Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi was an Italian composer, string player, choirmaster, and priest. A composer of both secular and sacred music, and a pioneer in the development of opera, he is considered a crucial transitional figure between the Renaissance and Baroque periods of music history.
Giaches de Wert was a Franco-Flemish composer of the late Renaissance, active in Italy. Intimately connected with the progressive musical center of Ferrara, he was one of the leaders in developing the style of the late Renaissance madrigal. He was one of the most influential of late sixteenth-century madrigal composers, particularly on Claudio Monteverdi, and his later music was formative on the development of music of the early Baroque era.
The year 1607 in music involved some significant events.
The year 1608 in music involved some significant events and new musical works.
Salamone Rossi or Salomone Rossi was an Italian Jewish violinist and composer. He was a transitional figure between the late Italian Renaissance period and early Baroque.
L'Orfeo, sometimes called La favola d'Orfeo[la ˈfaːvola dorˈfɛːo], is a late Renaissance/early Baroque favola in musica, or opera, by Claudio Monteverdi, with a libretto by Alessandro Striggio. It is based on the Greek legend of Orpheus, and tells the story of his descent to Hades and his fruitless attempt to bring his dead bride Eurydice back to the living world. It was written in 1607 for a court performance during the annual Carnival at Mantua. While Jacopo Peri's Dafne is generally recognised as the first work in the opera genre, and the earliest surviving opera is Peri's Euridice, L'Orfeo is the earliest that is still regularly performed.
Ottavio Rinuccini was an Italian poet, courtier, and opera librettist at the end of the Renaissance and beginning of the Baroque eras. In collaborating with Jacopo Peri to produce the first opera, Dafne, in 1597, he became the first opera librettist.
Stile concitato or "agitated style" is a Baroque style developed by Claudio Monteverdi with effects such as having rapid repeated notes and extended trills as symbols of bellicose agitation or anger. Kate Van Orden points out a precedent in Clément Janequin's "La Guerre" (1528). Agathe Sueur points out similarities and ambiguities between Monteverdi's genere concitato and stile concitato in rhetoric and poetry. Examples of stile concitato can be found in these works:
Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda, SV 153, is an operatic scena for three voices by Claudio Monteverdi. The libretto is drawn from Torquato Tasso's La Gerusalemme Liberata. It was first performed in Venice in 1624, and printed in 1638 in Monteverdi's eighth book of madrigals. Monteverdi used musical features here for the first time to enhance the dramatic depiction of a battle in stile concitato, such as pizzicato and tremolo.
Les Arts Florissants is a Baroque musical ensemble in residence at the Théâtre de Caen in Caen, France. The organization was founded by conductor William Christie in 1979. The ensemble derives its name from the 1685 opera Les Arts florissants by Marc-Antoine Charpentier. The organization consists of a chamber orchestra of period instruments and a small vocal ensemble. Current notable members include soprano Danielle de Niese and tenor Paul Agnew, who has served as assistant conductor since 2007. Jonathan Cohen is also on the conducting staff; Christie remains the organization's Artistic Director.
L'Arianna is the lost second opera by Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi. One of the earliest operas in general, it was composed in 1607–1608 and first performed on 28 May 1608, as part of the musical festivities for a royal wedding at the court of Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga in Mantua. All the music is lost apart from the extended recitative known as "Lamento d'Arianna". The libretto, which survives complete, was written in eight scenes by Ottavio Rinuccini, who used Ovid's Heroides and other classical sources to relate the story of Ariadne's abandonment by Theseus on the island of Naxos and her subsequent elevation as bride to the god Bacchus.
Suzie LeBlanc is a Canadian soprano and early music specialist. She is also active as a professor, currently working at Mcgill University. She was named a member of the Order of Canada in 2014 for her contributions to music and Acadian culture.
Alessandro Striggio the Younger was an Italian librettist, the son of the composer Alessandro Striggio. The younger Striggio is most famous for his association with the composer Claudio Monteverdi. He wrote the libretto for Monteverdi's first opera Orfeo (1607), a landmark in the history of the genre, as well as the balloTirsi e Clori. Striggio worked at the court of Mantua and died of the plague while on a diplomatic mission to Venice.
La Dafne (Daphne) is an early Italian opera, written in 1608 by the Italian composer Marco da Gagliano from a libretto by Ottavio Rinuccini. It is described as a favola in musica composed in one act and a prologue. The opera is based on the myth of Daphne and Apollo as related by Ovid in the first book of the Metamorphoses. An earlier version of the libretto had been set to music in 1597–98 by Jacopo Peri, whose Dafne is generally considered to be the first opera.
Antonio Il Verso was an Italian composer.
The Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi (1567–1643), in addition to a large output of church music and madrigals, wrote prolifically for the stage. His theatrical works were written between 1604 and 1643 and included operas, of which three—L'Orfeo (1607), Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria (1640) and L'incoronazione di Poppea (1643)—have survived with their music and librettos intact. In the case of the other seven operas, the music has disappeared almost entirely, although some of the librettos exist. The loss of these works, written during a critical period of early opera history, has been much regretted by commentators and musicologists.
La Venexiana is an Italian early music ensemble founded and led by Claudio Cavina, an Italian countertenor and conductor.
Jill Feldman is an American soprano who has acquired an international reputation for her interpretation of medieval, baroque and classical repertoires.
Enrico Onofri is an Italian violinist and conductor specialising in Baroque music.
