Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that can help answer the question.
Query: Who wrote the Libretto for The Marriage of Figaro?
In 1786, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed an opera, "Le Nozze di Figaro", based on "The Marriage of Figaro", with a libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte based on the play. Several composers including Paisiello in 1782 wrote operas based on "The Barber of Seville". Rossini's 1816 version is his most successful work and still often performed. In 1966, Darius Milhaud composed an opera, "La mère coupable", based on "The Guilty Mother".
Giacomo Puccini wrote a trio of operas named "Il trittico" comprising "Il tabarro", "Suor Angelica" and "Gianni Schicchi". Florence created the role of Lauretta at the world premiere of Puccini¹s "Gianni Schicchi" on 14 December 1918 at the Metropolitan Opera, New York; she was the first to sing the famous aria "O mio babbino caro" ("O My Beloved Papa"). Puccini could not get to New York for the premiere, so the Met's general manager Giulio Gatti-Casazza sent a telegram to Puccini after the performance of the Trittico:
Ballet was further shaped by the French "ballet de cour", which consisted of social dances performed by the nobility in tandem with music, speech, verse, song, pageant, decor and costume. When Catherine de' Medici, an Italian aristocrat with an interest in the arts, married the French crown heir Henry II, she brought her enthusiasm for dance to France and provided financial support. Catherine's glittering entertainments supported the aims of court politics and usually were organized around mythological themes. The first "ballet de cour" was the "Ballet de Polonais." This Ballet was performed in 1573 on the occasion of the visit of the Polish Ambassador. It was choreographed by Balthasar de Beaaujoyeulx and featured an hour-long dance for sixteen women, each representing a French province. "Ballet Comique de la Reine" (1581), which was also choreographed and directed by Balthasar de Beaujoyeulx, was commissioned by Louise of Lorraine, queen consort of King Henry III, son of Catherine, to celebrate the marriage of Henry's favorite the Duke de Joyeuse to Marguerite de Lorraine, the sister of Queen Louise. The ballet lasted for more than five hours and was danced by twenty four dancers: twelve naiades and twelve pages.
Die Herzogin von Chicago ("The Duchess of Chicago") is an operetta in two acts, a prologue, and an epilogue. The music was composed by Hungarian composer Emmerich Kálmán with a libretto by Julius Brammer and Alfred Grünwald. It premiered in Vienna at the Theater an der Wien, on April 5, 1928 and played for 372 performances. The work was presented in out-of-town tryouts in Newark, New Jersey and Springfield, Massachusetts by the Shuberts in 1929, but it did not make it to Broadway. The piece was forgotten until 1997, when the Lubo Opera Company performed it in concert in New York, after which Light Opera Works of Illinois performed the work in 1998 in a fully staged version with a new translation by Philip Kraus and Gregory Opelka. In 1999, Richard Bonynge made a recording of the work, which revived international interest in it.
During her twelve years as a member of the New York City Ballet, she danced in the company's regular seasons at the City Center of Music & Drama, in New York, and traveled with NYCB on five extended European tours and three national American tours. She rose from corps de ballet to soloist, performed principal roles in Balanchine's one-act "Swan Lake" and in Frederick Ashton's "Illuminations" (as "Profane Love", an erotic role originally choreographed for Melissa Hayden), and danced in the premières of Balanchine ballets still in repertory today. She also danced in ballets by Balanchine that are only occasionally performed now, including his 1948 "Orpheus" (where she was first a Fury then promoted to Bacchante) and, when not dancing, was a page-turner for Balanchine's rehearsal pianist Nicholas Kopeikine. She performed in the 1954 Arnold Schönberg ballet "Opus 34" and, as a soloist, in the 1955 Georges Bizet ballet "Roma". She was one of the principal dancers in the 1956 "Divertimento No. 15", one of Balanchine's rare Mozart works, and in the 1957 Stravinsky-Balanchine collaboration "Agon", she danced the "Gailliard" duet with Barbara Walczak. This was the last new ballet Milberg performed with the company. With NYCB she played the role of Leto in the 1951 revival production of Balanchine's 1928 "Apollo" and one of the three Ladies of the Night in his choreography for "NBC Opera Theatre"'s production of "The Magic Flute", televised in 1956. With Balanchine and NYCB principal Francisco Moncion, Milberg was at Balanchine's invitation a co-choreographer of NYCB's 1955 production of Bizet's "Jeux d'Enfants".
