AUTHORITATIVE | CURATED | First 500 words Free

• Houses & Companies
• Late Baroque
• Opera

Literary clubs that were established in seventeenth-century Italy were commonly known as ‘academies’, taking their name from the Athenian garden where Plato was thought to have met with his followers. One of the most important such groups in the early eighteenth century was the Roman ‘Arcadian Academy’. It was formally established in 1690 to honour the late Queen Christina of Sweden ...

• Personalities
• Late Baroque
• Opera

1664–1725, Italian Stampiglia was one of the 14 founding members of the Accadamia dell’Arcadia (The Arcadian Academy). Although a Roman by birth, for many years Stampiglia was associated with operas in Naples, and did not always conform to Arcadian ideals despite being part of their circle. Stampiglia’s libretti are often ironic comedies in which conventional heroism is regarded ...

• Opera
• Classical Era

The humanist principles of the Enlightenment removed opera from the extravagant world of baroque and landed it in entirely new territory. After 1720, Baroque became a target for changes initiated by the scholar Gian Vincenzo Gravina of the Arcadian Academy in Rome. Baroque operas based on classical myths had developed exaggerated and ultimately ludicrous forms. Under the Enlightenment principles that ...

• Houses & Companies
• Late Baroque
• Opera

During the early eighteenth century a few composers enjoyed regular close collaboration with a favourite librettist, such as Fux with Pariati, or both Vinci and Porpora with the young Metastasio. However, such examples were rare, and instead it was common for a popular libretto created for one major Italian opera centre to be adapted for the needs ...

• Arts & Culture
• Classical
• Contemporary Classical

Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921) is said to have written the first film score with L’assassinat du duc de Guise (‘The Assassination of the Duke of Guise’, c. 1908). Many composers in the US and Europe followed suit, although few wished to make a career in films. A famous exception was Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897–1957), whose scores include the Academy Award-winning The ...

• Houses & Companies
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

In 1880 a meeting was held between a group of wealthy businessmen in New York. Their uniting cause was the limited number of box seats available at the Academy of Music, the city’s primary venue for opera. The solution they posited was to build an entirely new opera house. A design was commissioned from J. Cleaveland Cady that included boxes ...

• Instruments
• Keyboards

Like its close relation the concertina, the accordion is a glorified mouth organ, in which the ‘reeds’ (now generally made of tempered steel) are set in vibration by a rectangular bellows. The bellows are operated by the left hand, which also – as in all keyboard instruments – manipulates the so-called bass keyboard, in this case a ...

• Classical
• Early Romantic

Following the social and political upheaval of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, Europe enjoyed a short period of relative stability with Napoleon’s exile, the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in France and the establishment of the Vienna Peace Settlement in 1815. However, in the early 1820s a number of minor revolts broke out in Naples and ...

• Opera
• Late Baroque

The traditions and styles of opera from Venice and Naples dominated operatic life in Rome, although for a short time public opera performances were forbidden in the papal city. The influence of Italian opera stretched much further, and companies were established outside Italy – most notably the Dresden opera house at the court of the Elector of Saxony, ...

• Classical
• Late Romantic

The 1860s saw a number of major reorganizations in European politics. Italy became a united country under the king of (former) Piedmont-Sardinia, Victor Emmanuel II, in 1861 and its new national government tried to retain the kingdom’s liberal ideals, such as removing instances of operatic and intellectual censorship. However, Italy’s liberalism was not aspired to by other ...

• Major Operas
• Early & Middle Baroque
• Opera

Premiered: 1602, Florence Libretto by Ottavio Rinuccini, after Ovid Prologue The figure of Tragedy introduces the opera, explaining that to make the story suitable for marriage celebrations, the original ending has been altered. Act I The act opens in an Arcadian village, with Euridice preparing for her marriage to Orfeo, along with nymphs and shepherds ...

• Major Operas
• Late Baroque
• Opera

A small number of Handel’s dramatic works are known as the ‘magic operas’, including Rinaldo, Teseo (1712), Amadigi (1715), Orlando (1733) and Alcina. These operas feature protagonists who use sorcery to manipulate love, usually for evil ends. Most common among these operas is the prima-donna sorceress figure, who attempts to compel a castrato hero away from his true ...

• Major Operas
• Late Baroque
• Opera

Semele was first performed at Covent Garden on 10 February 1744 in the manner of an oratorio, without action or scenery. Nevertheless, Handel’s occasional collaborator Charles Jennens regarded it as ‘a bawdy opera’. Congreve’s libretto, based on a story from Ovid, had originally been set as an opera by John Eccles in 1707, but it was ...

• Performance
• Late Baroque
• Opera

Pierre-Jacques Fougeroux visited London and attended Handel’s operas Tolomeo, Siroe and Admeto during the Royal Academy of Music’s final season in 1727–28. His account of what he saw and heard is invaluable: 'The Opera, which was once negligible, has become a spectacle of some importance in the last three years. They have sent for the best voices [and] ...

• Performance
• Classical
• Renaissance

In his Dialogo della musica (‘Musical Dialogue’), published in 1544, Antonfrancesco Doni describes two performances, one in an all-male academy, the other at a more informal gathering including a woman. The singing of madrigals by contemporary composers is interspersed with conversation. Is this a realistic picture of a social gathering in mid-sixteenth century Italy ? Diverse clues suggest ...