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Achille et Polyxène (Achilles and Polyxena) is a tragédie lyrique containing a prologue and five acts based on Virgil's Aeneid with a French libretto by Jean Galbert de Campistron. The opera's overture and first act were composed by Jean-Baptiste Lully, who died from a conducting injury before he could complete the score. The prologue and the remaining acts are the work of his pupil Pascal Collasse who finished the work, eight months after Lully's death on March 22, 1687. The opera was first performed on November 7, 1687, by the Paris Opera at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal in Paris.
The libretto for this opera differs from those of Lully's earlier works with Philippe Quinault. Typically, Lully would begin his operas with a lively prologue, but this work has a somber prologue in which the Muses lament the king's desire for military expansion. Another difference is the tragic and somber ending of this opera in Act V. Lully usually ended his operas with a rousing ensemble number but this opera closes with the suicide of the heroine. The end of Act IV, the wedding scene, does contain a vibrant ensemble number at its close which would be more in keeping with a typical finale of one of Lully's operas.
Industry:Drama
Acis et Galatée (Acis and Galatea) is an opera by Jean-Baptiste Lully. Unlike most of his operas, which are designated tragédies en musique, Lully called this work a pastorale-héroïque, because it was on a pastoral theme and had only three acts (plus a prologue) compared to the usual five. Otherwise, there is little musically or dramatically to distinguish it from Lully's tragédies.
Lully did not work with his usual collaborator, Philippe Quinault, because he was no longer doing theatrical work. Jean Galbert de Campistron wrote the French libretto after the story in Ovid's Metamorphoses. The same story was also to inspire a dramatic work by Handel, Acis and Galatea. The opera was commissioned by Louis Joseph, duc de Vendôme in honor of Louis, le Grand Dauphin.
It was premiered by the Académie Royale de Musique (Paris Opera) at the Château d'Anet on 6 September 1686 (without machines) and later at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal in Paris on 17 September 1686.
Industry:Drama
Actéon (Actaeon) is a Pastorale in the form of a miniature tragédie en musique in six scenes by Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Opus H 481, based on a Greek myth. t is highly unlikely that this opera was written for performance at the Hôtel de Guise, the palatial Parisian residence of Marie de Lorraine, Duchess of Guise, Charpentier's protectress. (The work was copied into a roman-number notebook, which strongly suggests that it was an outside commission; and the overall distribution of voices and instruments does not match that of the Guise ensemble of the time.) Although the patron and the place of performance remain unknown, the date can be determined with considerable accuracy: the spring hunting season of 1684. Later that year (presumably for the fall hunting season) it was revised to change the title role from an haute-contre role (perhaps originally sung by Charpentier) to a soprano part, and was at that time renamed Actéon changé en biche.
The author of the French libretto is unknown, however the plot is based on a story in Ovid's Metamorphoses. In this story the hunter Actaeon (Actéon in French) accidentally discovers the goddess Diana (Diane in French) bathing with her attendants. He tries to hide himself, but is discovered, and Diane in anger turns him into a stag, and he is pursued and torn apart by his own hounds.
This story is the same one recounted in the aria "Oft she visits this lone mountain" from Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, first performed in 1689.
Industry:Drama
Adelaide or l'Adelaide is an opera by Antonio Sartorio to an Italian libretto by Pietro Dolfin. It was premiered in Venice at the Teatro San Salvatore in 1672. An exact date is not known, although the libretto is dedicated February 19, 1672. The genre of the opera is dramma per musica. The libretto follows the same historical events as Handel's later Lotario.
Industry:Drama
Adelaide di Borgogna, ossia Ottone, re d'Italia (Adelaide of Burgundy, or Otto, King of Italy) is a two-act opera composed by Gioachino Rossini (with contributions by Michele Carafa) to a libretto by Giovanni Schmidt. It was premièred at the Teatro Argentina in Rome on 27 December 1817.
Performances have included concert versions with Della Jones as Ottone and Eiddwen Harrhy as Adelaide given at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall in November 1978, and another at Usher Hall in Edinburgh on 19 August 2005 with the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Chorus with Jennifer Larmore as Ottone and Marjella Cullagh as Adelaide.
