libretto | L'Ulisse errante

Events Pro | Info: There are no items created, add some please.

Where Vincenzo Bellini meets the Coldplay | Palazzo Biscari in Sicily

If a great composer such as Vincenzo Bellini was born in Sicily it’s also thanks to another great personality of his time, the Prince of Biscari Ignatiu Paternò Castello.

January

Italian language | the fourth most spoken in the world thanks to music

Everywhere in the world, Italian language is popular thanks to music; not just Opera but also pop hits such as Volare or Mamma. Common Italian words are increasingly used in other languages while notation on music scores is traditionally in Italian (piano, forte, crescendo, rallentando etc…). So much so that many Italian terms used for music are now truly international, representing a substantial part of the international Italian vocabulary.

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.

April

Rigoletto in Mantua | Palazzo Te, the pleasure palace

What is Rigoletto it about? This sounds like a simple question, which could be answered by telling the story of the Duke of Mantua, the city of Mantua, his hunchback jester and the jester’s daughter, Gilda. A story of love, deception, revenge, and death. The story, of course, is so close to the one told by playwright and poet Victor Hugo in his play Le Roi s’amuse (The King has fun), that they could appear the same thing. But anyone who loves opera will not be satisfied by this explanation. In the best operas, music is much more than an accompaniment to the story: it is through the power of music that the story unfolds into the drama. Verdi fell literally in love with Hugo’s play and was determined to translate it into music; despite his librettist Francesco Maria Piave‘s concerns, particularly over the fourth act culminating in the deposition of a dying Gilda in a bag. In a letter dated June 1850, Verdi explains the reasons he suggested as a title for the opera Monterone’s curse or, by the short, The Curse. “The subject is the curse as a moral element: A distraught father who mourns the honor taken away from his daughter, a […]

Opera | Useful basic definitions of commonly used terms

Opera: a drama created through music Why are people still interested in opera? What is so intriguing…

Tag Archives: libretto

Where Vincenzo Bellini meets the Coldplay | Palazzo Biscari in Sicily

Italian language | the fourth most spoken in the world thanks to music

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

Rigoletto in Mantua | Palazzo Te, the pleasure palace

Opera | Useful basic definitions of commonly used terms

L’Ulisse Errante

Recent Posts

Contact Info