|
Santa Stella
Santa Stella (c. 1686 – 18 September 1759) was an Italian soprano. She was also known as Santa Stella Scarabelli and after her marriage to Antonio Lotti on 12 February 1714 as Santa Lotti or La Santini. Life Early career Her birthplace and origins are unknown, but her stage debut as Santa Stella was as Silene in Antonio Caldara's opera ''Gli equivoci del sembiante'', which opened the 1703 carnival season at the Teatro Nuovo in Casale Monferrato. In 1704 she took the lead role in the premiere of ''Il gran Pompeo'' (an opera by an unknown composer) at the same theatre. She sang in Genoa in 1705 and in various productions at Venice's Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo and Teatro San Cassiano between 1706 and 1708, almost always taking the lead role or primadonna part. From 1706 to 1714 she also appeared as a singer for the ''camera del duca di Mantova'' in ''La Partenope'' by Antonio Caldara. In 1707 she also appeared in that work at Venice's Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo. No sources su ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antonio Lotti
Antonio Lotti (5 January 1667 – 5 January 1740) was an Italian composer of the Baroque era. Biography Lotti was born in Venice, although his father Matteo was ''Kapellmeister'' at Hanover at the time. Oral tradition says that in 1682, Lotti began studying with Lodovico Fuga and Giovanni Legrenzi, both of whom were employed at St Mark's Basilica, Venice's principal church, although there is no documentary evidence. Venice Lotti made his career at St Mark's, first as an alto singer (from 1689), then as assistant to the second organist, then as second organist (from 1692), then (from 1704) as first organist, and finally (from 1736) as ''maestro di cappella'', a position he held until his death. Because of the paucity of solid scholarship until recent decades, older reference books cite a good deal of misinformation regarding Lotti's biography. Cicogna's 1834 Delle inscrizioni Veneziane and Francesco Caffi’s 1854 ''Storia della Musica'' relied on oral tradition more than a centu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maria Josepha Of Austria
Maria Josepha of Austria (Maria Josepha Benedikta Antonia Theresia Xaveria Philippine, , ; 8 December 1699 – 17 November 1757) was the List of Polish consorts, Queen of Poland, Grand Duchess of Lithuania and List of Saxon royal consorts, Electress of Saxony by marriage to Augustus III of Poland, Augustus III. From 1711 to 1717, she was heir presumptive to the Habsburg monarchy. Family Maria Josepha was born in Vienna, an Archduchess of Austria, the eldest child and eldest daughter of Joseph I, Holy Roman Emperor and his wife, Princess Wilhelmina Amalia of Brunswick-Lüneburg. She was named Josepha in honor of her father. During the times of her childhood, the House of Habsburg had no male heirs, as her only brother, Archduke Leopold Joseph of Austria (1700-1701) died in infancy. During the reign of her grandfather, Maria Josepha's father and uncle signed the Mutual Pact of Succession of 1703, which was issued by her grandfather, Emperor Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor, Leopold ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1680s Births
Year 168 ( CLXVIII) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Julian calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Apronianus and Paullus (or, less frequently, year 921 ''Ab urbe condita''). The denomination 168 for this year has been used since the early medieval period, when the Anno Domini calendar era became the prevalent method in Europe for naming years. Events By place Roman Empire * Emperor Marcus Aurelius and his adopted brother Lucius Verus leave Rome, and establish their headquarters at Aquileia. * The Roman army crosses the Alps into Pannonia, and subdues the Marcomanni at Carnuntum, north of the Danube. Asia * Emperor Ling of Han succeeds Emperor Huan of Han as the emperor of the Chinese Han Dynasty; the first year of the ''Jianning'' era. Births * Cao Ren, Chinese general (d. 223) * Gu Yong, Chinese chancellor (d. 243) * Li Tong, Chinese general (d. 209) Deaths * Anicetus, pope of Rome (approximate date) * Chen Fan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pier Francesco Tosi
