AUTHORITATIVE | CURATED | First 500 words Free

• Major Operas
• High Romantic
• Opera

escape by boat. Barnaba confronts Gioconda. She pretends to keep their bargain, but instead stabs herself and dies as Barnaba claims to have drowned La Cieca. Personalities | Amilcare Ponchielli | High Romantic | Opera ...

• Personalities
• High Romantic
• Opera

1834–86, Italian Amilcare Ponchielli, composer of nine operas, became famous for only one of them – La gioconda (‘The Joyful Girl’, 1876). Ponchielli was born at what was, for him, an unfortunate time. Verdi dominated the opera scene and Ponchielli was later overshadowed by one of his own pupils – Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924). Ponchielli’s first venture ...

• Instruments
• Keyboards
• Percussion

used to represent delicate sounds like small bells, music boxes, fairies and birds – such as in the ‘Dance of the Hours’ from La gioconda (1876) by Amilcare Ponchielli (1834–86). Xylophone The xylophone (140 cm/56 in long, 70 cm/28 in wide at low end, 33 cm/13 in wide at high end) and marimba (200 cm/80 in long ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Late Romantic
• Librettist

(Ar-i’-go Bo-e’-to) 1842–1918 Italian composer and librettist Boito furnished the librettos for two of Verdi’s greatest Shakespearean masterpieces, Otello (1884–86) and Falstaff (1893). The premiere of his own operatic masterpiece Mefistofele, at La Scala, Milan (1868), was greeted with whistles due to the work’s extreme length (over five hours) and Germanic influences. As a result Boito for a while ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Modern Era
• Singer

1890–1957 Italian tenor Gigli made his debut in Italy in 1914, and sang Faust in Boito’s Mefistofele at Bologna and Naples the following year. He made his Metropolitan Opera debut in Mefistofele in 1920. The operas in which he appeared at the ‘Met’, where he sang for 12 seasons, included La bohème, Ponchielli’s La gioconda and Meyerbeer’s L’Africaine. ...

• Personalities
• High Romantic
• Opera

as Aroldo, 1857), Rigoletto, La traviata, the first version of Simon Boccanegra (1857) and La forza del destino. Introduction | High Romantic | Opera Personalities | Amilcare Ponchielli | High Romantic | Opera ...

• Personalities
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

with support from both a bachelor relation and a royal bursary from Queen Margherita, at the conservatory in Milan. There, he was taught by Antonio Bazzini and Amilcare Ponchielli, who regarded him as an able, though not particularly diligent, student. In 1883 Puccini entered a competition run by the publishing firm Sonzogno. Le villi (‘The Willis’), ...