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1562–1621, Italian Ottavio Rinuccini, a member of the Bardi Camerata, wrote his first libretti for sophisticated Florentine entertainments. In 1598, Rinuccini produced the first opera libretto, Peri’s Dafne (1598). A musical setting of Dafne composed by Heinrich Schütz in 1627 may have been the first German opera. Rinuccini’s libretto Euridice was set to music by both ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

Premiered: 1602, Florence Libretto by Ottavio Rinuccini, after Ovid Prologue The figure of Tragedy introduces the opera, explaining that to make the story suitable for marriage celebrations, the original ending has been altered. Act I The act opens in an Arcadian village, with Euridice preparing for her marriage to Orfeo, along with nymphs and shepherds ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

‘Orpheus, a Legend in Music’ L’Orfeo, favola in musica consists of a prologue and five acts – a prolonged performance for its time. Monteverdi used several devices to extend the action of the opera. He wrote recitatives to be performed between the duets, as well as polyphonic madrigals, of which he was a master. Further additions included ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

c. 1620–c. 1660, Italian Singer Anna Renzi created the part of Ottavia, the neglected wife of Emperor Nero in Monteverdi’s L’incoronazione di Poppea, in 1642, and she sang many other operatic roles in Venice. Renzi was one of the first female opera singers and also one of the first, if not the first, singers to ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

1551–1618, Italian At age 13, Giulio Caccini arrived at the court of the de’ Medici family in Florence and very quickly proved himself immensely gifted in several musical skills – as singer, composer, teacher, lutenist and harpist. In 1598, Caccini helped Peri compose Dafne. In 1600, he became superintendent of musicians and actors at ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

The revival and imitation of ancient theatrical genres in sixteenth-century Italy bore fruit in seventeenth-century England and France in the works of the great dramatists of those countries: William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, Pierre Corneille and Jean Racine. In Italy, however, the sixteenth-century innovations in spoken drama were followed in the next century not by a great national ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

The six intermedi composed to celebrate the marriage of Ferdinando de’ Medici of Florence and Christine of Lorraine in 1589 were the most spectacular and expensive ever seen. So lavish was the presentation that it completely dominated the play it accompanied – La pellegrina (‘The Pilgrim’) by Girolamo Bargagli. All the texts and music survive, together with the designs for ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

European culture lay in ruins after the end of World War II. There were many who, in company with the philosopher Theodor Adorno, felt that Nazi atrocities such as Auschwitz rendered art impossible, at least temporarily. Others, though, felt that humanity could only establish itself anew by rediscovering the potency of art, including opera. On ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

Composed in 1787 and triumphantly premiered in Prague on 29 October that year, Don Giovanni reworks the old legend of the serial seducer, drawing on the Spanish play by Tirso de Molina (1630) and Molière’s Don Juan (1665). The opera revolves around the tensions of class and sex that were so central to Figaro. Ensembles and propulsive ‘chain’ finales ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

1820–89, Italian Enrico Tamberlik, the Italian tenor, made his debut in Naples in 1841, as Enrico Danieli, singing Tebaldo in I Capuleti e i Montecchi, Bellini’s Romeo and Juliet opera. Afterwards, while at the Teatro San Carlo, Naples, he took the surname Tamberlik and retained it for engagements in London, St ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

(Ya-ko-po Pa’-re) 1561–1633 Italian composer Peri was a Florentine who held a post as musician at the Medici court. He was probably a member of Bardi’s famous circle of Camerata in Florence, but by 1592 was enjoying the patronage of the amateur composer Corsi. One of the poets of Corsi’s household was Rinuccini, whose pastoral poem Dafne was partly set ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

1911–60, Swedish For sheer beauty of tone, Jussi Björling may have been the greatest lyric tenor of the twentieth century. He began singing professionally at the age of nine in the Björling Male Quartet, with his father and two brothers. He made his debut at the Royal Stockholm Opera in 1930 as Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni, ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

1916–2006, Canadian One of the great Mozartian tenors of his age, Simoneau married French-Canadian soprano Pierrette Alarie. They went to Europe, where he sang at the Paris Opéra, Aix-en-Provence, Glyndebourne and London’s Covent Garden. In 1952, Simoneau sang in a historic recording of Oedipus Rex, with Stravinsky conducting and librettist Jean Cocteau as narrator. ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

b. 1935 German tenor Schreier made his debut as the First Prisoner in Fidelio (Dresden, 1961), before joining the Berlin State Opera. On the death of Fritz Wunderlich in 1966, he became the best-known exponent of Mozart’s Belmonte, Don Ottavio, Ferrando and Tamino (The Magic Flute), the part with which he made his Metropolitan Opera debut in ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

1891–1948 Austrian tenor After his debut in Chemnitz in 1913, Tauber was engaged by the Dresden Opera as a lyric tenor. He achieved his greatest fame in operettas, especially those by Lehár; London heard him in Das Land des Lächelns (‘The Land of Smiles’) in 1931. He sang Don Ottavio (Mozart’s Don Giovanni) at Covent Garden shortly before his ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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