The Merry Wives of Windsor () is a 1950 East German musical comedy film directed by Georg Wildhagen. It was based on William Shakespeare's play by the same name.
The tragedy of Romeo and Juliet ultimately sprang from Ovid's story. Here the star-crossed lovers cannot be together because Juliet has been engaged by her parents to another man and the two families hold an ancient grudge. As in Pyramus and Thisbe, the mistaken belief in one lover's death leads to consecutive suicides. The earliest version of Romeo and Juliet was published in 1476 by Masuccio Salernitano, while it mostly obtained its present form when written down in 1524 by Luigi da Porto. Salernitano and Da Porto both are thought to have been inspired by Ovid and Boccaccio's writing. Shakespeare's most famous 1590s adaptation is a dramatization of Arthur Brooke's 1562 poem "The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet", itself a translation of a French translation of Da Porto's novella.
The world's first opera was "Dafne" by Jacopo Peri, which appeared in Florence in 1598. Three decades later Heinrich Schütz set the same libretto in a translation by the poet Martin Opitz, thus creating the first ever German-language opera. The music to Schütz's "Dafne" is now lost and details of the performance are sketchy, but it is known to have been written to celebrate the marriage of Landgrave Georg II of Hessen-Darmstadt to Princess Sophia Eleonora of Saxony in Torgau in 1627. As in Italy, the first patrons of opera in Germany and Austria were royalty and the nobility, and they tended to favour composers and singers from south of the Alps. Antonio Cesti was particularly successful, providing the huge operatic extravaganza "Il pomo d'oro" for the imperial court in Vienna in 1668. Opera in Italian would continue to exercise a considerable sway over German-speaking lands throughout the Baroque and Classical periods. Nevertheless, native forms were developing too. In Nuremberg in 1644, Sigmund Staden produced the "spiritual pastorale", "Seelewig", which foreshadows the "Singspiel", a genre of German-language opera in which arias alternate with spoken dialogue. "Seelewig" was a moral allegory inspired by the example of contemporary school dramas and is the first German opera whose music has survived.
"Ballet des Polonais" was one of the first works to be recognized as a true court ballet. The spectacle was commissioned by Catherine de’ Medici in 1573 to celebrate the election of her second son, Henry of Anjou, as King of Poland. Performed at the Tuileries Palace and organized by the Italian dancing master, Balthasar de Beaujoyeulx, the hour-long ballet consisted of sixteen amateur French ladies representing the sixteen provinces of France. Describing it as the most beautiful ballet ever made on earth, the court observer Brantome recounted that they “danced their ballet so curiously designed, with so many turns, swerves, and sinuosities, interlacings and minglings, confrontations and withdrawals, that [it was surprising that] no lady ever failed to be at her appointed turn or place.” Although its combination of verse, song and dance had been used before, the intricate figure dancing involved in the "Ballet des Polonais" marked the beginning of the French style that would become the dominant continental school over the next century.
