AUTHORITATIVE | CURATED | First 500 words Free

• Major Operas
• Classical Era
• Opera

‘Fidelity Rewarded’ Composed: 1780 Premiered: 1781, Eszterháza Libretto by Giambattista Lorenzi Act I Amaranta reads an inscription in the Temple of Diana describing how two lovers are to be offered to a sea monster every year until a hero sacrifices himself. Melibeo, the High Priest, chooses the victims and everyone has to be careful not to cross him. ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Classical Era
• Composer

(Fran-swa Zho-zef’ Gu-sek’) 1734–1829 Belgian (French) composer Born in what is now the French-speaking part of Belgium, Gossec spent most of his career in Paris working in the different roles of theatre composer, violinist and director of musical organizations. These organizations included the Concert Spirituel, the Ecole Royale de Chant and (after the Revolution) the band of the Garde ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Instrumentalist
• Late Baroque
• Theorist

(Yo’-han Yo’-sef Fooks) 1660–1741 German composer, organist and theorist There are large gaps in the biographical knowledge of Fux. It is almost certain that he was born into a peasant family somewhere in Germany, but precisely where he acquired his musical skills remains a mystery. Real knowledge of the composer begins from 1698, when Emperor Leopold I appointed Fux ...

• Personalities
• Late Baroque
• Opera

1660–1741, German Fux studied music at Graz, and became a talented organist and church musician. He probably travelled to Italy during the 1680s, and his a capella Masses influenced by Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (c. 1525–94) attracted the admiring attention of Emperor Leopold I in 1698. Based in Vienna for the remainder of his life, Fux was ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Classical Era
• Composer

(Fränts Yo’-sef Hi’-dan) 1732–1809 Austrian composer Joseph Haydn was the most celebrated musician of the late-eighteenth century and the first of the great triumvirate (Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven) of Viennese classical composers. A tireless explorer and innovator, he did more than anyone to develop the dramatic potential of the sonata style. When he composed his cheerful F major Missa brevis ...

• Personalities
• Classical Era
• Opera

1732–1809, Austrian The operatic career of Joseph Haydn spanned four decades, from his lost German Singspiel Der krumme Teufel (‘The Crooked Devil’, 1753) to his Orpheus opera L’anima del filosofo (‘The Philosopher’s Soul’), composed for London in 1791 but not performed there (or anywhere else) during the composer’s lifetime. In between, he composed some 20 operas (several lost) ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Instrumentalist
• Late Romantic

(Yo’-zef Yo’-a-khem) 1831–1907 German violinist Joachim studied with Ferdinand David, leader of the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig, where he made his debut in 1843. After a spell as leader of the Court Orchestra in Weimar under Liszt (1850–51), he distanced himself from Liszt’s ‘New German School’ in favour of Brahms’ classicism. Appointed violinist to the king in Hanover (1852), he ...

• Personalities
• Classical Era
• Opera

1739–93, French The French tenor and composer Joseph Legros made his debut at the Opéra in Paris, singing Titon in Titon et Aurore by Jean-Joseph Mondonville (1711–72). Subsequently he built up a considerable repertoire of roles in operas by Lully, Rameau, Grétry and Gluck, among others. One of his greatest roles was as Gluck’s Orpheus – ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Instrumentalist
• Modern Era

1892–1973 American violinist Born in Hungary, Szigeti made his Berlin debut in 1905. He lived in England 1907–13, where he gave many concerts. In the 1920s he toured the Soviet Union, and made his US debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra in 1925. He was a keen advocate of contemporary music: Bartók, Bloch and Prokofiev wrote works for ...

• Personalities
• High Romantic
• Opera

1807–86, Bohemian The Bohemian tenor Joseph Tichatschek made his debut at the Kärntnertor Theatre in Vienna in 1833, as the farmer, Raimbaut, in Meyerbeer’s Robert le diable. After a year, 1837, at Graz, Tichatschek found a regular berth at Dresden, where he sang between 1838 and 1870. He also performed at the Drury ...

• Personalities
• Late Baroque
• Opera

1663–1745, French Simon-Joseph Pellegrin was a monk who sailed twice with the French fleet to the Orient, and who put into verse Biblical texts that were sung to music by Lully and Campra at the royal convent at St Cyr. Pellegrin provided libretti for many composers, including Campra and Desmarets, but his best-known works are Jephté, set ...

• Classical
• Early Romantic

The first half of the nineteenth century was essentially a period of insurgence in Europe, from the French Revolution in 1789 to the series of uprisings that rocked the continent around 1848. Meanwhile, the Industrial Revolution was also underway, beginning in Britain, then spreading south through the rest of Europe. With these two strands of revolution came ...

• Opera
• High Romantic

In 1891, when the Irish playwright Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) wrote his famous words ‘Life imitates art far more than art imitates life’, he had somehow managed to overlook the artistic realities of the late nineteenth century. By that time, after some 50 years of the High Romantic era, music and opera had brought real life on stage and ...

• Classical
• Modern Era

There is no escaping the crucial importance of World War I (1914–18) in the formation of the Modern Age (as the first half of the twentieth century has come to be known). The war changed irrevocably the development and directions of almost all pre-war innovations in politics, society, the arts and ideas in general. Declining economic conditions also altered ...

• Opera
• Modern Era

Although the art of the classical singer has traditionally been perceived as the pursuit of technical perfection and tonal beauty, the twentieth century enabled a re-evaluation of what that art should be. Due in part to the technological advances and harrowing events of the times, much of the music was innovative, challenging, moving, powerful and, ...