AUTHORITATIVE | CURATED | First 500 words Free

• Major Operas
• Classical Era
• Opera

‘The Secret Marriage’ Composed: 1792 Premiered: 1792, Vienna Libretto by Giovanni Bertati, after George Colman and David Garrick Act I Carolina, Geronimo’s daughter, is secretly married to Paolino, her father’s clerk. The couple are trying to find a way to tell Geronimo of their marriage; he would not approve of such a lowly match. Paolino comes ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Classical Era
• Composer

(Do-ma’-ne-ko Che-ma-rô’-za) 1749–1801 Italian composer Trained in Naples, Cimarosa quickly launched himself on an operatic career with successes in Naples, Rome and Venice. In 1787 he was invited to St Petersburg. On the way home he paused at Vienna, where his Il matrimonio segreto (‘The Secret Marriage’) had a huge success in 1792 – uniquely, the entire opera ...

• Personalities
• Classical Era
• Opera

1749–1801, Italian The prolific Italian composer Domenico Cimarosa, who was born near Naples, first attracted attention with his opera Le stravaganze del conte (‘The Eccentricity of the Count’, 1772). By 1787, Cimarosa had produced one success after another, with 15 operas written for opera houses in Rome and Naples. In 1787, however, Cimarosa accepted ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Instrumentalist
• Late Baroque

(Do-man’-e-ko Skär-lat’-te) 1685–1757 Italian composer and harpsichordist Domenico Scarlatti was the son of Alessandro Scarlatti. He was born in Naples and lived there until 1704, when he joined his father in Rome. The following year he travelled to the cities of Florence and Venice; during his time in the latter he met the great composer of the era, Handel. Scarlatti ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Classical Era
• Theorist
• Writer

1726–1814 English music theorist and writer Burney was undoubtedly the most important English writer on music of his time. The theorist was born in Shrewsbury and brought up in Chester. There he met Arne, to whom he was apprenticed. Later he took posts as organist and worked in the London theatres. In the 1770s he made two long journeys through ...

• Personalities
• Classical Era
• Opera

1760–1801, Austrian Katharina Cavalieri, the Austrian soprano, was both the student and the mistress of the court composer Antonio Salieri. In 1775, when she was 15, she made her debut in Vienna in the role of Sandrina in La finta giardiniera by Pasquale Anfossi (1727–97). Her voice was expressive and ‘full’, and she possessed a first-class ...

• Arts & Culture
• Classical
• Late Romantic

Glinka, the ‘father of Russian music’, was the first composer to forge a distinctively Russian style. Previously, during the reigns of Peter the Great and Catherine the Great in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, music at the Imperial court had been directed by leading Italian opera composers such as Baldassare Galuppi (1706–85), Giovanni Paisiello (1740–1816) and Domenico ...

• Influences
• Classical
• Late Baroque

By the eighteenth century many musicians had become accustomed to travelling far from their native cities or countries in search of employment, or in response to invitations from rulers of different states. In the late-Baroque period this type of wandering existence had become a standard feature of musical life in Europe, involving singers, instrumentalists and composers, in ...

• Instruments
• Keyboards

In 1905, and probably for several decades before that, there were more pianos in the United States than there were bathtubs. In Europe, throughout the nineteenth century, piano sales increased at a greater rate than the population. English, French and German makers dispatched veritable armies of pianos to every corner of the Earth. It was the ...

• Classical

The story of classical music is not bound up simply with the traditions of any one country: it is tied up with the cultural development of Europe as a whole. This section attempts to pick out the composers from each successive age who, looked at from one point of view, exerted the greatest influence on their contemporaries and subsequent ...

• 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
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

With Manon Lescaut, Puccini took his place at the head of the Italian operatic table. Ricordi worked hard to persuade Puccini of the dangers inherent in setting a story that had already received successful treatment by Massenet, but the young composer was not to be swayed. Puccini’s determination proved well-founded, for the opera received an ecstatic reception after ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Late Baroque

(Al-es-san’-dro Skär-lat’-te) 1660–1725 Italian composer Scarlatti was born in Sicily but spent most of his working life in Rome, where he studied, and in Naples. He made important and prolific contributions to the genres of opera, oratorio, serenata and cantata forms, composing a much smaller quantity of instrumental and keyboard music. His musical talent attracted the attention ...

• Personalities
• Classical Era
• Opera

1706–85, Italian Baldassare Galuppi wrote his first opera, La fede nell’incostanza (‘Faith in Inconstancy’, 1722), when he was 16. It failed. Undeterred, Galuppi studied with Antonio Lotti (1667–1740) to improve his technique. Eventually, in 1729, he achieved his first big success, in Venice, with Dorinda. This opened the door to a brilliant career in ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Early Baroque

(Bâr-när’-do Pas-kwe’-ne) 1637–1710 Italian composer Pasquini was a keyboard virtuoso and teacher working in Rome, who numbered Muffat, Francesco Gasparini (1668–1727) and Domenico Zipoli (1688–1726) among his pupils. He benefited from several of the leading Roman patrons of the time, including the cardinals Pamphili and Ottoboni, as well as from the exiled Queen Christina of Sweden. He served ...