The Opéra-Comique company was established in 1714 to offer French opera as an alternative to the Italian opera that dominated the continent at the time. After several misadventures, which included a bankruptcy, the Opéra-Comique settled at the Salle Feydeau in 1805. Here, its essentially radical approach to opera soon became clear. At this time, composers such as ...
‘The Pearl Fishers’ While the success of Carmen overshadows his other operas, Bizet’s first lasting success was with Les pêcheurs de perles, written when he was only 24. Set in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), it uses gently oriental inflections to portray the priestess Leïla torn between love and her sacred vows, and a more romantic and dramatic style for ...
1697–1763, French Prévost has a place in operatic history quite simply because two major nineteenth-century composers made lasting operas out of his work: Massenet’s Manon and Puccini’s Manon Lescaut both derive from Prévost’s most famous novel, L’histoire du Chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut. Its exploration of the tribulations of a passionate woman made ideal material for operatic ...
1843–1919, Italian The Italian soprano Adelina Patti was among the greatest of all prima donnas. As such, she enjoyed special privileges. One was exemption from rehearsals. Another was top pay for her time, amounting to $5,000 (£2,725) a performance after 1882. Patti made her singing debut at age seven, and first appeared on stage at ...
1802–39, French Adolphe Nourrit, the French tenor, made his debut at the Paris Opéra in 1821, singing Pylade in Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride. Nourrit remained at the Opéra until 1837, singing, among other roles, Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Rossini’s Otello. Nourrit was a brilliant all-round performer, charming his audiences with his subtle, ...
c. 1759–c. 1803, Italian Adriana Ferrarese was known as ‘La Ferrarese’ from her birthplace, Ferrara. In 1785, in London, she sang in Demetrio by Luigi Cherubini (1760–1842). Da Ponte, her mentor, wrote libretti for operas by Vicente Martín y Soler (1754–1806) and Salieri in which she took part. However, Mozart was not particularly impressed ...
1885–1935, Austrian The composer of just two operas, Berg was a man who took atonality and stretched it to its expressionistic limits. While Joseph Haydn (1732–1809), Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) are often referred to as the First Viennese School, the so-called Second Viennese School consists of Berg together with fellow student Anton Webern (1883–1945) and their ...
1916–83, Argentinian One of the most important South American composers of the twentieth century, Ginastera combined energetic Argentine rhythms with enchanting lyricism and an almost hallucinatory ambiance to forge his unique style. He lived in New York on a Guggenheim Fellowship from 1945–48 before returning to Argentina. Here, he experimented with advanced composition techniques, yet his three ...
1660–1725, Italian Sicilian-born Alessandro Scarlatti came to the attention of the Italian opera world with his first opera, Gli equivoci nel sembiante (‘Mistaken Identities’, 1679), which he wrote when he was only 19. The work was soon being staged by opera houses outside Rome, but this was not the limit of Scarlatti’s new renown. At around the same ...
1639–82, Italian Alessandro Stradella was in his native Rome, writing intermezzi and other music for revivals of operas by Cavalli and Cesti, when he became embroiled in a quarrel with the Catholic authorities. He then had to leave Rome and decamped to Genoa, where he arrived in 1678. By that time, Stradella had composed several operas ...
1833–87, Russian Alexander Borodin was the illegitimate son of the Georgian Prince Luka Gedianov. As was customary in nineteenth-century Russia, his irregular birth was concealed by registering him under the name of a serf owned by the prince. Borodin was in no way deprived by this lowly status, and his talent for music was actively encouraged. Even so ...
1813–69, Russian Alexander Dargomïzhsky belonged to an aristocratic family in St Petersburg. He entered government service, but resigned his post in 1843. The musical training he received in his youth enabled him to build a reputation as a pianist and his acquaintance with during the winter of 1833–34 with Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka (1804–57) involved him in the movement to ...
1799–1837, Russian Russian composers of the High Romantic era were able to enjoy a ready-made source of stories for operas in the works of Alexander Pushkin. His first success was the romantic poem Ruslan i Lyudmila (1820), which Glinka used for his opera of the same name, first performed in 1842. Pushkin produced not only poetry, but essays ...
1871–1942, Austrian Dedicated to opera as a conductor and composer, Zemlinsky attracted critical acclaim, yet by the time of his death he was all but forgotten. He had his second opera, Es War Einmal (‘Once Upon a Time’, 1899), conducted and revised by Gustav Mahler for its first performance at the Vienna Court Opera in 1900. Zemlinsky ...
1844–1918, Austrian Amalie Materna, the Austrian soprano, sang Brünnhilde at the first performance of the complete Der Ring des Nibelungen at Bayreuth in 1876. Wagner was deeply impressed by her performance – so much so that he declared Materna the only woman truly capable of singing the exceptionally demanding role. Materna, a singer of great stamina, ...
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