Search Results

Advanced search parameters have been applied.

Achille et Polixene, tragédie dont le prologue & les quatre derniers actes

Description: Achille et Polixene, Jean-Baptiste Lully's last opera, premiered on 7 November 1687, eight months after Lully's death on March 22 of that year. Since the composer had only finished the overture and first act, the score was completed by Pascal Colasse, Lully's secretary and student, to a text by Jean Galbert de Campistron based on events in Virgil's Aeneid.
Date: 1687
Creator: Collasse, Pascal, 1649-1709; Lully, Jean Baptiste, 1632-1687 & Campistron, Jean Galbert de, 1656-1723
Partner: UNT Music Library

Alceste

Description: This is a ca. 1774 score of the opera "Alceste" by Anton Schweitzer based on a libretto by Christoph Wieland. The work premiered in Weimar in 1773. The plot was based on the Greek legend of Alcestis, on the subject of female virtue and conjugal love. The library's copy contains an engraved illustration that portrays a domestic scene. The score does not indicate the musical instruments and the music, which is notated in two, three or four staves, contains the German text underlaid with indicat… more
Date: 1774
Creator: Schweitzer, Anton, 1735-1787.
Partner: UNT Music Library

Alceste: tragedie opera en trois actes

Description: According to Grove Music, "when Admetus, King of Pherae in Thessaly, is ill and about to die an oracle announces that he will be saved if someone else is willing to die in his stead. His wife Alcestis displays her conjugal devotion by offering herself; she dies and Admetus recovers. Under the influence of tragédie lyrique, Calzabigi enriched his libretto with choruses, ballets and opportunities for impressive scenery."
Date: 1776
Creator: Gluck, Christoph Willibald, Ritter von, 1714-1787; Calzabigi, Ranieri de, 1714-1795 & Du Roullet, François Louis Gaud Lebland, marquis, 1716-1786
Partner: UNT Music Library

Armide

Description: Armide, which premiered at the Paris Opéra February 15, 1686, was the last tragédie lyrique on which Jean-Baptiste Lully collaborated with his favorite librettist, Philippe Quinault. Quinault retired from the stage after Armide, and Lully died a year later on March 22, 1687. From its first performance, Armide was considered their masterpiece. Armide is unusual among Lully and Quinault's tragédies lyriques in that it concentrates on the psychological development of a single character; the refl… more
Date: 1686~
Creator: Lully, Jean Baptiste, 1632-1687 & Quinault, Philippe, 1635-1688
Partner: UNT Music Library

Armide : tragedie mise en musique

Description: Armide, which premiered at the Paris Opéra February 15, 1686, was the last tragédie lyrique on which Jean-Baptiste Lully collaborated with his favorite librettist, Philippe Quinault. Quinault retired from the stage after Armide, and Lully died a year later on March 22, 1687. From its first performance, Armide was considered their masterpiece. Armide is unusual among Lully and Quinault's tragédies lyriques in that it concentrates on the psychological development of a single character; the refl… more
Date: 1686
Creator: Lully, Jean Baptiste, 1632-1687 & Quinault, Philippe, 1635-1688
Partner: UNT Music Library

Atys : tragedie

Description: Atys, which premiered on 10 January 1676, is the first of the tragédies lyriques of Jean-Baptiste Lully and Philippe Quinault to conclude with a tragic ending. Joyce Newman, in Jean-Baptiste de Lully and his Tragédie Lyriques, summarizes the message of the story in this way: In [Atys], Quinault shows how actions which are not in accord with the noble ideal will bring defeat and punishment. Not only is love in opposition to glory in this opera, but also it is shown that if love is placed more h… more
Date: 1708
Creator: Lully, Jean Baptiste, 1632-1687
Partner: UNT Music Library

Atys : tragédie lyrique en trois actes

Description: The story of Atys was first known operatically through Lully’s opera that premiered in 1676 at the court of St Germain-en-Laye. Marmontel adapted Quinault’s libretto and modified it by removing the prologue and divertissements. He also altered the plot; in lieu of Ovid’s metamorphic ending (to which Quinault had adhered), Atys commits suicide.
Date: 1780
Creator: Piccinni, Niccolò, 1728-1800; Quinault, Philippe, 1635-1688 & Marmontel, Jean François, 1723-1799
Partner: UNT Music Library

Atys : tragédie lyrique en trois actes

Description: The story of Atys was first known operatically through Lully’s opera that premiered in 1676 at the court of St Germain-en-Laye. Marmontel adapted Quinault’s libretto and modified it by removing the prologue and divertissements. He also altered the plot; in lieu of Ovid’s metamorphic ending (to which Quinault had adhered), Atys commits suicide.
Date: 1781
Creator: Piccinni, Niccolò, 1728-1800; Quinault, Philippe, 1635-1688 & Marmontel, Jean François, 1723-1799
Partner: UNT Music Library

