Italian Opera: Syllabus

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Italian Opera: Syllabus: Session 1- Baroque Opera In this session, we will trace the development of opera from its beginnings in the late 16th & early 17th century and then on into the formal conventions of Opera Seria in the early to mid-18th century. We will examine the following highlights of 3 important operas from this period: La Favola d’Ofeo by Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) La Calisto by Francesco Cavalli (1602-1676) Giulio Cesare by George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) Session 2-Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) Mozart wrote seven considered operatic masterpieces in the last 10 years of his life. We will focus on two of his best known Italian operas of this period: Le Nozze di Figaro (Vienna, 1786) Don Giovanni (Prague, 1787) Session 3- The Bel Canto This particular operatic style was all the rage in the early part of the 19th century. We will examine highlights from a trio of well-known operas from this period: Il Barbiere di Siviglia by Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868) L’Elisir d’Amore by Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848) Norma by Vincenzo Bellini (1801-1835) Session 4- Giuseppi Verdi (1813-1901) Verdi was undeniably the most important composer of Italian opera in the latter half of the 19th century. He wrote 27 operas in his long career and we will look at highlights from three of his masterpieces: Nabucco ( Milan, 1842) Rigoletto (Venice, 1851) Otello (Milan, 1887) Session 5- Verismo Opera This rather rough & tumble operatic style was inspired by an Italian literary genre of the late 19th century. We will examine highlights from three operas by well- known composers of the period. Cavalleria Rusticana by Pietro Mascagni (1863-1945) Pagliacci by Ruggero Leoncavallo (1857-1919) Andrea Chenier by Umberto Giordano (1867-1948) Session 6- Giacomo Puccini (1858-1914) Puccini could easily be considered as the last of the line of great Italian opera composers. Although he was not a prolific composer, he wrote some of the most popular operas in the repertoire. We will focus on the following big three: La Boheme (Turin, 1896) Tosca (Rome, 1900) Madama Butterfly (Milan, 1904) .

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The Rise of the Tenor Voice in the Late Eighteenth Century: Mozart’S Opera and Concert Arias Joshua M
University of Connecticut OpenCommons@UConn Doctoral Dissertations University of Connecticut Graduate School 10-3-2014 The Rise of the Tenor Voice in the Late Eighteenth Century: Mozart’s Opera and Concert Arias Joshua M. May University of Connecticut - Storrs, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://opencommons.uconn.edu/dissertations Recommended Citation May, Joshua M., "The Rise of the Tenor Voice in the Late Eighteenth Century: Mozart’s Opera and Concert Arias" (2014). Doctoral Dissertations. 580. https://opencommons.uconn.edu/dissertations/580 ABSTRACT The Rise of the Tenor Voice in the Late Eighteenth Century: Mozart’s Opera and Concert Arias Joshua Michael May University of Connecticut, 2014 W. A. Mozart’s opera and concert arias for tenor are among the first music written specifically for this voice type as it is understood today, and they form an essential pillar of the pedagogy and repertoire for the modern tenor voice. Yet while the opera arias have received a great deal of attention from scholars of the vocal literature, the concert arias have been comparatively overlooked; they are neglected also in relation to their counterparts for soprano, about which a great deal has been written. There has been some pedagogical discussion of the tenor concert arias in relation to the correction of vocal faults, but otherwise they have received little scrutiny. This is surprising, not least because in most cases Mozart’s concert arias were composed for singers with whom he also worked in the opera house, and Mozart always paid close attention to the particular capabilities of the musicians for whom he wrote: these arias offer us unusually intimate insights into how a first-rank composer explored and shaped the potential of the newly-emerging voice type of the modern tenor voice.
