|
Renaud (Desmarets)
''Renaud, ou La suite d'Armide'' (''Renaud, or the Sequel to "Armide"'') is an opera by the French composer Henri Desmarets, first performed at the Académie Royale de Musique (the Paris Opera) on 5 March 1722. It takes the form of a ''tragédie en musique'' in a prologue and five acts. The libretto, by Simon-Joseph Pellegrin, is based on Torquato Tasso's ''Gerusalemme liberata''. The opera is a sequel to Jean-Baptiste Lully's '' Armide'' (1686). The libretto had an influence on Antonio Sacchini's opera ''Renaud Renaud Pierre Manuel Séchan (), known as Renaud (), born 11 May 1952, is a French singer, songwriter and actor. His characteristically 'broken' voice makes for a very distinctive vocal style. Several of his songs are popular classics in F ...'', first performed in 1783. Sources Libretto at "Livrets baroques"Félix Clément and Pierre Larousse ''Dictionnaire des Opéras'', Paris, 1881 page 570. French-language operas Tragédies en musique Operas by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
France
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of Overseas France, overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic, Pacific Ocean, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its Metropolitan France, metropolitan area extends from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea; overseas territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the North Atlantic, the French West Indies, and many islands in Oceania and the Indian Ocean. Due to its several coastal territories, France has the largest exclusive economic zone in the world. France borders Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Monaco, Italy, Andorra, and Spain in continental Europe, as well as the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Netherlands, Suriname, and Brazil in the Americas via its overseas territories in French Guiana and Saint Martin (island), ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henri Desmarets
Henri Desmarets (February 1661 – 7 September 1741) was a French composer of the Baroque period primarily known for his stage works, although he also composed sacred music as well as secular cantatas, songs and instrumental works. Biography Early years and first successes Henri Desmarets was born into a modest Paris household in February 1661. His mother, Madeleine ''née'' Frottier, came from a bourgeois Parisian family. His father, Hugues Desmarets was a huissier in the cavalry at the Grand Châtelet. Desmarets' childhood was marked by his father's death when he was eight years old, his mother's subsequent remarriage in 1670, and the death of his two siblings. In 1674, he entered into the service of King Louis XIV as a page and choir singer in the Chapelle Royale (Chapel Royal). According to Duron and Ferraton, he may have also previously sung as a choir boy in Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois which was the parish church of the kings of France. While in the service of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paris Opera
The Paris Opera (, ) is the primary opera and ballet company of France. It was founded in 1669 by Louis XIV as the , and shortly thereafter was placed under the leadership of Jean-Baptiste Lully and officially renamed the , but continued to be known more simply as the . Classical ballet as it is known today arose within the Paris Opera as the Paris Opera Ballet and has remained an integral and important part of the company. Currently called the , it mainly produces operas at its modern 2,723-seat theatre Opéra Bastille which opened in 1989, and ballets and some classical operas at the older 1,979-seat Palais Garnier which opened in 1875. Small scale and contemporary works are also staged in the 500-seat Amphitheatre under the Opéra Bastille. The company's annual budget is in the order of 200 million euros, of which €100M come from the French state and €70M from box office receipts. With this money, the company runs the two houses and supports a large permanent staff, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tragédie En Musique
Tragédie en musique (, ''musical tragedy''), also known as tragédie lyrique (, ''lyric tragedy''), is a genre of French opera introduced by Jean-Baptiste Lully and used by his followers until the second half of the eighteenth century. Operas in this genre are usually based on stories from Classical mythology or the Italian romantic epics of Tasso and Ariosto. The stories may not necessarily have a tragic ending – in fact, most do not – but the works' atmospheres are suffused throughout with an affect of nobility and stateliness. The standard ''tragédie en musique'' has five acts. Earlier works in the genre were preceded by an allegorical prologue and, during the lifetime of Louis XIV, these generally celebrated the king's noble qualities and his prowess in war. Each of the five acts usually follows a basic pattern, opening with an aria in which one of the main characters expresses their feelings, followed by dialogue in recitative interspersed with short arias (''petits airs'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Simon-Joseph Pellegrin
The abbé Simon-Joseph Pellegrin (1663 – 5 September 1745) was a French poet and playwright, a librettist who collaborated with Jean-Philippe Rameau and other composers. Biography He was born at Marseille, the son of a ''conseiller'' to the Siège Présidial of the city. He was at first designated for an ecclesiastical career, from which he retained the courtesy title ''abbé''. Though he was for a time a novitiate of the Servites at Moustiers-Sainte-Marie, he soon embarked on a career as a ship's bursar. Returning to France in 1703, he settled in Paris and composed his earliest poems, among them an ''Epître à Louis XIV'', praising the Sun King's military successes, which gained the king's attention and the Académie française prize in 1704. Probably thanks to Madame de Maintenon, Pellegrin succeeded in escaping the urging of his superiors that he become more fully integrated with his order; instead a papal dispensation enabled him to enter the Cluniac order, whereupon he w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Torquato Tasso
