Gioachino Antonio Rossini was an Italian composer who gained fame for his 39 operas, although he also wrote many songs, some chamber music and piano pieces and some sacred music. He set new standards for both comic and serious opera before retiring from large-scale composition while still in his thirties, at the height of his popularity.
Opera buffa is a genre of opera. It was first used as an informal description of Italian comic operas variously classified by their authors as commedia in musica, commedia per musica, dramma bernesco, dramma comico, divertimento giocoso.
The Canadian Opera Company (COC) is an opera company in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is the largest opera company in Canada and one of the largest producers of opera in North America. The COC performs at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, which was purpose-built for opera and ballet and is shared with the National Ballet of Canada. For forty years until April 2006, the COC had performed at the O'Keefe Centre.
Casa Ricordi is a publisher of primarily classical music and opera. Its classical repertoire represents one of the important sources in the world through its publishing of the work of the major 19th-century Italian composers such as Gioachino Rossini, Gaetano Donizetti, Vincenzo Bellini, Giuseppe Verdi, and, later in the century, Giacomo Puccini, composers with whom one or another of the Ricordi family came into close contact.
Errico Petrella was an Italian opera composer.
Günther Rennert was a German opera director and administrator.
Lauro Rossi, was an Italian composer, particularly of operas. There is no known connection with Luigi Rossi (1597–1653).
Prima la musica e poi le parole is an opera in one act by Antonio Salieri to a libretto by Giovanni Battista Casti. The work was first performed on 7 February 1786 in Vienna, following a commission by the Emperor Joseph II. The opera was first performed at one end of the orangery of the Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna by an Italian troupe; simultaneously, Mozart's Der Schauspieldirektor was staged at the other end.
George Michael Sinclair Kennedy CBE was an English music critic and author who specialized in classical music. For nearly two decades he was the chief classical music critic for both The Daily Telegraph (1986–2005) and The Sunday Telegraph (1989–2005). A prolific writer, he was the biographer of many composers and musicians, including Vaughan Williams, Elgar, Barbirolli, Mahler, Strauss, Britten, Boult and Walton. Other notable publications include writings on various musical institutions, the editing of music dictionaries as well as numerous articles for The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and the subsequent Grove Music Online.
Idoménée is an opera by the French composer André Campra. It takes the form of a tragédie en musique in a prologue and five acts. Idoménée was first performed on 12 January 1712 by the Académie royale de musique at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal in Paris. The libretto, by Antoine Danchet, is based on a stage play by Crébillon père. It later formed the basis of Giambattista Varesco's libretto for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera Idomeneo.
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).
A bass is a type of classical male singing voice and has the lowest vocal range of all voice types. According to The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, a bass is typically classified as having a vocal range extending from around the second E below middle C to the E above middle C (i.e., E2–E4). Its tessitura, or comfortable range, is normally defined by the outermost lines of the bass clef. Categories of bass voices vary according to national style and classification system.
Anna Caterina Antonacci is an Italian soprano known for roles in the bel canto and Baroque repertories. She performed as a mezzo-soprano for several years, particularly performing the Rossini canon.
Antonio Buzzolla was an Italian composer and conductor. A native of Adria, he studied in Venice, and later worked with Gaetano Donizetti and Saverio Mercadante. He composed five operas, but was better known in his lifetime for ariettas and canzonettas in the Venetian dialect. Beginning in 1855 he served as the maestro di cappella of the Cappella Marciana at St Mark's Basilica in Venice. Buzzolla was one of the composers invited by Giuseppe Verdi to contribute to the Messa per Rossini; he composed the opening movement, the Requiem e Kyrie. He died in Venice in 1871 and was interred at the San Michele cemetery on the Isola di San Michele in Venice.
Eva Mei is an Italian coloratura soprano.
Jean-Nicolas-Gustave Van Nieuwen-Huysen was a Belgian playwright, librettist, translator of opera libretti., and opera director. He wrote many stage plays and opera libretti in collaboration with Alphonse Royer]; including the libretti to Gaetano Donizetti's La favorite (1843) and Giuseppe Verdi's Jérusalem (1847). Vaëz and Royer also translated several Italian-language operas by other writers into French. Vaëz also collaborated on opera libretti with the writers Eugène Scribe and Victorien Sardou.
Hervey Alan was an English operatic bass and voice teacher. During his career he sang leading roles with most of Great Britain's major opera institutions, including the Edinburgh Festival, the Glyndebourne Festival, the Royal Opera House, the Sadler's Wells Opera, and the Welsh National Opera. He is best known for creating the role of Mr. Redburn in the world premiere of Benjamin Britten's Billy Budd at the Royal Opera House, London, on 1 December 1951. Music critic Elizabeth Forbes wrote that his voice was "dark toned, resonant", and "especially effective as Zaccaria in Nabucco.
Opera Columbus is an American professional opera company in Columbus, Ohio, founded in 1981, and is a member of Opera America. OC employs nearly 350 artists and creative professionals annually—vocalists, artisans, stagehands, costumers, and scenic designers—many of whom are members of the Columbus community.
