Giulio Ricordi News
Italian musician (1840-1912)
- opera
- Kingdom of Italy
- editor, composer, music publisher, businessperson, journalist, publisher, music publicist, painter
streaming
Last update
2024-04-23
Refresh
2022-07-22 12:36:00
Operatic rarities in a striking double bill at Opera Holland Park
[…] shied away from realism. Puccini was still a student when he wrote the opera and was introduced to the librettist, Ferdinando Fontana, by his teacher Ponchielli (both Ponchielli and Fontana had links to the Scapigliatura movement). Despite Ponchielli being on the Sonzogno competition jury (or perhaps because of this) Puccini's opera was disqualified because it was 'illegible'. It was Fontana who gained support to put on a performance, which attracted the attention of the publishing house Ricordi. The result, for Puccini, was a contract and ongoing support from Ricordi.Ferdinando Fontana's libretto for Le Villi provided a series of tableaux which were linked via orchestral and dance episodes plus linking spoken narrative (here delivered by Stephen Gadd), the characters seen as a series of striking incidents rather than a single interrelated narrative. Yes, there are gorgeous solo scenes for each of the characters, but there is also a storm scene, and that danced […]
2022-06-29 09:43:21
An exciting rediscovery: Mercadante's Il proscritto proves far more than a museum piece in this thrilling revival from Opera Rara
[…] Elizabeth DeShong, Sally Matthews, and Goderdzi Janelidze.Il proscritto dates from 1842, when it was premiered Naples where he was Director of the Naples Conservatory. The premiere was not a great success, and the manuscript lay in the conservatory's library until 2020 when Carlo Rizzi, artistic director of Opera Rara, discovered it and the company decided to revive the work. A new edition has been created by Roger Parker and Ian Schofield, which is available via Casa Ricordi.During the 1830s, Mercadante had produced a series of works which are regarded as 'reform operas', aimed at changing the structure of Italian bel canto operas and their reliance on the soloists as vehicles for display. He was partly spurred on to this after witnessing the premiered of Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots in 1836, and Mercadante would write "varied forms, cabalettas banished, crescendos out, vocal lines simplified, fewer repeats, more originality in the cadences, proper regard paid […]
2021-09-06 07:11:05
The history behind: 17 June 1800 - Puccini's Tosca and Sardou's La Tosca
[…] ideas came from seeing stage works, so that both Madama Butterfly and La fanciulla del West are based on English-language stage plays by John Belasco (despite Puccini understanding barely any of the spoken English texts). Tosca is based on French-language dramatic play, La Tosca, written in 1887 by playwright Victorien Sardou as a vehicle for Sarah Bernhardt. Puccini saw La Tosca at least twice, in Milan and Turin and on 7 May 1889 he wrote to his publisher, Giulio Ricordi, asking him to get permission for the work to be made into an opera. The path to creating the opera was rocky, Puccini started with librettist Luigi Illica, but Illica was not keen and Sardou disliked Puccini's music! Ricordi eventually transferred the opera to Alberto Franchetti, who started work on it but somehow the project got transferred back to Puccini. There is a suggestion that Franchetti was never at ease with the subject matter. But […]
2021-07-27 09:31:50
Liverpool welcomes new chief conductor Domingo Hindoyan for his first season
[…] a new concerto for trumpet by Paquito D’Rivera and a work by Flores himself. Alongside Brahms (with local boy, pianist Stephen Hough), Bruckner, Mahler, Schumann, Mozart, Sibelius, Nielsen, Ravel and Rachmaninov, there will also be Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle with soloists Jennifer Johnston and Károly Szemerédy, and the UK premiere of Edmund Finnis’ Acts of Waves. Hindoyan's wife is the soprano Sonya Yoncheva, and she joins her husband for Giuseppe Martucci's song cycle La Canzone dei Ricordi (The Song of Remembrance). Other visitors include principal guest conductor Andrew Manze, pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason as young artist in residence and baritone Roderick Williams as artist in residence. Female guest conductors include Marta Gardolińska, Alexandra Dunn, Elena Schwarz, Rebecca Tong, Sarah Hicks, Ellie Slorach, Jeannette Sorrell, Nil Vendetti and Gemma New. Amongst the 15 world premieres in the season there are eight new works by female composers including music by Victoria Borisova-Ollas, Katherine […]
or
- timeline: Composers (Europe). Performers (Europe).
- Indexes (by alphabetical order): R...