When the Teatro San Cassiano, the first public opera house, opened in 1637, the Venetian nobility rapidly decamped from the private homes in which performances had previously been given and rented the best box seats for each opera season. The public had to make do with the lower parterre, or ‘pit’. The San Cassiano was built and owned by an aristocratic family, the Trons. The first opera staged there was L’Andromeda ...
Opera first reached Naples when Venetian companies brought their productions to the city after 1648. At that time, the city was recovering from the spate of murders and massacres that had taken place during the revolt against Spanish rule led by the fisherman Tommaso Aniello Masaniello. Masaniello was killed in 1647 by agents working for the Spanish Viceroy Count d’Onate. The introduction of opera in Naples was part of the ...
The writing and performance of Baroque music and opera relied heavily on wealthy patrons, who often employed musicians in their private orchestras and opera houses. Among these patrons were the aristocratic Barberini family, who made their fortune in the Florentine cloth business. Moving to Rome, the Barberini became one of the city’s most powerful family dynasties. Maffeo Barberini (1568–1644), elected Pope Urban VIII in 1623, was an influential opera enthusiast, and ...
During the early eighteenth century a few composers enjoyed regular close collaboration with a favourite librettist, such as Fux with Pariati, or both Vinci and Porpora with the young Metastasio. However, such examples were rare, and instead it was common for a popular libretto created for one major Italian opera centre to be adapted for the needs of other composers working all over Europe. Some texts were consequently used many ...
Literary clubs that were established in seventeenth-century Italy were commonly known as ‘academies’, taking their name from the Athenian garden where Plato was thought to have met with his followers. One of the most important such groups in the early eighteenth century was the Roman ‘Arcadian Academy’. It was formally established in 1690 to honour the late Queen Christina of Sweden, who had been a keen supporter of the literary ...
The extended polemic between Lullistes and Ramistes was provoked by the former group’s disgust for the Italianate elements in Rameau’s Hippolyte et Aricie, and their arising concern that the repertoire and tradition established by Lully was under threat. In contrast, Rameau’s supporters championed his innovative music that included more elaborate solo songs and increasingly complex use of the orchestra. One venomous Lulliste complained that he was racked, flayed and dislocated ...
Opposing tastes in opera have often provoked minor wars. One of them was the guerre des bouffons, which took place in Paris between 1752 and 1754 and ranged the supporters of French serious opera against the advocates of Italian opera buffa. On the French side were King Louis, his influential mistress Madame de Pompadour, his court and the aristocracy. Louis’ Polish queen, Mary, the philosopher Denis Diderot and other French ...
A composer, librettist or other musician who attracted a royal patron acquired personal influence as a result. In Germany, this great good fortune devolved on anyone favoured by King Frederick II (‘The Great’) of Prussia. Frederick was an immensely powerful and able ruler and a rigid disciplinarian and it was inevitable that he approached his great interest, opera seria, as a demanding martinet. His control over operas performed in Berlin ...
The Opéra-Comique company was established in 1714 to offer French opera as an alternative to the Italian opera that dominated the continent at the time. After several misadventures, which included a bankruptcy, the Opéra-Comique settled at the Salle Feydeau in 1805. Here, its essentially radical approach to opera soon became clear. At this time, composers such as Méhul, François-Adrien Boieldieu (1775–1834) and Nicolo Isouard (1775–1818) were pioneering a new genre, the ...
At the start of the Romantic era, French and Italian opera were fighting it out for possession of the opera stage in Paris. However, in attempting to turn back the tide of Italian taste and vocal technique, which had ‘invaded’ the opera in France, the French were at a severe disadvantage. As one contemporary English guidebook to the Paris opera commented: ‘Nothing can be worse than the style of singing ...
The Teatro alla Scala – known outside Italy as La Scala, Milan – is one of the world’s most famous opera houses and originally opened in the sixteenth century as the Salone Margherita in the Palazzo Ducale. Both this theatre and another built on its site, the Teatro Regio Ducale, burned down, in 1708 and 1776 respectively. After an appeal by 96 box holders to the Austrian Empress Maria Theresa, ...
The Académie Royale de Musique (now known as the Paris Académie de Musique or the Paris Opéra), has had many homes. The Académie opened in 1671, and from 1672–87 was largely controlled by Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632–87). In 1763, the building was destroyed by fire, as was the next building in 1781. The Opéra moved to rue de Richelieu as Theatre des Arts in 1794, to the rue Favart in 1821, ...
King Ludwig II of Bavaria (1845–86), a homosexual and a strange, obsessive character, came from a royal family, the Wittelsbachs, which had a strong streak of madness in it. Ludwig virtually fell in love with Wagner and his music, calling the composer his ‘one true friend whom I shall love until death.... If only, I had the opportunity to die for you’ he added. After he succeeded to the Bavarian ...
The city of St Petersburg was founded in 1703 by Peter the Great as his ‘window on the West’ – part of his plan to connect backward Russia to the modern world. A court theatre was included as part of Peter’s modernizing policy, but plays were being performed there for more than 30 years before the first opera was staged. This was La forza dell’amore e dell’odio (‘The Force of ...
In 1876 Pyotr Tchaikovsky began an extraordinary relationship with a wealthy widow, Nadezhda von Meck (1831–94), which was totally platonic and conducted entirely by letter. The two of them never formally met, but they remained devoted to each other for the rest of their lives. Madame von Meck settled on Tchaikovsky an allowance of 6,000 roubles, which gave the composer much-needed financial security. Tchaikovsky dedicated his Fourth Symphony (1878) to ...
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