Rimsky-Korsakov and Belsky first became interested in writing an opera on the Kitezh legend during the winter of 1898-1899, while they were working on the libretto to "The Tale of Tsar Saltan". The idea of combining the legend of St. Fevroniya into the story was part of the project from the beginning. The project remained in the minds of both composer and the librettist, but would have to wait until 1903 until serious work could begin. During the period between 1898 and the beginning of 1903, the composer was occupied with the composition of the operas "The Tale of Tsar Saltan", "Servilia", "Kashchey the Immortal" and "Pan Voyevoda". In his "My Musical Life", Rimsky-Korsakov mentions "In the midst of work on "Pan Voyevoda" Belsky and I pondered intensively the subject of "The Tale of the Invisible City of Kityezh and of the Maiden Fyevroniya"." Rimsky-Korsakov had written a rough draft of the first act by the end of summer, and Belsky had completed the libretto by spring. By summer of 1904, Rimsky-Korsakov had finished the composition of the second tableau of Act III and was orchestrating the opera. During the summer of 1905, while writing his "Principles of Orchestration", Rimsky-Korsakov also polished the orchestral score to "Kitezh", and made a clean final copy to send to the printers.
For the fourth season in 1723, for which his first opera was "Ottone", Handel assembled a cast of star singers including the internationally famous castrato, Senesino, beginning a long and sometimes stormy association with Handel that included creating seventeen leading roles in his operas for London, at a vast salary. The star soprano Margherita Durastanti, who had sung in many of Handel's early works in Italy as well as his previous operas in London, joined the cast, as did English soprano Anastasia Robinson, who was unhappy about much of the music Handel had written for her to sing in "Ottone", feeling that she could not portray, as he desired, scorn and anger, and appealed in a letter to one of the patrons of the Royal Academy to intervene with Handel to write gentler music for her to suit her abilities. Also in the cast was another internationally renowned castrato, Gaetano Berenstadt, in the first of three roles he created in Handel operas.
Romeo and Juliet is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare early in his career about two young star-crossed lovers whose deaths ultimately reconcile their feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular plays during his lifetime and along with "Hamlet", is one of his most frequently performed plays. Today, the title characters are regarded as archetypal young lovers.
The Noblewoman Vera Sheloga (, "Boyarïnya Vera Sheloga") is an opera in one act by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Rimsky-Korsakov wrote the libretto, which he based on the first act of the play "The Maid of Pskov" by Lev Alexandrovich Mey. The opera was composed in 1898 from material omitted from the second version of Rimsky-Korsakov's setting of the play as an opera. The first and third versions of the opera "The Maid of Pskov" omit the first act of the play.
In 1733, a second opera company, The Opera of the Nobility was set up to rival Handel's, employing several of Handel's former star singers including the celebrated castrato Senesino. Handel's lease on the King's Theatre in the Haymarket expired at the end of the 1733 - 34 season, and the Opera of the Nobility moved into what had been Handel's artistic home for years. In addition to Senesino, the rival opera company had also hired the renowned castrato Farinelli, who created a sensation. These were considered serious setbacks for Handel as the French author Antoine François Prévost wrote in 1734:He has so suffered great losses and written so many wonderful operas, which proved to be utter failures, that he will be forced to leave London and return to his home country but, undeterred, Handel moved into a new theatre, the Theatre Royal Covent Garden, built by John Rich largely on the proceeds of the extremely successful "The Beggar's Opera" which had parodied Italian opera of the kind Handel supplied for London. Rich had equipped his new theatre with the latest technology in stage machinery and also employed a troupe of dancers, which had not been the case at the King's Theatre in the Haymarket. Handel opened his first season at Covent Garden with a re-working of his earlier "Il Pastor Fido" with an entirely new prologue, "Terpsichore", featuring the internationally famous French dancer Marie Sallé. The pasticcio "Oreste", which followed, also features dances unlike the operas Handel had previously composed for London.
Most critics consider "Merry Wives" to be one of Shakespeare's weakest plays, and the Falstaff of "Merry Wives" to be much inferior to the Falstaff of the two "Henry IV" plays. That Shakespeare would so stumble with one of his greatest creations is puzzling and a satisfactory reason for this remains to be found. The most obvious explanation is that it was written very quickly. Leslie Hotson wrote that "it is certain that the play bears the earmarks of hasty writing."
