William Bradbury (1816-1868)
Jenny Lind (1820-1887)
Julia Culp (1880-1970)
Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937)
Maria Jeritza (1887-1982)
Edwin Fischer (1886-1960)
Paul Badura-Skoda (1927)
Dennis Wicks (1928-2003)
Udo Zimmermann (1943)
Keith Lewis (1950)
and
Le Corbusier (1887-1965)
Caroline Gordon (1895-1981)
From the Writer's Almanac:
It
was on this day in 1600 that the opera Euridice was first performed, at
the Palazzo Pitti in Florence. It is the oldest surviving opera.
Euridice
was performed for the wedding celebrations of Henry IV of France and
Maria de' Medici. It was written by Jacopo Peri, a beloved composer and
singer. He had already written Dafne a few years earlier, which is
considered to be the first opera, but that music has been lost.
Euridice
is a retelling of the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, in which the
gifted musician Orpheus falls in love with the beautiful Eurydice, but
just after their wedding she is bitten by a snake and dies. Orpheus is
heartbroken, and he journeys to the underworld, to Hades, to try to
bring her back. He charms the king of the underworld, also named Hades,
and his wife, Persephone, and they agree to return Eurydice to Orpheus
on one condition: that he get all the way back to the upper world
without looking back to see if Eurydice is following. He almost makes
it, but right as he is walking out into the sunlight he turns back, and
Eurydice is still in the underworld, so he loses her forever. Peri not
only wrote the opera, but he sang the role of Orpheus. The climax of the
opera came during "Funeste piagge," or "Funeral shores," when Orpheus
begs Hades and Persephone to release his beloved.
Peri wrote a
long preface to Euridice, in which he explained the new musical form he
was working in, which we now call opera. He said that he was trying to
write the way he imagined the Greeks would have, combing music and
speech into the ultimate form of drama. One of the people who came to
Florence to see Euridice was Vincenzo Gonzaga, the Duke of Mantua. And
he probably brought his servant, Claudio Monteverdi. A few years later,
in 1607, Monteverdi premiered his first opera, L'Orfeo, which was also a
retelling of the legend of Orpheus. Monteverdi elevated the opera form
to new heights, and L'Orfeo is considered the first truly great opera,
with all of the dramatic orchestration and lyrics that are so central to
the drama.
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