‘The Story of the Soul and the Body’ Premiered: 1600, Rome Libretto by Agostino Manni and Dorisio Isorelli Prologue The figures of Avveduto and Prudenzio (both mean ‘Prudence’) discuss at length the various facets of human nature and appeal to the audience to learn from what they will see in this allegorical opera. Act I The character Tempo (Time) presents ...
c. 1550–1602, Italian Emilio de’ Cavalieri – composer, teacher, dancer and organist – was born in Rome. At the de’ Medici court in Florence, he organized the family’s spectacular celebrations and was also involved with the innovative Camerata group and their experiments into the stile rappresentativo (representative style). In 1589, Cavalieri contributed madrigals and concluding music ...
(A-mel’-yo da Ka-val-ya’-re) c. 1550–1602 Italian composer Cavalieri was born in Rome and was a teacher, dancer and diplomat at the Medici court. In 1589 he organized the celebrated Florentine intermedi for the wedding of Grand Duke Ferdinando I and Christine of Lorraine. He was associated with the Florentine Camerata of Giovanni de’ Bardi, whose members experimented with musically continuous ...
Indie guitarist and producer Bernard Butler (b. 1970) was born in Tottenham, London. After learning violin as a child, he took up guitar at the age of 14, inspired by Johnny Marr, learning Smiths’ guitar parts by watching the band play live. He was also influenced by Bernard Sumner and Aztec Camera’s Roddy Frame. After replying to ...
(Guitar, vocals, 1937–97) The Houston guitarist played with bluesman Joe ‘Guitar’ Hughes before forming his own band in the late 1950s. Relocating to New York in 1974, Copeland debuted on Rounder Records with 1977’s Copeland Special. In 1985 he recorded a guitar summit meeting with Albert Collins and Robert Cray (Showdown!) and in 1986 recorded Bringin’ It ...
1714–95, Italian Calzabigi was best known for three libretti for Gluck – Orfeo ed Euridice, Alceste and Paride ed Elena, the last taking its eponymous characters, Paris and Helen, from the ancient Greek story of the Trojan War. In these libretti, Calzabigi moved away from the artificiality and limited conventions of opera seria, preferring ...
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 ...
The revival and imitation of ancient theatrical genres in sixteenth-century Italy bore fruit in seventeenth-century England and France in the works of the great dramatists of those countries: William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, Pierre Corneille and Jean Racine. In Italy, however, the sixteenth-century innovations in spoken drama were followed in the next century not by a great national ...
The reputation that Paris enjoyed for elegance and culture also attracted many foreign visitors to the city, who carried the French style to their own countries. While Italian opera was occasionally performed, French-language serious and comic opera predominated. The city’s most famous concert series was the Concert Spirituel, founded by Anne-Danican Philidor (1681–1728) in 1725. By the middle ...
The guitar is a plucked stringed instrument played resting on the lap. Although it has a long history – thought by many to reach as far back as the ancient Greek lyre known as the kithara – it is best-known today in the design of the Spanish guitar-maker Antonio de Torres Jurado (1817–92). The modern or classical guitar developed from the ...
1660–1744, French Born in Aix-en-Provence, Campra became a church musician in Arles and Toulouse, and composed sacred music that was much admired. In 1694, Campra moved to Paris to become master of music at the cathedral of Nôtre Dame. Three years later, he produced his opéra-ballet, L’Europe galante (1697). With this work, Campra was ...
(Ja’-ko-mo Ka-res’-se-me) 1605–74 Italian composer Carissimi was the most important composer of oratorios of his time. He was born in Rome where, in about 1630, he became maestro di cappella at Sant’Apollinare, the church of the Jesuit Collegio Germanico, renowned for its musical tradition. Carissimi composed masses and motets, but is chiefly admired for his cantatas and ...
(Vocals, b. 1957) Originally scoring hits as part of the Latin-powered Miami Sound Machine in the late 1980s with husband Emilio, Cuban-born Estefan soon went solo with hugely successful pop albums like Into The Light (1991) and Destiny (1996). Always keeping a foot firmly in the Latin market with Spanish-language albums like Abriendo Puertas (1995), she was ideally placed ...
Perhaps the most important developments in music around the year 1600 were the emergence of the basso continuo and the fashion for virtuosity. The presence of an independent bass line moved composition away from the flowing polyphony of the Renaissance, in which all voices played an equal role in the texture, leaving the upper voices free to indulge in ...
Latin pop has been around for as long as Latin music itself. As far back as the 1920s, Mexico, Argentina and Spain were veritable fountains of popular music, which they exported to all Spanish-speaking nations. An international audience was found in the United States, along with the steady influx of Latino immigrants in the late twentieth century. ...
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