Mary Tudor is a 1935 history play by the British writer Wilfrid Grantham. It portrays the reign of the Tudor Queen Mary I of England during the sixteenth century. It's West End run at the Playhouse Theatre lasted for 143 performances from 12 December 1935 to 18 April 1936. Flora Robson as Mary and Marius Goring as her husband Philip of Spain were particularly praised for their performances. The cast also included Torin Thatcher, Annie Esmond and Joyce Bland.
The Merry Wives of Windsor (German:Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor) is a 1918 German silent comedy film directed by William Wauer. It is an adaptation of William Shakespeare's "The Merry Wives of Windsor".
"Verismo" is a style of Italian opera that began in 1890 with the first performance of Mascagni's "Cavalleria rusticana", peaked in the early 1900s, and lingered into the 1920s. The style is distinguished by realistic – sometimes sordid or violent – depictions of everyday life, especially the life of the contemporary lower classes. It by and large rejects the historical or mythical subjects associated with Romanticism. "Cavalleria rusticana", "Pagliacci", and "Andrea Chénier" are uniformly considered to be "verismo" operas. Puccini's career as a composer is almost entirely coincident in time with the "verismo" movement. Only his "Le Villi" and "Edgar" preceded "Cavalleria rusticana". Some view Puccini as essentially a "verismo" composer, while others, although acknowledging that he took part in the movement to some degree, do not view him as a "pure" "verismo" composer. In addition, critics differ as to the degree to which particular operas by Puccini are, or are not, properly described as "verismo" operas. Two of Puccini's operas, "Tosca" and "Il tabarro," are universally considered to be "verismo" operas. Puccini scholar Mosco Carner places only two of Puccini's operas other than "Tosca" and "Il tabarro" within the "verismo" school: "Madama Butterfly", and "La fanciulla del West." Because only three "verismo" works by Puccini continue to appear regularly on stage (the aforementioned "Cavalleria rusticana", "Pagliacci", and "Andrea Chénier"), Puccini's contribution has had lasting significance to the genre.
Morlacchi was quickly successful as an opera composer. His first operatic works were written in 1807, and were a "farce" and a comic opera. His first truly effective theatre work was the "opera seria" "Corradino" (Parma, 1808), and lead to commissions from opera houses in Rome and Milan. In 1810 he was brought to Dresden by contralto Marietta Marcolini, and in 1811 Morlacchi was made Kapellmeister of the Italian Opera in Dresden. While in Dresden, he had to work to establish himself in the eyes of critics. By this time, German opera was well established, and Morlacchi and his compositions were seen to represent the old order both of composers and the aristocracy. In 1815 Morlacchi set "Il barbiere di Siviglia" with a libretto of Giuseppe Petrosellini and one year later Rossini presented his own with a newer libretto by Cesare Sterbini.
The Cobhams appear to have intervened while Shakespeare was in the process of writing either "The Merry Wives of Windsor" or the second part of "Henry IV". The first part of "Henry IV" was probably written and performed in 1596, and the name Oldcastle had almost certainly been allowed by Master of the Revels Edmund Tilney. William Brooke, 10th Baron Cobham may have become aware of the offensive representation after a public performance; he may also have learned of it while it was being prepared for a court performance (Cobham was at that time Lord Chamberlain). As father-in-law to the newly widowed Robert Cecil, Cobham certainly possessed the influence at court to get his complaint heard quickly. Shakespeare may have included a sly retaliation against the complaint in his play "The Merry Wives of Windsor" (published after the Henry IV series). In the play, the paranoid, jealous Master Ford uses the alias "Brook" to fool Falstaff, perhaps in reference to William Brooke. At any rate, the name is Falstaff in the "Henry IV, Part 1" quarto, of 1598, and the epilogue to the second part, published in 1600, contains this clarification:
Not to be confused with Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Molière (1622-73), the famous playwright of King Louis’ reign responsible for ballets such as "Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme" (1670), the Molière mentioned in the text is accompanied by “La Jeune” translated into English as “the young” or “the younger.” Given Poquelin was never known by such a title, it indicates “Molière” is rather the courtly spelling of “Mollier” as in Louis de Mollier (1615-88) an acclaimed dancer and musician of the court. Of course, Louis de Mollier is older than Jean-Baptiste Poquelin Molière, however historical records (such as pg.103 of the "Mercure Galant", July 1677) show Louis de Mollier was commonly known as “le petit Molière,” likely due to his waning popularity in comparison Poquelin.[8] It is thus feasible that “Molière La Jeune” is equivalent to “Molière le petit.”