Pier Francesco Tosi (c. 16531732) was a castrato singer, composer, and writer on music. His ''Opinoni de' cantori antichi e moderni...'' was the first full-length treatise on singing and provides a unique glimpse into the technical and social aspects of Baroque vocal music. Life and career Tosi was born in Cesena, Italy in 1653 or 1654. There is a disagreement among sources whether he was the son of composer Giuseppe Felice Tosi. He was castrated before puberty to preserve his high voice. While it is not known where he received his rudimentary music training, he sang at a church in Rome from 1676 to 1677 and at the Milan cathedral from 1681 until 1685, when he was dismissed for “misconduct.” Thereafter, he made his one recorded appearance in opera at Reggio nell’Emilia in 1687 (in Varischino’s ''Odoacre'') and was based for a time in Genoa. In 1693 Tosi relocated to London where he took on singing students and sang in weekly public concerts. In 1701 he entered int ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg
Friedrich Wilhelm Marpurg (21 November 1718 – 22 May 1795) was a German music critic, music theorist and composer. Described as "one of Germany's leading mid 8th-entury music critics," he was friendly and active with many figures of the Enlightenment. Life Little is known of Marpurg's early life. According to various sources, he studied "philosophy" and music. It is clear that he enjoyed a strong education and was friendly with various leading figures of the Enlightenment, including Winckelmann and Lessing. In 1746, he travelled to Paris as the secretary for a General named either Rothenberg or Bodenberg. There, he became acquainted with intellectuals including the writer and philosopher Voltaire, the mathematician d'Alembert and the composer Jean-Philippe Rameau. After 1746, he returned to Berlin where he was more or less independent. Marpurg's offer to write exclusively for Breitkopf & Härtel was declined by the firm in 1757. In 1760, he received an appointment to the R ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Johann Joachim Quantz
Johann Joachim Quantz (; 30 January 1697 – 12 July 1773) was a German composer, flute, flutist and flute maker of the late Baroque music, Baroque period. Much of his professional career was spent in the court of Frederick the Great, where he served as the king's flute teacher. Quantz composed hundreds of flute sonatas and concertos, and wrote ''On Playing the Flute'', an influential treatise on flute performance. His works were known and appreciated by Bach, Haydn and Mozart. Biography 1697–1723: Early life Quantz was born as Hanß Jochim Quantz in Scheden, Oberscheden, near Göttingen, Lower Saxony, in the Electorate of Hanover. His father, Andreas Quantz, was a blacksmith who died when Hans was not yet 11; on his deathbed, he declared that his son should follow in his footsteps. Quantz states in his autobiography that he had been trained as a blacksmith from the age of nine. As a result of his father's death he was given the opportunity to choose his own career path and f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Johann Georg Sulzer
Johann Georg Sulzer (; 16 October 1720 in Winterthur – 27 February 1779 in Berlin) was a Swiss professor of Mathematics, who later on moved on to the field of electricity. He was a Wolffian philosopher and director of the philosophical section of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, and translator of David Hume's ''An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals'' into German in 1755. Anticipating galvanism Sulzer is best known as the subject of an anecdote in the history of the development of the battery. In 1752, Sulzer happened to put the tip of his tongue between pieces of two different metals whose edges were in contact. He thought the metals set up a vibratory motion in their particles which excited the nerves of taste. The event became known as the "battery tongue test": the saliva serves as the electrolyte carrying the current between two metallic electrodes. ''General Theory of the Fine Arts'' His ''General Theory of the Fine Arts'' has been called "probably the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carlo Francesco Pollarolo
Carlo Francesco Pollarolo (ca. 1653 – 7 February 1723) was an Italian composer, organist, and music director. Known chiefly for his operas, he wrote a total of 85 of them as well as 13 oratorios. His compositional style was initially indebted to the opera tradition of Giovanni Legrenzi and Carlo Pallavicino, but he moved beyond this style with innovations to the compositional structure of the aria characterized by expanded forms and orchestral elaborations. His early work used three part strings in the Legrenzi and Pallacino tradition of orchestration, but his mid and later works had developed into a richer orchestration of five strings parts and expanded instrumentation of brass and woodwinds. He was the first Venetian opera composer and one of the earliest Italian composers to use the oboe in his opera orchestrations. Life and career Born into the Pollarolo family of musicians in Brescia, Carlo Francesco Pollarolo was the son of musician Orazio Pollarolo. His father was the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tomaso Albinoni