Barbe bleue : comédie en prose et en trois actes

Description: Although the story of Bluebeard was familiar to French readers from Charles Perrault’s 1698 collection of children’s tales, transferring it to the operatic stage was problematic due in large part to the gruesome nature of the plot. Other violent works had appeared in Paris, but in this instance, the drama was to be performed at the Comédie-Italienne, which typically featured lighter plots than that of Raoul and Isaure. Nevertheless, the opera had a successful run, receiving over a hundred per… more
Date: 1789
Creator: Grétry, André Ernest Modeste, 1741-1813 & Sedaine, 1719-1797
Partner: UNT Music Library

Barbier de Seville [Il barbiere di Siviglia] Opéra comique en quatre actes

Description: Paisiello’s Il barbiere di Siviglia was based on the first play, Le barbier de Séville, ou La precaution inutile (1772), of Beaumarchais’s famous trilogy. The controversial commentary on aristocracy caused the play to be banned from the stage for three years. The ban was lifted in 1775 and the work premiered that same year; Beaumarchais finally saw the work performed in 1780 when he was employed by Catherine II in St. Petersburg. Although Rossini’s later opera (of 1816) is more familiar tod… more
Date: 1789
Creator: Paisiello, Giovanni, 1740-1816; Beaumarchais, Pierre Augustin Caron de, 1732-1799 & Framery, Nicolas Etienne, 1745-1810
Partner: UNT Music Library

Bellérophon; tragedie mise en musique

Description: Although not the first of the Jean-Baptiste Lully's tragédies lyriques, Bellérophon was the first of Lully's opera scores to appear in print. The Ballard first edition was printed in 1679 to accompany the premiere, on January 31 of that year, at the Palais Royale. Bellérophon was the second of two operas (the first was Psyché) created by Lully without librettist Philippe Quinault after the scandal associated with Isis that led to Quinault's temporary dismissal as royal librettist. After an ex… more
Date: 1679
Creator: Lully, Jean Baptiste, 1632-1687; Corneille, Pierre, 1606-1684; Fontenelle, M. de (Bernard Le Bovier), 1657-1757 & Boileau Despréaux, Nicolas, 1636-1711
Partner: UNT Music Library

Buona figliuola : opera comica

Description: Goldoni turned to Samuel Richardson’s novel Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740) as the inspiration for his La buona figliuola. In 1750, he wrote the play Pamela nubile and then turned it into a libretto for Duni. Although Duni’s La buona figliuola (1756) was a failure, Piccinni’s setting in 1760 was a huge success. The hilarious comedy coupled with Piccinni’s sentimental treatment of Cecchina contributed to the popularity of the opera, which still receives performances to this day. Typical of… more
Date: 1767
Creator: Piccinni, Niccolò, 1728-1800; Goldoni, Carlo, 1707-1793 & Richardson, Samuel, 1689-1761
Partner: UNT Music Library

Colinette à la cour ou La double épreuve : comédie lyrique en trois actes

Description: A comparison of the scores for Colinette à la cour and Barbe-bleue illustrates the primary distinguishing factor between the genres of comédie lyrique and opera comique: the method of dialogue delivery. In Paris, the issue of genre was tied to the performance venue of a particular opera, due to government regulations. Although comic opera was traditionally presented with spoken dialogue, as in opera comique, when Grétry composed for the Opéra, where recitative was expected, he merged comic su… more
Date: 1782
Creator: Grétry, André Ernest Modeste, 1741-1813 & Lourdet de Santerre, Jean Baptiste, 1732-1815
Partner: UNT Music Library

Colonie : opéra comique en deux actes

Description: La colonie is Nicolas Etienne Framery’s French parody of Sacchini’s Italian L’isola d’amore, which was premiered during the 1766 Roman carnival. However, Framery chose music in a pastiche-like fashion from various Sacchini operas, without actually using any arias from L’isola d’amore. Although the operas that Sacchini specifically composed for Paris faced resistance from opponents of foreign composers, La colonie received praise from critics. The 1775 French premiere at the Comédie-Italienne… more
Date: 1776
Creator: Sacchini, Antonio, 1730-1786 & Framery, Nicolas Etienne, 1745-1810
Partner: UNT Music Library

