Pietro Alessandro Gaspare Scarlatti was an Italian Baroque composer, known especially for his operas and chamber cantatas. He is considered the most important representative of the Neapolitan school of opera.
Carlo Osvaldo Goldoni was an Italian playwright and librettist from the Republic of Venice. His works include some of Italy's most famous and best-loved plays. Audiences have admired the plays of Goldoni for their ingenious mix of wit and honesty. His plays offered his contemporaries images of themselves, often dramatizing the lives, values, and conflicts of the emerging middle classes. Though he wrote in French and Italian, his plays make rich use of the Venetian language, regional vernacular, and colloquialisms. Goldoni also wrote under the pen name and title Polisseno Fegeio, Pastor Arcade, which he claimed in his memoirs the "Arcadians of Rome" bestowed on him.
Amica is an opera in two acts by Pietro Mascagni, originally composed to a libretto by Paul Bérel. The only opera by Mascagni with a French libretto, it was an immediate success with both the audience and the critics on its opening night at the Théâtre du Casino in Monte-Carlo on 16 March 1905. Mascagni himself conducted the performance. The opera had its Italian premiere on 13 May 1905 at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome.
Griselda is an opera seria in three acts by the Italian composer Alessandro Scarlatti, the last of Scarlatti’s operas to survive completely today. The libretto is by Apostolo Zeno, with revisions by an anonymous author. Zeno wrote his work in 1701 and it had already been set by Pollarolo and Antonio Maria Bononcini. It is based on the story of Patient Griselda from Boccaccio's tenth day of The Decameron. Scarlatti's opera was first performed at the Teatro Capranica, Rome, in January 1721 with an all-male cast.
Arnoldo Foà was an Italian actor, voice actor, theatre director, singer and writer. He appeared in more than 130 films between 1938 and 2014.
Il Pompeo is a dramma per musica in three acts by composer Alessandro Scarlatti. Written in 1682 when Scarlatti was 22 years old, it was his fourth opera and first dramatic work on a serious and grand subject. The opera uses an Italian language libretto by Nicolò Minato which had previously been used by Francesco Cavalli for his 1666 opera Pompeo Magno. The work premiered at the Teatro di Palazzo Colonna in Rome on 25 January 1683.
L'honestà negli amori is a dramma per musica in 3 acts by composer Alessandro Scarlatti. Written in 1679-1680 when Scarlatti was 19 years old, it was his second opera. The opera uses an Italian language libretto that was written by either D F Bernini or Domenico Filippo Contini. The work premiered at the Teatro di Palazzo Bernini in Rome on 3 February 1680. The opera was performed again in 1682 in Acquaviva delle Fonti at the Palazzo De Mari with Acquaviva laureata a serenata composed by Giovanni Cesare Netti. The opera has since been almost entirely forgotten, except as the source of the aria ‘Già il sola dal Gange’.
Il finto astrologo is an intermezzo by composer Niccolò Piccinni. The opera uses an Italian-language libretto by Carlo Goldoni. The work premiered at the Teatro Valle in Rome on 7 February 1765 with a cast that included the famous castrato Venanzio Rauzzini as Clarice.
Antonio Palomba (20 December 1705 – 1769) was an Italian opera librettist, poet, harpsichordist, and music educator. He also worked as a notary. Born in Naples, he became a teacher of the harpsichord at the Teatro della Pace in 1749. Most of his more than 50 opera libretti were comedic works written for composers of the Neapolitan school. He also wrote some works for performance in Florence, Bologna and abroad. He died in Naples in 1769; one of the victims of a fever epidemic in the city. Many of his libretti were set more than once to music, and composers continued to use his libretti up into the 1830s.
Teatro San Samuele was an opera house and theatre located at the Rio del Duca, between Campo San Samuele and Campo Santo Stefano, in Venice. One of several important theatres built in that city by the Grimani family, the theatre opened in 1656 and operated continuously until a fire destroyed the theatre in 1747. A new structure was built and opened in 1748, but financial difficulties forced the theatre to close and be sold in 1770. The theatre remained active until 1807 when it was shut down by Napoleonic decree. It reopened in 1815 and was later acquired by impresario Giuseppe Camploy in 1819. In 1853 the theatre was renamed the Teatro Camploy. Upon Camploy's death in 1889, the theatre was bequeathed to the City of Verona. The Venice City Council in turn bought the theatre and demolished it in 1894.
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.
Tito e Berenice is an opera in three acts composed by Antonio Caldara to a libretto by Carlo Sigismondo Capece. It premiered on 10 January 1714 at the Teatro Capranica in Rome. The story centers on the love affair between Berenice of Cilicia and the future Roman Emperor Titus. The libretto borrows from earlier plays on the same subject by Corneille and Racine (Bérénice), both of which premiered in 1670 and took as their starting point Suetonius's brief account of the love affair in De vita Caesarum.
Amor d'un'ombra e gelosia d'un'aura, also known as Narciso ("Narcissus"), is an opera in three acts composed by Domenico Scarlatti to a libretto by Carlo Sigismondo Capece. It premiered in Rome in January 1714 at the private theatre of Maria Casimira of Poland who had commissioned the work. The libretto is based on two fables from Ovid's Metamorphoses: Echo and Narcissus and Cephalus and Procris.
Vincenzo Galli was an Italian opera singer and impresario. Considered an outstanding basso buffo singer, he created many roles on Italian stages, including in two of Donizetti's operas: Ivano in Otto mesi in due ore and Cesare Salzapariglia in Le convenienze ed inconvenienze teatrali. Luigi Ricci composed the role of Michelotto in his opera Chiara di Rosembergh specifically for Galli's voice.
The Teatro delle Dame, also known as the Teatro Alibert, was a theatre in Rome built in 1718 and located on what is now the corner of Via D'Alibert and Via Margutta. In the course of its history it underwent a series of reconstructions and renovations until it was definitively destroyed by a fire in 1863. In their 18th-century heyday, the Teatro delle Dame and its rival, the Teatro Capranica, were the leading opera houses in Rome and saw many world premieres performed by some of the most prominent singers of the time.
Giovanni Filippo Apolloni was an Italian poet and librettist. Born in Arezzo, he has sometimes been referred to as "Giovanni Apollonio Apolloni", but the second given name is spurious. He served as the court poet to Ferdinand Charles, Archduke of Austria at Innsbruck form 1653 until 1659. On his return to Italy he entered the service of Cardinal Volumnio Bandinelli. After Bandinelli's death in 1667 Appolloni was in the service of the Chigi family in Rome and Siena for the rest of his life. He wrote the librettos for a number of operas, the most well-known of which were Antonio Cesti's L'Argia and La Dori, as well as several oratorios and the texts for cantatas by both Cesti and Alessandro Stradella.
Telemaco, ossia L'isola di Circe is a 1718 opera by Alessandro Scarlatti to a libretto by Carlo Sigismondo Capece, court poet to Queen Maria Casimira of Poland, living in exile in Rome, for the Teatro Capranica in Rome, where it was premiered during the carnival season. The opera was revived in 2005 by the Schwetzingen Festival and the Deutsche Oper am Rhein.
Savino Monelli was an Italian tenor prominent in the opera houses of Italy from 1806 until 1830. Amongst the numerous roles he created in world premieres were Giannetto in Rossini's La gazza ladra, Enrico in Donizetti's L'ajo nell'imbarazzo and Nadir in Pacini's La schiava in Bagdad. He was born in Fermo where he initially studied music. After leaving the stage, he retired to Fermo and died there five years later at the age of 52.
