AUTHORITATIVE | CURATED | First 500 words Free

• Major Operas
• Late Baroque
• Opera

Although popular now, Serse was one of Handel’s worst failures during his own time. It was only performed five times in its first run and Handel never revived it. Unusually among his operas, its libretto by Silvio Stampiglia (1664–1725) is warmly light-hearted and does not seriously concern itself with tragic events or heroic actions. The most famous aria, ...

• Personalities
• Late Baroque
• Opera

, and by the end of the 1736–37 season Handel suffered a massive stroke, signalling the end of his most active years as an opera composer. Thereafter he produced Serse (1738) and Imeneo (1740), which present wittier subject matter, and reveal a more concise economical musical style. After nearly 30 years trying to make a success of Italian opera ...

• Personalities
• Late Baroque
• Opera

Imeneo, set to music by Porpora in 1723. His lively and witty examinations of courtly love inspired Handel to great artistic heights in his settings of Il partenope, Serse and Imeneo, although none of these was successful in London. Introduction | Late Baroque | Opera Personalities | Anna Maria Strada del Pò | Late Baroque | Opera Houses ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Classical Era
• Composer

(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 ...

• Personalities
• Classical Era
• Opera

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 ...

• Personalities
• Classical Era
• Opera

1699–1783, German At the age of 22, Johann Adolf Hasse had his first opera, Antioco (1721), produced before being sent to Italy to study under Alessandro Scarlatti (1660–1725). In Naples, Hasse’s ‘dialect comedies’ Sesostrate (1726) and La sorella amante (‘The Loving Sister’, 1729) made him something of a local celebrity. Hasse’s Artaserse (1730), staged in Venice, ...

• Personalities
• Classical Era
• Opera

1735–82, German Johann Christian Bach, the youngest son of J. S. Bach (1685–1750), acquired a more thorough training in opera than most contemporary composers, studying first in Germany and afterwards in Italy. Consequently, his operas combined both styles. As a composer, Johann Christian concentrated initially on church music, but he soon transferred his talents to ...

• Personalities
• Late Baroque
• Opera

c. 1696–1730, Italian Vinci studied at the Conservatorio dei Poveri di Gesù Cristo in Naples between 1708 and 1718, and afterwards made his operatic debut with Lo cecato fauzo (‘The False Blind Man’, 1719). He proceeded to dominate operatic life in Naples, and his Li zite ’ngalera (‘The Lovers on the Galley’, 1722) is the earliest extant comic ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Classical Era
• Librettist
• Poet

(Pi-et’-tro Met-ta-shta-syo) 1698–1782 Italian librettist and poet Metastasio was the leading Italian librettist of his era, and creator of the tradition of a particular kind of serious opera. He was born in Rome, worked initially there and in Venice, and settled in Vienna in 1730 as poet to the imperial Habsburg court. He wrote numerous texts for music, ...

• Personalities
• Classical Era
• Opera

1698–1782, Italian The Italian poet Metastasio wrote 27 large-scale opera libretti, some of which were set to music up to 100 times. He created a genre of opera – Metastasian opera – that not only bore his name, but set new patterns for libretti during the 50 years he spent in Vienna. Invited to the imperial court in ...