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Boston Early Music Festival
The Boston Early Music Festival (BEMF) is a non-profit organization founded in 1980 in Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. to promote historical music performance. It presents an annual concert series in Boston and New York City, produces opera recordings, and organizes a weeklong Festival and Exhibition every two years in Boston. A centerpiece of these festivals has been a fully staged Baroque opera production. One of BEMF's main goals is to unearth lesser-known Baroque operas, which are then performed by the world's leading musicians armed with the latest information on period singing, orchestral performance, costuming, dance, and staging at each biennial Festival. BEMF operas are led by the BEMF Artistic Directors Paul O’Dette and Stephen Stubbs, BEMF Orchestra Director Robert Mealy, and BEMF Opera Director Gilbert Blin. In 2008, BEMF introduced its Chamber Opera Series as part of its annual concert season. The series presents semi-staged productions of chamber operas composed duri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- most populous city in the country. The city boundaries encompass an area of about and a population of 675,647 as of 2020. It is the seat of Suffolk County (although the county government was disbanded on July 1, 1999). The city is the economic and cultural anchor of a substantially larger metropolitan area known as Greater Boston, a metropolitan statistical area (MSA) home to a census-estimated 4.8 million people in 2016 and ranking as the tenth-largest MSA in the country. A broader combined statistical area (CSA), generally corresponding to the commuting area and including Providence, Rhode Island, is home to approximately 8.2 million people, making it the sixth most populous in the United States. Boston is one of the oldest ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jean-Baptiste Lully
Jean-Baptiste Lully ( , , ; born Giovanni Battista Lulli, ; – 22 March 1687) was an Italian-born French composer, guitarist, violinist, and dancer who is considered a master of the French Baroque music style. Best known for his operas, he spent most of his life working in the court of Louis XIV of France and became a French subject in 1661. He was a close friend of the playwright Molière, with whom he collaborated on numerous ''comédie-ballets'', including ''L'Amour médecin'', ''George Dandin ou le Mari confondu'', ''Monsieur de Pourceaugnac'', ''Psyché'' and his best known work, ''Le Bourgeois gentilhomme''. Biography Lully was born on November 28, 1632, in Florence, Grand Duchy of Tuscany, to Lorenzo Lulli and Caterina Del Sera, a Tuscan family of millers. His general education and his musical training during his youth in Florence remain uncertain, but his adult handwriting suggests that he manipulated a quill pen with ease. He used to say that a Franciscan friar ga ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Actéon (opera)
''Actéon'' (''Actaeon'') is a ''Pastorale'' in the form of a miniature ''tragédie en musique'' in six scenes by Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Opus H.481 & H.481a, based on a Greek myth. History It is highly unlikely that this opera was written for performance at the Hôtel de Guise, the palatial Parisian residence of Marie de Lorraine, Duchess of Guise, Charpentier's protectress. (The work was copied into a Roman-number notebook, which strongly suggests that it was an outside commission; and the overall distribution of voices and instruments does not match that of the Guise ensemble of the time.) Although the patron and the place of performance remain unknown, the date can be determined with considerable accuracy: the spring hunting season of 1684. Later that year (presumably for the fall hunting season) it was revised to change the title role from an ''haute-contre'' role (perhaps originally sung by Charpentier) to a soprano part, and was at that time renamed ''Actéon changé en bic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Blow
