenium arch (whether or not truly "arched") and on the bottom by the stage floor itself, which serves as the frame into which the audience observes from a more or less unified angle the events taking place upon the stage during a theatrical performance. The concept of the fourth wall of the theatre stage space that faces the audience is essentially the same. It can be considered as a social construct which divides the actors and their stage-world from the audience which has come to witness it. But since the curtain usually comes down just behind the proscenium arch, it has a physical reality when the curtain is down, hiding the stage from view. The same plane also includes the drop, in traditional theatres of modern times, from the stage level to the "stalls" level of the audience, which was the original meaning of the ''proscaenium'' in Roman theat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roy Strong
Sir Roy Colin Strong, (born 23 August 1935) is an English art historian, museum curator, writer, broadcaster and landscape designer. He has served as director of both the National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Strong was knighted in 1982. Early years Roy Colin Strong was born at Winchmore Hill, London Borough of Enfield (then in Middlesex), the third son of hat manufacturer's commercial traveller George Edward Clement Strong, and Mabel Ada Strong (''née'' Smart). He was raised in "an Enfield terrace sans books, with linoleum 'in shades of unutterable green'", and attended nearby Edmonton County School, a grammar school in Edmonton. Strong graduated with a first class honours degree in history from Queen Mary College, University of London. He then earned his PhD from the Warburg Institute and became a research fellow at the Institute of Historical Research. His passionate interest in the portraiture of Queen Elizabeth I was sidelined "while ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vasari
Giorgio Vasari (30 July 1511 – 27 June 1574) was an Italian Renaissance painter, architect, art historian, and biographer who is best known for his work '' Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects'', considered the ideological foundation of Western art-historical writing, and still much cited in modern biographies of the many Italian Renaissance artists he covers, including Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, although he is now regarded as including many factual errors, especially when covering artists from before he was born. Vasari was a Mannerist painter who was highly regarded both as a painter and architect in his day but rather less so in later centuries. He was effectively what would now be called the minister of culture to the Medici court in Florence, and the ''Lives'' promoted, with enduring success, the idea of Florentine superiority in the visual arts. Vasari designed the ''Tomb of Michelangelo'', his hero, in the Basilica of Santa Cro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eleanor Of Toledo
Eleanor () is a feminine given name, originally from an Old French adaptation of the Old Provençal name ''Aliénor''. It was the name of a number of women of royalty and nobility in western Europe during the High Middle Ages">Provençal dialect">Provençal name ''Aliénor''. It was the name of a number of women of royalty and nobility in western Europe during the High Middle Ages. The name was introduced to England by Eleanor of Aquitaine, who came to marry Henry II of England, King Henry II. It was also borne by Eleanor of Provence, who became queen consort of England as the wife of Henry III of England, King Henry III, and Eleanor of Castile, wife of Edward I. The name was popular in the Anglosphere during the first half of the 20th century, but declined in use until the late 20th century and first decades of the 21st century. It has been a well-used name in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand during the 2020s. Eleanor was the third mos ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cosimo I De' Medici, Grand Duke Of Tuscany
Cosimo I de' Medici (12 June 1519 – 21 April 1574) was the second and last duke of Florence from 1537 until 1569, when he became the first grand duke of Tuscany, a title he held until his death. Cosimo I succeeded his cousin to the duchy. He built the Uffizi (office) to organize his administration, and conquered Siena to consolidate Florence's rule in Tuscany. He expanded the Pitti Palace and most of the Boboli Gardens were also laid out during his reign. Life Rise to power Cosimo was born in Florence on 12 June 1519, the son of the famous condottiere Ludovico de' Medici (known as Giovanni delle Bande Nere) and his wife Maria Salviati, herself a granddaughter of Lorenzo the Magnificent. He was the grandson of Caterina Sforza, the Countess of Forlì and Lady of Imola. Cosimo became Duke of Florence in 1537 at age 17, after the former Duke of Florence, Alessandro de' Medici, was assassinated. Cosimo was from a different branch of the Medici family, descended from ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
