Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi, better known by his pseudonym of Pietro Metastasio, was an Italian poet and librettist, considered the most important writer of opera seria libretti.
Opera seria is an Italian musical term which refers to the noble and "serious" style of Italian opera that predominated in Europe from the 1710s to about 1770. The term itself was rarely used at the time and only attained common usage once opera seria was becoming unfashionable and beginning to be viewed as a historical genre. The popular rival to opera seria was opera buffa, the 'comic' opera that took its cue from the improvisatory commedia dell'arte.
Pietro Alessandro Guglielmi was an Italian opera composer.
Antonio Caldara was an Italian Baroque composer.
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.
Demofonte is an opera seria libretto by Metastasio. The libretto was first set by Antonio Caldara in 1733, but remained popular throughout the eighteenth century and was set over seventy times.
Domenico Fischietti (1725–1810) was an Italian composer.
Carlo Francesco Pollarolo was an Italian composer, chiefly of operas. Born into a musical family, he became the cathedral organist of his home town of Brescia. In the 1680s he began composing operas for performance in nearby Venice. He wrote a total of 85 of them as well as 13 oratorios. His operatic style is noted for its development of arias accompanied by the orchestra and it shows some influence from the contemporary French opera of Jean-Baptiste Lully.
Nicola Sala was an Italian composer and music theorist. He was born in Tocco Caudio and died in Naples. He was chapel-master and professor at Naples, having devoted himself to the collection of the finest models of printed music.
Giuseppe Maria Orlandini was an Italian baroque composer particularly known for his more than 40 operas and intermezzos. Highly regarded by music historians of his day like Francesco Saverio Quadrio, Jean-Benjamin de La Borde and Charles Burney, Orlandini, along with Vivaldi, is considered one of the major creators of the new style of opera that dominated the second decade of the 18th century.
Rinaldo di (da) Capua was an Italian composer. Little is known of him with any certainty, including his name, although he was known to Charles Burney. He may have been the father of composer Marcello Bernardini.
Antonio Salvi was an Italian physician, court poet and librettist. He was in the service of the ducal court in Florence and the favourite librettist of Prince Ferdinando de' Medici. Salvi was one of the developers of the opera seria.
Didone abbandonata was an opera in three acts composed by Tomaso Albinoni. Albinoni's music was set to Pietro Metastasio's libretto, Didone abbandonata, which was in turn based on the story of Dido and Aeneas from the fourth book of Virgil's Aeneid. The opera premiered on 26 December 1724 at the Teatro San Cassiano in Venice and was the first time that an opera based on a Metastasio libretto was performed in Venice.
Andrea Adolfati was an Italian composer who is particularly remembered for his output of opera serias. His works are generally conventional and stylistically similar to the operas of his teacher Baldassare Galuppi. Although his music largely followed the fashion of his time, he did compose two tunes with unusual time signatures for his day: an air in 5
4 meter and another in 7
4 meter.
The Teatro San Angelo or Teatro Sant' Angelo was once a theatre in Venice which ran from 1677 until 1803.
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.
Pietro Pompeo Sales was an Italian composer.
Graz is the capital of Styria and the second-largest city in Austria after Vienna. On 1 January 2019, it had a population of 328,276. In 2015, the population of the Graz larger urban zone who had principal residence status stood at 633,168.
Heidelberg is a university town in Baden-Württemberg situated on the river Neckar in south-west Germany. In the 2016 census, its population was 159,914, with roughly a quarter of its population being students.
Bologna is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna Region in Northern Italy. It is the seventh most populous city in Italy, at the heart of a metropolitan area of about one million people.
