François Lays
François Lay, better known under the stage name Lays (14 February 1758 – 30 March 1831), was a French baritone and tenor opera singer. Originally destined for a career in the church, Lays was recruited by the Paris Opéra in 1779. He soon became a leading member of the company, in spite of quarrels with the management. Lays enthusiastically welcomed the French Revolution and became involved in politics with the encouragement of his friend Bertrand Barère. Barère's downfall led to Lays being imprisoned briefly, but he soon won back the public and secured the patronage of Napoleon, at whose coronation and second wedding he sang. This association with the Emperor caused him trouble when the Bourbon monarchy was restored and Lays's final years were darkened by disputes over his pension, mounting debts, the death of his only son and his wife's illness. After a career spanning more than four decades, he died in poverty. Lays was famous for the beauty of his voice. One of the Op� ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Toulouse
Toulouse (, ; ; ) is a city in southern France, the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Haute-Garonne department and of the Occitania (administrative region), Occitania region. The city is on the banks of the Garonne, River Garonne, from the Mediterranean Sea, from the Atlantic Ocean and from Paris. It is the List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, fourth-largest city in France after Paris, Marseille and Lyon, with 511,684 inhabitants within its municipal boundaries (2022); its Functional area (France), metropolitan area has a population of 1,513,396 inhabitants (2022). Toulouse is the central city of one of the 22 Métropole, metropolitan councils of France. Between the 2014 and 2020 censuses, its metropolitan area was the third fastest growing among metropolitan areas larger than 500,000 inhabitants in France. Toulouse is the centre of the European aerospace industry, with the headquarters of Airbus, the SPOT (satellites), SPOT satellite system, ATR ( ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Iphigénie En Tauride
''Iphigénie en Tauride'' (, ''Iphigenia in Tauris'') is a 1779 opera by Christoph Willibald Gluck in four acts. It was his fifth opera for the French stage. The libretto was written by Nicolas-François Guillard. With ''Iphigénie,'' Gluck took his operatic reform to its logical conclusion. The recitatives are shorter and they are ''récitatif accompagné'' (i.e. the strings and perhaps other instruments are playing, not just continuo accompaniment). The normal dance movements that one finds in the French ''tragédie en musique'' are almost entirely absent. The drama is ultimately based on the play '' Iphigenia in Tauris'' by the ancient Greek dramatist Euripides which deals with stories concerning the family of Agamemnon in the aftermath of the Trojan War. Performance history ''Iphigénie en Tauride'' was first performed on 18 May 1779 by the Paris Opéra at the second Salle du Palais-Royal and was a great success. Some think that the head of the Paris Opéra, Devismes, ha ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Christoph Willibald Gluck
Christoph Willibald (Ritter von) Gluck (; ; 2 July 1714 – 15 November 1787) was a composer of Italian and French opera in the early classical period (music), classical period. Born in the Upper Palatinate and raised in Bohemia, both part of the Holy Roman Empire at the time, he gained prominence at the House of Habsburg, Habsburg court in Vienna. There he brought about the practical reform of opera's dramaturgical practices for which many intellectuals had been campaigning. With a series of radical new works in the 1760s, among them ''Orfeo ed Euridice'' and ''Alceste (Gluck), Alceste'', he broke the stranglehold that Metastasio, Metastasian ''opera seria'' had enjoyed for much of the century. Gluck introduced more drama by using orchestral recitative and cutting the usually long da capo aria. His later operas have half the length of a typical baroque opera. The strong influence of French opera encouraged Gluck to move to Paris in November 1773. Fusing the traditions of Italian ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Étienne-Joseph Floquet
Étienne-Joseph Floquet (23 November 174810 May 1785) was a French composer, mainly of operas. He was born in Aix-en-Provence and began his career by writing church music, before moving to Paris in 1767.Rushton There, Floquet made a name for himself with the requiem he wrote for the funeral of the composer Jean-Joseph de Mondonville in 1772.Dratwicki, ''Antoine Dauvergne'', p. 297 Floquet's first work for the Paris Opéra, the ''ballet héroïque'' ''L'union de l'amour et les arts,'' was a triumph, enjoying 60 performances between its premiere in September 1773 and January 1774. The audience at the premiere was so enthusiastic that the performance had to be stopped several times because of the applause and, at the final curtain, Floquet was presented on stage, the first composer in the history of the Paris Opéra to enjoy such an honour. However, the arrival of the German composer Christoph Willibald Gluck in Paris later that year changed French musical taste and Floquet's style beca ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Opera Buffa
Opera buffa (, "comic opera"; : ''opere buffe'') is a genre of opera. It was first used as an informal description of Italian comic operas variously classified by their authors as ''commedia in musica'', ''commedia per musica'', ''dramma bernesco'', ''dramma comico'', ''divertimento giocoso''. Especially associated with developments in Naples in the first half of the 18th century, whence its popularity spread to Rome and northern Italy, ''buffa'' was at first characterized by everyday settings, local dialects, and simple vocal writing (the basso buffo is the associated voice type), the main requirement being clear diction and facility with patter song, patter. ''The New Grove Dictionary of Opera'' considers ''La Cilla'' (music by Michelangelo Faggioli, text by , 1706) and Luigi Ricci (composer), Luigi and Federico Ricci's'' Crispino e la comare'' (1850) to be the first and last appearances of the genre, although the term is still occasionally applied to newer work (for example E ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Opéra-ballet
