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Librettist
A libretto (Italian for "booklet") is the text used in, or intended for, an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata or musical. The term ''libretto'' is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as the Mass, requiem and sacred cantata, or the story line of a ballet. ''Libretto'' (; plural ''libretti'' ), from Italian, is the diminutive of the word '' libro'' ("book"). Sometimes other-language equivalents are used for libretti in that language, ''livret'' for French works, ''Textbuch'' for German and ''libreto'' for Spanish. A libretto is distinct from a synopsis or scenario of the plot, in that the libretto contains all the words and stage directions, while a synopsis summarizes the plot. Some ballet historians also use the word ''libretto'' to refer to the 15 to 40 page books which were on sale to 19th century ballet audiences in Paris and contained a very detailed description of the ballet's story, scene ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vincenzo Bellini
Vincenzo Salvatore Carmelo Francesco Bellini (; 3 November 1801 – 23 September 1835) was a Sicilian opera composer, who was known for his long-flowing melodic lines for which he was named "the Swan of Catania". Many years later, in 1898, Giuseppe Verdi "praised the broad curves of Bellini's melody: 'there are extremely long melodies as no-one else had ever made before'." A large amount of what is known about Bellini's life and his activities comes from surviving letters—except for a short period—which were written over his lifetime to his friend Francesco Florimo, whom he had met as a fellow student in Naples and with whom he maintained a lifelong friendship. Other sources of information come from correspondence saved by other friends and business acquaintances. Bellini was the quintessential composer of the Italian ''bel canto'' era of the early 19th century, and his work has been summed up by the London critic Tim Ashley as: ... also hugely influential, as much a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lorenzo Da Ponte
Lorenzo Da Ponte (; 10 March 174917 August 1838) was an Italian, later American, opera librettist, poet and Roman Catholic priest. He wrote the libretti for 28 operas by 11 composers, including three of Mozart's most celebrated operas: '' The Marriage of Figaro'' (1786), '' Don Giovanni'' (1787), and '' Così fan tutte'' (1790). Early career Lorenzo Da Ponte was born Emanuele Conegliano in 1749 in Ceneda in the Republic of Venice (now Vittorio Veneto, Italy). He was Jewish by birth, the eldest of three sons. In 1764, his father, Geronimo Conegliano, then a widower, converted himself and his family to Roman Catholicism in order to marry a Catholic woman. Emanuele, as was the custom, took the name of Lorenzo Da Ponte from the bishop of Ceneda who baptised him. Thanks to the bishop, the three Conegliano brothers studied at the Ceneda seminary. The bishop died in 1768, after which Lorenzo moved to the seminary at Portogruaro, where he took Minor Orders in 1770 and became Prof ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Libretto Cover Andrea Chenier
A libretto (Italian for "booklet") is the text used in, or intended for, an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata or Musical theatre, musical. The term ''libretto'' is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as the Mass (liturgy), Mass, requiem and sacred cantata, or the story line of a ballet. ''Libretto'' (; plural ''libretti'' ), from Italian, is the diminutive of the word ''wiktionary:libro#Italian, libro'' ("book"). Sometimes other-language equivalents are used for libretti in that language, ''livret'' for French works, ''Textbuch'' for German and ''libreto'' for Spanish. A libretto is distinct from a synopsis or scenario of the plot, in that the libretto contains all the words and stage directions, while a synopsis summarizes the plot. Some ballet historians also use the word ''libretto'' to refer to the 15 to 40 page books which were on sale to 19th century ballet audiences in Paris and contained a ve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gaetano Donizetti
Domenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti (29 November 1797 – 8 April 1848) was an Italian composer, best known for his almost 70 operas. Along with Gioachino Rossini and Vincenzo Bellini, he was a leading composer of the ''bel canto'' opera style during the first half of the nineteenth century and a probable influence on other composers such as Giuseppe Verdi. Donizetti was born in Bergamo in Lombardy. At an early age he was taken up by Simon Mayr who enrolled him with a full scholarship in a school which he had set up. There he received detailed musical training. Mayr was instrumental in obtaining a place for Donizetti at the Bologna Academy, where, at the age of 19, he wrote his first one-act opera, the comedy '' Il Pigmalione'', which may never have been performed during his lifetime. An offer in 1822 from Domenico Barbaja, the impresario of the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, which followed the composer's ninth opera, led to his move to Naples and his residency there until pro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amilcare Ponchielli
Amilcare Ponchielli (, ; 31 August 1834 – 16 January 1886) was an Italian opera composer, best known for his opera ''La Gioconda''. He was married to the soprano Teresina Brambilla. Life and work Born in Paderno Fasolaro (now Paderno Ponchielli) near Cremona, then Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia, Ponchielli won a scholarship at the age of nine to study music at the Milan Conservatory, writing his first symphony by the time he was ten years old. In 1856 he wrote his first opera—it was based on Alessandro Manzoni's great novel '' The Betrothed'' (''I promessi sposi'')—and it was as an opera composer that he eventually found fame. His early career was disappointing. Maneuvered out of a professorship at the Milan Conservatory that he had won in a competition, he took small-time jobs in small cities, and composed several operas, none successful at first. In spite of his disappointment, he gained much experience as the bandmaster (''capobanda'') in Piacenza and Cremona, arrangi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach (, also , , ; 20 June 18195 October 1880) was a German-born French composer, cellist and impresario of the Romantic period. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s to the 1870s, and his uncompleted opera ''The Tales of Hoffmann''. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss Jr. and Arthur Sullivan. His best-known works were continually revived during the 20th century, and many of his operettas continue to be staged in the 21st. ''The Tales of Hoffmann'' remains part of the standard opera repertory. Born in Cologne, the son of a synagogue cantor, Offenbach showed early musical talent. At the age of 14, he was accepted as a student at the Paris Conservatoire but found academic study unfulfilling and left after a year. From 1835 to 1855 he earned his living as a cellist, achieving international fame, and as a conductor. His ambition, however, was to compose comic pieces for the musical theat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eugène Scribe