Torquato Tasso ( , also , ; 11 March 154425 April 1595) was an Italian poet of the 16th century, known for his 1591 poem ''Gerusalemme liberata'' (Jerusalem Delivered), in which he depicts a highly imaginative version of the combats between Christians and Muslims at the end of the First Crusade, during the Siege of Jerusalem (1099), Siege of Jerusalem of 1099. Tasso had mental illness and died a few days before he was to be Poet laureate, crowned on the Capitoline Hill as the king of poets by Clement VIII, Pope Clement VIII. His work was widely translated and adapted, and until the beginning of the 20th century, he remained one of the most widely read poets in Europe. Biography Early life Born in Sorrento, Torquato was the son of Bernardo Tasso, a nobleman of Bergamo and an epic and lyric poet of considerable fame in his day, and his wife Porzia de Rossi, a noblewoman born in Naples of Tuscany, Tuscan origins. His father had for many years been secretary in the service of F ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gerusalemme Liberata
''Jerusalem Delivered'', also known as ''The Liberation of Jerusalem'' ( it, La Gerusalemme liberata ; ), is an epic poem by the Italian poet Torquato Tasso, first published in 1581, that tells a largely mythified version of the First Crusade in which Christian knights, led by Godfrey of Bouillon, battle Muslims in order to take Jerusalem. Tasso began work on the poem in the mid-1560s. Originally, it bore the title ''Il Goffredo''. It was completed in April, 1575 and that summer the poet read his work to Duke Alfonso of Ferrara and Lucrezia, Duchess of Urbino. A pirate edition of 14 cantos from the poem appeared in Venice in 1580. The first complete editions of ''Gerusalemme liberata'' were published in Parma and Ferrara in 1581. Tasso's choice of subject matter, an actual historic conflict between Christians and Muslims (albeit with fantastical elements added), had a historical grounding and created compositional implications (the narrative subject matter had a fixed endpoin ... [...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] |
Armide (Lully)
''Armide'' is an opera in five acts by Jean-Baptiste Lully. The libretto by Philippe Quinault is based on Torquato Tasso's poem ''La Gerusalemme liberata'' (''Jerusalem Delivered''). The work is in the form of a tragédie en musique, a genre invented by Lully and Quinault. Critics in the 18th century regarded ''Armide'' as Lully's masterpiece. It continues to be well-regarded, featuring some of the best-known music in French baroque opera and being arguably ahead of its time in its psychological interest. Unlike most of his operas, ''Armide'' concentrates on the sustained psychological development of a character – not Renaud, who spends most of the opera under Armide's spell, but Armide, who repeatedly tries without success to choose vengeance over love. Performance history ''Armide'' was first performed on 15 February 1686 by the Paris Opera at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal, with scenery by Bérain, in the presence of the Grand Dauphin. The subject for the opera was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antonio Sacchini
Antonio Maria Gasparo Gioacchino Sacchini (14 June 1730 – 6 October 1786) was an Italian composer, best known for his operas. Sacchini was born in Florence, but raised in Naples, where he received his musical education. He made a name for himself as a composer of serious and comic opera in Italy before moving to London, where he produced works for the King's Theatre. He spent his final years in Paris, becoming embroiled in the musical dispute between the followers of the composers Gluck and Niccolò Piccinni. His early death in 1786 was blamed on his disappointment over the apparent failure of his opera '' Œdipe à Colone''. However, when the work was revived the following year, it quickly became one of the most popular in the 18th-century French repertoire. Life Childhood and education Sacchini was the son of a humble Florentine cook (or coachman), Gaetano Sacchini. At the age of four, he moved with his family to Naples as part of the entourage of the infante Charles of B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Renaud (opera)
is an opera by Antonio Sacchini, first performed on 28 February 1783 by the Académie Royale de Musique at the Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin in Paris. It takes the form of a tragédie lyrique in three acts. The French libretto, by Jean-Joseph Lebœuf, is based on Cantos XVII and XX of Torquato Tasso's epic poem ''Gerusalemme liberata'' and, more directly, on the five-act tragedy by Simon-Joseph Pellegrin, '' Renaud, ou La suite d'Armide'', which had been set to music by Henri Desmarets in 1722 and was intended as a sequel to Lully's famous opera '' Armide''. According to Théodore Lajarte, Lebœuf was helped by Nicolas-Étienne Framery, the regular translator of Sacchini's libretti. Performance history The premiere took place on 28 February 1783 at the Académie Royale de Musique (Salle du Théâtre de la Porte-Saint-Martin) in Paris, with Sacchini's patron Queen Marie-Antoinette among the audience. The choreography was by Maximilien Gardel and the cast contained some of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
French-language Operas
French opera is one of Europe's most important operatic traditions, containing works by composers of the stature of Rameau, Berlioz, Gounod, Bizet, Massenet, Debussy, Ravel, Poulenc and Messiaen. Many foreign-born composers have played a part in the French tradition as well, including Lully, Gluck, Salieri, Cherubini, Spontini, Meyerbeer, Rossini, Donizetti, Verdi and Offenbach. French opera began at the court of Louis XIV of France with Jean-Baptiste Lully's ''Cadmus et Hermione'' (1673), although there had been various experiments with the form before that, most notably '' Pomone'' by Robert Cambert. Lully and his librettist Quinault created ''tragédie en musique'', a form in which dance music and choral writing were particularly prominent. Lully's most important successor was Rameau. After Rameau's death, the German Gluck was persuaded to produce six operas for the Paris, Parisian stage in the 1770s. They show the influence of Rameau, but simplified and with greater foc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