The Festival della Valle d'Itria in Martina Franca in Italy presented staged performances in August 1984, with Ottone sung by Martine Dupuy and Adelaide by Mariella Devia. In addition, the Rossini Opera Festival staged it in Pesaro in August 2006, with Daniela Barcellona and Patrizia Ciofi singing the roles of Ottone and Adelaide respectively and it was presented again in a new production in 2011, also with Barcellona as well as Jessica Pratt in the title role.
Industry:Drama
Adelia, o La figlia dell'arciere (Adelia, or The Archer's Daughter) is an opera in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti. The Italian libretto was written partly by Felice Romani (Acts 1 and 2) and by Girolamo Maria Marini (Act 3), a part-time poet who had achieved notability the previous year with Otto Nicolai's Il templario. The opera premiered at the Teatro Apollo, Rome on 11 February 1841.
Industry:Drama
Adelson e Salvini (Adelson and Salvini) is a three act opera semiseria composed by Vincenzo Bellini from a libretto by Andrea Leone Tottola. The opera was based on the 1772 novel Épreuves du Sentiment by François-Thomas-Marie de Baculard d'Arnaud, and it draws on a previously performed play by Prospère Delamare.
Bellini's first opera was written as his final project at the Naples San Sebastiano Conservatory, when the composer was 23 years old. It was the custom at the Conservatory to introduce promising students to the public with a dramatic work. Bellini styled his project an opera semiseria and it was first performed at the Teatro del Conservatorio di San Sebastiano in Naples on 12 February 1825. "With a view to professional staging", various revisions were undertaken between 1826 and 1828, but they were never performed professionally.
Bellini's score does not bring out much of the humour of the piece. Nevertheless, the work was so popular among the Conservatory's student audience that it was performed every Sunday for a year.
It was successful enough to generate a commission from the royal court, and it captured the interest of the impresario Domenico Barbaja of the San Carlo Opera, who launched Bellini's career, commissioning him to write his next work, Bianca e Gernando (1826), which was revised two years later as Bianca e Fernando. Although much influenced by the music of Gioacchino Rossini, this early piece exhibits some of the characteristic tuneful style and delicate vocal line that Bellini achieved in his mature works and the composer used some of the music from the opera in later works. This is also the only Bellini opera provided with Recitativo secco.
Bellini greatly revised the opera for another production in 1829, and later revised it further. However, the first professional production was not given for over one hundred years at the Teatro Metropolitan in Belliini's home town of Catania on 6 November 1985. Domenico De Meo further revised and edited the score of Adelson to prepare it for a 1992 production at the Teatro Massimo Bellini in Catania, Sicily. The following year, the Italian label Nuova Era issued Adelson e Salvini on compact discs.
Industry:Drama
Admeto, re di Tessaglia (Admetus, King of Thessaly; HWV 22) is a three-act opera written for the Royal Academy of Music with music composed by George Frideric Handel to an Italian-language libretto prepared by Nicola Haym. The story is partly based on Euripides' Alcestis. The opera's first performance was at the Haymarket Theatre in London on 31 January 1727. The original cast included Faustina Bordoni as Alcestis and Francesca Cuzzoni as Antigona, as Admeto was the second of the five operas that Handel composed to feature specifically these two prime donne of the day. The opera received 19 performances in its first season, and over the time from September 1727 to January 1732, received 16 additional performances. Admeto was revived in 1754 and received 5 additional performances. The last, 6 April 1754, proved to be the last opera performance that Handel saw of his own operas in his lifetime.
Industry:Drama
Adriana Lecouvreur is an opera in four acts by Francesco Cilea to an Italian libretto by Arturo Colautti, based on the 1849 play Adrienne Lecouvreur by Eugène Scribe and Ernest Legouvé. It was first performed on 6 November 1902 in Milan.
The same play by Scribe and Legouvé which served as a basis for Cilea's librettists was also used by at least three different librettists for operas carrying exactly the same name, Adriana Lecouvreur, and created by three different composers. The first was an opera in three acts by Tommaso Benvenuti (premiered in Milan in 1857). The next two were lyric dramas in 4 acts by Edoardo Vera (to a libretto by Achille de Lauzières) which premiered in Lisbon in 1858, and by Ettore Perosio (to an anonymous libretto), premiered in Geneva in 1889. After Cilea created his own Adriana, however, none of those by others were performed anymore and they remain largely unknown today.
