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Der Wettkampf Zu Olympia, Oder Die Freunde
''L'Olimpiade'' is an opera libretto in three acts by Metastasio originally written for an operatic setting by Antonio Caldara of 1733. Metastasio’s plot vaguely draws upon the narrative of "The Trial of the Suitors" provided from Book 6 of '' The Histories'' of Herodotus, which had previously been the base for Apostolo Zeno's libretto ''Gli inganni felici'' (1695). The story, set in Ancient Greece at the time of the Olympic Games, is about amorous rivalry and characters' taking places to gain the loved one. The story ends with the announcement of two marriages. Background Metastasio, as Imperial court poet at the court of Vienna, was requested to write the libretto to help celebrate the birthday of Empress Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel in 1733. The court composer Caldara was assigned to compose the music. The libretto attracted attention immediately and productions were soon mounted across Europe. Metastasio himself commented to Saverio Mattei that ''L’Olim ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
La Nitteti
''La Nitteti'' is an 18th-century Italian opera in 3 acts by the Czech composer Josef Mysliveček. It was composed to a libretto by the Italian poet Metastasio that was first performed in 1756, one of the newer (and less popular) of the Metastasian librettos in Mysliveček's day. For a performance in the 1770s, it would only be expected that a libretto of such age would be abbreviated and altered to suit contemporary operatic taste. This opera contains more substitutions of original aria texts than any other Mysliveček setting of a Metastasian libretto. The cuts and changes in the text made for the 1770 performance of Mysliveček's opera are not attributable. All of Mysliveček's operas are of the serious type in Italian language referred to as opera seria. Performance history The opera was first performed at the Teatro Nuovo Pubblico in Bologna on 29 April 1770, a month after Mysliveček first made the acquaintance of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his father Leopold the previ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antonio Sacchini
Antonio Maria Gasparo Gioacchino Sacchini (14 June 1730 – 6 October 1786) was an Italian classical period (music), classical era 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 Her Majesty's Theatre, King's Theatre. He spent his final years in Paris, becoming embroiled in the musical dispute between the followers of the composers Christoph Willibald Gluck, 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, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Josef Mysliveček
Josef Mysliveček (9 March 1737 – 4 February 1781) was a Czech composer who contributed to the formation of late eighteenth-century classicism in music. Mysliveček provided his younger friend Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart with significant compositional models in the genres of symphony, Italian serious opera, and violin concerto; both Wolfgang and his father Leopold Mozart considered him an intimate friend from the time of their first meetings in Bologna in 1770 until he betrayed their trust over the promise of an operatic commission for Wolfgang to be arranged with the management of the Teatro San Carlo in Naples. His closeness to the Mozart family resulted in frequent references to him in the Mozart correspondence. Biography Mysliveček was born in Prague, one of twin sons of a prosperous mill owner, and studied philosophy at Charles-Ferdinand University before following in the footsteps of his father. No documentation exists to support claims that he was actually born in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
London
London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Western Europe, with a population of 14.9 million. London stands on the River Thames in southeast England, at the head of a tidal estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a major settlement for nearly 2,000 years. Its ancient core and financial centre, the City of London, was founded by the Roman Empire, Romans as Londinium and has retained its medieval boundaries. The City of Westminster, to the west of the City of London, has been the centuries-long host of Government of the United Kingdom, the national government and Parliament of the United Kingdom, parliament. London grew rapidly 19th-century London, in the 19th century, becoming the world's List of largest cities throughout history, largest city at the time. Since the 19th cen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Her Majesty's Theatre
His Majesty's Theatre is a West End theatre situated in the Haymarket, London, Haymarket in the City of Westminster, London. The building, designed by Charles J. Phipps, was constructed in 1897 for the actor-manager Herbert Beerbohm Tree, who established the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) at the theatre. In the early decades of the 20th century Tree produced spectacular productions of William Shakespeare, Shakespeare and other classical works, and the theatre hosted premieres by such playwrights as George Bernard Shaw, Bernard Shaw, J. M. Synge and, later, Noël Coward and J. B. Priestley. Since the First World War the wide stage has made the theatre suitable for large-scale musical productions, and His Majesty's has accordingly specialised in hosting musical theatre, musicals. It has been home to record-setting musical theatre runs such as the First World War hit ''Chu Chin Chow'' and Andrew Lloyd Webber's ''The Phantom of the Opera (1986 musical), The Phantom of the Oper ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Arne