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Composers Mascagni and Leoncavallo Biography
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Minnesota Opera’S Production of La Traviata
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Ceriani Rowan University Email: [email protected]
Nineteenth-Century Music Review, 14 (2017), pp 211–242. © Cambridge University Press, 2016 doi:10.1017/S1479409816000082 First published online 8 September 2016 Romantic Nostalgia and Wagnerismo During the Age of Verismo: The Case of Alberto Franchetti* Davide Ceriani Rowan University Email: [email protected] The world premiere of Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana on 17 May 1890 immediately became a central event in Italy’s recent operatic history. As contemporary music critic and composer, Francesco D’Arcais, wrote: Maybe for the first time, at least in quite a while, learned people, the audience and the press shared the same opinion on an opera. [Composers] called upon to choose the works to be staged, among those presented for the Sonzogno [opera] competition, immediately picked Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana as one of the best; the audience awarded this composer triumphal honours, and the press 1 unanimously praised it to the heavens. D’Arcais acknowledged Mascagni’smeritsbut,inthesamearticle,alsourgedcaution in too enthusiastically festooning the work with critical laurels: the dangers of excessive adulation had already become alarmingly apparent in numerous ill-starred precedents. In the two decades prior to its premiere, several other Italian composers similarly attained outstanding critical and popular success with a single work, but were later unable to emulate their earlier achievements. Among these composers were Filippo Marchetti (Ruy Blas, 1869), Stefano Gobatti (IGoti, 1873), Arrigo Boito (with the revised version of Mefistofele, 1875), Amilcare Ponchielli (La Gioconda, 1876) and Giovanni Bottesini (Ero e Leandro, 1879). Once again, and more than a decade after Bottesini’s one-hit wonder, D’Arcais found himself wondering whether in Mascagni ‘We [Italians] have finally [found] … the legitimate successor to [our] great composers, the person 2 who will perpetuate our musical glory?’ This hoary nationalist interrogative returned in 1890 like an old-fashioned curse.
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Music on Stage
Music on Stage Music on Stage Edited by Fiona Jane Schopf Music on Stage Edited by Fiona Jane Schopf This book first published 2015 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2015 by Fiona Jane Schopf and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-7603-8 ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-7603-2 TO SUE HUNT - THANK YOU FOR YOUR WISE COUNSEL TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Illustrations ...................................................................................... x List of Tables .............................................................................................. xi Foreword ................................................................................................... xii Acknowledgments .................................................................................... xiii Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Opera, the Musical and Performance Practice Jane Schopf Part I: Opera Chapter One ................................................................................................. 8 Werktreue and Regieoper Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe
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The Baritone Voice in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: a Brief Examination of Its Development and Its Use in Handel’S Messiah
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University of Louisville ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository Electronic Theses and Dissertations 8-2013 Eighteenth-century reception of Italian opera in London. Kaylyn Kinder University of Louisville Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.library.louisville.edu/etd Recommended Citation Kinder, Kaylyn, "Eighteenth-century reception of Italian opera in London." (2013). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 753. https://doi.org/10.18297/etd/753 This Master's Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ThinkIR: The University of Louisville's Institutional Repository. This title appears here courtesy of the author, who has retained all other copyrights. For more information, please contact [email protected]. EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY RECEPTION OF ITALIAN OPERA IN LONDON By Kaylyn Kinder B.M., Southeast Missouri State University, 2009 A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the Division of Music History of the University of Louisville in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Music Department of Music University of Louisville Louisville, Kentucky August 2013 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY RECEPTION OF ITALIAN OPERA IN LONDON By Kaylyn Kinder B.M., Southeast Missouri State University, 2009 A Thesis Approved on July 18, 2013 by the following Thesis Committee: Jack Ashworth, Thesis Director Douglas Shadle Daniel Weeks ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Jack Ashworth, for his guidance and patience over the past two years. I would also like to thank the other members of my committee, Dr.
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Pietro Mascagni Ruggero Leoncavallo
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Andrea Chénier
Synopsis France, late 18th century Act I A The Château de Coigny near Paris; spring, 1789 ER OP Act II AN Paris, along the Cours-la-Reine; spring, 1794 TROPOLIT Act III ME / The courtroom of the Revolutionary Tribunal; July 24, 1794 RD WA HO Act IV N St. Lazare Prison; July 25, 1794 KE 2013–14 A scene from Madama Butterﬂy Act I Preparations are under way for a party. Gérard, servant to the Countess de Coigny, is disgusted by the ways of the aristocracy. He riles against the servants’ life of slavery and prophesizes death to his masters. Maddalena, the countess’s daughter, appears and Gérard reflects on his secret love for her, while she complains to her servant, Bersi, about the discomfort of wearing fashionable e Metropolitan Opera is pleased clothes. Guests arrive, among them Fléville, a novelist, who has brought his friend, the poet Andrea Chénier. The latest distressing news from Paris is discussed, to salute Bank of America in then Fléville cheers the company with a pastorale he has written for the occasion. Maddalena teases a reluctant Chénier into improvising a poem. He responds recognition of its generous support with a rapturous description of the beauties of nature that turns into an appeal against tyranny and the suffering of the poor. The guests are offended but the during the 2013–14 season. countess begs their indulgence and commands a gavotte to begin. Just then, Gérard storms in with a group of starving peasants. Furious, the countess orders them out. Gérard takes off his livery, declaring he won’t have anything to do with the aristocracy any longer, and departs.
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