Opéra-ballet (; plural: ''opéras-ballets'') is a genre of French Baroque lyric theatre that was most popular during the 18th century, combining elements of opera and ballet, "that grew out of the '' ballets à entrées'' of the early seventeenth century".Pitou 1983, p. 278 "''Opéra-ballet''". It differed from the more elevated '' tragédie en musique'' as practised by Jean-Baptiste Lully in several ways. It contained more dance music than the ''tragédie'', and the plots were not necessarily derived from classical mythology and allowed for the comic elements, which Lully had excluded from the ''tragédie en musique'' after '' Thésée'' (1675). The ''opéra-ballet'' consisted of a prologue followed by a number of self-contained acts (also known as ''entrées''), often loosely grouped around a single theme. The individual acts could also be performed independently, in which case they were known as ''actes de ballet''. History The first work in the genre is generally held to ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Pierre-Joseph Candeille
Pierre-Joseph Candeille (8 December 1744 – 24 April 1827) was a French composer and singer, born in Estaires. He studied at Lille before moving to Paris, where he worked singing ''basse-taille'' in the chorus of the Opéra and the Concert Spirituel between 1767 and 1781, except for a brief period (1771—1773) he spent in Moulins. From 1784, he became a full-time composer. He worked at the Opéra as choirmaster from 1800 to 1802 and again from 1804 to 1805, before retiring to live in Chantilly.Rushton in ''Grove'' Candeille wrote four symphonies, as well as ballets, divertissements and sacred music (including a mass and a Magnificat). None of his operas achieved much success, with the exception of his revision of Jean-Philippe Rameau's ''Castor et Pollux''. Candeille's version was premiered at the Paris Opéra on 14 June 1791. By 1 January 1793, it had had 50 performances. It continued to be one of the most popular operatic works in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic period and ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Jean-Joseph Mouret
Jean-Joseph Mouret (11 April 1682 in Avignon – 10 December 1738 in Charenton-le-Pont) was a French composer whose dramatic works made him one of the leading exponents of Baroque music in his country. Even though most of his works are rarely performed, Mouret's name survives today thanks to the popularity of the Fanfare-Rondeau from his first ''Suite de symphonies'', which has been adopted as the signature tune of the PBS program ''Masterpiece'' and is a popular musical choice in many modern weddings. Life Jean-Joseph was the son of Jean Bertrand Mouret, a silk merchant, who gave his son a good education and, noting his early gifts for music, supported his musical studies. Mouret sang and composed with success and, around the age of twenty-five, settled in Paris. Talented and agreeable, he became well-known there, and in 1708 he was introduced to Anne, Duchess of Maine, whose salon at Sceaux was a center of courtly society in the declining years of the reign of Louis XIV. He ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Acte De Ballet
This is a glossary list of opera genres, giving alternative names. "Opera" is an Italian word (short for "opera in musica"); it was not at first ''commonly'' used in Italy (or in other countries) to refer to the genre of particular works. Most composers used more precise designations to present their work to the public. Often specific genres of opera were commissioned by theatres or patrons (in which case the form of the work might deviate more or less from the genre norm, depending on the inclination of the composer). Opera genres are not exclusive. Some operas are regarded as belonging to several. Definitions Opera genres have been defined in different ways, not always in terms of stylistic rules. Some, like opera seria, refer to traditions identified by later historians,McClymonds, Marita P and Heartz, Daniel: "Opera seria" in ''The New Grove Dictionary of Opera'', ed. Stanley Sadie (London, 1992) and others, like Zeitoper, have been defined by their own inventors. Other forms ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Pierre Montan Berton
Pierre Montan Berton (7 January 1727 – 14 May 1780) was a French people, French composer and conductor (music), conductor. He resided primarily in Paris and was an opera director. Pierre's son Henri Montan Berton (1767–1844) was also a composer, more famous than Pierre himself. Operas SourcesArticle on Berton on the site CESAR(accessed on 31 October 2013) External links * * 1727 births 1780 deaths French male composers French conductors (music) French male conductors (music) 18th-century French composers 18th-century French male musicians 18th-century conductors (music) French ballet composers Directors of the Paris Opera {{France-composer-stub ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Lettre De Cachet
''Lettres de cachet'' (; ) were letters signed by the king of France, countersigned by one of his ministers, and closed with the royal seal. They contained orders directly from the king, often to enforce actions and judgments that could not be appealed. In the case of organized bodies, ''lettres de cachet'' were issued for the purpose of preventing assembly, or to accomplish some other definite act. The provincial estates were convoked (called to assembly) in this manner, and it was by a ''lettre de cachet'' (in this case, a ''lettre de jussipri''), or by showing in person in a ''lit de justice'', that the king ordered a ''parlement'' to register a law despite that ''parlement''s refusal to pass it. The best-known ''lettres de cachet'', however, were penal, by which a subject was imprisoned without trial and without an opportunity of defense (after inquiry and due diligence by the ''lieutenant de police'') in a state prison or an ordinary jail, confined in a convent or the G ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |