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Johann Adolph Hasse was an 18th-century German composer, singer and teacher of music. Immensely popular in his time, Hasse was best known for his prolific operatic output, though he also composed a considerable quantity of sacred music. Married to soprano Faustina Bordoni and a great friend of librettist Pietro Metastasio, whose libretti he frequently set, Hasse was a pivotal figure in the development of opera seria and 18th-century music.
Niccolò Jommelli was an Italian composer of the Neapolitan School. Along with other composers mainly in the Holy Roman Empire and France, he was responsible for certain operatic reforms including reducing ornateness of style and the primacy of star singers somewhat.
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.
L'Olimpiade is an opera libretto in three acts by Metastasio originally written for an operatic setting by Antonio Caldara of 1733. Metastasio’s plot vaguely draws upon the narrative of "The Trial of the Suitors" provided from Book 6 of The Histories of Herodotus, which had previously been the base for Apostolo Zeno's libretto Gli inganni felici (1695). The story, set in Ancient Greece at the time of the Olympic Games, is about amorous rivalry and characters' taking places to gain the loved one. The story ends with the announcement of two marriages.
Pasquale Anfossi was an Italian opera composer. Born in Taggia, Liguria, he studied with Niccolò Piccinni and Antonio Sacchini, and worked mainly in London, Venice and Rome.
Davide Perez was an Italian opera composer born in Naples of Italian parents, and later resident court composer at Lisbon from 1752. He staged three operas on librettos of Metastasio at Lisbon with huge success in 1753, 1754, and 1755. Following the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, Perez turned from opera mostly to church music.
Demofonte is an opera seria libretto by Metastasio. The libretto was first set by Antonio Caldara in 1733, but remained popular throughout the eighteenth century and was set over seventy times.
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.
Vittoria TesiTramontini, also known as "La Fiorentina" or "La Moretta" was an Italian opera singer of the 18th century. Her vocal range was that of a contralto. She is "regarded as the first eminent singer of black African descent in the history of Western music".
Giuseppe Aprile was an Italian castrato singer and music teacher. He was also known as 'Sciroletto' or 'Scirolino'.
Catone in Utica is an opera libretto by Metastasio, that was originally written for Leonardo Vinci's 1727 opera. Following Vinci's success, Metastasio's text was used by numerous composers of the baroque and classical eras for their own operas, including Pietro Torri (1736), Antonio Vivaldi (1737), Giovanni Battista Ferrandini (1753) and J. C. Bach (1761).
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.
Gennaro Manna was an Italian composer based in Naples. He was a member of the Neapolitan School. His compositional output includes 13 operas and more than 150 sacred works, including several oratorios.
Ezio is an opera libretto by Pietro Metastasio, first officially set to music by Pietro Auletta and premièred in the Teatro delle Dame, Rome, on December 26, 1728; an unauthorized setting by Nicola Porpora had already been premièred a month earlier in Venice.
Adriano in Siria is a libretto by Italian poet Metastasio first performed, with music by Antonio Caldara, in Vienna in 1732, and turned into an opera by at least 60 other composers during the next century. Metastasio based the background of the story on late Classical works by Cassius Dio and Elio Sparziano.
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.
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 Ambrogio Migliavacca was an Italian poet and librettist. A student and protégé of Metastasio, he was primarily active in the court theaters of Dresden and Vienna. His most successful work was the libretto for the opera Solimano, first set by Johann Adolph Hasse in 1753 and subsequently set by 18 other composers in the course of the next 50 years.
Ipermestra is an opera by Johann Adolph Hasse. It was the first setting of the libretto by Metastasio, itself following in an already long tradition of operas based on Aeschylus' Suppliants. The opera has not received a modern recording, though Max Emanuel Cencic recorded Impermestra's aria "Ma rendi pur contento" on Rokoko - Hasse Opera Arias (2012).
Achille in Sciro is an opera and libretto by Pietro Metastasio. It was first set to music by Antonio Caldara in 1736, and premiered at the wedding of Maria Theresa and Francis of Lorraine in Vienna. In 1772, Johann Anton Koch translated the libretto to German under the name "Achilles in Scyro".
References
- ↑ Eleanor Selfridge-Field - A New Chronology of Venetian Opera and Related Genres, 1660-1760 2007 0804744378 "All the daughters obeyed except Hypermnestra (Faustina Bordoni), who spared her cousin, the argonaut Lynceus (Antonio Bemacchi), on account of his kindness. The first Venetian performance of Ipermestra was given on 5 February 1724 "