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Tancrède (tragedy)
'' Tancrède '' is a tragedy in five acts by Voltaire that premiered on 3 September 1760. Action The character names Tancrède and Aménaïde are taken from Torquato Tasso's ''Jerusalem Delivered'', but the plot does not owe anything to this work. The action takes place in the year 1005 in Norman-ruled Syracuse at the time Sicily was throwing off the rule of the Saracens. Aménaïde, daughter of Argire, is betrothed to Orbassan. However she loves Tancrède, who has gone onto hiding after being placed under Imperial ban at the initiative of Orbassan. A letter from Aménaïde to Tancrède is intercepted and falsely said to be intended for the Saracen Solamir; she is then held prisoner until she can be tried. Tancrède, thinking he has been deceived by Aménaïde, seeks death in an attack on Solamir, whom he kills. As Tancrède too dies, Aménaïde declares her innocence and her love before escaping her father and dying of a broken heart next to Tancrède's body. Composition ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tancrède (Voltaire) P1
''Tancrède'' is a 1702 ''tragédie en musique'' (a French opera in the lyric tragedy tradition) in a prologue and five acts by composer André Campra and librettist Antoine Danchet, based on ''Gerusalemme liberata'' by Torquato Tasso. The opera contains 23 dances in addition to the singing. It is famous for having the alleged first contralto role in French opera. (However, in modern terms it is considered more of a mezzo-soprano range.) The role was written for Julie d'Aubigny, known as 'La Maupin', the most colorful singer of this era.The part of Clorinde is notated in the soprano cleforiginal score, p. 71, but, although it never descends below d′, tradition has it that it was the first major ''bas-dessus'' (contralto) role in the French opera history (Sadie, Julie Anne, ''Maupin'', in Sadie, Stanley (ed), ''op. cit.'', III, p. 274). It's also notable for the unusual choice of three low-lying voices for the main male parts. Performance history ''Tancrède'' was first performe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antoine-François Riccoboni
Antoine-François Riccoboni (1707 – 15 May 1772)"Riccoboni, Antoine-François" Notice d'autorité personne at the BnF website. was an Italian actor of the in Paris, whose stage name was Lélio ''fils''.Forman 2010, p. 151. Life He was born Antonio Francesco Valentino Riccoboni in . His father was the celebrated actor |
Madame De Pompadour
Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour (, ; 29 December 1721 – 15 April 1764), commonly known as Madame de Pompadour, was a member of the French court. She was the official chief mistress of King Louis XV from 1745 to 1751, and remained influential as court favourite until her death. Pompadour took charge of the king's schedule and was a valued aide and advisor, despite her frail health and many political enemies. She secured titles of nobility for herself and her relatives, and built a network of clients and supporters. She was particularly careful not to alienate the Queen, Marie Leszczyńska. On 8 February 1756, the Marquise de Pompadour was named as the thirteenth lady-in-waiting to the queen, a position considered the most prestigious at the court, which accorded her with honors. Pompadour was a major patron of architecture and decorative arts, especially porcelain. She was a patron of the ''philosophes'' of the Enlightenment, including Voltaire. Hostile crit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tancredi
''Tancredi'' is a ''melodramma eroico'' ('' opera seria'' or heroic opera) in two acts by composer Gioachino Rossini and librettist Gaetano Rossi (who was also to write ''Semiramide'' ten years later), based on Voltaire's play ''Tancrède'' (1760). The opera made its first appearance at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice on 6 February 1813, and because ''Il signor Bruschino'' premiered in late January, the composer must have completed ''Tancredi'' in less than a month. The overture, borrowed from ''La pietra del paragone'', is a popular example of Rossini's characteristic style and is regularly performed in concert and recorded. Considered by Stendhal, Rossini's earliest biographer, to be "high amongst the composer's masterworks", and describing it as "a genuine thunderbolt out of a clear, blue sky for the Italian lyric theatre," his librettist Gaetano Rossi notes that, with it, "Rossini rose to glory".Rossi, in Osborne, Richard 2007, p. 199 Richard Osborne proclaims it to be "his f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gioacchino Rossini
Gioachino Antonio Rossini (29 February 1792 – 13 November 1868) was an Italian composer who gained fame for his 39 operas, although he also wrote many songs, some chamber music and piano pieces, and some sacred music. He set new standards for both comic and serious opera before retiring from large-scale composition while still in his thirties, at the height of his popularity. Born in Pesaro to parents who were both musicians (his father a trumpeter, his mother a singer), Rossini began to compose by the age of 12 and was educated at music school in Bologna. His first opera was performed in Venice in 1810 when he was 18 years old. In 1815 he was engaged to write operas and manage theatres in Naples. In the period 1810–1823 he wrote 34 operas for the Italian stage that were performed in Venice, Milan, Ferrara, Naples and elsewhere; this