Silvio Ranieri News
Italian musician
- mandolin
- Italy, Kingdom of Italy
- mandolinist
Last update
2024-03-28
Refresh
2021-09-25 11:26:40
Lyric intensity: Gluck's Paride ed Elena (Paris and Helen) receives its first London staging from Bampton Classical Opera
[…] tooWhen it comes to British performances of Gluck's final Viennese opera, Paride ed Elena, there are a lot of maybes. Paul McCreesh and the Gabrieli Consort & Players performed it at the Barbican in 2003, which MAY have been the work's London premiere, and this year's revival of the work by Bampton Classical Opera could well be the work's first London staging. But then even in 18th century Vienna, Paride ed Elena rather lagged behind Gluck and librettist Ranieri de' Calzabigi's other two operas, so that in the period to 1800, there were more than 100 performances of Orfeo ed Euridice in Vienna, compared to more than 70 of Alceste and just 25 of Paride ed Elena.So it was with great pleasure that I was able to encounter Gluck's Paride ed Elena, performed in a new English translation by Gilly French as Paris and Helen, with Bampton Classical Opera's performance at St John's Smith […]
2021-08-16 10:54:27
Gluck: Paride ed Elena - Ella Taylor, Lucy Anderson - Bampton Classical Opera (photo Jeremy Gray) Christoph Willibald Gluck wrote four works with librettist Ranieri de' Calzabigi in Vienna in the 1760s which would become an important key in the Reform movement aimed at creating a new style of serious opera. Of the four works one is a ballet, Don Juan (1761) which is perhaps understandably little known as styles of ballet and dance dramaturgy have changed considerably since the late 18th century. But of the three Reform Operas, Orfeo ed Euridice (1762) and Alceste (1767) are well known yet the third, Paride ed Elena (1770) is hardly known at all.Londoners will be getting the chance to experience the opera, staged in London for the first time, when Bampton Classical Opera brings its new production of the work to St John's Smith Square on 24 September 2021. Whilst the work […]
2021-03-23 09:12:14
Giving Gluck's Paride ed Elena its due: Bampton Classical Opera's 2021 season
Jacques-Louis David: Paris and Helen (1788)Musée du Louvre, Paris (detail) During the 1760s the composer Christoph Willibald Gluck and librettist Ranieri de' Calzabigi collaborated on a sequence of theatrical works which would revolutionise opera performance [see my article To delight the eyes and ears without the risk of sinning against reason or common sense: the creation of Reform Opera]. The first of these was the ballet Don Juan, followed by three operas Orfeo ed Euridice, Alceste and Paride ed Elena. Orfeo ed Euridice remains iconic whilst Alceste is occasionally performed (though more often in its later French re-composition) yet Paride ed Elena remains virtually unknown getting only very occasional revivals and may never have been staged in London. This is going to be remedied by Bampton Classical Opera whose 2021 Summer season features a staging of Paride ed Elena directed by Jeremy Gray in a new English […]
2021-03-01 08:24:05
To delight the eyes and ears without the risk of sinning against reason or common sense: the creation of Reform Opera
The old Burgtheater in Vienna where Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice was premiered in1762(Photograph taken pre-1880) When Christoph Willibald Gluck and Ranieri de' Calzabigi premiered Orfeo ed Euridice at the Burgtheater in Vienna in 1762, the work showcased a new operatic style which merged elements of French and Italian opera, eschewed the virtuosity and many of the dramatic conventions of classic opera seria and prized emotion over display. It can often seem as if their type of opera, Reform Opera, sprang into life fully formed. But the Reform movement was one which had slowly gathered force across Europe during the mid-18th century, involving a pleasure-loving German duke, an English actor, an Italian singer coached by Handel, a French choreographer, and an Italian theorist, not to mention three or four different composers. All these contributed to the 'perfect storm' that was the Reform movement in Vienna. […]
or
- timeline: Composers (Europe). Performers (Europe).
- Indexes (by alphabetical order): R...