Note La Giuditta may refer to one of several Italian oratorios, further elaborated below.
Each version of La Giuditta deals with the figure of Judith, from the Biblical Apocrypha, who liberated the besieged city of Bethulia by seducing and then beheading the enemy General Holofernes. Judith and Holofernes are the two main roles common to all versions. Incidental characters, such as, in the larger Scarlatti Giuditta, Achior, a captain so revolted by Holofernes' brutality that he defects to the Israelite army, do not occur in other versions.
Alessandro Scarlatti: La Giuditta, Rome, 1693. Libretto by Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni. "Scarlatti considered it his finest oratorio, and its dramatic structure, rapidly interweaving brief scenes in Holofernes's camp with events in the troubled city, is remarkable." [1]
Alessandro Scarlatti: La Giuditta, Rome or Naples 1697, Libretto by Prince Antonio Ottoboni, father of the cardinal. This smaller setting for three voices, strings and basso continuo, is known today as the "Cambridge" Giuditta, since its manuscript is conserved in the Rowe Music Library of King's College, Cambridge. [3] [4]
Francisco António de Almeida: La Giuditta
These oratorios are generally listed under Latin names:
Pietro Alessandro Gaspare Scarlatti was an Italian Baroque composer, known especially for his operas and chamber cantatas. He is considered the most important representative of the Neapolitan school of opera.
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.
Pietro Alessandro Guglielmi was an Italian opera composer of the classical period.
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.
Pietro Ottoboni was an Italian cardinal and grandnephew of Pope Alexander VIII, who was also born Pietro Ottoboni. He is remembered especially as a great patron of music and art. Ottoboni was the last person to hold the curial office of Cardinal-nephew, which was abolished by Alexander's successor, Pope Innocent XII, in 1692. Ottoboni '"loved pomp, prodigality, and sensual pleasure, but was in the same time kind, ready to serve and charitable".
Juditha triumphans devicta Holofernis barbarie, RV 644, is an oratorio by Antonio Vivaldi. Although the rest of the oratorio survives completely intact, the overture has been lost. The Latin libretto was written by Iacopo Cassetti based upon the Book of Judith.
La Betulia liberata is a libretto by Pietro Metastasio which was originally commissioned by Emperor Charles VI and set to music by Georg Reutter the Younger in 1734. It was subsequently set by as many as 30 composers, including Niccolò Jommelli (1743), Ignaz Holzbauer (1752), Florian Leopold Gassmann (1772), Joseph Schuster (1787), and most famously Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1771).
Giuseppe Scarlatti was a composer of opere serie and opere buffe. He worked in Rome from 1739 to 1741, and from 1752 to 1754 in Florence, Pisa, Lucca and Turin. From 1752 to 1754, and again from 1756 to 1759, he worked in Venice and for short periods in Milan and Barcelona. In 1760 he moved to Vienna, where he enjoyed the friendship of Christoph Willibald Gluck. "The third most important musician of his clan", it is still uncertain whether he was born on 18 June 1723 as the nephew of Alessandro or in 1718 as nephew of Domenico. Giuseppe Scarlatti was married to the Viennese singer Barbara Stabili who died about 1753. By 1767 he had married Antonia Lefebvre, who that year bore him a son; she died three years later. Scarlatti died intestate in 1777 in Vienna.
Benedetto Pamphili was an Italian cardinal, patron of the arts and librettist for many composers.
Alessandro Melani was an Italian composer and the brother of composer Jacopo Melani, and castrato singer Atto Melani. Along with Bernardo Pasquini and Alessandro Scarlatti, he was one of the leading composers active in Rome during the 17th century. He is also ranked among the second school of Roman opera composers which began with his brother's 1668 opera Il Girello. He is chiefly remembered today for his large output of liturgical music that he wrote while serving in various musical posts in Rome. Of particular interest is the large number of polychoral motets that he produced and his eight ascribed oratorios. Three published collections of his liturgical music survive today along with numerous solitary motets from other published volumes. A number of original manuscripts also survive.
Antonio Ottoboni (1646–1720) was a Neapolitan general, nephew of Pope Alexander VIII and the father of Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni.
La passione di Gesù Cristo is a libretto by Pietro Metastasio which was repeatedly set as an azione sacra or oratorio by many composers of the late baroque, Rococo and early classical period.
Luca Antonio Predieri was an Italian composer and violinist. A member of a prominent family of musicians, Predieri was born in Bologna and was active there from 1704. In 1737 he moved to Vienna, eventually becoming Kapellmeister to the imperial Habsburg court in 1741, a post he held for ten years. In 1765 he returned to his native city where he died two years later at the age of 78. A prolific opera composer, he was also known for his sacred music and oratorios. Although his operas were largely forgotten by the end of his own lifetime and most of their scores lost, individual arias as well some of his sacred music are still performed and recorded.
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.
Amor d'un'ombra e gelosia d'un'aura, also known as Narciso ("Narcissus"), is an opera in three acts composed by Domenico Scarlatti to a libretto by Carlo Sigismondo Capece. It premiered in Rome in January 1714 at the private theatre of Maria Casimira of Poland who had commissioned the work. The libretto is based on two fables from Ovid's Metamorphoses: Echo and Narcissus and Cephalus and Procris.
Sebastiano Biancardi, known by the pseudonym Domenico Lalli, was an Italian poet and librettist. Amongst the many libretti he produced, largely for the opera houses of Venice, were those for Vivaldi's Ottone in villa and Alessandro Scarlatti's Tigrane. A member of the Accademia degli Arcadi, he also wrote under his arcadian name "Ortanio". Lalli was born and raised in Naples as the adopted son of Fulvio Caracciolo but fled the city after being implicated in a bank fraud. After two years wandering about Italy in the company of Emanuele d'Astorga, he settled in Venice in 1710 and worked as the "house poet" of the Grimani family's theatres for the rest of his career. In addition to his stage works, Lalli published several volumes of poetry and a collection of biographies of the kings of Naples. He died in Venice at the age of 62.
Gioas re di Giuda is an Italian-language oratorio libretto by Pietro Metastasio written in 1735 for imperial court composer Georg Reutter the younger and later set by at least 25 composers. The plot is based on the life of King Joash of Judah.
Carlo re d'Allemagna is a three-act dramma per musica by Italian composer Alessandro Scarlatti to a libretto by Giuseppe Papis, after Francesco Silvani, premiered at the Teatro San Bartolomeo of Naples on 26 or 30 January 1716. This is the composer's 79th opera out of 114 composed.
Alessandro nell'Indie is a libretto in three acts by Pietro Metastasio. It was set to music around ninety times firstly by Leonardo Vinci, whose version premiered in Rome on 2 January 1730. The libretto was the fourth of five that Metastasio wrote for the Teatro delle Dame in Rome between 1727 and 1730. The work was dedicated to the Stuart pretender to the British throne, James Francis Edward Stuart, then resident in Rome.