| Arianna | |
|---|---|
| Opera by Alexander Goehr | |
 The composer in 2007 | |
| Librettist | Ottavio Rinuccini |
| Language | Italian |
| Based on | Libretto for L'Arianna |
| Premiere | |
Arianna is an opera in eight scenes by the English composer Alexander Goehr, premiered at the Royal Opera House in London in 1995. It is set to the libretto (in Italian), by Ottavio Rinuccini that was used by Claudio Monteverdi in his 1608 lost opera, L'Arianna . The opera is Goehr's Op. 58.
Although Rinuccini's libretto survives, the greater part of Monteverdi's music for the opera, originally performed in Mantua in 1608, has been lost. All that remains is Arianna's lament , a solo aria which Monteverdi published separately in 1623. Goehr sets most (but not all) of the original libretto, (which is based on the classical story of Ariadne and Theseus from Ovid's Heroides ), preserving the lament but interspersing it with choral episodes. The orchestration is contemporary, including contrabassoon, saxophone, Akai sampler and electric guitar, as is the harmonic language. [1]
| Role | Voice type | Premiere cast 15 September 1995 (Conductor: Ivor Bolton) (Director: Francesca Zambello) [2] |
|---|---|---|
| Arianna | mezzo-soprano | Susan Graham |
| Amore | soprano | Anna Maria Panzarella |
| Venere/Dorilla | contralto | Sheila Nadler |
| Teseo | tenor | J. Patrick Raftery |
| Bacco | countertenor | Axel Köhler |
| Giove | bass | Gidon Saks |
| Consigliero | baritone | David Wilson-Johnson |
| Soldato Primo/Pescatore | tenor | Timothy Robinson |
| Soldato Secondo/Pescatore | tenor | Christopher Ventris |
The composer wrote in the programme notes of the premiere 'It was surely an act of faith - if not of folly - for me to choose Rinuccini's old Arianna libretto, when I could barely make out the meaning of the words. Yet I knew it was right for me[...]'. [2] Critics tended to agree more with the first part of this statement. The review in the Musical Times for example commented '[the] setting imitates Monteverdi, but feels unnatural. [...] The opera reached its nadir in Goehr's setting of the great surviving fragment itself [..] the harmonic implications of Goehr's bass-line distortions destroyed the dramatic build-up' [3] Meanwhile, Opera News called it a "waste of mezzo Susan Graham's talent in the title role" and "perfunctory." [4]
A recording of the opera, with Ruby Philogene in the title role, was issued in 1998. [5]
Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi was an Italian composer, choirmaster and string player. A composer of both secular and sacred music, and a pioneer in the development of opera, he is considered a crucial transitional figure between the Renaissance and Baroque periods of music history.
L'Orfeo, or La favola d'Orfeo, is a late Renaissance/early Baroque favola in musica, or opera, by Claudio Monteverdi, with a libretto by Alessandro Striggio. It is based on the Greek legend of Orpheus, and tells the story of his descent to Hades and his fruitless attempt to bring his dead bride Eurydice back to the living world. It was written in 1607 for a court performance during the annual Carnival at Mantua. While Jacopo Peri's Dafne is generally recognised as the first work in the opera genre, and the earliest surviving opera is Peri's Euridice, L'Orfeo is the earliest that is still regularly performed.
Peter Alexander Goehr was a German-born English composer of contemporary classical music and academic teacher. A long-time professor of music at the University of Cambridge, Goehr influenced many notable contemporary composers, including Thomas Adès, Julian Anderson, George Benjamin and Robin Holloway.
Walter Goehr was a German composer and conductor who from 1937 lived and worked in the UK. He was the father of composer Alexander Goehr.
Dafne is the earliest known work that, by modern standards, could be considered an opera. The libretto by Ottavio Rinuccini, based on an earlier intermedio created in 1589, "Combattimento di Apollo col serpente Pitone," and set to music by Luca Marenzio, survives complete. The opera is considered to be the first "modern music drama."
Marco da Gagliano was an Italian composer of the early Baroque era. He was important in the early history of opera and the development of the solo and concerted madrigal.
Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria is an opera consisting of a prologue and five acts, set by Claudio Monteverdi to a libretto by Giacomo Badoaro. The opera was first performed at the Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice during the 1639–1640 carnival season. The story, taken from the second half of Homer's Odyssey, tells how constancy and virtue are ultimately rewarded, treachery and deception overcome. After his long journey home from the Trojan Wars Ulisse, king of Ithaca, finally returns to his kingdom where he finds that a trio of villainous suitors are importuning his faithful queen, Penelope. With the assistance of the gods, his son Telemaco and a staunch friend Eumete, Ulisse vanquishes the suitors and recovers his kingdom.
L'incoronazione di Poppea is an Italian opera by Claudio Monteverdi. It was Monteverdi's last opera, with a libretto by Giovanni Francesco Busenello, and was first performed at the Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice during the 1643 carnival season. One of the first operas to use historical events and people, it describes how Poppaea, mistress of the Roman emperor Nero, is able to achieve her ambition and be crowned empress. The opera was revived in Naples in 1651, but was then neglected until the rediscovery of the score in 1888, after which it became the subject of scholarly attention in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Since the 1960s, the opera has been performed and recorded many times.
