Composers Italy
Silvano Bussotti is an Italian composer, painter and opera director, set and costume designer.
Silvano learned to play the violin at an early age, studied harmony and counterpoint at the Cherubini Conservatory in Florence, and studied with various teachers. In addition to music, he was fond of drawing and painting. His first works, influenced by Luigi Dallapiccola and Roberto Lupi, were written in the avant-garde dodecaphonic technique, and he also made extensive use of the aleatoric method. Bussotti was a participant in "anti-music" concerts, for which he created works without any sounds at all.
Bussotti's compositions include numerous pieces for various vocal, instrumental and mixed ensembles. In 1963 he co-founded the Group of 70 (Florence). Between 1968 and 2001 he worked as a director, costume designer and stage designer at the leading opera houses in Italy, La Scala, La Fenice; Massimo (Palermo), Reggio (Turin) and others. In total, he created about 40 opera productions.
Bussotti's art exhibitions are held in various countries around the world. Bussotti is also known for his extravagant graphic scores, in which he found self-expression as an artist, but this hides the meaningful nature of his musical achievements.
Domenico Cimarosa was an Italian opera composer of the Neapolitan school of the late 18th century.
For 11 years Cimarosa studied at the Conservatory of Santa Maria di Loreto. His first successful work was the comic opera Stravaganze del Conte, staged at the Teatro Fiorentini in Naples in 1772. It was followed by The Italian Woman in Londre (1778), which is still performed in Italy, and others. Cimarosa composed both serious and comic operas (more than 80 in all), which were staged in Rome, Naples, Florence, Vicenza, Milan and Turin.
In 1787, at the invitation of Catherine II, he traveled to Russia, replacing Giovanni Paisiello as court musician. He staged two operas in St. Petersburg, and in 1791 he traveled to Vienna at the invitation of Leopold II. There in 1792 Cimarosa staged his masterpiece, the opera The Secret Marriage, which made him famous. In 1793 he returned to Italy and composed many more works.
Cimarosa was a prolific and popular composer. His numerous operas are characterized by vivid imagery and rich comic content. He also wrote many choral works, including the cantata Maestro di cappella, a popular satire on modern opera rehearsal methods. His instrumental works include many sonatas for harpsichord and a concerto for two flutes.
George Frideric Handel was a German-born English composer of the Baroque period.
After receiving a musical education, Handel worked briefly as an organist at the cathedral in Halle, then joined the violin section of the opera orchestra in Hamburg. After spending several years in Italy, he wrote many works there, including two operas. The style of Italian music permeated the composer's work throughout his life. Having become famous in Italy, in 1710 Handel was appointed Kapellmeister to the Elector of Hanover, the future King George I of England, and two years later he was already staging his operas in London.
In 1727 Handel became a British subject and was appointed composer to the Chapel Royal. In this capacity he wrote many musical works. From 1720 to 1728, operas at the Royal Theater in London were staged by the Royal Academy of Music, and Handel wrote the music for most of them.
In 1741, Handel wrote the most famous of his many oratorios, Messiah. Handel had a talent for musically portraying a human character in a single scene or aria - a gift he used with great dramatic power in his operas and oratorios. Although much of his music was vocal, Handel was also one of the recognized instrumental composers of the late Baroque era. Handel paid tribute to church music by composing many solemn hymns.
Handel's music has become an integral part of the national culture of England, and in Germany he is also honored as a major national composer.
Jean-Baptiste Lully, born Giovanni Battista Lulli, was an Italian-born French composer, violinist, and conductor.
Lully spent most of his life working as a musician at the court of Louis XIV and became a French subject in 1661. He began composing music for court ballets in 1658 and collaborated with Molière on numerous comedy ballets between 1664 and 1670.
Lully is considered the leading composer of the French Baroque musical style, to which he contributed many of his own innovations. He composed several operas, chief among them the opera Armide, written especially for Louis XIV. Lully's other works include sacred works, dance music for various instruments, and suites for trumpet and strings.
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, born Giovanni Battista Draghi, was an Italian composer, violinist and organist, a leading representative of the Baroque and Neapolitan school.
