Giacomo Puccini was an Italian composer known primarily for his operas. Regarded as the greatest and most successful proponent of Italian opera after Verdi, he was descended from a long line of composers, stemming from the late-Baroque era. Though his early work was firmly rooted in traditional late-19th-century Romantic Italian opera, he later developed his work in the realistic verismo style, of which he became one of the leading exponents.
Pietro Mascagni was an Italian composer primarily known for his operas. His 1890 masterpiece Cavalleria rusticana caused one of the greatest sensations in opera history and single-handedly ushered in the Verismo movement in Italian dramatic music. While it was often held that Mascagni, like Ruggero Leoncavallo, was a "one-opera man" who could never repeat his first success, L'amico Fritz and Iris have remained in the repertoire in Europe since their premieres.
Semiramide is an opera in two acts by Gioachino Rossini. The libretto by Gaetano Rossi is based on Voltaire's tragedy Semiramis, which in turn was based on the legend of Semiramis of Assyria. The opera was first performed at La Fenice in Venice on 3 February 1823.
Maria Teresa Agnesi Pinottini was an Italian composer. Though she was most famous for her compositions, she was also an accomplished harpsichordist and singer, and the majority of her surviving compositions were written for keyboard, the voice, or both.
Azio Corghi was an Italian composer, academic teacher and musicologist. He composed mostly operas and chamber music. His operas are often based on literature, especially in collaboration with José Saramago as librettist. His first opera, Gargantua, was premiered at the Teatro Regio in Turin in 1984, his second opera, Blimunda, was first performed at La Scala in Milan in the 1989/90 season, and his third opera, Divara – aqua e sangue, was premiered in 1993 at the Theater Münster, Germany. He taught composition at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, among other academies. In 2005, he was awarded the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic.
Carlo Evasio Soliva was a Swiss-Italian composer of opera, chamber music, and sacred choral works. Soliva was born in Casale Monferrato, Piedmont to a family of Swiss chocolatiers who had emigrated from the canton of Ticino. He studied pianoforte and composition at the Milan Conservatory.
Argippo is an opera libretto by Domenico Lalli, which in Giovanni Porta's setting premiered in Venice in 1717. Claudio Nicola Stampa's reworked version of the libretto was set as L'Argippo by Andrea Stefano Fiorè. This opera was performed in Milan in 1722.
Tigrane, o vero L'egual impegno d'amore e di fede is an opera seria in three acts by the Italian composer Alessandro Scarlatti with a libretto by Domenico Lalli. It was first performed at the Teatro San Bartolomeo, Naples, on 16 February 1715. It is regarded as one of Scarlatti's finest operas. As well as the serious main plot, there are also comic scenes involving the servants Dorilla and Orcone.
Angelo Maria Amorevoli was a leading Italian tenor in Baroque opera.
The Teatro Regio Ducale was the opera house in Milan from 26 December 1717 until 25 February 1776, when it was burned down following a carnival gala. Many famous composers and their operas are associated with it, including the premieres of Mozart's Mitridate, re di Ponto, Ascanio in Alba, and Lucio Silla. The opera house also saw the premiere of Maria Teresa Agnesi Pinottini's Ciro in Armenia in 1753; one of the earliest successfully received operas by a female composer. The variant form Regio Ducal Teatro is also seen.
Geminiano Giacomelli was an Italian composer.
Antonio Cagnoni was an Italian composer. Primarily known for his twenty operas, his work is characterized by his use of leitmotifs and moderately dissonant harmonies. In addition to writing music for the stage, he composed a modest amount of sacred music, most notably a Requiem in 1888. He also contributed the third movement, Quid sum miser, to the Messa per Rossini, a collaborative work created by thirteen composers to honor Gioacchino Rossini.
La Silvia is an dramma pastorale per musica in three acts by Antonio Vivaldi to an Italian libretto by Enrico Bissari. It was first performed on 28 August 1721 at the Teatro Regio Ducale in Milan on the occasion of the birthday celebrations of the Austrian Empress Elisabeth Christine, wife of Emperor Charles VI of Austria.
Ferdinando Orlandi, also referred to as Orland and Orlando. Little is known of his early life and his year of birth is also cited as 1777. He was an Italian musician and teacher of singing who composed cantatas and sacred music, but was particularly known for his operas, not all of which have survived. He was born and died in Parma.
L'incoronazione di Dario is an opera in three acts composed by Giacomo Antonio Perti to an Italian libretto by Adriano Morselli. It was first performed on 13 January 1686, at the Teatro Malvezzi in Bologna. Morselli originally wrote the libretto for Domenico Freschi's opera Dario which premiered at the Teatro San Angelo in Venice in 1685. Other later uses of the libretto include Giuseppe Aldrovandini's 1705 L'incoronazione di Dario and Vivaldi's 1717 L'incoronazione di Dario.
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.
Elisabetta Manfredini-Guarmani was an Italian opera singer best known for having created the leading soprano roles in four of Rossini's operas, roles which he wrote specifically for her voice. She was born Antonia Elisabetta Manfredini in Bologna and was the daughter of the composer and music theorist Vincenzo Manfredini. After her stage debut in 1810 when she sang in the premiere of Stefano Pavesi's Il trionfo di Gedeone at Bologna's Teatro del Corso, she went on to perform at La Fenice, La Scala, Teatro Regio di Torino, Rome's Teatro Argentina and several other opera houses, primarily in Northern Italy. In addition to the roles she created in Rossini's operas, she also sang in the world premieres of operas by several composers who are lesser known today, including Pietro Raimondi, Simon Mayr, and Ferdinando Paër. Her last known appearance was in 1828 after which there is no further trace of her. The date and place of her death are unknown.
Feliciano Cristoforo Bartolomeo Strepponi was an Italian composer and conductor. He was born in Lodi and died in Trieste at the age of 38. Amongst his compositions were seven operas which had a modest success in their day. The last one, L'Ullà di Bassora, premiered at La Scala in 1831. He was the father and first teacher of the opera singer Giuseppina Strepponi who later became the second wife of Giuseppe Verdi.
Teresa "Teresina" Brambilla was an Italian soprano who sang in the major opera houses of Europe in a career spanning 25 years. She was particularly noted for her interpretations of the leading roles in operas by Amilcare Ponchielli whom she married in 1874.
Luigi Capotorti was an Italian composer of both sacred and secular music. He was the maestro di cappella of several Neapolitan churches; the composer of ten operas, five of which premiered at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples; and a teacher of composition and singing whose students included Stefano Pavesi and Saverio Mercadante. Born in Molfetta, he studied violin and composition at the Conservatorio di Sant'Onofrio in Naples and spent his entire career in that city. In his later years, Capotorti retired to San Severo, where he died at the age of 75.
