Ernani is an operatic dramma lirico in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, based on the 1830 play Hernani by Victor Hugo.
A countertenor (also contra tenor) is a type of classical male singing voice whose vocal range is equivalent to that of the female contralto or mezzo-soprano voice types, generally extending from around G3 to D5 or E5, although a sopranist (a specific kind of countertenor) may match the soprano's range of around C4 to C6. Countertenors often have tenor or baritone chest voices, but sing in falsetto or head voice much more often than they do in their chest voice.
The musical term alto, meaning "high" in Italian, historically refers to the contrapuntal part higher than the tenor and its associated vocal range. In 4-part voice leading alto is the second-highest part, sung in choruses by either low women's or high men's voices. In vocal classification these are usually called contralto and male alto or countertenor.
Alceste, Wq. 37, is an opera by Christoph Willibald Gluck from 1767. The libretto was written by Ranieri de' Calzabigi and based on the play Alcestis by Euripides. The premiere took place on 26 December 1767 at the Burgtheater in Vienna.
A breeches role is one in which an actress appears in male clothing. Breeches, tight-fitting knee-length pants, were the standard male garment at the time these roles were introduced. The theatrical term travesti covers both this sort of cross-dressing and also that of male actors dressing as female characters. Both are part of the long history of cross-dressing in music and opera and later in film and television.
L'Ormindo is an opera in a prologue and three acts by Francesco Cavalli to an original Italian libretto by Giovanni Faustini. The manuscript score is held at the Biblioteca Marciana in Venice, while a copy of the original libretto has been digitized by the Library of Congress. The opera has set numbers with recitative, and is set in Anfa (Casablanca), in the Mauri kingdom of Fessa (Fez).
Al gran sole carico d'amore is an opera with music by Luigi Nono, based mainly on plays by Bertolt Brecht, but also incorporating texts of Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Karl Marx, and Vladimir Lenin. Nono himself and Yuri Lyubimov wrote the libretto. It premiered at the Teatro alla Scala on 4 April 1975, conducted by Claudio Abbado. Lyubimov directed the original production. The UK premiere was at the 32nd Edinburgh Festival in 1978. In addition to vocal soloists, chorus and orchestra, the work incorporates taped sounds. This work is a product of Nono's strong political activism through the mid-1970s.
Isis is a French opera in a prologue and five acts with music by Jean-Baptiste Lully and a libretto by Philippe Quinault, based on Ovid's Metamorphoses. The fifth of Lully's collaborations with Quinault, it was first performed on 5 January 1677 before the royal court of Louis XIV at the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye and in August received a run of public performances at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal. It was Lully's first published score ; a full score was published in 1719.
Le cantatrici villane is a comic opera in two acts composed by Valentino Fioravanti to a libretto by Giuseppe Palomba. It was first performed in Naples in 1799. A revised one act version premiered at the Teatro San Moisè in Venice as Le virtuose ridicole in 1801.
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.
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.
Il Palazzo incantato or Il Palagio d’Atlante, overo La Guerriera Amante, or also Lealtà con valore is an opera in a prologue and three acts by the Italian composer Luigi Rossi. The libretto, by Giulio Rospigliosi, the future Pope Clement IX, is based on Ariosto's Orlando furioso. It was first performed in Rome in a lavish production at the Teatro delle Quattro Fontane on 22 February 1642. Rossi was criticised for giving too much music to his friend, the castrato Marc'Antonio Pasqualini, who played Bradamante, at the expense of the other roles. Some of the highly complicated stage machinery failed to work during the performance. Revived by Opera Dijon in a January 2021 online production.
Ulisse is an opera in a prologue and two acts composed by Luigi Dallapiccola to his own libretto based on the legend of Ulysses. It premiered at the Deutsche Oper Berlin on 29 September 1968 conducted by Lorin Maazel with Erik Saedén in the title role. Ulisse was Dallapiccola's last opera and took eight years to compose. As in his previous operas, Volo di notte and Il prigioniero, his declared theme was "the struggle of man against some force much stronger than he".
Pimmalione (Pygmalion) is an opera in one act by Luigi Cherubini, first performed at the Théâtre des Tuileries, Paris, on 30 November 1809. The libretto is an adaptation by Stefano Vestris of Antonio Simone Sografi's Italian translation of the text Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote for his scène lyriquePygmalion (1770). It is based on the Classical legend of the sculptor Pygmalion.
Loreto Vittori was an Italian castrato and composer. From 1622 until his death, he was a mezzo-soprano singer in the papal chapel in Rome.
Il Diamante, ZWV 177, is a composition from 1737 by Czech baroque composer Jan Dismas Zelenka.
L'Argia is an opera in a prologue and three acts composed by Antonio Cesti to a libretto by Giovanni Filippo Apolloni. It was first performed in the court theatre at Innsbruck on 4 November 1655 to celebrate the visit of Queen Christina of Sweden who was on her way to exile in Rome. Over the next 20 years it had multiple performances in Italian cities including Venice and Siena where it inaugurated Siena's new opera house in 1669. Its first performance in modern times took place at the Innsbruck Festival of Early Music in 1996. Set on the Island of Cyprus in ancient times the opera's convoluted plot, full of disguises and mistaken identities, revolves around the amorous misadventures of Selino who has been pursued to Salamis by his deserted wife Princess Argia.
La Dori, overo Lo schiavo reggio is a tragi-comic opera in a prologue and three acts composed by Antonio Cesti to a libretto by Giovanni Filippo Apolloni. It was first performed in the court theatre at Innsbruck in 1657. The story is set in Babylon on the shores of the Euphrates and is a convoluted tale of mistaken identities—a female protagonist who disguised as a man eventually regains her lost lover, and a man disguised as a woman who causes another man to fall in love with him. In several respects it resembles the plot of Cesti and Apolloni's earlier opera L'Argia and foreshadows Apostolo Zeno's libretto for Gli inganni felici (1695) and Metastasio's libretto for L'Olimpiade (1733). The first Italian staging of La Dori was in Florence in 1661 for the wedding of Cosimo III de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. It subsequently became one of the most popular operas in 17th-century Italy. The opera was revived three times in the 20th century, beginning in 1983.
Gabriella Besanzoni was an Italian opera singer.