Amilcare Ponchielli was an Italian opera composer, best known for his opera La Gioconda. He was married to the soprano Teresina Brambilla.
Sir Alan Charles MacLaurin Mackerras was an Australian conductor. He was an authority on the operas of Janáček and Mozart, and the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan. He was long associated with the English National Opera and Welsh National Opera and was the first Australian chief conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. He also specialized in Czech music as a whole, producing many recordings for the Czech label Supraphon.
Piero Cappuccilli was an Italian operatic baritone. Best known for his interpretations of Verdi roles, he was widely regarded as one of the finest Italian baritones of the second half of the 20th century. He was enormously admired within the field of opera for his rich and abundant voice, fine vocal technique and exceptional breath control. In the great Italian tradition he fused words and music into elegant phrases. He focused on Italian repertory, particularly the operas of Verdi, singing 17 major roles.
Ildebrando Pizzetti was an Italian composer of classical music, as well as being a musicologist and a music critic.
Sir Antonio Pappano is an English-Italian conductor and pianist. He is currently music director of the Royal Opera House and chief conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra.
Dino Ciani was an Italian pianist.
Esclarmonde is an opéra in four acts and eight tableaux, with prologue and epilogue, by Jules Massenet, to a French libretto by Alfred Blau and Louis Ferdinand de Gramont. It was first performed at the Exposition Universelle on 15 May 1889 by the Opéra-Comique at the Théâtre Lyrique on the Place du Châtelet in Paris.
Denis Edward Vaughan was an Australian-born orchestral conductor and multi-instrumentalist. In 1950, he joined the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in London and by 1966 had settled in Rome. He was a campaigner for wider access to arts and culture for young people, promoting the health benefits of music, the arts, and sport. He returned to the United Kingdom and from 1987 he became more widely known as the driving force behind the creation of that country's National Lottery. He was president of CAARE, the charity he founded in 1996.
I Lituani is an opera consisting of a prologue and three acts by Amilcare Ponchielli to an Italian libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni, based on the historical poem Konrad Wallenrod written by Lithuanian-Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz. It premiered at La Scala in Milan on 7 March 1874.
Giuseppe Taddei was an Italian baritone, who, during his career, performed multiple operas composed by numerous composers.
Gianandrea Noseda is an Italian conductor. He is currently the music director of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington, D.C.; general music director (Generalmusikdirektor) of Zurich Opera; principal guest conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra; and the music director of the Tsinandali Festival in Tsinandali, Georgia.
Joseph Rescigno is an American conductor best known for his work in opera in North America and Europe. He served as Artistic Advisor and Principal Conductor of the Florentine Opera Company of Milwaukee, WI for 38 seasons beginning in 1981. He also served as Artistic Director of l'Orchestre Métropolitain du Grand Montréal, in Quebec, Canada, for four seasons. His commitment to young musicians and singers returns him each year to La Musica Lirica, a summer program for singers in Northern Italy, where he has been Music Director since 2005., He has mentored Solti Foundation U.S. Award recipients as part of the Foundation's residency project since the 2014–2015 season, first at the Florentine and later elsewhere. In this program, award recipients apprentice through an entire rehearsal and performance cycle.
Turandot(BV 273) is a 1917 opera with spoken dialogue and in two acts by Ferruccio Busoni. Busoni prepared his own libretto, in German, based on the play of the same name by Count Carlo Gozzi. The music for Busoni's opera is based on the incidental music, and the associated Turandot Suite, which Busoni had written in 1905 for a production of Gozzi's play. The opera is often performed as part of a double bill with Busoni's earlier one-act opera Arlecchino.
Assassinio nella cattedrale is an opera in two acts and an intermezzo by the Italian composer Ildebrando Pizzetti. The libretto is an adaptation by the composer of an Italian translation of T. S. Eliot's 1935 play Murder in the Cathedral. The opera was first performed at La Scala, Milan, on 1 March 1958. The opera was performed for the first time in Canada the following year at the Montreal Festivals.
Denia Mazzola - Gavazzeni is an Italian operatic soprano. In 1991 she married Gianandrea Gavazzeni (1909–1996) a famous conductor, 44 years older. She had the peak of her career between the years 1982 and 2015 when she decide to dedicate herself to teaching. She recorded in 2017 the Antonio Smareglia opera La Falena. As of 2021, she is still singing in events and recitals organized by her foundation.
Zanetto is an opera in one act by Pietro Mascagni to an Italian libretto by Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti and Guido Menasci. It received its first performance on 2 March 1896 at the Liceo Musicale Rossini in Pesaro. Only 40 minutes long and with cast of two singers, Zanetto was originally described by its composer as a scena lirica rather than an opera. It is set in the countryside near Florence during the Renaissance and tells the story of an encounter between a beautiful courtesan, Silvia, and a young wandering minstrel, Zanetto. The libretto was adapted from an Italian translation by Emilio Praga of François Coppée's play Le passant in which the young Sarah Bernhardt had won fame in the en travesti role of Zanetto.
Roberto Michelucci was an Italian classical violinist.
Zingari (Gypsies), also known as Gli Zingari, is an opera in two acts by Ruggero Leoncavallo. The libretto by Enrico Cavacchioli and Guglielmo Emanuel is based on The Gypsies, an 1827 narrative poem by Alexander Pushkin. The opera premiered on 16 September 1912 at the Hippodrome Theatre in London. The United States premiere of the opera was staged by the Chicago Grand Opera Company in 1913 with soprano Carolina White as Fleana.
Daniele Rustioni is an Italian conductor.
Clitennestra, an opera in a prelude and two acts, was the last work by Ildebrando Pizzetti. The libretto is in Italian. The opera play is based on ancient Greek mythology written by Aeschylus and Sophocles. It was premiered at La Scala in Milan on 1 March 1965, conducted by Gianandrea Gavazzeni.
