AUTHORITATIVE | CURATED | First 500 words Free

• Major Operas
• High Romantic
• Opera

‘The Joyful Girl’ Composed: 1876 Premiered: 1876, Milan Libretto by Tobia Gorrio, after Victor Hugo Act I Gioconda leaves her blind mother, La Cieca, surrounded by revellers outside the Doge’s Palace while she looks for her betrothed, Enzo Grimaldi. When Gioconda refuses Barnaba’s advances, he has La Cieca accused of witchcraft. Laura, the wife ...

• Personalities
• High Romantic
• Opera

1834–86, Italian Amilcare Ponchielli, composer of nine operas, became famous for only one of them – La gioconda (‘The Joyful Girl’, 1876). Ponchielli was born at what was, for him, an unfortunate time. Verdi dominated the opera scene and Ponchielli was later overshadowed by one of his own pupils – Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924). Ponchielli’s first venture ...

• Instruments
• Keyboards
• Percussion

Keyboard percussion instruments include the western xylophone, marimba, vibraphone and glockenspiel, the log xylophones and marimbas of Africa and Central America, and the barred instruments played in the Indonesian gamelan. The orchestral xylophone, marimba and glockenspiel have thin wooden or metal rectangular bars laid out like a chromatic piano keyboard. The back row of bars – ...

• Personalities
• High Romantic
• Opera

1810–76, Italian Although Francesco Maria Piave’s fame rests on his libretti written for Verdi, he produced texts for several other composers of the Romantic era. These included Michael Balfe, Antonio Cagnoni (1828–96), Saverio Mercadante (1795–1870) and Giovanni Pacini (1796–1867): Piave supplied Pacini with the libretto for his Lorenzino de’ Medici (1845), which was first performed in Venice. By ...

• Personalities
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

1858–1924, Italian Puccini’s unerring instinct for strong melody and evocative harmony, coupled with his ability to bring to life passionate and sensual relationships, has made him one the most popular of opera composers. Puccini brought Italian opera into the twentieth century, synthesizing music and drama in a symphonic idiom, but retaining the voice as the focal ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Late Romantic
• Librettist

(Ar-i’-go Bo-e’-to) 1842–1918 Italian composer and librettist Boito furnished the librettos for two of Verdi’s greatest Shakespearean masterpieces, Otello (1884–86) and Falstaff (1893). The premiere of his own operatic masterpiece Mefistofele, at La Scala, Milan (1868), was greeted with whistles due to the work’s extreme length (over five hours) and Germanic influences. As a result Boito for a while ...

• 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. ...