AUTHORITATIVE | CURATED | First 500 words Free

• Major Operas
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

Composed: 1896 Premiered: 1896, Milan Libretto by Luigi Illica Act I During the early days of the French Revolution, Gérard, a servant, is secretly in love with Maddalena, daughter of the Contessa de Coigny. Among the guests at the contessa’s soirée is the poet Andrea Chénier. The other guests are offended by his call for liberty ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Renaissance

(An-dra’-a Gab-re-a’-le) c. 1510–86 Italian composer After spending some time in Munich as a colleague of Lassus, Gabrieli became maestro di cappella at St Mark’s, Venice in 1566. There, with the resources of its great choir at his disposal, he composed an impressive repertory of music for various combinations of voices and instruments. His style – in sacred ...

• Personalities
• Jazz & Blues
• Sixties

(Accordion, vocals, 1925–87) This Opelousas, Louisiana native cut his teeth on French dance tunes flavoured by Creole blues, as played by his musical forebear Amédée Ardoin. Chenier invented the zydeco style by adding elements of R&B, country and rock’n’roll, combined with a swinging beat. He enjoyed a string of hit singles, including his career-making ...

• Personalities
• Early Romantic
• Opera

1775–1832, Italian Andrea Nozzari was one of the greatest tenors to sing in Rossini’s operas, creating, among many others, the roles of the Earl of Leicester in Elisabetta, regina d’Inghilterra and the title role in Otello. Nozzari was the complete opera singer, with a strong voice and graceful stage presence. He probably made his debut ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Contemporary Classical
• Singer

b. 1967 German countertenor Scholl studied at the Schola Cantorum in Basle. He has worked with many leading Baroque specialists, including William Christie, Philip Herreweghe, Christopher Hogwood and Ton Koopman, singing oratorios and cantatas by J. S. Bach and Handel. His recordings include Handel’s Messiah and Solomon, and Bach’s Christmas Oratorio and B minor Mass. He ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Modern Era
• Singer

1890–1957 Italian tenor Gigli made his debut in Italy in 1914, and sang Faust in Boito’s Mefistofele at Bologna and Naples the following year. He made his Metropolitan Opera debut in Mefistofele in 1920. The operas in which he appeared at the ‘Met’, where he sang for 12 seasons, included La bohème, Ponchielli’s La gioconda and Meyerbeer’s L’Africaine. ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Contemporary Classical
• Singer

1924–2014 Italian tenor Bergonzi studied as a baritone, singing Rossini’s Figaro in Lecce in 1948 before retraining as a tenor. His second debut was as Giordano’s Andrea Chénier in 1951. He sang regularly at the Metropolitan Opera 1956–88. At Covent Garden, where he made his debut in 1962, he sang many roles including Verdi’s Alvaro and Manrico (conducted ...

• Personalities
• Modern Era
• Opera

1924–2014, Italian Known as ‘the tenor of all tenors’, Bergonzi had a lyrical voice that was both refined and intense. Vocal lessons were interrupted when he was interred in a prisoner-of-war camp, but resumed upon his release and in 1947 he began to make a series of debuts as a baritone. Retraining his voice, he emerged four years ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Modern Era

(Oom-bâr’-to Jôr-da’-no) 1867–1948 Italian composer A leading member of the verismo school, Giordano has been much criticized for dramatic crudity and melodic short-windedness. He remains popular with singers, however, who value his effectively flattering vocal writing, and with audiences, who respond to his sense of the stage and his emotional power. Such works as Andrea Chénier ...

• Personalities
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

1867–1948, Italian Having successfully avoided the career of fencing master intended for him by his father, Giordano studied at the Naples Conservatory and entered a one-act opera, Marina, in the Sonzogno competition in 1889. This was the year in which Mascagni blew away the competition with Cavalleria rusticana and Giordano came a respectable sixth. Even so, ...

• Arts & Culture
• Classical
• Early Baroque

The Italian city of Cremona has been celebrated since the sixteenth century for the manufacture of stringed instruments. The first famous family of makers there was the Amati. Andrea Amati (c. 1505–80) founded a dynasty that included his sons Antonio (c. 1538–95) and Girolamo (1561–1630). But it is the latter’s son Nicolo (1596–1684) who is usually regarded as the most outstanding ...

• Inside the Music
• Classical
• Early Baroque

From the late sixteenth century, castratos were engaged as singers by the Sistine Chapel in Rome. Although castration had been forbidden by Pope Gregory XIII, some children who had suffered mutilation were trained as castrato singers. Their voices were found to be much stronger, and their vocal ranges wider, than those of falsettists, whom they gradually ...

• Instruments
• Stringed

The violin family is a group of fretless bowed stringed instruments that has its roots in Italy. Four instruments make up the family: the violin, the viola, the violoncello (commonly abbreviated to cello), and the double bass. The characteristic body shape is one of the most recognizable in music; the particular acoustic properties this shape imparts have made the ...

• Classical
• Late Baroque

More sophisticated diplomatic relations between states in the late Baroque era resulted in a time of relative peace – for a short period at least – during which the arts flourished. As in the Renaissance and early Baroque eras, writers, artists and musicians turned to the classical antiquity of Greece and Rome for their standards and their in­spiration. At ...

• Major Operas
• Classical Era
• Opera

‘The Magic Flute’ The librettist of Die Zauberflöte, Emanuel Schikaneder, Mozart’s old friend and fellow freemason, drew on an eclectic variety of sources, including a French novel, Sethos, Paul Wranitzky’s magic opera Oberon (1789) and the oriental fairy tale Lulu. In the bird catcher Papageno, Schikaneder created for himself a character that could exploit ...