The opera was the first of three collaborations between Mozart and Da Ponte; their later collaborations were "Don Giovanni" and "Così fan tutte". It was Mozart who originally selected Beaumarchais's play and brought it to Da Ponte, who turned it into a libretto in six weeks, rewriting it in poetic Italian and removing all of the original's political references. In particular, Da Ponte replaced Figaro's climactic speech against inherited nobility with an equally angry aria against unfaithful wives. Contrary to the popular myth, the libretto was approved by the Emperor before any music was written by Mozart.
Following the success of his libretto for "The Marriage of Figaro", Da Ponte was asked by Storace to provide for him a libretto based on Shakespeare. Da Ponte compressed Shakespeare's plot into two acts, but retained nearly all the key elements. "Gli equivoci" was the second of Storace's operas to be performed at the Burgtheater.
"Figaro Gets a Divorce" is conceived as a sequel to Mozart's 1786 opera "Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro)" based on the 1778 play "La Folle Journée, ou Le Mariage de Figaro", by Pierre Beaumarchais. This had been created by Beaumarchais as a sequel to his play "Le Barbier de Séville". The latter was also set as the opera "The Barber of Seville" by Rossini in 1816 (itself preceded by other versions, including a 1782 setting by Giovanni Paisiello). Pountney, who in his capacity as Chief Executive and Artistic Director of the Welsh National Opera commissioned the composition, was inspired in his libretto by two different theatrical follow-ups to these two plays, Beaumarchais's own "La Mère coupable (The Guilty Mother)", and Ödön von Horváth's 1936 play, "Figaro läßt sich scheiden (Figaro Gets a Divorce)." Both of these plays have previous operatic settings, the former by Darius Milhaud (1966), Inger Wikström ("Den brottsliga modern", 2006), and Thierry Pécou (2010), the latter by Giselher Klebe (1963). The opera takes the characters into the period of the French Revolution.
Marcos António da Fonseca Portugal was born in Lisbon. He studied music at the Patriarchal Seminary in Lisbon where, as a 14-year-old student, he wrote his first work, a "Miserere". He later worked as composer and organist at the Patriarchal See, and was "maestro" at the Theatre of Salitre in Lisbon from c. 1784. He lived in Italy from late 1792 to 1800, possibly funded by the Prince Regent D. João, the later King John VI of Portugal. He wrote 21 operas for various Italian theatres. The first, "I due gobbi" (also known as "Confusioni della Somiglianza"), premiered in Florence in the spring of 1793. His version of "The Marriage of Figaro", titled "La pazza giornata, ovvero Il matrimonio di Figaro" (The Crazy Day, or The Marriage of Figaro), to a libretto by Gaetano Rossi, premiered in Venice in 1799. Like most theatre composers of the time, Portugal set several librettos that had proven successful for earlier operas, such as Metastasio's "Demofoonte" (premièred at La Scala, Milan, in 1794) and "Artaserse"; he set many stories that had been used before, including Serse, Alceste, Adrasto, Semiramide and Sofonisba.
Marcos Portugal returned to Portugal in 1800. He became "maestro" at the São Carlos National Theatre in Lisbon and was appointed music master at the Patriarchal Seminary in Lisbon. He continued to write operas, mainly "opere serie", and a large number of religious works, until the Prince Regent summoned him to the Portuguese colony of Brazil in 1811. Upon arriving, Portugal was appointed music master to the sons and daughters of the Prince Regent and became the official Royal Composer.