Tomaso Giovanni Albinoni (8 June 1671 – 17 January 1751) was an Italian composer of the Baroque era. His output includes operas, concertos, sonatas for one to six instruments, sinfonias, and solo cantatas. While famous in his day as an opera composer, he is known today for his instrumental music, especially his concertos. He is best remembered today for a work called " Adagio in G minor", attributed to him but largely written by Remo Giazotto, a 20th century musicologist and composer, who was a cataloger of the works of Albinoni. Biography Born in Venice, to Antonio Albinoni, a wealthy paper merchant, he studied violin and singing. Relatively little is known about his life, which is surprising, considering his contemporary stature as a composer and the comparatively well-documented period in which he lived. In 1694 he dedicated his Opus 1 to the fellow-Venetian, Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni (grand-nephew of Pope Alexander VIII). His first opera, '' Zenobia, regina de Palmireni'', ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leonardo Leo
Leonardo Leo (5 August 1694 – 31 October 1744), more correctly Leonardo Ortensio Salvatore de Leo, was a Baroque music, Baroque composer. Biography Leo was born in San Vito degli Schiavoni (currently known as San Vito dei Normanni, province of Brindisi) in the Apulia region, then part of the Kingdom of Naples. He became a student at the Music conservatories of Naples#Conservatorio della Pietà dei Turchini, Conservatorio della Pietà dei Turchini at Naples in 1703, and was a pupil first of Francesco Provenzale and later of Nicola Fago. It has been supposed that he was a pupil of Giuseppe Ottavio Pitoni, Pitoni and Alessandro Scarlatti, but he could not possibly have studied with either of these composers, although he was undoubtedly influenced by their compositions. His earliest known work was a sacred drama, ''L'infedeltà abbattuta'', performed by his fellow-students in 1712. In 1714 he produced, at the court theatre, an opera, ''Pisistrato'', which was much admired. He hel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Agrippina (Handel)
''Agrippina'' ( HWV 6) is an ''opera seria'' in three acts by George Frideric Handel with a libretto by Cardinal Vincenzo Grimani. Composed for the Venice ''Carnevale'' season, the opera tells the story of Agrippina, the mother of Nero, as she plots the downfall of the Roman Emperor Claudius and the installation of her son as emperor. Grimani's libretto, considered one of the best that Handel set, is an "anti-heroic satirical comedy",Brown, pp. 357–358 full of topical political allusions. Some analysts believe that it reflects Grimani's political and diplomatic rivalry with Pope Clement XI. Handel composed ''Agrippina'' at the end of a three-year sojourn in Italy. It premiered in Venice at the Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo on 26 December 1709. It proved an immediate success and an unprecedented series of 27 consecutive performances followed. Observers praised the quality of the music—much of which, in keeping with the contemporary custom, had been borrowed and adapted f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Castrato
A castrato (Italian; : castrati) is a male singer who underwent castration before puberty in order to retain a singing voice equivalent to that of a soprano, mezzo-soprano, or contralto. The voice can also occur in one who, due to an endocrinological condition, never reaches sexual maturity. Castration before puberty (or in its early stages) prevents the larynx from being transformed by the normal physiological events of puberty. As a result, the vocal range of prepubescence (shared by both sexes) is largely retained, and the voice develops into adulthood in a unique way. Prepubescent castration for this purpose diminished greatly in the late 18th century. Methods of castration used to terminate the onset of puberty varied. Methods involved using opium to medically induce a coma, then submerging the boy into an ice or milk bath where the procedure of either twisting the testicles until they atrophied, or complete removal via surgical cutting was performed (however the comp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
