Sources
- Holden, Amanda The Viking Opera Guide (Viking, 1993), page 373.
- Gluck Gesamtausgabe Il re pastore
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Il re pastore (The Shepherd King) is an opera by the composer Christoph Willibald Gluck. It takes the form of a dramma per musica in three acts. The Italian-language libretto is by Pietro Metastasio. The opera premiered on 8 December 1756 at the Burgtheater, Vienna.
| Role | Voice type | Premiere Cast |
|---|---|---|
| Alessandro, King of Macedonia | tenor | Pietro Mezzo |
| Aminta, a shepherd, rightful heir to Sidon | soprano castrato | Ferdinando Mazzanti |
| Elisa, a noble nymph of Phoenicia, of the family of Cadmus | soprano | Catarina Gabrielli |
| Tamiri, a fugitive princess, daughter of the deposed tyrant Stratone | soprano | Francesca Gabrielli |
| Agenore, a Sidonian nobleman | soprano castrato | Paolo Bareggi |
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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.
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.
Il re pastore is an opera, K. 208, written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to an Italian libretto by Metastasio, edited by Giambattista Varesco. It is an opera seria. The opera was first performed on 23 April 1775 in Salzburg in the Rittersaal of the Residenz-Theater in the palace of the Archbishop Count Hieronymus von Colloredo.
Luis Ernesto Alva y Talledo, better known as Luigi Alva is a Peruvian operatic tenor. A Mozart and Rossini specialist, Alva achieved fame with roles such as Don Ottavio, Count Almaviva and Fenton. He retired from the stage in 1989.
A soubrette is a type of operatic soprano voice fach, often cast as a female stock character in opera and theatre. The term arrived in English from Provençal via French, and means "conceited" or "coy". A soubrette is also defined as a young woman regarded as flirtatious or frivolous.
Aminta is a play written by Torquato Tasso in 1573, represented during a garden party at the court of Ferrara. Both the actors and the public were noble persons living at the Court, who could understand subtle allusions the poet made to that style of life, in contrast with the life of shepherds, represented in an idyllic way.
Caterina Gabrielli, born Caterina Fatta, was an Italian coloratura singer. She was the most important soprano of her age. A woman of great personal charm and dynamism, Charles Burney referred to her as "the most intelligent and best-bred virtuosa" that he had ever encountered. The excellence of her vocal artistry is reflected in the fact that she was able to secure long-term engagements in three of the most prestigious operatic centers in her day outside of Italy.
The Symphony in C major "No. 52", K. 208+102, was composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1775. The first two movements are from the opera Il re pastore, K. 208, and the last movement, K. 102/213c, were composed separately. The movements are played one after another without a break.
Ipermestra (Hypermnestra) is an opera by the composer Christoph Willibald Gluck. It takes the form of an opera seria in three acts. The Italian-language libretto is by Pietro Metastasio. The opera premiered on 21 November 1744 at the Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo in Venice. Ipermestra is the first of Gluck's operas to survive complete.
Cythère assiégée is an opera by the composer Christoph Willibald Gluck. The French-language libretto is by Charles-Simon Favart. The first version of this opera premiered in spring 1759 at the Burgtheater, Vienna in the form of a one-act opéra comique. A completely revised version turned it into a three-act opéra-ballet which appeared at the Paris Opéra on 1 August 1775. Gluck resorted to his eponymous opera comique for the Parisian Cythère assiégée (1775) and transformed it into an opera ballet. He added recitative sections to Favarts's textual basis, re-designed sections and added his own compositions, some of them changing. His compositional works had progressed so far to the beginning of March 1775 that Gluck was able to leave a copy of the score on his departure from Paris; but neither could he supervise the rehearsal work nor be present at the premiere on 1 August 1775 or in the other 21 performances. Due to these circumstances, three versions of the work can be distinguished: the original, the listed and the printed.
Il Parnaso confuso is an opera by the composer Christoph Willibald Gluck. It takes the form of an azione teatrale in one act. The Italian-language libretto is by Pietro Metastasio. The opera premiered on 24 January 1765 at Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna. All the members of the cast were archduchesses of the Habsburg family and the work was conducted by the future Emperor Leopold II from the harpsichord.
La corona is an opera by the composer Christoph Willibald Gluck. It takes the form of an azione teatrale in one act. The Italian-language libretto is by Pietro Metastasio. The opera was intended to celebrate the name day of Emperor Francis I on 4 October 1765 but the Emperor died in August and it remained unperformed until the 20th century. It was written for the four archduchess daughters of the Emperor, like Gluck's Il Parnaso confuso, premiered earlier that year at Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna.
Antigono is a three act opera seria composed by Christoph Willibald Gluck. It premiered February 9, 1756, at the Teatro Argentina in Rome. The Italian libretto was written by Pietro Metastasio, who was considered to be the most important opera seria librettist. Antigono was the only opera that Gluck ever premiered in Rome. This allowed him to reuse several arias and an entire introduction from some of his other operas, L'innocenza giustificata, Le cinesi, and La danza.
Il re pastore is a 1751 Italian-language opera libretto written by Metastasio. It was first set by Giuseppe Bonno in 1751, but best known today in the version by Gluck (1756) and the Il re pastore of Mozart (1775).
Giovanni Gualberto Bottarelli wrote the libretto for several operas to which Johann Christian Bach wrote the music, and adapted many other operas. The first collaboration with Bach was Orione, performed at the King's Theatre in Haymarket to great acclaim in February 1763. Zanaida, a three-act opera debuted in London in May 1763, but was less well received. Other works were "Addio di Londra", "Carattaco", "Cesare e Cleopatra", "Il Cid ", "L'Endimione", and "Rodelinda regina de' Longobardi".