AUTHORITATIVE | CURATED | First 500 words Free

• Personalities
• Early & Middle Baroque
• Opera

1606–51, Italian Florentine librettist Giacinto Cicognini followed in a famous father’s footsteps. Jacopo Cicognini (1577–1633), had been among the pioneers who introduced Spanish theatre to Italian audiences. Jacopo was also a librettist; he wrote Andromeda (1618) for another Florentine, the composer Domenico Belli. Giacinto Cicognini initially intended to become a lawyer, but the stage proved much more seductive ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Contemporary Classical

(Ja-chen-to Shâlse) 1905–88 Italian composer Born as a Count into the Italian aristocracy, and numbering Salvador Dalí and Henri Michaux among his acquaintances, Scelsi enjoyed early success as a composer – his Rotativa for three pianos, wind and percussion was conducted in Paris by Monteux – but after World War II, increasingly inspired by Eastern mysticism, ...

• Personalities
• Early & Middle Baroque
• Opera

c. 1645–1704, French Marc-Antoine Charpentier, a Parisian, was on hand to step into the breach after Lully quarrelled with the French playwright Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Molière (1622–73), whose works Lully had been setting to music. As a result, Charpentier wrote the music for Molière’s Le mariage forcé (‘The Forced Marriage’, 1672) and Le malade imaginaire (‘The Hypochondriac’, 1673). ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Contemporary Classical

(Or’-liss Sal’-li-nan) b. 1935 Finnish composer Early dabbling in serialism was swiftly replaced with a strong feeling for simple, expressive themes, diatonicism and clarity of structure (Elegy for Sebastian Knight, 1964). Like his compatriot Jean Sibelius (1865–1957), Sallinen developed a strong interest in the folk traditions of his country, evident in his use of both folk melodies ...