‎”Das Lied von der Erde” (“The Song of the Earth”) is a large-scale work for two vocal soloists and orchestra by the Austrian composer Gustav Mahler. Laid out in six separate movements, each of them an independent song, the work is described on the title-page as Eine Symphonie für eine Tenor- und eine Alt- (oder Bariton-) Stimme und Orchester (nach Hans Bethges “Die chinesische Flöte”) – “A Symphony for Tenor and Alto (or Baritone) Voice and Orchestra (after Hans Bethge’s ‘The Chinese Flute’”). Bethge’s text was published in the autumn of 1907. Mahler’s use of ‘Chinese’ motifs in the music is unique in his output. Composed in the years 1908–1909, it followed the Eighth Symphony, but is not numbered as the Ninth, which is a different work. Following the most painful period (1907) in his life, Mahler touches on issues of living, parting and salvation with this work. It lasts approximately 65 minutes in performance.
Mahler conceived the work in 1908. This followed closely on the publication of Hans Bethge’s volume of ancient Chinese poetry rendered into German, Die Chinesische Flöte (“The Chinese Flute”), based on several intermediate works (see Text). Mahler was very taken by the vision of earthly beauty and transience expressed in these verses and chose seven (two of them used in the finale) to set to music. Mahler himself wrote: “I think it is probably the most personal composition I have created thus far.” Bruno Walter called it “the most personal utterance among Mahler’s creations, and perhaps in all music.”
According to the philosopher Theodor W. Adorno, in Chinese poetry Mahler found what he had formerly sought in the genre of German folk song: a mask or costume for the sense of rootlessness or “otherness” attending his identity as a Jew. This theme, and its influence upon Mahler’s tonality, has been further explored by John Sheinbaum. It is also claimed that Mahler found in these poems an echo of his own increasing awareness of mortality.
Mahler’s experiences during the preceding summer (1907) are likened to the three hammer blows of his Sixth Symphony (written in 1903–1904). He was pushed to resign his post as Director of the Vienna Court Opera, through political intrigue partly involving anti-semitism. His eldest daughter Maria died from scarlet fever and diphtheria. In addition, Mahler himself was diagnosed with a congenital heart defect. “With one stroke,” he wrote to his friend Bruno Walter, “I have lost everything I have gained in terms of who I thought I was, and have to learn my first steps again like a newborn”.
Mahler had already included movements for voice and orchestra in his Second, Third, Fourth and Eighth Symphonies. However, Das Lied von der Erde is the first work giving a complete integration of song cycle and symphony. The form was afterwards imitated by other composers, notably by Shostakovich and Zemlinsky. This new form has been termed a “song-symphony”, a hybrid of the two forms that had occupied most of Mahler’s creative life.
Mahler was aware of the so-called “curse of the Ninth”, the fact that no major composer since Beethoven had successfully completed more than nine symphonies before dying. He had already written eight symphonies before composing Das Lied von Der Erde, which he subtitled A Symphony for Tenor, Contralto and Large Orchestra, but left unnumbered as a symphony. His next (instrumental) symphony was numbered his Ninth. That was indeed the last he fully completed, for only the first movement of the Tenth had been orchestrated at the time of his death.
The original public performance was given on 20 November 1911 in the Tonhalle in Munich, with Bruno Walter conducting and sung by Sara Cahier and William Miller. One of the earliest in London (possibly the first) was in January 1913 at the Queen’s Hall, under Henry Wood, where it was sung by Gervase Elwes and Doris Woodall: Wood thought it ‘excessively modern but very beautiful’.
Four of the Chinese poems used by Mahler (“Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde”, “Von der Jugend”, “Von der Schönheit” and “Der Trunkene im Frühling”) are by Li Bai, the famous Tang dynasty wandering poet; the German text used by Mahler was derived from Hans Bethge’s translations in his book Die chinesische Flöte (1907). These ‘translations’ were in fact loose imitations of translations in Hans Heilman’s 1907 book Chinesische Lyrik, and drawing also upon Heilman’s two sources in French translations from the Chinese: these were Poésies de l’époque des Thang by Marie-Jean-Léon, Marquis d’Hervey de Saint Denys, and the Livre de Jade by Judith Gautier (an intimate friend of Richard Wagner). “Der Einsame im Herbst” is by Qian Qi and “Der Abschied” combines poems by Mong Hao-Ran and Wang Wei, plus several additional lines by Mahler himself.
