Gradara | L'Ulisse errante

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Opera | Useful basic definitions of commonly used terms

Opera is a drama created through music. It is the result of the joint effort of some of the best poets and composers in music history who worked together in perfect synergy to create a work as a whole.

February

Verdi’s Falstaff | Triumph with a laughter

Verdi’s last opera Falstaff relates to Verdi’s late years when after the enormous success of Otello no one expected him to create yet another opera. A pleasant routine Verdi and Giuseppina had a pleasant life routine at that stage. They used to spend winters in Genoa; the beginning of spring in Milan attending music events; the end of spring and most part of summer in Sant’Agata, where the composer attended business such as the collection of rent payments, purchase of seeds, repairs, new buildings works. Yet his friend, librettist and composer Arrigo Boito noticed how much Verdi missed composing and for that reason started to insist in working together on something new, an opera that could end his career in an even better way than Otello, a “triumph with a laughter”. Triumph with a laughter The idea came out during a conversation between Boito and Verdi. By May 1889 Boito had already sketched the libretto from Shakespeare’s Henry IV (1597) and The Merry Wives of Windsor (1602). Verdi, who had considered a comic subject before, at that stage was worried for not being able to complete it: “What would happen if I won’t overcome my weakness…If I won’t be able to finish […]

December

Rome, the Domus Aurea | Monteverdi’s Incoronazione di Poppea

The libretto for Monteverdi’s Opera L’Incoronazione di Poppea was mainly drawn from the roman historians Tacitus. Its leading character is Poppea, the beautiful mistress who became wife to the Roman Emperor Nero, one of the most loved and, at the same time, hated emperor of the ancient Rome. Nero after the great fire of Rome, built on the Colle Oppio, the most lavish and vast villa of the ancient Rome, the Domus Aurea.

March