A castrato is a type of classical male singing voice equivalent to that of a soprano, mezzo-soprano, or contralto. The voice is produced by castration of the singer before puberty, or it occurs in one who, due to an endocrinological condition, never reaches sexual maturity.
Farinelli was the stage name of Carlo Maria Michelangelo Nicola Broschi, a celebrated Italian castrato singer of the 18th century and one of the greatest singers in the history of opera. Farinelli has been described as having had soprano vocal range and as having sung the highest note customary at the time, C6.
Francesco Bernardi, known as Senesino, was a celebrated Italian contralto castrato, particularly remembered today for his long collaboration with the composer George Frideric Handel.
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.
NicolaAntonio Porpora was an Italian composer and teacher of singing of the Baroque era, whose most famous singing students were the castrati Farinelli and Caffarelli. Other students included composers Matteo Capranica and Joseph Haydn.
The Real Teatro di San Carlo, as originally named by the Bourbon monarchy but today known simply as the Teatro (di) San Carlo, is an opera house in Naples, Italy, connected to the Royal Palace and adjacent to the Piazza del Plebiscito. It is the oldest continuously active venue for opera in the world, having opened in 1737, decades before either Milan's La Scala or Venice's La Fenice.
This is a list of notable events in music that took place in the year 1732.
Gaetano Majorano was an Italian castrato and opera singer, who performed under the stage name Caffarelli. Like Farinelli, Caffarelli was a student of Nicola Porpora.
Faramondo, HWV 39, is an opera in three acts by George Frideric Handel to an Italian libretto adapted from Apostolo Zeno's Faramondo. The story is loosely based upon the legend of Pharamond, a mythological King of the Franks, circa 420 AD, and the early history of France. The opera had its first performance at the King's Theatre, London, on 3 January 1738.
Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin is a German chamber orchestra founded in East Berlin in 1982. Each year Akamus gives approximately 100 concerts, ranging from small chamber works to large-scale symphonic pieces in Europe's musical centers as well as on tours in Asia, North America and South America.
Il Sant'Alessio is an opera in three acts composed by Stefano Landi in 1631 with a libretto by Giulio Rospigliosi. Its first performance was probably in February 1632.
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.
Max Emanuel Cenčić is a Croatian countertenor, as of 1994 based in Austria. He was a member of the Wiener Sängerknaben.
Adriano in Siria is an 18th-century Italian opera seria in 3 acts by the Czech composer Josef Mysliveček. It was composed to a libretto of the same name by the Italian poet Metastasio that was first performed in 1732 with music of Antonio Caldara and in more than 60 further settings until 1828. For a performance in the 1770s, it would only be expected that a libretto of such age would be abbreviated and altered to suit contemporary operatic taste. No other of the composer's settings of Metatasio's texts contains as many substitute aria texts as this one does. The cuts and changes in the text made for the 1776 performance of Mysliveček's opera are not attributable.
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 Adolf Hasse, notably creating roles in the premieres of two of his operas. He was also admired there in works by Nicola Porpora.
Ezio is a baroque opera in three acts composed by Christoph Willibald Gluck, staged in 1750 and revised in 1763.
Franco Maximiliano Fagioli is an Argentinian operatic countertenor.
Telemaco, ossia L'isola di Circe is a 1718 opera by Alessandro Scarlatti to a libretto by Carlo Sigismondo Capece, court poet to Queen Maria Casimira of Poland, living in exile in Rome, for the Teatro Capranica in Rome, where it was premiered during the carnival season. The opera was revived in 2005 by the Schwetzingen Festival and the Deutsche Oper am Rhein.
Dilyara Idrisova is a Russian soprano opera singer and recitalist, specialising in soprano and coloratura mezzo-soprano material of the 18th and 19th century. She studied with Milyausha Murtazina and Galina Pisarenko.
Polifemo is an opera in three acts by Nicola Porpora with a libretto by Paolo Rolli. The opera is based on a combination of two mythological stories involving the cyclops Polyphemus: His killing of Acis and his blinding by Ulysses.