productivity necessitated an almost formulaic approach for some components (such as overtures) and a certain amount of self-borrowing. Durin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (28 August 1749 – 22 March 1832) was a German poet, playwright, novelist, scientist, statesman, theatre director, and critic. His works include plays, poetry, literature, and aesthetic criticism, as well as treatises on botany, anatomy, and colour. He is widely regarded as the greatest and most influential writer in the German language, his work having a profound and wide-ranging influence on Western literary, political, and philosophical thought from the late 18th century to the present day.. Goethe took up residence in Weimar in November 1775 following the success of his first novel, ''The Sorrows of Young Werther'' (1774). He was ennobled by the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, Karl August, in 1782. Goethe was an early participant in the ''Sturm und Drang'' literary movement. During his first ten years in Weimar, Goethe became a member of the Duke's privy council (1776–1785), sat on the war and highway commissions, oversaw the reopening of silver min ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dorothea Celesia
Dorothea Celesia (bap. 1738, died 1790) was a poet and playwright best known for ''Almida'', her free translation of Voltaire's ''Tancrède'' (1760) notable for its emphasis on the heroine. Life and work Dorothea Mallet was the youngest child of David Mallet (ca. 1701–1765), playwright and poet, and his first wife, Susanna (d. 1742). She was educated at home, and in 1758 she married Pietro Paolo Celesia (d. 1806), Ambassador to England (1755 to 1759). She moved with her husband to Genoa in 1759 and remained there for the rest of her life. David Garrick visited her when in Italy and produced her blank verse tragedy, ''Almida'', at the Drury Lane Theatre. The play premiered on January 1, 1771 and had a successful run of ten nights, which afforded Celesia with some short-lived celebrity. Her version of the story is notable for its shift of focus from the warrior Tancred, as in Voltaire's original, to Almida, the heroine, and the latter's assertion of her right to choose her own ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Élie Catherine Fréron
Élie Catherine Fréron (20 January 1718 – 10 March 1776) was a French literary critic and controversialist whose career focused on countering the influence of the ''philosophes'' of the French Enlightenment, partly through his vehicle, the ''Année littéraire''.Jean Balcou, ''Fréron contre les philosophes'' (Geneva) 1975. Thus Fréron, in recruiting young writers to counter the literary establishment became central to the movement now called the Counter-Enlightenment. Biography Fréron was born at Quimper in Brittany and educated by the Jesuits. He made such rapid academic progress that he was appointed professor at the college of Louis-le-Grand before he turned twenty. He became a contributor to the ''Observations sur les écrits modernes'' of the abbé Pierre Desfontaines. The very fact of his collaboration with Desfontaines, one of Voltaire's bitterest enemies, was sufficient to arouse the latter's hostility, and although Fréron had begun his career as one of his admire ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nicolas Poussin
Nicolas Poussin (, , ; June 1594 – 19 November 1665) was the leading painter of the classical French Baroque style, although he spent most of his working life in Rome. Most of his works were on religious and mythological subjects painted for a small group of Italian and French collectors. He returned to Paris for a brief period to serve as First Painter to the King under Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu, but soon returned to Rome and resumed his more traditional themes. In his later years he gave growing prominence to the landscape in his paintings. His work is characterized by clarity, logic, and order, and favors line over color. Until the 20th century he remained a major inspiration for such classically-oriented artists as Jacques-Louis David, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and Paul Cézanne. Details of Poussin's artistic training are somewhat obscure. Around 1612 he traveled to Paris, where he studied under minor masters and completed his earliest surviving works. Hi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot (; ; 5 October 171331 July 1784) was a French philosopher, art critic, and writer, best known for serving as co-founder, chief editor, and contributor to the ''Encyclopédie'' along with Jean le Rond d'Alembert. He was a prominent figure during the Age of Enlightenment. Diderot initially studied philosophy at a Jesuit college, then considered working in the church clergy before briefly studying law. When he decided to become a writer in 1734, his father disowned him. He lived a bohemian existence for the next decade. In the 1740s he wrote many of his best-known works in both fiction and non-fiction, including the 1748 novel ''The Indiscreet Jewels''. In 1751, Diderot co-created the ''Encyclopédie'' with Jean le Rond d'Alembert. It was the first encyclopedia to include contributions from many named contributors and the first to describe the mechanical arts. Its secular tone, which included articles skeptical about Biblical miracles, angered both religious and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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