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.
Cecilia BartoliOMRI is an Italian mezzo-soprano widely known in the music of Bellini, Handel, Mozart, Rossini and Vivaldi and for lesser-known music of the Baroque and Classical periods. She has also sung soprano and alto repertory.
Euridice is an opera by Jacopo Peri, with additional music by Giulio Caccini. It is the earliest surviving opera, Peri's earlier Dafne being lost. The libretto by Ottavio Rinuccini is based on books X and XI of Ovid's Metamorphoses which recount the story of the legendary musician Orpheus and his wife Euridice.
Derek Hammond-Stroud was an English baritone opera singer best known for his performances of German lieder and his international performances in opera, particularly the roles of Alberich in Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, Herr Faninal in Der Rosenkavalier and Beckmesser in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. He also made recordings, including a series of recordings of the Gilbert and Sullivan patter roles.
Le carnaval de Venise is a comédie-lyrique in a prologue and three acts by the French composer André Campra. The libretto is by Jean-François Regnard. It was first performed on 20 January 1699 by the Académie royale de musique in the Salle du Palais-Royal in Paris. Campra dedicated the work to Louis, Grand Dauphin, heir apparent to the French throne, who enjoyed it and had it staged again in February 1711, shortly before his death. In one critic's assessment: "In a magisterial act of conflation, this composer blends the styles of Lully, Lalande, Monteverdi and Cavalli and manages also to foreshadow Handel and Rameau. He dreamt up a multi-hued score, capable of recapturing in Paris both the carnival spirit in general and that of the legendary Venice in particular."
The ancient legend of Orpheus and Eurydice concerns the fateful love of Orpheus of Thrace for the beautiful Eurydice. Orpheus was the son of Oeagrus and the muse Calliope. It may be a late addition to the Orpheus myths, as the latter cult-title suggests those attached to Persephone. The subject is among the most frequently retold of all Greek myths, being featured in numerous works of literature, operas, ballets, paintings, plays, musicals, and more recently, films and video games.
Orfeo (Orpheus) is an opera in three acts by the Italian composer Antonio Sartorio. The libretto, by Aurelio Aureli, is based on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. It was first performed at the Teatro San Salvatore, Venice in 1672. With its clear division between arias and recitative, the work marks a transition in style between the Venetian opera of Francesco Cavalli and the new form of opera seria. Modern reactions to the work have been mixed, with Tim Carter describing it as "a fairly dismal example of a genre with all the symptoms of terminal decline...[Orfeo]'s journey to Hades seems almost a Sunday-school outing...Whether satire or not, this is indeed a sorry tale."
Euridice is an opera in a prologue and one act by the Italian composer Giulio Caccini. The libretto, by Ottavio Rinuccini, had already been set by Caccini's rival Jacopo Peri in 1600. Caccini's version of Euridice was first performed at the Pitti Palace, Florence, on 5 December 1602. Caccini hurriedly prepared the score for the press and published it six weeks before Peri's version appeared.
Orfeo (Orpheus) is an opera in three acts, a prologue and an epilogue by the Italian composer Luigi Rossi. The libretto, by Francesco Buti, is based on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Orfeo premiered at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal in Paris on 2 March 1647. It was one of the earliest operas to be staged in France.
Orpheus is an opera in three acts by the German composer Georg Philipp Telemann. It was first performed in a concert version at the Oper am Gänsemarkt in Hamburg on 9 March 1726. The anonymous libretto is based on the 1690 opera Orphée by Michel Duboullay, originally set by the French composer Louis Lully. Most of the work is in German but it also contains passages in French and Italian drawn from famous operas by Handel and Jean-Baptiste Lully. The music to these words is Telemann's own, however. The manuscript score of Telemann's Orpheus was not rediscovered until the late 20th century.
Medea in Corinto is an 1813 opera in Italian by the composer Simon Mayr. It takes the form of a melodramma tragico in two acts. The libretto, by Felice Romani, is based on the Greek myth of Medea and the plays on the theme by Euripides and Pierre Corneille. The same subject had formed the basis for Luigi Cherubini's famous opera Médée (1797) which may have had an influence on Mayr's work. Medea in Corinto was first performed at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples on 28 November 1813 and was Mayr's greatest theatrical success.
Giacomo David, was a leading Italian tenor of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Faniska is an opera eroica in three acts by Luigi Cherubini. The German libretto, by Joseph Sonnleithner, is based on the melodrama Les mines de Pologne (1803) by René-Charles Guilbert de Pixérécourt.
Eurydice was a character in Greek mythology and the Auloniad wife of Orpheus, whom Orpheus tried to bring back from the dead with his enchanting music.
Kenneth Tarver is an American operatic tenor, born in Detroit. He has appeared at some of the world's most prestigious opera houses, such as the Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Municipal Theatre of Santiago in Chile, Wiener Staatsoper, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Bayerische Staatsoper, Dresden Semperoper, Gran Teatre del Liceu Barcelona, Opéra Comique París, Teatro Lirico Giuseppe Verdi in Trieste, La Monnaie Brussels, Metropolitan Opera, Washington and Teatro San Carlo Naples.
Anne-Marie Krumpholtz was a French harpist and composer.
The following discography for Gluck's opera Orfeo ed Euridice is mainly based on the research of Giuseppe Rossi, which appeared in the programme notes to the performance of the work at the 70th Maggio Musicale Fiorentino in 2007, under the title "Discografia – Christoph Willibald Gluck – Orfeo ed Euridice ". Rossi's data has been checked against the sources referenced in the notes.
