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Innsbruck Festival Of Early Music
The Innsbruck Festival of Early Music (German: Innsbrucker Festwochen der Alten Musik) is a festival of historically informed performances of music from the late Renaissance, Baroque and early Classical periods which takes place annually in Innsbruck, Austria. It was founded in 1976. History The festival had its roots in 1963 when the Innsbruck musician Otto Ulf (1907–1993) organized a concert at the Ambras Castle to celebrate the 600th anniversary of Margaret, Countess of Tyrol's bequest of Tyrol to the Dukes of Austria. The Ambras Castle concerts continued over the years and in 1972, he initiated an International Summer Academy in the city. The festival itself was established in 1976 with Ulf as its artistic director. Beginning in 1977 with Handel's '' Acis and Galatea'', the festival's centerpiece has been the production of at least one baroque opera or oratorio. Since then it has played a pioneering role in the revival of Baroque opera. The Belgian conductor and early ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
2959 - Innsbruck - Schloss Ambras
Year 959 ( CMLIX) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar. Events By place Byzantine Empire * April - May – The Byzantines refuse to pay the yearly tribute. A Hungarian army, led by Apor, invades Macedonia and Thrace. He plunders its territories until reaching Constantinople. On his way back, Apor is defeated during a night attack by Byzantine forces.Bóna, Istvá (2000). ''The Hungarians and Europe in the 9th-10th centuries''. Budapest: Historia - MTA Történettudományi Intézete, p. 33. . * November 9 – Emperor Constantine VII ''Porphyrogennetos'' ("born in the purple") dies at Constantinople after a 46-year reign. He is succeeded by his 21-year-old son Romanos II as ruler of the Byzantine Empire. * Winter – Romanos II appoints Leo Phokas (the Younger) to be commander of the Byzantine field army (''Domestic of the Schools'') in the West. The Phokas clan becomes one of the leading famil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Eliot Gardiner
Sir John Eliot Gardiner (born 20 April 1943) is an English conductor, particularly known for his performances of the works of Johann Sebastian Bach. Life and career Born in Fontmell Magna, Dorset, son of Rolf Gardiner and Marabel Hodgkin, Gardiner's early musical experience came largely through singing with his family and in a local church choir. As a child he grew up with the celebrated Haussmann portrait of J. S. Bach, which had been lent to his parents for safe keeping during the Second World War. A self-taught musician who also played the violin, he began to study conducting at the age of 15. He was educated at Bryanston School, then studied history at King's College, Cambridge, where his tutor was the social anthropologist Edmund Leach."John Eliot Gardiner", in ''Contemporary Musicians'' (1999), Detroit: Gale While an undergraduate at Cambridge he launched his career as a conductor with a performance of Vespro della Beata Vergine by Monteverdi, in King's College Chapel on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Johann Adolf Hasse
Johann Adolph Hasse (baptised 25 March 1699 – 16 December 1783) was an 18th-century German composer, singer and teacher of music. Immensely popular in his time, Hasse was best known for his prolific operatic output, though he also composed a considerable quantity of sacred music. Married to soprano Faustina Bordoni and a friend of librettist Pietro Metastasio, whose libretti he frequently set, Hasse was a pivotal figure in the development of ''opera seria'' and 18th-century music. Early career Hasse was baptised in Bergedorf near Hamburg where his family had been church organists for three generations. His career began in singing when he joined the Hamburg Oper am Gänsemarkt in 1718 as a tenor. In 1719 he obtained a singing post at the court of Brunswick, where in 1721 his first opera, ''Antioco'', was performed; Hasse himself sang in the production. He is thought to have left Germany during 1722. During the 1720s he lived mostly in Naples, dwelling there for six or seven y ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Orpheus (Telemann)
''Orpheus'' (full title: ''Die wunderbare Beständigkeit der Liebe oder Orpheus'', ''The Wonderful Constancy of Love, or Orpheus'') is an opera in three acts by the Germany, German composer Georg Philipp Telemann. It was first performed in a concert version at the Oper am Gänsemarkt in Hamburg on 9 March 1726. The anonymous libretto is based on the 1690 opera ''Orphée (Louis Lully), Orphée'' by Michel Duboullay, originally set by the French composer Louis Lully. Most of the work is in German but it also contains passages in French and Italian drawn from famous operas by George Frideric Handel, Handel and Jean-Baptiste Lully. The music to these words is Telemann's own, however. The manuscript score of Telemann's ''Orpheus'' was not rediscovered until the late 20th century. Roles Synopsis ;Act 1 :Queen Orasia of Thrace is in love with Orpheus, but he rejects her in favour of Eurydice. The queen plots to kill Eurydice as she is picking flowers in a garden. Orpheus tells his friend ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rinaldo (opera)
''Rinaldo'' ( HWV 7) is an opera by George Frideric Handel, composed in 1711, and was the first Italian language opera written specifically for the London stage. The libretto was prepared by Giacomo Rossi from a scenario provided by Aaron Hill, and the work was first performed at the Queen's Theatre in London's Haymarket on 24 February 1711. The story of love, war and redemption, set at the time of the First Crusade, is loosely based on Torquato Tasso's epic poem ''Gerusalemme liberata'' ("Jerusalem Delivered"), and its staging involved many original and vivid effects. It was a great success with the public, despite negative reactions from literary critics hostile to the contemporary trend towards Italian entertainment in English theatres. Handel composed ''Rinaldo'' quickly, borrowing and adapting music from operas and other works that he had composed during a long stay in Italy in the years 1706–10, during which he established a considerable reputation. In the years followi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flavio
''Flavio, re de' Longobardi'' ("Flavio, King of the Lombards", HWV 16) is an opera seria in three acts by George Frideric Handel. The Italian-language libretto was by Nicola Francesco Haym, after Matteo Noris's ''Flavio Cuniberto''. It was Handel's fourth full-length opera for the Royal Academy of Music. Handel had originally entitled the opera after the character of Emilia in the opera. Dean, Winton, "A Handel Tragicomedy" (August 1969). ''The Musical Times'', 110 (1518): pp. 819–822. ''Flavio'' is unusually concise for an opera by Handel of this period. It is also notable as a skillful blend of tragedy and comedy, both in the text and the music, and for being one of Handel's few operas to feature leading roles for all major voice categories of his day – soprano, contralto, castrato, tenor and bass. Performance history Handel completed the score only seven days before the premiere, at the King's Theatre in the Haymarket on 14 May 1723. There were eight performances in the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Giulio Cesare In Egitto (Sartorio)
''Giulio Cesare in Egitto'' (; , HWV 17), commonly known as ''Giulio Cesare'', is a dramma per musica (''opera seria'') in three acts composed by George Frideric Handel for the Royal Academy of Music in 1724. The libretto was written by Nicola Francesco Haym who used an earlier libretto by Giacomo Francesco Bussani, which had been set to music by Antonio Sartorio (1676). The opera was a success at its first performances, was frequently revived by Handel in his subsequent opera seasons and is now one of the most often performed Baroque operas. The opera's plot is loosely based on historic events during the Roman Civil War of 49–45 BC. Composition history ''Giulio Cesare in Egitto'' was first performed at the King's Theatre in the Haymarket, London on 20 February 1724. The opera was an immediate success. A contemporary wrote in a letter on 10 March 1724: ...the opera is in full swing also, since Hendell's new one, called Jules César – in which Cenesino and Cozzuna s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antonio Sartorio
Antonio Sartorio (1630 – 30 December 1680) was an Italian composer active mainly in Venice, Italy, and in Hanover, Germany. He was a leading composer of operas in his native Venice in the 1660s and 1670s and was also known for composing in other genres of vocal music. Between 1665 and 1675 he spent most of his time in Hanover, where he held the post of ''Kapellmeister'' to Duke Johann Friedrich of Brunswick-Lüneburg – returning frequently to Venice to compose operas for the Carnival. In 1676 he became vice ''maestro di capella'' at San Marco in Venice. Early work in Italy and work as ''Kapellmeister'' Sartorio was the brother of composer and organist Gasparo Sartorio and architect Girolamo Sartorio who also had connections with the theatre. Beyond birth records, the first known information about Sartorio relates to the mounting of his first opera, ''Gl'amori infruttuosi di Pirro'', at the Teatro di San Giovanni Grisostomo in Venice on 4 January 1661. His second op ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Don Chisciotte In Sierra Morena
''Don Chisciotte in Sierra Morena'' is a tragicomic opera in five acts composed by Francesco Bartolomeo Conti to an Italian libretto by Apostolo Zeno and Pietro Pariati. The libretto is based on the episodes set in the Sierra Morena mountains of Spain in Book I of the Miguel de Cervantes novel ''Don Quixote''. The opera premiered on 6 February 1719 at the Hoftheater in Vienna and proved to be one of Conti's most successful ones. It has had several revivals in modern times beginning in 1987 at the Buxton Festival. Background and performance history The opera's librettists, Apostolo Zeno and Pietro Pariati, had written the librettos for many of Conti's Vienna operas, either individually or jointly. On this occasion they remained quite faithful to the text and basic story recounted Book I of ''Don Quixote'' where he travels to the Sierra Morena mountains and has a series of encounters with the wily inhabitants and two pairs of unhappy lovers. Described in the libretto as a ''tragicome ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Francesco Bartolomeo Conti
Francesco Bartolomeo Conti (20 January 1681 or 168219 July 1732) was an Italian composer and player of the mandolin and theorbo. He also wrote the oldest mandolin method book that has survived. Little is known about the biography of Conti. He was born in Florence, Italy. By 1700 he was already known as a theorbist not only in his native Florence, but also in other cities such as Ferrara and Milan. The fame he enjoyed by 1701 enabled him to obtain appointment as an auxiliary theorbist at the Habsburg court in Vienna with the same salary as the main theorbist, Orazio Clementi. At the 1706 carnival he made his debut as an opera composer with ''Cleotide'', and in 1713 was appointed as a court composer. In 1708, with the death of Clementi, Conti was promoted senior theorbist, a position he held until 1726. In the same year he was elected a member of the Accademia Filarmonica of Bologna and in 1711 he was appointed ''vice-Kapellmeister'' (''vice-maestro di cappella'') in Vienna. In Ap ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Xerse
''Il Xerse'' ( in its 1660 French version ''Xerxès'') is an opera by Francesco Cavalli (specifically, a ''dramma per musica'') about Xerxes I. The libretto was written by Nicolò Minato, and was later set by both Giovanni Bononcini (1694, ''Xerse'' and George Frideric Handel (''Serse'', 1738). Minato's plot outline is loosely based on Book 7 of Herodotus's '' Histories''. The opera, Cavalli's twenty-first, consisting of a prologue and three acts, was first performed at Venice on 12 January 1655, at the Teatro SS. Giovanni e Paolo.Clinkscale (2001) It was dedicated to the Ferrarese nobleman Marchese Cornelio Bentivoglio. Background The premiere at Venice was probably conducted by Cavalli from the keyboard.da Silva (2021), p. 12 The opera was highly popular in Italy, not least due to Cavalli's setting of "Ombra mai fu" (later more famously set by Handel): nine different revivals were given across Italy while Cavalli lived. In 1660 Cavalli was persuaded to travel to France to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Giasone
''Giasone'' (''Jason'') is an opera in three acts and a prologue with music by Francesco Cavalli and a libretto by Giacinto Andrea Cicognini. It was premiered at the Teatro San Cassiano, Venice on 5 January 1649, during carnival. The plot is loosely based on the story of Jason and the golden fleece, but the opera contains many comic elements too. ''Giasone'' was "the single most popular opera of the 17th century". It is rarely revived today, but has been performed by for example English Touring Opera (2013). Recordings include a 1988 version directed by René Jacobs with Michael Chance in the title role. A 2010 production by the Vlaamse Opera, with Christophe Dumaux in the title role, was released on DVD. Roles Synopsis Prologue Two mythological characters appear in the prologue: Sole (the sun, i.e. Apollo) and Amore (love, i.e. Cupid). Sole opens with an aria about the gloriousness of the day because Giasone (i.e. Jason) will set out leading his Argonauts on a quest to find ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