Philippe Boesmans was a Belgian pianist, composer and academic teacher. He studied to be a pianist at the Royal Conservatory of Liège, and was self-taught as a composer, influenced by the Liège Group of Henri Pousseur, André Souris, and Célestin Deliège, and by attending the Darmstädter Ferienkurse. He worked for the Radio Télévision Belge de la Communauté Française (RTBF) from 1961, as a producer from 1971.
The Tempest is an opera by English composer Thomas Adès with a libretto in English by Meredith Oakes based on the play The Tempest by William Shakespeare.
L'Arianna is the lost second opera by Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi. One of the earliest operas in general, it was composed in 1607–1608 and first performed on 28 May 1608, as part of the musical festivities for a royal wedding at the court of Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga in Mantua. All the music is lost apart from the extended recitative known as "Lamento d'Arianna". The libretto, which survives complete, was written in eight scenes by Ottavio Rinuccini, who used Ovid's Heroides and other classical sources to relate the story of Ariadne's abandonment by Theseus on the island of Naxos and her subsequent elevation as bride to the god Bacchus.
La Dafne (Daphne) is an early Italian opera, written in 1608 by the Italian composer Marco da Gagliano from a libretto by Ottavio Rinuccini. It is described as a favola in musica composed in one act and a prologue. The opera is based on the myth of Daphne and Apollo as related by Ovid in the first book of the Metamorphoses. An earlier version of the libretto had been set to music in 1597–98 by Jacopo Peri, whose Dafne is generally considered to be the first opera.
Il ballo delle ingrate is a semi-dramatic ballet by the Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi set to a libretto by Ottavio Rinuccini. It was first performed in Mantua on Wednesday, 4 June 1608 as part of the wedding celebrations for Francesco Gonzaga and Margaret of Savoy. Both Vincenzo and Francesco Gonzaga took part in the dancing. Monteverdi also composed the opera L'Arianna and the music for the prologue to Guarini's play L'idropica for the occasion.
Geoffrey Alvarez is a British/Nicaraguan composer and conductor. He chairs the annual international composition competition run by the Alvarez Chamber Orchestra. He is also a writer on music and inventor of Gravesian Analysis.
These lists show the audio and visual recordings of the opera L'Orfeo by Claudio Monteverdi. The opera was first performed in Mantua in 1607, at the court of Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga, and is one of the earliest of all operas. The first recording of L'Orfeo was issued in 1939, a freely adapted version of Monteverdi's music edited by Giacomo Benvenuti, given by the orchestra of La Scala Milan conducted by Ferrucio Calusio. In 1949 the Berlin Radio Orchestra under Helmut Koch recorded the complete opera, on long-playing records (LPs). The advent of LP recordings was, as Harold Schonberg later wrote, an important factor in the postwar revival of interest in Renaissance and Baroque music, and from the mid-1950s recordings of L'Orfeo have been issued on many labels. Koch's landmark version was reissued in 1962, when it was compared unfavourably with others that had by then been issued. The 1969 recording by Nicholas Harnoncourt and the Vienna Concentus Musicus, using Harnoncourt's edition based on period instruments, was praised for "making Monteverdi's music sound something like the way he imagined". In 1981 Siegfried Heinrich, with the Early Music Studio of the Hesse Chamber Orchestra, recorded a version which re-created the original Striggio libretto ending, adding music from Monteverdi's 1616 ballet Tirsi e Clori for the Bacchante scenes. Among more recent recordings, that of Emmanuelle Haïm has been praised for its dramatic effect. The 21st century has seen the issue of an increasing number of recordings on DVD and Blu-ray.
Salvatore Di Vittorio is an Italian composer and conductor. He is the music director and Conductor of the Chamber Orchestra of New York. He has been recognized by Luigi Verdi as a "lyrical musical spirit, respectful of the ancient Italian tradition… an emerging leading interpreter of the music of Ottorino Respighi".
The Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643), in addition to a large output of church music and madrigals, wrote prolifically for the stage. His theatrical works were written between 1604 and 1643 and included operas, of which three—L'Orfeo (1607), Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria (1640) and L'incoronazione di Poppea (1643)—have survived with their music and librettos intact. In the case of the other seven operas, the music has disappeared almost entirely, although some of the librettos exist. The loss of these works, written during a critical period of early opera history, has been much regretted by commentators and musicologists.
This discography is a partial list of recordings of "Lamento d'Arianna", the only surviving fragment of music from the lost opera L'Arianna (1608) by Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643). The lament was saved from oblivion by the composer's decision to publish it independently from the opera; in 1614 as a five-voice madrigal, and in 1623 as an accompanied solo. The madrigal version was included in Monteverdi's Sixth Book of Madrigals. It appears in recordings of that collection, and in other madrigal selections.
Virginia Ramponi-Andreini, also known by her stage name "La Florinda" was a celebrated Italian actress and singer. She was known for her performances in commedia dell'arte plays, many of them written for her by her husband Giambattista Andreini, and for having created the title role in Claudio Monteverdi's lost opera L'Arianna. She was born in Northern Italy in either Milan or Genoa. The exact date and place of her death are unknown.
| Music |
|
|---|---|
| Related | |