In 2005 a Cantonese version was prepared by Daniel Ng. The world premiere of this version was given by the Singapore Symphony Orchestra on 22 July 2005 with mezzo Ning Liang and tenor Warren Mok under the direction of Lan Shui.

‎”Der Abschied”
The final movement, “The Farewell”, is nearly as long as the previous five movements combined. Its text is drawn from two different poems, both involving the theme of leave-taking.
“The sun sinks beyond the hills, evening descends into the valleys with its cooling shade. See, like a silver boat the moon sails up into the lake of the sky. I sense a soft wind blowing beyond the dark fir-trees. The brook sings melodiously through the dark. The flowers grow pale in the twilight. The earth breathes a deep draught of rest and sleep. All longing now will dream: tired people go homewards, so that they can learn forgotten joy and youth again in sleep! Birds sit motionless on their branches. The world is slumbering! It grows cool in the shade of my fir-trees. I stand and await my friend, I wait for him for our last farewell. O friend, I long to share the beauty of this evening at your side. Where do you linger? Long you leave me alone! I wander here and there with my lyre on soft grassy paths. O Beauty! O endless love-life-drunken world!
He dismounted from the horse and handed to him the drink of farewell. He asked him where he was bound and why it must be so. He spoke, and his voice was muffled: ‘You, my friend, Fortune was not kind to me in this world! Where do I go? I am departing, I wander in the mountains. I am seeking rest for my lonely heart. I am making my way to my home, my abode. I shall never stray far away. My heart is still and awaits its moment.’
The beloved Earth blooms forth everywhere in Spring, and becomes green anew! Everywhere and endlessly blue shines the horizon! Endless… endless…”
(The last lines were added by Mahler himself.) The singer repeats the final word like a mantra, accompanied by a sparse mix of strings, mandolin, harps, and celesta, until the music fades into silence, the final chord “imprinted on the atmosphere” as Benjamin Britten put it.
The last movement is very difficult to conduct because of its cadenza writing for voice and solo instruments, which often flows over the barlines, “Ohne Rücksicht auf das Tempo” (Without regard for the tempo) according to Mahler’s own direction. Bruno Walter related[cite this quote] that Mahler showed him the score of this movement and asked, “Do you know how to conduct this? Because I certainly don’t.” Mahler also hesitated to put the piece before the public because of its relentless negativity, unusual even for him. “Won’t people go home and shoot themselves?” he asked.

This is an “ancient” recording. Maybe 1910-11. Mattia Battistini was the last baritone in possession of the perfect nineteenth-century voice color and technique. A perfect exemple of how had to be the “real” baritone voice: smooth, light, extended and velvet. Not too big or dark.
Mattia Battistini (27 February 1856 – 7 November 1928) was an Italian operatic baritone. He became internationally famous due to the beauty of his voice and the virtuosity of his singing technique, and he earned the sobriquet “King of Baritones”.
Battistini was born in Rome and brought up largely at Collebaccaro di Contigliano, a village near Rieti, where his parents had an estate. The Battistinis were ancestrally from Rieti, the ancient capital of the Sabines, and Mattia Battistini always looked like an ancient Roman, with his imposing physique, high forehead and monumental nose.
They were a well-to-do family, long established in the field of medicine. His grandfather, Giovanni, and uncle, Raffaele, were personal physicians to the Pope and his knighted father, Cavaliere Luigi Battistini, was a professor of anatomy at the University of Rome. They preferred the future baritone to take up a career in medicine or law, and sent him to old and exclusive preparatory schools (the Collegio Bandinelli and later the Istituto dell’ Apollinare) where he gained a classical education.
From the beginning, Battistini had shown great musical talent, so, to the dismay of his mother, née Elena Tommasi, he dropped out of law school to study singing, first with Emilio Terziani and then with the renowned vocal pedagogue Venceslao Persichini (who also taught Francesco Marconi, Antonio Magini-Coletti, Titta Ruffo and Giuseppe De Luca). Battistini worked, too, with the top-class conductor Luigi Mancinelli and the composer Augusto Rotoli, and he consulted an illustrious baritone of the previous generation, Antonio Cotogni, in an effort to refine his technique.
Most of the following information about Mattia Battistini’s performance venues, dates and roles is drawn from The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Opera (second edition, 1980), edited by Harold Rosenthal and John Warrack, and The Record of Singing (Volume One, 1977), by Michael Scott.
