Tolomeo e Alessandro, ovvero la corona disprezzata is an Italian-language opera by Domenico Scarlatti to a libretto by Carlo Sigismondo Capece which premiered in Rome on 19 January 1711 at the Palazzo Zuccari, with scenery by Filippo Juvarra. It was second of the seven operas composed by Domenico for the Polish queen Maria Casimira Sobieski, following his pastorale in three acts La Silvia of 27 January 1710. [1]
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. He was the father of two other composers, Domenico Scarlatti and Pietro Filippo Scarlatti.
Giovanni Battista Draghi, often referred to as Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, was an Italian Baroque composer, violinist and organist. His best-known works include his Stabat Mater and the opera La serva padrona. His compositions include operas and sacred music. He died of tuberculosis at the age of 26.
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.
Bernardo Pasquini was an Italian composer of operas, oratorios, cantatas and keyboard music. A renowned virtuoso keyboard player in his day, he was one of the most important Italian composers for harpsichord between Girolamo Frescobaldi and Domenico Scarlatti, having also made substantial contributions to the opera and oratorio.
Giulio Cesare in Egitto, commonly known as Giulio Cesare, is a dramma per musica in three acts composed by George Frideric Handel for the Royal Academy of Music in 1724. The libretto was written by Nicola Francesco Haym who used an earlier libretto by Giacomo Francesco Bussani, which had been set to music by Antonio Sartorio (1676). The opera was a success at its first performances, was frequently revived by Handel in his subsequent opera seasons and is now one of the most often performed Baroque operas.
Tolomeo, re d'Egitto is an opera seria in three acts by George Frideric Handel to an Italian text by Nicola Francesco Haym, adapted from Carlo Sigismondo Capece's Tolomeo et Alessandro. It was Handel's 13th and last opera for the Royal Academy of Music (1719) and was also the last of the operas he composed for the triumvirate of internationally renowned singers, the castrato Senesino and the sopranos Francesca Cuzzoni and Faustina Bordoni.
Berenice is an opera in three acts by George Frideric Handel to a 1709 Antonio Salvi libretto, Berenice, regina d’Egitto, or Berenice, Queen of Egypt. Handel began the music in December 1736; the premiere took place at Covent Garden Theatre in London on 18 May 1737 — but was unsuccessful, with just three further performances. Set circa 81 B.C., Berenice traces the life of Berenice III of Egypt, daughter of Ptolemy IX, the main character in another Handel opera, Tolomeo.
Domenico de' Rossi (1659–1730) was an Italian sculptor and engraver.
Francesco Domenico Araja was an Italian composer who spent 25 years in Russia and wrote at least 14 operas for the Russian Imperial Court including Tsefal i Prokris, the first opera in Russian.
The Piccola Accademia di Montisi is a music academy for harpsichord students and recent graduates located in Montisi, a hill town in the Province of Siena, in Southern Tuscany. It provides masterclasses with students playing on its collection of restored historic instruments and modern copies. It also holds an annual summer festival with concerts of harpsichord music and other works from the Baroque period which feature the instrument. The academy was founded in 2006 by harpsichord-maker and collector Bruce Kennedy who had been making harpsichords based on 18th-century models since the 1980s. He remains the academy's executive director.
Annibale Pio Fabri, also known as Balino, from Annibalino, diminutive of his first name, was an Italian composer and singer of the 18th century. One of the leading tenors of his age in a time dominated by the castrati, Fabri is now best known for his association with the composer George Frideric Handel, in whose operas Fabri sang.
Isabella Girardeau was an Italian operatic soprano who flourished in London, England from 1709 to 1712. Commonly referred to by the opera going public in London as "La Isabella", she is best remembered today for creating the role of Almirena in the momentous premiere of George Frideric Handel's Rinaldo on 24 February 1711 at the Queen's Theatre in the Haymarket in which she introduced the famous aria "Lascia ch'io pianga". She had succeeded Joanna Maria Lindelheim, "The Baroness", as one of the leading sopranos at that theatre. She is said to have had a bitter rivalry with the Queen's other prima donna, the soprano Elisabetta Pilotti-Schiavonetti.
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.
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.
La Dori, overo Lo schiavo reggio is a tragi-comic opera in a prologue and three acts composed by Antonio Cesti to a libretto by Giovanni Filippo Apolloni. It was first performed in the court theatre at Innsbruck in 1657. The story is set in Babylon on the shores of the Euphrates and is a convoluted tale of mistaken identities—a female protagonist who disguised as a man eventually regains her lost lover, and a man disguised as a woman who causes another man to fall in love with him. In several respects it resembles the plot of Cesti and Apolloni's earlier opera L'Argia and foreshadows Apostolo Zeno's libretto for Gli inganni felici (1695) and Metastasio's libretto for L'Olimpiade (1733). The first Italian staging of La Dori was in Florence in 1661 for the wedding of Cosimo III de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. It subsequently became one of the most popular operas in 17th-century Italy. The opera was revived three times in the 20th century, beginning in 1983.
Adriano Morselli was a Venetian librettist active between 1679 and 1691. His libretti have been set to music by composers like Antonio Vivaldi, Alessandro Scarlatti, Giacomo Antonio Perti, Bernardo Sabadini, Carlo Francesco Pollarolo and Domenico Gabrielli. His most popular works were L'incoronazione di Dario from 1684 and Tullo Ostilio from 1685, and the unfinished La pace fra Seleuco e Tolomeo from 1691.
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.
Carlo Sigismondo Capece was an Italian dramatist and librettist. Capece was court poet to Queen Maria Casimira of Poland, who was living in exile in Rome, and is best remembered today for the libretto of La resurrezione a sacred oratorio by George Frideric Handel. He also provided the Libretto for operas including Domenico Scarlatti's Tolomeo e Alessandro (1711) and Ifigenia in Aulide (1714), as well as Caldara's Tito e Berenice (1714).
Domenico Guglielmini was an Italian mathematician, chemist and physician.