Johann Adolph Hasse was an 18th-century German composer, singer and teacher of music. Immensely popular in his time, Hasse was best known for his prolific operatic output, though he also composed a considerable quantity of sacred music. Married to soprano Faustina Bordoni and a friend of librettist Pietro Metastasio, whose libretti he frequently set, Hasse was a pivotal figure in the development of opera seria and 18th-century music.
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 something of 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.
Carl Heinrich Graun was a German composer and tenor. Along with Johann Adolph Hasse, he is considered to be the most important German composer of Italian opera of his time.
Vivica Genaux is an American coloratura mezzo-soprano. She was born in Fairbanks, Alaska. She has sung in major operas such as The Barber of Seville at the Metropolitan Opera, L'italiana in Algeri at Opéra National de Paris, and La Cenerentola with Dallas Opera and the Bavarian State Opera.
Davide Perez was an Italian opera composer born in Naples of Italian parents, and later resident court composer at Lisbon from 1752. He staged three operas on librettos of Metastasio at Lisbon with huge success in 1753, 1754, and 1755. Following the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, Perez turned from opera mostly to church music.
Domenico Fischietti (1725–1810) was an Italian composer.
Angelo Maria Amorevoli was a leading Italian tenor in Baroque opera.
Gennaro Astarita was an Italian composer, mainly of operas. The place of his birth is unknown, although he was active in Naples for many years. He began his operatic career in 1765, collaborating with Niccolò Piccinni in the writing of the opera L'orfana insidiata. He became the maestro di cappella in Naples in 1770.
Demofoonte is a dramma per musica or opera in 3 acts by composer Christoph Willibald Gluck. The work uses an Italian language libretto by Pietro Metastasio. The opera premiered on 6 January 1743 at the Teatro Regio Ducale in Milan.
Didone abbandonata is an opera in three acts composed by Domenico Sarro to a libretto by Pietro Metastasio of the same name which was based on the story of Dido and Aeneas from the fourth book of Virgil's Aeneid. The opera premiered on 1 February 1724 at the Teatro San Bartolomeo in Naples.
Pasquale Errichelli was an Italian composer and organist based in the city of Naples. Trained at the Conservatorio della Pietà dei Turchini, his compositional output consists of 7 operas, 2 cantatas, 1 symphony, 3 sonatas, several concert arias, and the oratorio Gerosolina protetta. He was for many years the organist at the Cattedrale di Napoli.
Siroe, or Siroe re di Persia, is an opera seria in three acts by Johann Adolph Hasse. The libretto was by Metastasio. As with many of the latter's libretti, Siroe was also set by Hasse's contemporaries, for example Vinci, Vivaldi and Handel.
Luca Antonio Predieri was an Italian composer and violinist. A member of a prominent family of musicians, Predieri was born in Bologna and was active there from 1704. In 1737 he moved to Vienna, eventually becoming Kapellmeister to the imperial Habsburg court in 1741, a post he held for ten years. In 1765 he returned to his native city where he died two years later at the age of 78. A prolific opera composer, he was also known for his sacred music and oratorios. Although his operas were largely forgotten by the end of his own lifetime and most of their scores lost, individual arias as well some of his sacred music are still performed and recorded.
Il trionfo di Clelia, Wq. 31, is an opera composed by Christoph Willibald Gluck. It takes the form of a dramma per musica in three acts. The Italian-language libretto by Pietro Metastasio is based on several semi-legendary narratives concerning the founding of the Roman Republic. The opera premiered on 14 May 1763 at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna. Although rarely performed since then, it was revived in London in 2012 at the Royal Opera House's Linbury Studio.
Artaserse is an opera in three acts composed by Johann Adolph Hasse to an Italian libretto adapted from that by Metastasio by Giovanni Boldini first shown in Venice on 11 February 1730.
Romolo ed Ersilia is a three-act opera composed by Johann Adolph Hasse to an Italian-language libretto by Pietro Metastasio. The opera was commissioned by Empress Maria Theresa to celebrate the marriage of her son Leopold to Maria Luisa of Spain. The opera was first performed on 6 August 1765, the day after their wedding, in the court theatre of the Imperial Palace in Innsbruck. The opera received its first performance in modern times in 2011 during the Innsbruck Festival of Early Music.
Giovanni Ambrogio Migliavacca was an Italian poet and librettist. A student and protégé of Metastasio, he was primarily active in the court theaters of Dresden and Vienna. His most successful work was the libretto for the opera Solimano, first set by Johann Adolph Hasse in 1753 and subsequently set by eighteen other composers in the following decades.
Attilio Regolo is an Italian-language opera seria by Johann Adolph Hasse based on the story of Marcus Atilius Regulus, a Roman general taken prisoner in Carthage who elects death rather than ransom. Pietro Metastasio wrote the libretto in 1740 for the birthday of the emperor Charles VI and supplied exacting notes to Hasse for its setting in music, despite the composer's having set several Metastasio librettos before. Hasse completed the score within three months, but the emperor's illness, then death, prevented the opera from being performed. It was not until 12 January 1750 that the premiere took place, at the Opernhaus am Zwinger in Dresden. The role of Regolo was taken by the castrato Domenico Annibali, while the role of Attilia was composed for Hasse's wife Faustina Bordoni.
Tigrane is an opera by Johann Adolph Hasse to a libretto by an anonymous arranger following Francesco Silvani which had already been used Vivaldi for his own opera of the same name. The opera premiered 4 November 1729 at the Teatro San Bartolomeo, Naples.
Solimano is a Baroque opera in three acts by Davide Perez (1711–1778). A first version was premiered for the carnival in 1757 in the Palace of Ajuda in Lisbon. The revised version of 1768 performed for the birthday of Mariana Victoria of Spain is however much more widely known.
