Antonio Lucio Vivaldi was an Italian Baroque musical composer, virtuoso violinist, teacher, and priest. Born in Venice, the capital of the Venetian Republic, he is regarded as one of the greatest Baroque composers, and his influence during his lifetime was widespread across Europe. He composed many instrumental concertos, for the violin and a variety of other instruments, as well as sacred choral works and more than forty operas. His best-known work is a series of violin concertos known as the Four Seasons.
Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini was an Italian opera composer who has been called "the greatest composer of Italian opera after Verdi".
Tomaso Giovanni Albinoni was an Italian Baroque composer. While famous in his day as an opera composer, he is known today for his instrumental music, especially his concertos. He is also remembered today for a work called "Adagio in G minor", supposedly written by him, but probably written by Remo Giazotto, a modern musicologist and composer, who was a cataloger of the works of Albinoni.
La traviata is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. It is based on La Dame aux camélias (1852), a play adapted from the novel by Alexandre Dumas fils. The opera was originally titled Violetta, after the main character. It was first performed on 6 March 1853 at the La Fenice opera house in Venice.
Il trovatore is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto largely written by Salvadore Cammarano, based on the play El trovador (1836) by Antonio García Gutiérrez. It was Gutiérrez's most successful play, one which Verdi scholar Julian Budden describes as "a high flown, sprawling melodrama flamboyantly defiant of the Aristotelian unities, packed with all manner of fantastic and bizarre incident."
Domenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti was an Italian composer. Along with Gioachino Rossini and Vincenzo Bellini, Donizetti was a leading composer of the bel canto opera style during the first half of the nineteenth century. Donizetti's close association with the bel canto style was undoubtedly an influence on other composers such as Giuseppe Verdi.
Lucca is a city and comune in Tuscany, Central Italy, on the Serchio, in a fertile plain near the Tyrrhenian Sea. It is the capital of the Province of Lucca. It is famous for its intact Renaissance-era city walls.
An oratorio is a large musical composition for orchestra, choir, and soloists. Like most operas, an oratorio includes the use of a choir, soloists, an instrumental ensemble, various distinguishable characters, and arias. However, opera is musical theatre, while oratorio is strictly a concert piece – though oratorios are sometimes staged as operas, and operas are sometimes presented in concert form. In an oratorio the choir often plays a central role, and there is generally little or no interaction between the characters, and no props or elaborate costumes. A particularly important difference is in the typical subject matter of the text. Opera tends to deal with history and mythology, including age-old devices of romance, deception, and murder, whereas the plot of an oratorio often deals with sacred topics, making it appropriate for performance in the church. Protestant composers took their stories from the Bible, while Catholic composers looked to the lives of saints, as well as to Biblical topics. Oratorios became extremely popular in early 17th-century Italy partly because of the success of opera and the Catholic Church's prohibition of spectacles during Lent. Oratorios became the main choice of music during that period for opera audiences.
Giovanni "Nino" Rota was an Italian composer, pianist, conductor and academic who is best known for his film scores, notably for the films of Federico Fellini and Luchino Visconti. He also composed the music for two of Franco Zeffirelli's Shakespeare films, and for the first two films of Francis Ford Coppola's Godfather trilogy, receiving the Academy Award for Best Original Score for The Godfather Part II (1974).
Remo Giazotto was an Italian musicologist, music critic, and composer, mostly known through his systematic catalogue of the works of Tomaso Albinoni. He wrote biographies of Albinoni and other composers, including Vivaldi, the composer of The Four Seasons.
Ottorino Respighi was an Italian violinist, composer and musicologist, best known for his trilogy of orchestral tone poems: Fountains of Rome (1916), Pines of Rome (1924), and Roman Festivals (1928). His musicological interest in 16th-, 17th- and 18th-century music led him to compose pieces based on the music of these periods. He also wrote several operas, the most famous being La fiamma.
La clemenza di Tito, K. 621, is an opera seria in two acts composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to an Italian libretto by Caterino Mazzolà, after Pietro Metastasio. It was started after the bulk of Die Zauberflöte, the last opera that Mozart worked on, was already written. The work premiered on 6 September 1791 at the Estates Theatre in Prague.
The Real Teatro di San Carlo, its original name under the Bourbon monarchy but known today as simply the Teatro di San Carlo, is an opera house in Naples, Italy. It is located adjacent to the central Piazza del Plebiscito, and connected to the Royal Palace.
Antonio Caldara was an Italian Baroque composer.
Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco was an Italian composer, pianist and writer. He was known as one of the foremost guitar composers in the twentieth century with almost one hundred compositions for that instrument. In 1939 he immigrated to the United States and became a film composer for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for some 200 Hollywood movies for the next fifteen years. He also wrote concertos for Jascha Heifetz and Gregor Piatigorsky.
Pesaro is a city and comune in the Italian region of Marche, capital of the Province of Pesaro e Urbino, on the Adriatic Sea. According to the 2011 census, its population was 95,011, making it the second most populous city in the Marche, after Ancona.
Pesaro was dubbed "Cycling City" by Italian environmentalist association Legambiente in recognition of its extensive network of bicycle paths and promotion of cycling.
It is also known as "City of Music" as it is the birthplace of the composer Gioacchino Rossini. In 2015 the Italian Government applied for Pesaro to be declared a "Creative City" in UNESCO's World Heritage sites. In 2017 Pesaro received the European City of Sport award together with Aosta, Cagliari and Vicenza.
Castellammare di Stabia is a comune in the Metropolitan City of Naples, Campania region, in Italy. It is situated on the Bay of Naples about 30 kilometres southeast of Naples, on the route to Sorrento.
Lorenzo Da Ponte was an Italian, later American opera librettist, poet and Roman Catholic priest. He wrote the libretti for 28 operas by 11 composers, including three of Mozart's most celebrated operas, Don Giovanni, The Marriage of Figaro and Così fan tutte.
The Conservatorio Statale di Musica "Gioachino Rossini" is a music conservatory in Pesaro, Italy. Founded in 1869 with a legacy from the composer Gioachino Rossini, the conservatory officially opened in 1882 with 67 students and was then known as the Liceo musicale Rossini. By 2010 it had an enrollment of approximately 850 students studying for higher diplomas in singing, instrumental performance, composition, musicology, choral conducting, jazz or electronic music. The conservatory also trains music teachers for secondary schools and holds regular master classes. Its seat is the 18th century Palazzo Olivieri–Machirelli on the Piazza Oliveri in Pesaro. Amongst its past Directors are the composers Carlo Pedrotti, Pietro Mascagni, Riccardo Zandonai and Franco Alfano. Mascagni's opera Zanetto had its world premiere at the conservatory in 1896.
Andrea Guerra is an Italian composer. He is noted for his film scores of Facing Windows (2003), Hotel Rwanda (2004), and The Pursuit of Happyness (2006).