Thomas Augustine Arne (; 12 March 17105 March 1778) was an English composer. He is best known for his patriotic song " Rule, Britannia!" and the song " A-Hunting We Will Go", the latter composed for a 1777 production of '' The Beggar's Opera'', which has since become popular as a folk song and a nursery rhyme. Arne was a leading British theatre composer of the 18th century, working at the West End's Drury Lane and Covent Garden. He wrote many operatic entertainments for the London theatres and pleasure gardens, as well as concertos, sinfonias, and sonatas. Early life Arne was born on 12 March 1710 in Covent Garden and baptised as a Roman Catholic. He came from a long line of Catholic recusants. Arne's father and grandfather were both upholsterers and both held office in the Worshipful Company of Upholders of the City of London. His grandfather fell on hard times and died in the debtors' prison of Marshalsea. His father earned enough money to rent 31 King Street, a large ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Opera Seria
''Opera seria'' (; plural: ''opere serie''; usually called ''dramma per musica'' or ''melodramma serio'') is an Italian musical term which refers to the noble and "serious" style of Italian opera that predominated in Europe from the 1710s to about 1770. The term itself was rarely used at the time and only attained common usage once ''opera seria'' was becoming unfashionable and beginning to be viewed as something of a historical genre. The popular rival to ''opera seria'' was ''opera buffa,'' the 'comic' opera that took its cue from the improvisatory commedia dell'arte. An opera seria had a historical or Biblical subject, whereas an opera buffa had a contemporary subject. Italian ''opera seria'' (invariably to Italian libretto, libretti) was produced not only in Italy but almost throughout Europe, and beyond (see Opera in Latin America, Opera in Cuba e. g.). Among the main centres in Europe were the Royal court, court operas based in Warsaw (since 1628), Bavarian State Opera, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Milan
Milan ( , , ; ) is a city in northern Italy, regional capital of Lombardy, the largest city in Italy by urban area and the List of cities in Italy, second-most-populous city proper in Italy after Rome. The city proper has a population of nearly 1.4 million, while its Metropolitan City of Milan, metropolitan city has 3.2 million residents. Within Europe, Milan is the fourth-most-populous List of urban areas in the European Union, urban area of the EU with 6.17 million inhabitants. According to national sources, the population within the wider Milan metropolitan area (also known as Greater Milan) is estimated between 7.5 million and 8.2 million, making it by far the List of metropolitan areas of Italy, largest metropolitan area in Italy and List of metropolitan areas in Europe, one of the largest in the EU.* * * * Milan is the economic capital of Italy, one of the economic capitals of Europe and a global centre for business, fashion and finance. Milan is reco ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Baldassare Galuppi
Baldassare Galuppi (18 October 17063 January 1785) was a Venetian composer, born on the island of Burano in the Venetian Republic. He belonged to a generation of composers, including Johann Adolph Hasse, Giovanni Battista Sammartini, and C. P. E. Bach, whose works are emblematic of the prevailing galant music that developed in Europe throughout the 18th century. He achieved international success, spending periods of his career in Vienna, London and Saint Petersburg, but his main base remained Venice, where he held a succession of leading appointments. In his early career Galuppi made a modest success in ''opera seria'', but from the 1740s, together with the playwright and librettist Carlo Goldoni, he became famous throughout Europe for his comic operas in the new ''dramma giocoso'' style. To the succeeding generation of composers, he was known as "the father of comic opera". Some of his mature ''opere serie'', for which his librettists included the poet and dramatist M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi
Giovanni Battista Draghi (; 4 January 1710 – 16 or 17 March 1736), usually referred to as Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (), was an Italian Baroque composer, violinist, and organist, leading exponent of the Baroque; he is considered one of the greatest Italian musicians of the first half of the 18th century and one of the most important representatives of the Neapolitan school. Despite his short life and few years of activity (he died of tuberculosis at the age of 26), he managed to create works of high artistic value and historical importance, such as ''La serva padrona'' (''The Maid Turned Mistress''), which played an important role in the development and diffusion of the opera buffa in Europe, and '' L'Olimpiade'', considered one of the best of the opera seria of the first half of the 18th century, and the '' Stabat Mater'', among the most important works of sacred music of all time. Biography Born in Jesi in what is now the Province of Ancona (but was then part of the Papa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antonio Vivaldi
Antonio Lucio Vivaldi (4 March 1678 – 28 July 1741) was an Italian composer, virtuoso violinist, impresario of Baroque music and Roman Catholic priest. Regarded as one of the greatest Baroque composers, Vivaldi's influence during his lifetime was widespread across Europe, giving origin to many imitators and admirers. He pioneered many developments in orchestration, violin technique and Program music, programmatic music. He consolidated the emerging concerto form, especially the solo concerto, into a widely accepted and followed idiom. Vivaldi composed many instrumental concertos, for the violin and a variety of other musical instruments, as well as Sacred Music, sacred choral works and List of operas by Antonio Vivaldi, more than fifty operas. His best-known work is a series of violin concertos known as ''The Four Seasons (Vivaldi), The Four Seasons''. Many of his compositions were written for the all-female music ensemble of the , a home for abandoned children. Vivaldi b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
