AUTHORITATIVE | CURATED | First 500 words Free

• Personalities
• Classical Era
• Opera

c. 1730–94, Italian Mattia Verazi was the author of around 20 libretti, most of them written for performance in Italy. Among the first was Ifigenia in Aulide (1751), which was set to music by Jommelli. Some 10 years later, Verazi was at the court in Mannheim, which later moved to Munich. Verazi went too. The most important ...

• Personalities
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

1856–1928, Italian Battistini was gifted with a beautiful baritone voice and after only a short period of study was given the opportunity to take on the leading role in Gaetano Donizetti’s (1797–1848) La favorite in 1878. Such was his success that Battistini embarked immediately on a busy schedule. His liquid, agile, high voice was ideally suited for the ...

• Personalities
• Classical Era
• Opera

1727–79, Italian The Italian composer Tommaso Traetta reflected Gluck’s ideals for opera, in which orchestration, choral scenes, dance and solo arias were combined. One example of these principles was Traetta’s setting of an Italian translation of the text Rameau had used in his own Hippolyte et Aricie (‘Hippolytus and Aricia’, 1759), which married the French and Italian ...

• Personalities
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

1878–1946, Italian Adami worked as a playwright and journalist as well as a librettist. He found most success with lighter plays such as Una capanna e il tuo cuore (1913) and also wrote a number of ballet scenarios. His is best known operatically for his collaborations with Puccini. The publisher Giulio Ricordi brought the two together, and their first ...