AUTHORITATIVE | CURATED | First 500 words Free

• Major Operas
• Classical Era
• Opera

a different opera: musically richer, dramatically tauter and more human than the Italian original, with a touch of comedy in the deus ex machina figure of Hercules. The librettist Roullet summed up the enthusiasm Alceste aroused when he described it as ‘the most passionate, the most energetic, the most theatrical music ever heard in Europe’. Composed: 1767 ...

• Major Operas
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

initially curious, but not moved to any great enthusiasm. As his work on the project progressed, though, it grew so far beyond Hofmannsthal’s original conception that the librettist felt compelled to write to Strauss explaining exactly what he had meant. The work was finally finished in 1912 and lasted about an hour and a half, compared to ...

• Major Operas
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

Strauss’s final opera marked a belated return to form. He had suffered since the end of his collaboration with Hofmannsthal and jettisoned his original librettist, Joseph Gregor, in favour of the conductor Clemens Krauss. The conception was a simple but subtle one in which the characters in the piece decide to write an opera. Only at the end is ...

• Major Operas
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

For the follow-up to Elektra, Strauss declared he wanted to write a Mozart opera. Despite Hofmannsthal’s protests about a light, Renaissance subject set in the past, the librettist soon came up with a scenario that delighted Strauss. The correspondence between librettist and composer was good-natured and respectful. Each made suggestions to the other and the work gradually took ...

• Major Operas
• Classical Era
• Opera

‘The Magic Flute’ The librettist of Die Zauberflöte, Emanuel Schikaneder, Mozart’s old friend and fellow freemason, drew on an eclectic variety of sources, including a French novel, Sethos, Paul Wranitzky’s magic opera Oberon (1789) and the oriental fairy tale Lulu. In the bird catcher Papageno, Schikaneder created for himself a character that could exploit ...

• Major Operas
• High Romantic
• Opera

comic opera. However, he did not appear to envisage staging it: he wrote Falstaff, he told his publisher Ricordi just to amuse himself and pass the time. His librettist, Boito, had other ideas: he nagged Verdi to get on with Falstaff and the composer worked on it two hours a day for two years before the finished ...

• Major Operas
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

despair of Giulio Ricordi, who felt it would be a box-office disaster. With the publisher’s death in 1912, Puccini soon felt able to work on the project. His librettist for La rondine, Giuseppe Adami, provided Puccini with the text for the first one-acter, Il tabarro. As usual, though, Puccini did not make life easy ...

• Major Operas
• Early & Middle Baroque
• Opera

Falstaff (1893), in old age. Modern research has revealed that Poppea may not have been all Monteverdi’s own work. It was ascribed to him by Cristoforo Ivanovich (1628–89), an Italian librettist and theatre historian, but neither of the two extant scores of the opera mentions the composer. It appears that Monteverdi was assisted by other composers, notably Francesco Sacrati ...

• Major Operas
• Early Romantic
• Opera

write the opera for the carnival in Rome, gave him a deadline of 26 December 1816. However, by 23 December, no subject had yet been decided. The librettist, Jacopo Ferretti (1784–1852) suggested 20 possibilities to Rossini. The composer rejected them all. At last, though, Rossini agreed to the Cinderella theme. Ferretti stayed up all night ...

• Major Operas
• Classical Era
• Opera

‘The Marriage of Figaro’ The librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte wrote that Le nozze di Figaro offered ‘a new kind of spectacle … to a public of such assured taste and refined understanding’, and it would be fair to say that after Figaro’s premiere on 1 May 1786, opera buffa was never quite the same again. There were precedents, of ...

• Major Operas
• Late Baroque
• Opera

a Turkish garden, Incas worshipping the sun in a Peruvian desert, a flower festival at a Persian market and a village ceremony in a North American forest. The librettist Louis Fuzelier used these exotic elements to draw comparisons between ‘savage’ rituals and European culture, often to the detriment of the latter. Rameau’s witty music made this one of ...

• Major Operas
• Classical Era
• Opera

integrated chorus, soloists and ballet in dramatic complexes, abandoned the strict da capo aria, and broke down the clear-cut division between recitative and aria. Calzabigi, the librettist, was a disciple of the French Enlightenment, and a passionate opponent of the artifices and excesses of Italian opera. He took the archetypal story of Orpheus’s descent to ...

• Personalities
• Early & Middle Baroque
• Opera

the status of a prima donna. She was an impressive actress, possessed a fine treble voice and, it appears, had a fan following. In 1642, the librettist and poet Giulio Strozzi (1583–1652) wrote a book about her – Le glorie della Signora Anna Renzi romana (‘The Glory of the Roman [singer] Signora Anna Renzi’), in which he ...

• Personalities
• Late Baroque
• Opera

1671–1748, French Librettist Danchet was born on 7 September 1671 at Riom in Auvergne. His first theatrical text, Vénus (1698), was privately performed at Paris. This was also his first collaboration with composer André Campra (1660–1744). Between 1698 and 1735 Danchet and Campra produced several pastorals, ballets and opéra ballets, and 11 tragedies lyriques including Hésione (1700), ...

• Personalities
• Late Baroque
• Opera

1669–1750, Italian The Venetian librettist Zeno was a librarian and historian, who sought to establish opera libretti as a recognized literary form. His first opera libretto, Lucio Vero, was a huge success at Venice in 1695. Zeno continued to write more libretti, although he had reservations about it affecting his scholarly credibility. In 1718, Zeno ...