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is to marry a German noblewoman and persuades Cecchina of her true identity, confirmed by a blue mark on her breast. Mengotto consoles himself with Sandrina. Personalities | Niccolò Piccinni | Classical Era | Opera ...

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(Nik’-ko-lo Pit-chin’-ne) 1728–1800 Italian composer Piccinni trained in Naples and had operas, serious as well as comic, staged there from 1754; he held posts at the cathedral and at court. In 1760 he enjoyed a spectacular success in Rome with La buona figliuola (‘The Good-Natured Girl’), to a Goldoni libretto after Samuel Richardson’s Pamela; this was only one of nearly ...

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was resistance in France to the reforms promulgated by Gluck, who had introduced a mixture of music, dance and mime into opera among other ‘unwelcome’ innovations. Unfortunately, Piccinni became the stick with which this faction sought to beat Gluck. The Italian was invited to Paris in 1776, where he was obliged to enter a contest with Gluck ...

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1714–87, German Famous above all as the composer of Orfeo ed Euridice, Christoph Willibald von Gluck was, more than anyone, responsible for purging opera of what he dubbed the ‘abuses’ of opera seria in favour of ‘beautiful simplicity’, emotional directness and dramatic truth. From Bohemia to Vienna Born in the small town of Erasbach in the Upper ...

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Italian-style arias rather than the traditional airs. Recommended Recording: Tom Jones, soloists, Sinfonietta de Lausanne (cond) Jean-Claude Malgoire (Dynamic) Introduction | Classical Era | Classical Personalities | Niccolò Piccinni | Classical Era | Classical ...

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striking metal or a donkey braying. Introduction | Classical Era | Opera Major Operas | Ernelinde, princesse de Norvège by François-André Danican Philidor | Classical Era Personalities | Niccolò Piccinni | Classical Era | Opera Houses & Companies | Paris Opéra | High Romantic | Opera ...

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1763–1845, German The German-born composer Simon Mayr was studying in Italy when the patron who supported him died and he faced an uncertain future. Piccinni  encouraged him to write opera and Mayr took his advice. Mayr’s first opera, Saffo (1794), attracted several commissions, but his great breakthrough came when Ginevra di Scozia (‘Ginevra of Scotland’, 1801) was performed ...

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(crescendos, tremolandos, ‘rockets’) cultivated by the composers there; and after his stay in Paris he was ready to write an opera that had echoes of Gluck and Niccolò Piccinni (1728–1800), whose supporters had been at loggerheads during his visit. Once, passing through Munich, he commented approvingly on the piano and violin sonatas of a minor composer, ...

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Caserta, near Naples. After 1748, for example, Goldoni was already describing his works as dramma giocoso. In addition, La buona figliuola (‘The Good-Natured Girl’) by Niccolò Piccinni (1728–1800), which was given its first performance in Rome in 1760, later came to be regarded as the first opera semiseria. The Rondo Aria Like Goldoni, his librettist ...

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The controversy flared up in 1753 and petered out the next year, as quickly as it had risen. Gluck’s Influence Gluck’s arrival provoked a fresh controversy: Gluckistes v. Piccinnistes. Piccinni was imported in 1776 as Gluck’s rival, a role he neither wanted nor felt himself able to fulfil and indeed specifically disclaimed. Matters grew worse when the two composers ...