John Blow (baptised 23 February 1649 – 1 October 1708) was an English composer and organist of the Baroque music, Baroque period. Appointed organist of Westminster Abbey in late 1668,John Blow Westminster Abbey. Retrieved 30 December 2019. his pupils included William Croft, Jeremiah Clarke and Henry Purcell. In 1685 he was named a private musician to James II of England, James II. His only stage composition, ''Venus and Adonis (opera), Venus and Adonis'' (ca. 1680–1687), is thought to have influenced Henry Purcell's later opera ''Dido and Aeneas''. In 1687, he became choirmaster at St Paul's Cathedral, where many of his pieces were performed. In 1699 he was appointed to the newly created post of Composer to the Chapel Royal. Early life and education Blow was probably born in the village of Collingham, ...[...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Venus And Adonis (opera)
''Venus and Adonis'' is an opera in three act (theater), acts and a prologue by the English Baroque music, Baroque composer John Blow, composed in about 1683 in music, 1683. It was written for the Noble court, court of Charles II of England, King Charles II at either London or Windsor Castle, Windsor. It is considered by some to be either a semi-opera or a masque, but ''Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, The New Grove'' names it as the earliest known English opera. The author of the libretto was surmised to have been Aphra Behn due to the Feminism, feminist nature of the text, and that she later worked with Blow on the play ''The Lucky Chance''.Price, ''Grove Dictionary'', op. cit. However, according to the musicologist Bruce Wood, in his 2008 Critical edition (opera), critical edition of the work for the Purcell Society, the librettist "has been identified by James Winn as Anne Kingsmill, subsequently married as Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, Anne Finch". The story is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Psyché (opera)
''Psyché'' is an opera (''tragédie lyrique'') in a prologue and five acts composed by Jean-Baptiste Lully to a libretto by Thomas Corneille (adapted from Molière's original play for which Lully had composed the intermèdes). Based on the love story of Cupid and Psyche, ''Psyché'' was premiered on April 19, 1678 by the Académie Royale de Musique at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal in Paris. Background According to the '' Mercure Galant'', the opera ''Psyché'' was composed in three weeks; libretto, score and all. Although it is impossible to verify the truth of this statement, there is every reason to believe that Lully was in a hurry when writing this opera. In effect, the opera reuses the ''intermèdes'' from Molière's play. Since these ''intermèdes'' had met with such spectacular success seven years earlier, Lully must have felt that given his lack of time, he could at the very least attract a crowd with the promise of reviving the ''plainte italienne'' and the final ' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Johann Mattheson
Johann Mattheson (28 September 1681 – 17 April 1764) was a German composer, singer, writer, lexicographer, diplomat and music theorist. Early life and career The son of a prosperous tax collector, Mattheson received a broad liberal education and, aside from general musical training, took lessons in keyboard instruments, violin, composition and singing. By age nine he was singing and playing organ in church and was a member of the chorus of the Hamburg opera. He made his solo debut with the Hamburg opera in 1696 in female roles and, after his voice changed, sang tenor at the opera, conducted rehearsals and composed operas himself. He was cantor at St. Mary's Cathedral from 1718 until increasing deafness led to his retirement from that post in 1728. Mattheson's chief occupation from 1706 was as a professional diplomat. He had studied English in school and spoke it fluently. He became tutor to the son of the English ambassador Sir John Wich and then secretary to the ambassador. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Johann Georg Conradi
Johann Georg Conradi (1645 in Oettingen – 22 May 1699) was a German composer. He was, with Johann Theile, Nicolaus Adam Strungk, Johann Philipp Fortsch, Johann Wolfgang Franck and Johann Sigismund Kusser one of the main composers of the early Oper am Gänsemarkt The Oper am Gänsemarkt was a theatre in Hamburg, Germany, built in 1678 after plans of Girolamo Sartorio at the Gänsemarkt square. It was the first public opera house to be established in Germany: not a court opera, as in many other towns. E ....Dieterich Buxtehude: organist in Lübeck - Page 116 Kerala J. Snyder 1987 Several composers besides Theile were active in the early years of the Hamburg opera: Nicolaus Adam Strungk (1640-1700), Johann Wolfgang Franck (1644-ca. 1710) Johann Philipp Fortsch (1652-1732), and Johann Georg Conradi (ca. 1645-99) References {{DEFAULTSORT:Conradi, Johann 1645 births 1699 deaths 17th-century classical composers German Baroque composers German male classical compos ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thésée