Around 1720 he entered the Poveri Conservatory in Naples, where he earned a high reputation as a violinist. In 1732 Pergolesi was appointed maestro of the Prince of Stigliano's Chapel in Naples and soon composed his most successful work, the opera-buffa The Lady's Maid, which quickly gained popularity. His subsequent operas did not achieve the same success.
The Lady's Maid became much more popular when it was staged in Paris in 1752 after the composer's death. It also sparked fierce debate between conservatives, supporters of traditional French opera, and fans of the new Italian comic style. Pergolesi's opera-buffa became a forerunner of subsequent classical works: these are W. A. Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, J. Rossini's The Barber of Seville, G. Verdi's Falstaff, I. Stravinsky's The Moor, and others.
Alongside secular music Pergolesi composed sacred music. His masses and hymns demonstrate the composer's ability to cope with large choral and instrumental forces, as well as with chamber music. Shortly before his death, he composed the cantata Stabat Mater, one of the composer's most inspired works, written for a small chamber ensemble (soprano, viola, string quartet and organ), filled with sublime, sincere and heartfelt lyrical feeling.
Fate, however, was not favorable to the young talent: Giovanni Battista Pergolesi died of tuberculosis in extreme poverty at the age of 26.
Giacomo Puccini, full name Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini, was an Italian opera composer, organist and choirmaster.
Puccini was born into the family that for two centuries directed the musical organization of the Cathedral of San Martino in Lucca, and the young musician inherited the position of cathedral organist until his adulthood. He also played organ in small local churches. Giuseppe Verdi's opera Aida, which he saw in Pisa in 1876, was a boost for him and he entered the Milan Conservatory in 1880.
Puccini carefully studied contemporary operatic compositions, particularly the work of Claude Debussy, Richard Strauss, Arnold Schoenberg, and Igor Stravinsky. Soon he wrote Triptych (1918), three one-act operas - the melodramatic The Cape, the sentimental Suor Angelica and the comic Gianni Schicchi. Puccini's other mature operas are La bohème (1896), Tosca (1900), and Madama Butterfly (1904).
The composer did not manage to finish his last opera, Turandot - he died of cancer with its score in his hands. This work is the only Italian opera in the Impressionist style. Puccini is also considered the greatest representative of opera realism, as well as the Verismo movement in music, attempting to faithfully portray the social and psychological conflicts of the new national-historical reality after the unification of Italy.
Teodoro Riccio was an Italian composer and Kapellmeister of the second half of the 16th century, who worked in Germany for most of his life.
Educated in church music, Riccio first worked as a Kapellmeister in the church of his hometown in Lombardy, where he composed his first madrigals. In 1575 he arrived at the court of Margrave Georg Friedrich of Ansbach-Brandenburg, to whom he dedicated a famous canon, and moved with the rest of the court musicians to Königsberg when the margrave became governor of the Duchy of Prussia in 1578. In 1585 Riccio was appointed Kapellmeister for life at the margrave's court.
Riccio's works are known mainly from printed sources, although several works survive in manuscripts in the Kremsmünster Abbey, the Koninklijke Bibliothek (Brussels), and the Nuremberg Archives.
Giuseppe Verdi, full name Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi, was an Italian opera composer.
The son of a village innkeeper, Giuseppe showed musical talent very early, already playing the organ in church by the age of nine. He studied music in Milan, taught, and in March 1839 staged his first opera "Oberto, conte di San Bonifacio" at La Scala. In 1842 Verdi's opera "Nabucco" was a great success, passing through all the major theaters of Europe.
Verdi wrote a total of 26 operas during his career, the most famous of which are Rigoletto (1851), Trovatore (1853), La Traviata (1853), Don Carlos (1867), Aida (1871), Otello (1887) and Falstaff (1893).
In 1873, Giuseppe Verdi decided to retire from the world of opera. He settled in Sant'Agata, where he became a large landowner and a very wealthy man due to his tireless work in agriculture, he also financed large charitable organizations.
Verdi took a break from these activities for his opera Otello, but after a successful tour of Europe with it, he retreated again to Sant'Agata. The work of Giuseppe Verdi is one of the greatest achievements of world opera art. Many generations of opera lovers still enjoy the composer's brilliant works.