SEARCH RESULTS FOR: Raniero de’ Calzabigi
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1714–95, Italian Calzabigi was best known for three libretti for Gluck – Orfeo ed Euridice, Alceste and Paride ed Elena, the last taking its eponymous characters, Paris and Helen, from the ancient Greek story of the Trojan War. In these libretti, Calzabigi moved away from the artificiality and limited conventions of opera seria, preferring ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

Indie guitarist and producer Bernard Butler (b. 1970) was born in Tottenham, London. After learning violin as a child, he took up guitar at the age of 14, inspired by Johnny Marr, learning Smiths’ guitar parts by watching the band play live. He was also influenced by Bernard Sumner and Aztec Camera’s Roddy Frame. After replying to ...

Source: The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Guitar Heroes, consultant editor Rusty Cutchin

(A-mel’-yo da Ka-val-ya’-re) c. 1550–1602 Italian composer Cavalieri was born in Rome and was a teacher, dancer and diplomat at the Medici court. In 1589 he organized the celebrated Florentine intermedi for the wedding of Grand Duke Ferdinando I and Christine of Lorraine. He was associated with the Florentine Camerata of Giovanni de’ Bardi, whose members experimented with musically continuous ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

(Guitar, vocals, 1937–97) The Houston guitarist played with bluesman Joe ‘Guitar’ Hughes before forming his own band in the late 1950s. Relocating to New York in 1974, Copeland debuted on Rounder Records with 1977’s Copeland Special. In 1985 he recorded a guitar summit meeting with Albert Collins and Robert Cray (Showdown!) and in 1986 recorded Bringin’ It ...

Source: The Definitive Illustrated Encyclopedia of Jazz & Blues, founding editor Howard Mandel

c. 1550–1602, Italian Emilio de’ Cavalieri – composer, teacher, dancer and organist – was born in Rome. At the de’ Medici court in Florence, he organized the family’s spectacular celebrations and was also involved with the innovative Camerata group and their experiments into the stile rappresentativo (representative style). In 1589, Cavalieri contributed madrigals and concluding music ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

‘The Story of the Soul and the Body’ Premiered: 1600, Rome Libretto by Agostino Manni and Dorisio Isorelli Prologue The figures of Avveduto and Prudenzio (both mean ‘Prudence’) discuss at length the various facets of human nature and appeal to the audience to learn from what they will see in this allegorical opera. Act I The character Tempo (Time) presents ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

Triumphantly premiered in Vienna’s Burgtheater on 26 December 1767, Alceste was the second of the three collaborations between Gluck and Calzabigi. Today it is probably more famous for the reforming manifesto of its preface than for its magnificent music. Like Orfeo, Alceste cultivates Gluck’s ideal of noble simplicity, with the whole opera based essentially on a single situation ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

‘The Danaids’ Composed: 1784 Premiered: 1784, Paris Libretto by François Louis Gand Leblanc Roullet, after Raniero de’ Calzabigi The opera is based on a Greek myth. Under the guise of an act of reconciliation, the daughters of Danaus (the Danaids) have been betrothed to the sons of Danaus’s brother and enemy, Aegyptus, who is now dead. ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

(Khres’-tof Vil’-le-balt fun Glook) 1714–87 Bohemian composer Gluck was born in Erasbach, by the Czech-German border; his native language may well have been Czech. His father, a forester, was opposed to a musical career, but the boy left home at 13 to study in Prague, where he took musical posts and went briefly to the university. At ...

Source: Classical Music Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

The humanist principles of the Enlightenment removed opera from the extravagant world of baroque and landed it in entirely new territory. After 1720, Baroque became a target for changes initiated by the scholar Gian Vincenzo Gravina of the Arcadian Academy in Rome. Baroque operas based on classical myths had developed exaggerated and ultimately ludicrous forms. Under the Enlightenment principles that ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

Two crucial figures in Gluck’s operatic career were the controller of the Viennese theatres Count Durazzo and the Francophile poet and librettist Raniero de’ Calzabigi. Both were intent on the reform and revitalization of Italian opera. In Gluck they found their perfect musical collaborator. Some of Gluck’s Italian stage works had already begun to integrate solos and chorus, but it ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

‘Orpheus and Eurydice’ When the Emperor Franz I and his retinue attended the premiere of Orfeo ed Euridice at the Burgtheater in Vienna on 5 October 1762, they were doubtless expecting a lightweight pastoral entertainment. The occasion – the emperor’s name day – and the opera’s billing as an azione teatrale (literally ‘theatrical action’) promised as much. What they got ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

c. 1741–c. 1803, German The soprano Antonia Bernasconi was the step-daughter of the Italian composer Andrea Bernasconi, Kapellmeister at the Munich court, and created the title role in Gluck’s Alceste at its first performance in Vienna in 1767. Her father was in the service of the Duke of Württemberg, but after his death and her mother’s remarriage ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie

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 ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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