''Thésée'' (; ) is a ''tragédie en musique'', an early type of French opera, in a prologue and five acts with music by Jean-Baptiste Lully and a libretto by Philippe Quinault based on Ovid's ''Metamorphoses''. It was first performed on 11 January 1675Although the original libretto states the date of the premiere as 10 January, most sources give it as 11 January and the listing of performances o''Thesée''at ''césar'' gives the date as 12 January. by the Paris Opera for the royal court at the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye and was first performed in public in April at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal in Paris. The plot centres around a love triangle: Aegeus wants to marry his ward, princess Aegle, while the sorceress Medea wishes to marry the young warrior Theseus, but Theseus and Aegle love each other. Medea attempts to force the lovers to renounce each other: first by using her magic to bring Aegle to a place of torment, then by convincing Aegeus to have Theseus killed as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Francesco Cavalli
Francesco Cavalli (born Pietro Francesco Caletti-Bruni; 14 February 1602 – 14 January 1676) was a Republic of Venice, Venetian composer, organist and singer of the early Baroque music, Baroque period. He succeeded his teacher Claudio Monteverdi as the dominant and leading opera composer of the mid 17th-century. A central figure of Venetian musical life, Cavalli wrote more than forty operas, almost all of which premiered in the city's theaters. His best known works include ''Ormindo'' (1644), ''Giasone'' (1649) and ''La Calisto'' (1651). Life Cavalli was born at Crema, Lombardy, Crema, then an Domini di Terraferma, inland province of the Venetian Republic. He became a singer (boy soprano) at St Mark's Basilica in Venice in 1616, where he had the opportunity to work under the tutorship of Claudio Monteverdi. He became second organist in 1639, first organist in 1665, and in 1668 ''Kapellmeister, maestro di cappella''. He took the name "Cavalli" from his patron, Venetian nobleman ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ercole Amante
''Ercole amante'' (''Hercules in Love'', French: ''Hercule amoureux'') is an opera in a prologue and five acts by Francesco Cavalli. Its Italian libretto is by Francesco Buti, based on Sophocles' ''The Trachiniae'' and on the ninth book of Ovid's ''Metamorphoses''. The first performance took place on 7 February 1662 in the Salle des Machines of the Tuileries in Paris. Background Cardinal Mazarin commissioned the opera to celebrate the June 1660 wedding of Louis XIV and Maria Theresa of Spain, but preparations for the staging were on a grand scale and caused a twenty-month delay, irritating the composer. Worse for him, eighteen ballet '' entrées'' and ''intermède Intermède (also intermédie, intramède, entremets) is a French term for a musical or theatrical performance involving song and dance, also an 18th-century opera genre. The context in which the 'intermède' was performed has changed over time. ...s'' with music by Isaac de Benserade and Jean-Baptiste Lully were ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Luigi Rossi
Luigi Rossi (c. 1597 – 20 February 1653) was an Italian Baroque composer. Born in Torremaggiore, a small town near Foggia, in the ancient kingdom of Naples, at an early age he went to Naples where he studied music with the Franco-Flemish composer Jean de Macque, organist of the Santa Casa dell’Annunziata and ''maestro di cappella'' to the Spanish viceroy. Rossi later entered the service of the Caetani, dukes of Traetta. Life Rossi composed two operas: '' Il palazzo incantato'', which was given at Rome in 1642; and ''Orfeo'', written after he was invited by Cardinal Mazarin in 1646 to go to Paris for that purpose and given its premiere there in 1647. Rossi returned to France in 1648 hoping to write another opera, but no production was possible because the court had sought refuge outside Paris. Rossi returned to Rome by 1650 and never attempted anything more for the stage. A collection of cantatas published in 1646 describes him as musician to Cardinal Antonio Barberin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
_-_Lully%2C_Thesée%2C_cinquieme.jpg "Click for more on -> Thésée")
