Antonio Salieri was an Italian composer and teacher of the classical period. He was born in Legnago, south of Verona, in the Republic of Venice, and spent his adult life and career as a subject of the Habsburg monarchy.
Don Giovanni is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. Its subject is a centuries-old Spanish legend about a libertine as told by playwright Tirso de Molina in his 1630 play El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra. It is a dramma giocoso blending comedy, melodrama and supernatural elements. It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the National Theater, now called the Estates Theatre, on 29 October 1787. Don Giovanni is regarded as one of the greatest operas of all time, and has proved a fruitful subject for commentary in its own right; critic Fiona Maddocks has described it as one of Mozart's "trio of masterpieces with librettos by Da Ponte".
Don Juan, also known as Don Giovanni (Italian), is a legendary, fictional Spanish libertine who devotes his life to seducing women.
Orfeo ed Euridice is an opera composed by Christoph Willibald Gluck, based on the myth of Orpheus and set to a libretto by Ranieri de' Calzabigi. It belongs to the genre of the azione teatrale, meaning an opera on a mythological subject with choruses and dancing. The piece was first performed at the Burgtheater in Vienna on 5 October 1762, in the presence of Empress Maria Theresa. Orfeo ed Euridice is the first of Gluck's "reform" operas, in which he attempted to replace the abstruse plots and overly complex music of opera seria with a "noble simplicity" in both the music and the drama.
Alceste, Wq. 37, is an opera by Christoph Willibald Gluck from 1767. The libretto was written by Ranieri de' Calzabigi and based on the play Alcestis by Euripides. The premiere took place on 26 December 1767 at the Burgtheater in Vienna.
Iphigénie en Tauride is a 1779 opera by Christoph Willibald Gluck in four acts. It was his fifth opera for the French stage. The libretto was written by Nicolas-François Guillard.
Idomeneo, re di Creta ossia Ilia e Idamante is an Italian-language opera seria by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The libretto was adapted by Giambattista Varesco from a French text by Antoine Danchet, based on a 1705 play by Crébillion père, which had been set to music by André Campra as Idoménée in 1712. Mozart and Varesco were commissioned in 1780 by Karl Theodor, Elector of Bavaria for a court carnival. He probably chose the subject, though it may have been Mozart. The work premiered on 29 January 1781 at the Cuvilliés Theatre in Munich, Germany.
Dom Juan ou le Festin de Pierre is a five-act 1665 comedy by Molière based upon the Spanish legend of Don Juan Tenorio. The aristocrat Dom Juan is a rake who seduces, marries, and abandons Elvira, discarded as just another romantic conquest. Later, he invites to dinner the statue of a man whom he recently had murdered; the statue accepts and reciprocates Dom Juan's invitation. In the course of their second evening, the stone statue of the murdered man charms, deceives, and leads Dom Juan to Hell.
Anastasio Martín Ignacio Vicente Tadeo Francisco Pellegrin Martín y Soler was a Spanish composer of opera and ballet. Although relatively obscure now, in his own day he was compared favorably with his contemporary and admirer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, as a composer of opera buffa. In his time he was called "Martini lo spagnuolo" ; in modern times, he has been called "the Valencian Mozart". He was known primarily for his melodious Italian comic operas and his work with Lorenzo Da Ponte in the late 18th century, as well as the melody from Una cosa rara quoted in the dining scene of Mozart's Don Giovanni.
La rencontre imprévue, ou Les pèlerins de la Mecque Wq. 32 is a three-act opéra comique, composed in 1763 by Christoph Willibald Gluck to a libretto by Louis Dancourt after the 1726 comédie en vaudevilleLes pèlerins de la Mecque by Alain-René Lesage and d'Orneval. The death of Isabella of Parma, the archduke's wife, occasioned a revision of the spoken text downplaying the feigned death by which princess Rezia tests her beloved. The work was first performed in this form as La rencontre imprévue at the Burgtheater, Vienna on 7 January 1764. Dancourt's original text, titled Les pèlerins de la Mecque and designated as a comédie mêlée d'ariettes, was not premiered until 1990.
Gasparo Angiolini, real name Domenico Maria Gasparo, son of Francesco Angiolini and Maria Maddalena Torzi, was an Italian dancer, choreographer and composer. He was born in Florence and died in Milan.
Les Danaïdes is an opera by Antonio Salieri, in five acts: more specifically, it is a tragédie lyrique. The opera was set to a libretto by François-Louis Gand Le Bland Du Roullet and Louis-Théodore de Tschudi, who in turn adapted the work of Ranieri de' Calzabigi. Calzabigi originally wrote the libretto of Les Danaïdes for Christoph Willibald Gluck, but the aged composer, who had just experienced a stroke, was unable to meet the Opéra's schedule and so asked Salieri to take it over. The plot of the opera is based on Greek tragedy and revolves around the deeds of the mythological characters Danaus and Hypermnestra.
Nicolas-François Guillard was a French librettist. He was born in Chartres and died in Paris, the recipient of a government pension in recognition of his work writing librettos. He was also on Comité de Lecture of the Paris Opéra. One of the foremost of the French librettist of his generation, he wrote libretti for many noted composers of the day, including Salieri and in particular Sacchini. His most famous work is Iphigénie en Tauride, his first libretto, set by Gluck after the composer had initially rejected it. Gluck collaborated with Guillard to heavily recast the libretto, not only to suit Gluck's artistic preferences, but also to accommodate pre-existing music that Gluck borrowed, both from himself and from other composers, when composing the opera.
Pierre-Louis Moline was a prolific French dramatist, poet and librettist. His play La Réunion du six août was one of the longest-running patriotic pieces during the time of the French Revolution with 52 performances at the Paris Opéra. He also wrote the epitaph for the tomb of Jean-Paul Marat. However, he is best remembered today for having adapted Calzabigi's libretto for Gluck's Orphée et Euridice.
Jean-Pierre Solié was a French cellist and operatic singer. He began as a tenor, but switched and became well known as a baritone. He sang most often at the Paris Opéra-Comique. He also became a prolific composer, writing primarily one-act comic operas.
Le feste d'Apollo is an operatic work by Christoph Willibald von Gluck, first performed at the Teatrino della Corte, Parma, Italy, on 24 August 1769 for the wedding celebrations of Ferdinand, Duke of Parma and Archduchess Maria Amalia of Austria.
Alexis Dupont was a French operatic tenor who sang at the Opéra-Comique from 1821 to 1823 and the Paris Opera from 1826 to 1841. There he created a number of roles in operas by Rossini, Auber, Halévy and Meyerbeer. He had a significant association with Berlioz, creating the tenor solo in Roméo et Juliette in 1839; and he sang in the Mozart Requiem at Chopin's funeral in 1849.
Chimène, ou Le Cid is a French-language opera by Antonio Sacchini. It takes the form of a tragédie (lyrique) in three acts, with a libretto by Nicolas-François Guillard. It was first staged at Fontainebleau on 16 November 1783. The subject of the work was inspired by the tragicomedy Le Cid by Pierre Corneille, and indirectly by the medieval Spanish epic Cantar de Mio Cid and a play by Guillén de Castro y Bellvís, Las Mocedades del Cid. Comedia Comedia primera and segunda (1605–1615).
La toison d'or, soon revised as Médée à Colchos ou La toison d'or, is a French-language opera in three acts by the composer Johann Christoph Vogel. It was first performed at the Académie Royale de Musique on 5 September 1786, "some years after its completion". The libretto, by Philippe Desriaux, is based on the legend of Jason and the Golden Fleece.
