‘Medea’ Composed: 1797 Premiered: 1797, Paris Libretto by François Benoit Hoffman, after Pierre Corneille Act I At the palace of Corinth, Glaucé, daughter of King Créon, prepares for her approaching marriage to Jason. She fears the wrath of Médée, a sorceress who helped Jason to steal the Golden Fleece from Cholcis. Médée betrayed her family to ...
, Tito Gobbi, and during a production of Don Carlos this reached its breaking point. Further disputes embittered his working relationship with Maria Callas – during a rehearsal of Medea in Rome, Christoff accused her husband, Meneghini, of reducing his role by two-thirds. Meneghini hired a claque to disrupt Christoff’s scenes on opening night, while Christoff ...
chiefly for his German operas and especially his melodramas, in which a spoken text is illustrated by a highly expressive background of instrumental music. His Ariadne auf Naxos (1774), Medea and Romeo und Julie (1776) greatly impressed Mozart, who imitated their style in works of his own. Recommended Recording: Harpsichord Concertos, Sabine Bauer, La Stagione Frankfurt (cond) ...
phase of his career, Benda turned first to German ‘duodramas’, also known as ‘melodramas’. He wrote three on ancient Greek themes – Ariadne auf Naxos (‘Ariadne on Naxos’, 1775), Medea (1775) and Pygmalion (1779), in which the music provided background accompaniment to dialogue spoken by two actors. Between Medea and Pygmalion, Benda composed Singspiels: these featured a different arrangement ...
singing Verdi’s Gustavus and Berlioz’s Aeneas. In 1958 he sang the title-role in the Giulini-Visconti production of Don Carlos, and Siegmund at Bayreuth, followed by Jason in Cherubini’s Medea in Dallas. He sang Siegmund and three other roles in Vienna in 1959. He made his Metropolitan Opera debut in 1960 with Canio (Pagliacci). The many roles he sang at ...
(Loo-e’-je Ka-roo-be’-ne) 1760–1842 Italian composer and teacher Cherubini was a dominant figure in French musical life, particularly as a composer of operas, but also as director of the Paris Conservatoire. He studied with Giuseppe Sarti in Bologna and Milan (1778–81) before returning to his native Florence. After a brief period in London, where he composed La finta principessa (‘The ...
1760–1842, Italian The Italian composer Luigi Cherubini studied in Florence, Bologna and Milan, first writing church music, and then, in 1779, producing his first operas. By 1787, when he settled in Paris, he had written 13 operas, but nothing, as yet, that was innovatory. This changed when his Démophon (1788) ...
(Märk An-twan’ Shar-pont-ya’) 1643–1704 French composer Charpentier studied in Italy during the 1660s. There he familiarized himself with the instrumental and vocal forms of Carissimi and, above all, that of the oratorio. When he returned to Paris he joined the musicians of the Duchess of Guise and in 1673 became associated with Molière’s Comédie Française. In 1687, Charpentier composed ...
use of the orchestra is highly imaginative, and his enduring legacy is his construction of broad dramatic sequences for his main characters, as in his finest operas, Medea and La rosa. He also composed over 600 sacred works, mostly unpublished. Recommended Recording: Medea in Corinto, soloists, Philharmonia (dir) David Parry (Opera Rara) Introduction | Early ...
Naples, Rome, Milan and Venice and his work was performed internationally in Germany, London, St Petersburg, New York and several other places. Mayr’s masterpiece, Medea in Corinto (‘Medea in Corinth’, 1813), was first performed in Naples in 1813, a year in which he wrote two other operas, but after that he produced no ...
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