Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi, better known by his pseudonym of Pietro Metastasio, was an Italian poet and librettist, considered the most important writer of opera seria libretti.
Johann Adolph Hasse was an 18th-century German composer, singer and teacher of music. Immensely popular in his time, Hasse was best known for his prolific operatic output, though he also composed a considerable quantity of sacred music. Married to soprano Faustina Bordoni and a friend of librettist Pietro Metastasio, whose libretti he frequently set, Hasse was a pivotal figure in the development of opera seria and 18th-century music.
Niccolò Jommelli was an Italian composer of the Neapolitan School. Along with other composers mainly in the Holy Roman Empire and France, he was responsible for certain operatic reforms including reducing ornateness of style and the primacy of star singers somewhat.
Opera seria is an Italian musical term which refers to the noble and "serious" style of Italian opera that predominated in Europe from the 1710s to about 1770. The term itself was rarely used at the time and only attained common usage once opera seria was becoming unfashionable and beginning to be viewed as something of a historical genre. The popular rival to opera seria was opera buffa, the 'comic' opera that took its cue from the improvisatory commedia dell'arte.
Carl Heinrich Graun was a German composer and tenor. Along with Johann Adolph Hasse, he is considered to be the most important German composer of Italian opera of his time.
Demofonte is an opera seria libretto by Metastasio. The libretto was first set by Antonio Caldara in 1733, but remained popular throughout the eighteenth century and was set over seventy times.
Artaserse is the name of a number of Italian operas, all based on a text by Metastasio. Artaserse is the Italian form of the name of the king Artaxerxes I of Persia.
Attilio Regolo may refer to:
Catone in Utica is an opera libretto by Metastasio, that was originally written for Leonardo Vinci's 1727 opera. Following Vinci's success, Metastasio's text was used by numerous composers of the baroque and classical eras for their own operas, including Pietro Torri (1736), Antonio Vivaldi (1737), Giovanni Battista Ferrandini (1753) and J. C. Bach (1761).
Annibale Pio Fabri, also known as Balino, from Annibalino, diminutive of his first name, was an Italian singer and composer of the 18th century. One of the leading tenors of his age in a time dominated by the castrati, Fabri is now best known for his association with the composer George Frideric Handel, in whose operas Fabri sang.
Domenico Annibali was an Italian castrato who had an active international career from 1725–1764. He began his career in his native country and was then committed to the Grosses Königliches Opernhaus in Dresden from 1729 until his retirement from the stage 35 years later. In Dresden he excelled in the operas of Johann Adolph Hasse, notably creating roles in the premieres of two of his operas. He was also admired there in works by Nicola Porpora.
La passione di Gesù Cristo is a libretto by Pietro Metastasio which was repeatedly set as an azione sacra or oratorio by many composers of the late baroque, Rococo and early classical period.
Luca Antonio Predieri was an Italian composer and violinist. A member of a prominent family of musicians, Predieri was born in Bologna and was active there from 1704. In 1737 he moved to Vienna, eventually becoming Kapellmeister to the imperial Habsburg court in 1741, a post he held for ten years. In 1765 he returned to his native city where he died two years later at the age of 78. A prolific opera composer, he was also known for his sacred music and oratorios. Although his operas were largely forgotten by the end of his own lifetime and most of their scores lost, individual arias as well some of his sacred music are still performed and recorded.
Ezio is an opera libretto by Pietro Metastasio, first officially set to music by Pietro Auletta and premièred in the Teatro delle Dame, Rome, on December 26, 1728; an unauthorized setting by Nicola Porpora had already been premièred a month earlier in Venice.
Adriano in Siria is a libretto by Italian poet Metastasio first performed, with music by Antonio Caldara, in Vienna in 1732, and turned into an opera by at least 60 other composers during the next century. Metastasio based the background of the story on late Classical works by Cassius Dio and Elio Sparziano.
Solimano is an opera in three acts composed by Johann Adolph Hasse to an Italian-language libretto by Giovanni Ambrogio Migliavacca. Loosely based on an episode in the life of Suleiman the Magnificent, the opera premiered on 5 February 1753 at the Opernhaus am Zwinger in Dresden. The lavish production featured set designs by Giuseppe Galli Bibiena. The tenor Angelo Amorevoli sang the title role.
Giovanni Ambrogio Migliavacca was an Italian poet and librettist. A student and protégé of Metastasio, he was primarily active in the court theaters of Dresden and Vienna. His most successful work was the libretto for the opera Solimano, first set by Johann Adolph Hasse in 1753 and subsequently set by eighteen other composers in the following decades.
Ciro riconosciuto is an opera libretto in three acts by Pietro Metastasio, dating to around 1736.
Il Ruggiero is an opera in three acts composed by Johann Adolph Hasse to a libretto by Pietro Metastasio. It was first staged on 16 October 1771 for the wedding of Archduke Ferdinand Karl with Maria Beatrice d'Este in the Teatro Regio Ducale, Milan. It was both Metastasio's last libretto and Hasse's last opera, as well as the thirty-second Metastasio libretto Hasse had set to music.
Alessandro nell'Indie is a libretto in three acts by Pietro Metastasio. It was set to music around ninety times firstly by Leonardo Vinci, whose version premiered in Rome on 2 January 1730. The libretto was the fourth of five that Metastasio wrote for the Teatro delle Dame in Rome between 1727 and 1730. The work was dedicated to the Stuart pretender to the British throne, James Francis Edward Stuart, then resident in Rome.
