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.
L'Orfeo, sometimes called La favola d'Orfeo[la ˈfaːvola dorˈfɛːo], is a late Renaissance/early Baroque favola in musica, or opera, by Claudio Monteverdi, with a libretto by Alessandro Striggio. It is based on the Greek legend of Orpheus, and tells the story of his descent to Hades and his fruitless attempt to bring his dead bride Eurydice back to the living world. It was written in 1607 for a court performance during the annual Carnival at Mantua. While Jacopo Peri's Dafne is generally recognised as the first work in the opera genre, and the earliest surviving opera is Peri's Euridice, L'Orfeo is the earliest that is still regularly performed.
Emilio de' Cavalieri, or Emilio dei Cavalieri, the spellings "del" and "Cavaliere" are contemporary typographical errors, was an Italian composer, producer, organist, diplomat, choreographer and dancer at the end of the Renaissance era. His work, along with that of other composers active in Rome, Florence and Venice, was critical in defining the beginning of the musical Baroque era. A member of the Roman School of composers, he was an influential early composer of monody, and wrote what is usually considered to be the first oratorio.
Giulio Romolo Caccini was an Italian composer, teacher, singer, instrumentalist and writer of the late Renaissance and early Baroque eras. He was one of the founders of the genre of opera, and one of the most influential creators of the new Baroque style. He was also the father of the composer Francesca Caccini and the singer Settimia Caccini.
Ottavio Rinuccini was an Italian poet, courtier, and opera librettist at the end of the Renaissance and beginning of the Baroque eras. In collaborating with Jacopo Peri to produce the first opera, Dafne, in 1597, he became the first opera librettist.
Italian opera is both the art of opera in Italy and opera in the Italian language. Opera was born in Italy around the year 1600 and Italian opera has continued to play a dominant role in the history of the form until the present day. Many famous operas in Italian were written by foreign composers, including Handel, Gluck and Mozart. Works by native Italian composers of the 19th and early 20th centuries, such as Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi and Puccini, are amongst the most famous operas ever written and today are performed in opera houses across the world.
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.
Le Poème Harmonique is a musical ensemble founded in 1998 by Vincent Dumestre to recreate and promote early music, in particular that of the 17th century. Using rare instruments such as the theorbo, the lirone, the tiorbino and the arpa tripla, Le Poème Harmonique aims to recapture the poetry of early music, particularly of the late renaissance and early baroque era. The early 17th-century French and Italian madrigal is a special interest. Le Poème Harmonique also teaches singers in collaboration with the Centre de Musique Baroque at Versailles. The group's recordings with the French Alpha record label of Jean-Paul Combet contributed to the critical and commercial establishment of the label, and included the 1st and 100th releases of the label's primary 'Ut Pictura Musica' series.
Settimia Caccini was a well-known Italian singer and composer during the 1600s, being one of the first women to have a successful career in music. Caccini was highly regarded for her artistic and technical work with music. She came from a family of well-known composers and singers, with her father being Giulio Caccini and her sister Francesca Caccini. Settimia Caccini was less well-known as a composer because she never published her own collection of works. Instead, nine works are attributed to her in two manuscripts of secular songs. Settimia was known much more for her talent as a singer, and she performed for nobility with the Caccini family consort and as a soloist. Coming from a musical family, she was able to lead herself to her own fame and success.
Le nuove musiche is a collection of monodies and songs for solo voice and basso continuo by the composer Giulio Caccini, published in Florence in July 1602. It is one of the earliest and most significant examples of music written in the early baroque style of the seconda pratica. It contains 12 madrigals and 10 arias.
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."
La morte d'Orfeo is an opera in five acts by the Italian composer Stefano Landi. Dedicated to Alessandro Mattei, familiaris of Pope Paul V, it may have been first performed in Rome in 1619. The work is styled a tragicomedia pastorale. The libretto, which may be by the composer himself, is in part inspired by La favola d'Orfeo (1484) by Angelo Poliziano. Unlike Monteverdi's L'Orfeo and the earliest Florentine operas on the subject, Landi's opera contains comic elements and deals with a different episode from the life of the mythical singer.
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.
Barbara Russano Hanning is an American musicologist who specializes in 16th- and 17th-century Italian music. She has also written works on the music of 18th-century France and on musical iconography.
Andrea Salvadori was an Italian poet and librettist. He was born in Florence and educated at the Collegio Romano in Rome. From 1616 until his death in Florence at the age of 43, he was the principal court poet to the Medici family. In addition to numerous theatrical entertainments and poems, he wrote the libretti for five operas, four of which have survived, although only La Flora composed by Marco da Gagliano and Jacopo Peri has an extant score. He was married twice, first to Emilia Rigogli by whom he had three sons and then to the painter Alessandra Furini. A collection of Salvadori's principal works curated by his son Francesco was published in 1668.
Domenico Belli was an Italian composer who worked at the Basilica of San Lorenzo, Florence from 1610–13. He is most notable for his setting of the Pianto d'Orfeo by the Camerata poet Gabriello Chiabrera as five intermedii for Torquato Tasso's Aminta, at Florence in 1616. This was recorded by Le Poème Harmonique under the direction of Vincent Dumestre in 2008.
Modo Antiquo is an Italian instrumental ensemble dedicated to the performance of Baroque, Renaissance, and Medieval music. It was founded in 1984 by Federico Maria Sardelli. Twice nominated for a Grammy award, the ensemble has an extensive discography, primarily on the Naïve, Brilliant Classics, and Tactus labels and have given the first performances in modern times of several works by Vivaldi. Modo Antiquo's larger ensemble is its Baroque orchestra led by Sardelli. It also has a smaller ensemble devoted to Medieval and Renaissance music led by Bettina Hoffmann.
Marco Beasley is an Italian tenor, voice-actor and musicologist.