Daisy: Opera in Two Acts

Description: This is the original conductor's score for the opera "Daisy" including the vocal parts as well as instrumental lines for flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horns, trumpets, bass trombone, timpani and percussion, harp and piano, violin, viola, cello, and string bass. The introductory pages at the start of the score include acknowledgements and synopsis by Professor Kenneth L. Ballenger, the cast of characters and scene list (5 scenes). There is an index to the scenes for each act following their … more
Access: Restricted to UNT Community Members. Login required if off-campus.
Date: September 15, 1973
Creator: Smith, Julia, 1905-1989
Partner: UNT Music Library

Les Danaïdes, tragédie lirique en cinq actes

Description: Antonio Salieri began work on Les Danaïdes upon the recommendation of Gluck, whose health prevented him from fulfilling a commission for the work. Although Salieri was living in Vienna, the tragedie-lyrique was written for the Opéra in Paris, with a libretto by François Louis Gand Leblanc Roullet and Ludwig Theodor Tschudi based on Calzabigi’s Italian libretto.
Date: 1784
Creator: Salieri, Antonio, 1750-1825; Du Roullet, François Louis Gaud Lebland, marquis, 1716-1786 & Tschudi, Jean-Baptiste-Louis-Théodore, baron de, 1734-1784
Partner: UNT Music Library

Dardanus : nouvelle tragédie

Description: Dardanus went through a number of revisions from the time of its premiere in 1739 until its final eighteenth-century run at the Opéra in 1771. The version in the Virtual Rare Book Room was first performed in 1744; the last three acts exhibit extensive plot changes from the first edition. The final version in 1760 received the most positive acclaim, especially compared to the criticisms that were made about the nonsensical plot of the first version. By this point, however, the polemic between… more
Date: 1744
Creator: Rameau, Jean Philippe, 1683-1764 & La Bruère, Le Clerc de, 1714-1754
Partner: UNT Music Library

Dardanus : tragédie lyrique en quatre actes

Description: Like Renaud, Sacchini’s second French opera, Dardanus, faced problems due in large part to the composer’s Italian heritage. The opera is based on Rameau’s Dardanus, which had been a topic of earlier dispute between the Lullistes and the Ramistes. After an initially disappointing reception, Dardanus was reduced from four acts to three. In its first form, the opera received only six performances, but the three-act version was performed more than thirty times during the eighteenth century. Da… more
Date: 1784
Creator: Sacchini, Antonio, 1730-1786; Guillard, Nicolas François, 1752-1814 & La Bruère, Le Clerc de, 1714-1754
Partner: UNT Music Library

Les deux chasseurs et la laitière; comédie en un acte

Description: Undated score of Egidio Duni's opera Les deux chaussures et la laitière. Duni’s French style was shaped by the developments of the War of the Buffoons, which pitted French tragic opera against Italian comic opera. The newly emergent opéra comique genre, for which Duni is still considered to be one of the major contributors, combined elements of both styles. His significance in the development of opéra comique is evident in the long-term success of Les deux chasseurs et la laitière, which was… more
Date: 1763
Creator: Duni, Egidio, 1708-1775 & Anseaume, M. (Louis), 1721-1784
Partner: UNT Music Library

Les deux chasseurs et la laitière; comédie en un acte

Description: Duni’s French style was shaped by the developments of the War of the Buffoons, which pitted French tragic opera against Italian comic opera. The newly emergent opéra comique genre, for which Duni is still considered to be one of the major contributors, combined elements of both styles. His significance in the development of opéra comique is evident in the long-term success of Les deux chasseurs et la laitière, which was performed at the Comédie-Italien until 1792, almost twenty years after th… more
Date: 1763
Creator: Duni, Egidio, 1708-1775 & Anseaume, M. (Louis), 1721-1784
Partner: UNT Music Library

Les deux comtesses : opera bouffon imité de l'Italien et parodié sous la musique

Description: Paisiello’s comic operas were some of the most successful of the time. In point of fact, his operas enjoyed 251 performances in Vienna between 1783 and 1792, compared to 63 performances of Mozart’s operas. The intermezzo Le due comtesse, which first appeared in Rome (with an all-male cast) on 3 January 1776, was translated to French and parodied by Nicolas Etienne Framery, who also adapted Paisiello’s Il barbiere di Siviglia for the Parisian stage.
Date: 178X
Creator: Paisiello, Giovanni, 1740-1816 & Framery, Nicolas Etienne, 1745-1810
Partner: UNT Music Library

Le devin du village

Description: As with many French operas, Rousseau’s Le devin du village was first staged for the court, appearing at Fountainebleau on 18 October 1752. The work was then performed at the Paris Opéra on 1 March 1753. The historical importance of this short intermè is closely tied to its role in the famous Querelle de bouffons, a debate about the merits of French serious opera in comparison to Italian comic opera (especially Pergolesi’s La serva padrona).
Date: 1785
Creator: Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 1712-1778
Partner: UNT Music Library
Back to Top of Screen