Ranieri de' Calzabigi (; 23 December 1714 – July 1795) was an Italian poet and
librettist, most famous for his collaboration with the composer
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. Born in the Upper Palatinate and raised in Bohemia, both part of the Holy Roman Empire, he g ...
on his "reform" operas.
Born in
Livorno
Livorno () is a port city on the Ligurian Sea on the western coast of Tuscany, Italy. It is the capital of the Province of Livorno, having a population of 158,493 residents in December 2017. It is traditionally known in English as Leghorn (pronou ...
, Calzabigi spent the 1750s in
Paris, where he became a close friend of
Giacomo Casanova. Here he explored his interest in opera, producing an edition of the works of
Pietro Metastasio, the most famous librettist of
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 abo ...
. However, Calzabigi was also impressed by French
tragédie en musique, and eager to reform Italian opera by making it simpler and more dramatically effective. In 1761 he settled in
Vienna, where he met likeminded reformers: Gluck; Count
Giacomo Durazzo
Count Giacomo Durazzo (27 April 1717 – 15 October 1794) was an Italian diplomat and man of theatre.
Biography
He was born into the House of Durazzo, one of the most important aristocratic families in Genoa. His older brother was the doge Marc ...
, the theatre director;
Gasparo Angiolini, the choreographer;
Giovanni Maria Quaglio
Giovanni Maria Quaglio (c. 1700-1765) was an Austrian stage designer of Italian extraction. He worked mainly in Vienna, where he designed the original production of Christoph Willibald Gluck's ''Orfeo ed Euridice'' in 1762. He studied in Rome an ...
, the set designer; and the
castrato
A castrato (Italian, plural: ''castrati'') is a type of classical male singing voice equivalent to that of a soprano, mezzo-soprano, or contralto. The voice is produced by castration of the singer before puberty, or it occurs in one who, due to ...
Gaetano Guadagni. Together they worked on Gluck's groundbreaking ''
Orfeo ed Euridice
' (; French: '; English: ''Orpheus and Eurydice'') is an opera composed by Christoph Willibald Gluck, based on Orpheus, the myth of Orpheus and set to a libretto by Ranieri de' Calzabigi. It belongs to the genre of the ''azione teatrale'', mea ...
'' in 1762. Calzabigi then wrote the libretto for
''Alceste'', which further abandoned the practices of opera seria in favour of "noble simplicity". In the preface to this work, to which Gluck put his signature, Calzabigi set out his manifesto for reforming opera. A third collaboration, ''
Paride ed Elena
' (; ''Paris and Helen'') is an opera by Christoph Willibald Gluck. It is the third of Gluck's so-called reform operas for Vienna, following ''Orfeo ed Euridice'' and '' Alceste'', and the least often performed of the three. Like its predecesso ...
'', followed in 1770. Calzabigi also contributed to the scenario of Gluck's reformist
ballet,
''Don Juan'', in 1761. ''La finta giardiniera'', set by
Pasquale Anfossi in
1774
Events
January–March
* January 21 – Mustafa III, List of Ottoman Sultans, Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, dies and is succeeded by his brother Abdul Hamid I.
* January 27
** An angry crowd in Boston, Massachusetts seizes, tars, and f ...
and
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in
1775
Events
Summary
The American Revolutionary War began this year, with the first military engagement being the April 19 Battles of Lexington and Concord on the day after Paul Revere's now-legendary ride. The Second Continental Congress t ...
, has been ascribed to him, but this is now regarded as doubtful.
[ Julian Rushton]
"Finta giardiniera, La (ii)"
in ''Grove Music Online
''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians. Along with the German-language ''Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart'', it is one of the largest reference works on the history and theo ...
'' , accessed 13 May 2015.
In 1774 Calzabigi was banished from the Viennese court as the result of a scandal and took up residence in
Pisa
Pisa ( , or ) is a city and ''comune'' in Tuscany, central Italy, straddling the Arno just before it empties into the Ligurian Sea. It is the capital city of the Province of Pisa. Although Pisa is known worldwide for its leaning tower, the cit ...
and in 1780 in
Naples, where he wrote his last two librettos, ''Elfrida'' (1792) and ''Elvira'' (1794), both set to music by
Giovanni Paisiello, and continued his literary activities until his death.
Notes
External links
''Alceste'': opera with libretto by Calzabigi and music by Gluck vocal score from Sibley Music Library Digital Scores Collection
* Daniel Winkler: "Körper und Tragödie. Alfieris und Calzabigis paratextueller Kampf um eine reine Gattung", in
Wilhelm Fink, Munich 2016, . 49–104. pp. 153–190.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Calzabigi
1714 births
1795 deaths
People from Livorno
Ballet librettists
Italian expatriates in Austria
Italian opera librettists
Italian male dramatists and playwrights
18th-century Italian dramatists and playwrights
18th-century Italian male writers