Augustin Eugène Scribe (; 24 December 179120 February 1861) was a French dramatist and librettist. He is known for writing " well-made plays" ("pièces bien faites"), a mainstay of popular theatre for over 100 years, and as the librettist of many of the most successful grand operas and opéras-comiques. Born to a middle-class Parisian family, Scribe was intended for a legal career, but was drawn to the theatre, and began writing plays while still in his teens. His early years as a playwright were unsuccessful, but from 1815 onwards he prospered. Writing, usually with one or more collaborators, he produced several hundred stage works. He wrote to entertain the public rather than educate it. Many of his plays were written in a formulaic manner which aimed at neatness of plot and focus on dramatic incident rather than naturalism, depth of characterisation or intellectual substance. For this he was much criticised by intellectuals, but the "well-made play" remained established in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arrigo Boito
Arrigo Boito (; 24 February 1842 10 June 1918) (whose original name was Enrico Giuseppe Giovanni Boito and who wrote essays under the anagrammatic pseudonym of Tobia Gorrio) was an Italian poet, journalist, novelist, librettist and composer, best known today for his libretti, especially those for Giuseppe Verdi's last two monumental operas ''Otello'' and ''Falstaff'' (not to mention Amilcare Ponchielli's operatic masterpiece ''La Gioconda'') and his own opera '' Mefistofele''. Along with Emilio Praga and his own brother Camillo Boito, he is regarded as one of the prominent representatives of the Scapigliatura artistic movement. Biography Birthplace in Padua Born in Padua, the son of Silvestro Boito (1802–1856), an Italian painter of miniatures, who was not of noble birth but passed himself off as a nobleman, and his wife, a Polish countess, Józefina Radolińska, Boito studied music at the Milan Conservatory with Alberto Mazzucato until 1861, where a friend, Albert ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet (; 25 October 18383 June 1875) was a French composer of the Romantic era. Best known for his operas in a career cut short by his early death, Bizet achieved few successes before his final work, '' Carmen'', which has become one of the most popular and frequently performed works in the entire opera repertoire. During a brilliant student career at the Conservatoire de Paris, Bizet won many prizes, including the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1857. He was recognised as an outstanding pianist, though he chose not to capitalise on this skill and rarely performed in public. Returning to Paris after almost three years in Italy, he found that the main Parisian opera theatres preferred the established classical repertoire to the works of newcomers. His keyboard and orchestral compositions were likewise largely ignored; as a result, his career stalled, and he earned his living mainly by arranging and transcribing the music of others. Restless for success, he began many ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jules Massenet
Jules Émile Frédéric Massenet (; 12 May 1842 – 13 August 1912) was a French composer of the Romantic music, Romantic era best known for his operas, of which he wrote more than thirty. The two most frequently staged are ''Manon'' (1884) and ''Werther'' (1892). He also composed oratorios, ballets, orchestral works, incidental music, piano pieces, songs and other music. While still a schoolboy, Massenet was admitted to France's principal music college, the Paris Conservatoire. There he studied under Ambroise Thomas, whom he greatly admired. After winning the country's top musical prize, the Prix de Rome, in 1863, he composed prolifically in many genres, but quickly became best known for his operas. Between 1867 and his death forty-five years later he wrote more than forty stage works in a wide variety of styles, from opéra-comique to grand-scale depictions of classical myths, romantic comedies, Drame lyrique, lyric dramas, as well as oratorios, cantatas and ballets. Masse ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ludovic Halévy
Ludovic Halévy (1 January 1834 – 7 May 1908) was a French author and playwright, best known for his collaborations with Henri Meilhac on Georges Bizet's ''Carmen'' and on the works of Jacques Offenbach. Biography Ludovic Halévy was born in Paris. His father, Léon Halévy (1802–1883), was a civil servant and a clever and versatile writer, who tried almost every branch of literature—prose and verse, vaudeville, drama, history—without, however, achieving decisive success in any. His uncle, Fromental Halévy, was a noted composer of opera; hence the double and early connection of Ludovic Halévy with the Parisian stage. His father had converted from Judaism to Christianity prior to his marriage with Alexandrine Lebas, daughter of a Christian architect. At the age of six, Halévy might have been seen playing in that ''Foyer de la danse'' with which he was to make his readers so familiar, and, when a boy of twelve, he would often, on a Sunday night, on his way back to t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henri Meilhac
Henri Meilhac (23 February 1830 – 6 July 1897) was a French dramatist and opera librettist, best known for his collaborations with Ludovic Halévy on Georges Bizet's ''Carmen'' and on the works of Jacques Offenbach, as well as Jules Massenet's '' Manon''. Biography Meilhac was born in the 1st arrondissement of Paris in 1830. As a young man, he began writing fanciful articles for Parisian newspapers and comédies en vaudevilles, in a vivacious boulevardier spirit which brought him to the forefront. About 1860, Meilhac met Ludovic Halévy, and their collaboration for the stage lasted twenty years. Their most famous collaboration is the libretto for Georges Bizet's ''Carmen''. However, Meilhac's work is most closely tied to the music of Jacques Offenbach, for whom he wrote over a dozen librettos, most of them together with Halévy. The most successful collaborations with Offenbach are '' La belle Hélène'' (1864), '' Barbe-bleue'' (1866), '' La Vie parisienne'' (1866), '' L ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