The opera is based on the life of the French actress Adrienne Lecouvreur (1692–1730). While there are some actual historical figures in the opera, the episode it recounts is largely fictional, its death-by-poisoned violets plot device often signalled as verismo opera's least realistic. It is often condemned as being among the most confusing texts ever written for the stage, and cuts that have often been made in performance only make the story harder to follow. The running time of a typical modern performance is about 135 minutes (excluding intervals).
The opera premiered at the Teatro Lirico, Milan, on 6 November 1902, with the well-known verismo soprano Angelica Pandolfini in the title role, Enrico Caruso in the role of Maurizio, and the lyric baritone Giuseppe De Luca as Michonnet.
The opera was first performed in the United States by the San Carlo Opera Company on January 5, 1907 at the French Opera House in New Orleans with Tarquinia Tarquini in the title role. It gained its Metropolitan Opera premiere on 18 November 1907 (in a performance starring Lina Cavalieri and Caruso). It had a run of only three performances that season, however, due in large part to Caruso's ill-health. Subsequently, it was revived at the Met from time until a new production was commissioned in 1963. That 1963 production continued to be remounted at the same theatre, with differing casts, for the next few decades. It was in the lead role of this opera that the Spanish tenor Plácido Domingo made his Met debut in 1968, alongside Renata Tebaldi in the title role. He sang again in Adriana Lecouvreur in February 2009, although his voice was by then in decline.
The title role in Adriana Lecouvreur has always been a favorite of sopranos with large voices, which tend to sit less at the very top of their range. This part has a relatively low tessitura but requires great vocal power, and is a meaty and challenging one to tackle on a dramatic level – especially during the work's so-called "Recitation" and death scene. Famous Adrianas of the past 75 years have included Claudia Muzio, Magda Olivero, Leyla Gencer, Montserrat Caballé, Renata Tebaldi, Raina Kabaivanska, Renata Scotto, Mirella Freni and Joan Sutherland. Angela Gheorghiu tackled the role at the Royal Opera, London in 2010 with Jonas Kaufmann as Maurizio.."
A recording of part of the opera's last act duet "No, più nobile", rejigged into a self-contained tenor aria, was made by Caruso as early as 1902 for the Gramophone & Typewriter Company in Milan and its affiliates, with Cilea at the piano.
In Decca's 1990 complete performance of the work, with Dame Joan Sutherland as the female lead, the Australian conductor Richard Bonynge made sure that he restored a long-lost passage that Cilea had cut originally from the score. Its restoration made the opera's plot more transparent.
Industry:Drama
The Adventures of Pinocchio is a 2007 opera in two acts by Jonathan Dove with a libretto by Alasdair Middleton based on the novel by Carlo Collodi. It tells of the creation of the wooden puppet 'Pinocchio' and some of his adventures on the way to becoming a real boy.
The opera was commissioned by Opera North with Sadler's Wells Theatre, and the original production opened at the Grand Theatre in Leeds on December 21, 2007. It starred Victoria Simmonds as Pinocchio, Mary Plazas as the Blue Fairy and Jonathan Summers as Mister Geppetto. It was directed by Martin Duncan, conducted by David Parry, designed by Francis O'Connor and choreographed by Nick Winston. The production included some ingenious technical stage effects, and used a full symphony orchestra including two accordions (which appear briefly on stage), a piano, and assorted percussion. The opera received its German premiere in Chemnitz in 2008 with Inga Lampert in the title role; the North American premiere was by the Minnesota Opera at the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts on February 28, 2009, with mezzo-soprano Adriana Zabala as Pinocchio; and the Russian premiere was at Teatr Sats, Moscow on November 18, 2011 with Giulia Macariants as Pinocchio.
The work was recorded live at Sadler’s Wells Theatre, London, on 29 February & 1 March 2008, and was released on the Opus Arte label on Feb.1, 2009 in both DVD and Blu-ray formats.
Industry:Drama
