‘William Tell’ Rossini called the first performance of his grand opéra Guillaume Tell a ‘quasi-fiasco’. The overture, he said, was fine, the first act had some interesting effects, and the second was a triumph, but the third and fourth were disappointing. However, the theatre director was more concerned with audience reaction at the Théâtre de ...
(Ge-yom’ Düfa’) c. 1397–1474 French composer Du Fay is regarded as the leading musical figure of his generation, and his reputation in his own time is emphasized by his employment at many of the most important musical centres in Europe. He grew up in Cambrai, where his skills were recognized early by the ecclesiastical authorities, and in his late ...
(Ge-yom’ da Ma-sho’) c. 1300–77 French Composer and Poet Machaut was the most important poet-composer of fourteenth-century France and had a wide and enduring influence. He was in constant demand by the greatest noble patrons of his day, and his music reflects this patronage. He was unusual, although probably not unique, among medieval writers in that he made an ...
(Pe-a’-tro An-ton’-yo Lo-ka-tel’-le) 1695–1764 Italian composer and violinist Locatelli studied at Bergamo and Rome, where he played for Cardinal Ottoboni. After a short appointment as virtuoso da camera (court virtuoso) at the Mantuan court (1725–27), Locatelli travelled throughout Austria and Germany appearing as a virtuoso – on one occasion with Leclair. He settled in Amsterdam in 1729 where he taught, ...
(Vocals, guitar, 1901–59) A skilled purveyor of the ragtime-influenced Piedmont fingerpicking style, Atlanta-based Blind Willie McTell incorporated pop songs and novelty numbers, as well as blues, into his repertoire – befitting an entertainer who got his start in tent shows, medicine shows and carnivals. His voice was unusually tender and expressive for a musician who ...
Verdi’s late masterpiece, Otello, completed when he was 74, was the second of his three operas taken from the plays of Shakespeare. The libretto by Arrigo Boito dispensed with the Shakespeare’s opening scene, set in Venice and concentrated the action on Cyprus, giving it an almost claustrophobic intensity. Long considered Verdi’s greatest opera and his most ...
The opening of Otello at La Scala on 5 February 1887 was a major occasion, which musicians and critics attended from all over the world. People’s excitement mounted to fever pitch, both inside and outside the opera house. They were not to be disappointed. The seamless continuity of the opera, the lavish costumes, the richness and sophistication ...
1876–1949, Italian Zenatello studied as a baritone at Verona and debuted at Belluno in 1898 as Silvio in Pagliacci. He sang Canio in the same opera the following year in Naples. His La Scala debut in 1902 was a success and he regularly appeared there in the years immediately afterwards. He worked extensively in South America and appeared occasionally at ...
(Guitar, singer-songwriter, b. 1954) One of new wave’s most celebrated songwriters, Costello (born Declan Patrick MacManus) initially portrayed himself as an angry, revenge-obsessed young man before steadily maturing into a genre-straddling elder statesman. His cheeky appropriation of the name ‘Elvis’ was in tune with the iconoclastic mood of 1977, when his debut album My Aim Is ...
The cornet is a looped brass instrument with a wide bore and three valves. Beginning life as a development of the circular looped post horn, it became a valved instrument in France in the late 1820s. It apparently reached Britain in the 1830s, where its bright sound soon displaced the keyed bugle from amateur wind bands. Most often to ...
Tubular bells, also known as orchestral or symphonic chimes, are a set of tuned steel tubes with a chrome finish, hanging vertically in a stand with a pedal damper. The optimum range for a chromatic set of tubular bells is 11⁄2 octaves rising from middle C (c'–f''), as notes above or below this range are difficult to tune ...
Baroque brass music was written for natural horns and trumpets. The classical period saw experiments with introducing keys into trumpets: the concertos for trumpet by Haydn and Hummel were both written with a keyed trumpet in mind. Trumpeters and horn players also experimented with using one hand in the bell to affect pitch. However, in the early Romantic period valves ...
1759–1805, German Friedrich von Schiller, the great German poet, playwright and historian, trained for the Church, the army, the law and military medicine before he finally found his niche. It happened when, at his own expense, Schiller published his revolutionary drama Die Raüber (‘The Robbers’, 1781). When the play was staged in Mannheim ...
(Jo-ak-ke’-no Ros-se’-ne) 1792–1868 Italian composer Rossini dominated Italian opera during the first half of the nineteenth century, writing nearly 40 operas in less than 20 years. He established new conventions in the genre, and was the first Italian composer to abandon unaccompanied recitative in an attempt to create a more continuous flow in the music. He also developed rhythm and ...
1792–1868, Italian By the age of 14, Gioachino Rossini could play the violin, cello, harpsichord and horn, and had written a buffo-style cavatina, a short solo song. In 1806, Rossini was studying at the Bologna Conservatory and wrote his first opera, Demetrio e Polibio. The next year he produced his first professional work ...
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