A 22-year-old Battistini made his operatic début at the Teatro Argentina, Rome, as Alfonso in Donizetti’s La favorita on 11 December 1878. However, this date is erroneously given by many reference books and articles as correct, but reveals careless and repeated copying from faulty sources. It has been proven by the painstaking research of Jacques Chuilon that the date should most likely be replaced by Saturday, 9 November 1878. For full argumentation please see page 7 of the definitive Battistini biography Mattia Battistini, King of Baritones and Baritone of Kings, 2009 (The Scarecrow Press, Lanham, Md, USA), translation by E. Thomas Glasow; also to be found on page 17 of the author’s original French edition Battistini, le dernier divo, 1996 (Editions Romillat, Paris).
During the first three years of his professional career he toured Italy, honing his voice and gaining invaluable experience by singing principal rôles in such varied operas as La forza del destino, Il trovatore, Rigoletto, Il Guarany, Gli Ugonotti, Dinorah, L’Africana, I Puritani, Lucia di Lammermoor, Aïda, and Ernani. He participated, too, in several operatic premières. In 1881 he went to Buenos Aires for the first time, touring South America for more than 12 months. On his return trip, he appeared in Barcelona and Madrid where he sang Figaro in Rossini’s comic masterpiece Il Barbiere di Siviglia. His success in this was enormous and it marked the beginning of his ascent to major operatic stardom.
In 1883, he undertook his first visit to the Royal Opera House at London’s Covent Garden, where he appeared as Riccardo in Vincenzo Bellini’s I Puritani in a stellar cast containing Marcella Sembrich, Francesco Marconi and Edouard de Reszke. He also sang opposite Adelina Patti, the leading soprano of her era, in other Covent Garden productions. In such exulted and entrenched company there was not much attention paid to a new, unheralded young baritone! However, he would receive much greater réclame in London during subsequent Covent Garden appearances in 1905-1906, when the now mature performer established himself as a darling of Edwardian-era high society due to his dashing vocalism and polished off-stage demeanour.
Unlike his initial London experience, when Battistini made his debut at the important Teatro San Carlo in Naples in 1886, he scored an immediate triumph. Two years later, he once more sailed to Buenos Aires to fulfil a series of singing engagements; but this proved to be his last trans-Atlantic excursion, and he never appeared again in South America. He avoided North America, too, despite receiving overtures from the management of the New York Metropolitan Opera, where Battistini’s core repertoire was allocated in his absence to the Italian baritones Mario Ancona, Giuseppe Campanari, Antonio Scotti and, after 1908, Pasquale Amato.
Battistini is said to have developed a permanent horror of oceanic travel due to his adverse experiences on that particularly rough 1888 voyage to Buenos Aires. Eighteen Eighty-Eight was a memorable year for Battistini in another way, however, for it proved to be the year of his début at Italy’s foremost opera house—La Scala, Milan. La Scala’s audiences acclaimed him and he was re-engaged for the next season.

The Russian years.

Battistini contemplates Yorick’s skull as Ambroise Thomas’s Hamlet. Photographed in 1911.
From 1892 onwards, Battistini established himself as an immense favourite with audiences at Russia’s two imperial theatres in Saint Petersburg and Moscow: the Mariinsky and the Bolshoi respectively. He returned to Russia regularly, appearing there for 23 seasons in total, and touring extensively elsewhere in eastern Europe, using Warsaw as his stepping-stone. He would journey to Warsaw, Saint Petersburg, Moscow and Odessa like a prince, travelling in his own private rail coach with a retinue of servants and innumerable trunks containing a vast stage wardrobe renowned for its elegance and lavishness. Indeed, the composer Jules Massenet was prepared to adjust the rôle of Werther for the baritone range, when Battistini elected to sing it in Saint Petersburg in 1902, such was the singer’s prestige.
The industrious Battistini also appeared with some regularity in Milan, Lisbon, Barcelona, Madrid, Berlin, Vienna, Prague, Budapest and Paris (where he sang for the first time in 1907). But his many social connections in Russia, and the favour that he enjoyed with the imperial family and the nobility, ensured that Russia—more than perhaps even Italy—became his artistic home prior to the outbreak of the First World War, in 1914. The war led to the destruction, by the Bolsheviks in 1917, of the Tsarist regime and the aristocratic society which had enriched touring Italian opera stars like Battistini and his tenor compatriots Francesco Tamagno, Francesco Marconi and Angelo Masini. This history-shaping political development, coupled with Battistini’s refusal to sing in the Americas, meant that his career after the war’s conclusion in 1918 was confined to Western Europe.
Incidentally, Battistini’s choice of bride had befitted his esteemed social status in Tsarist Russia and the West: he married a Spanish noblewoman, Doña Dolores de Figueroa y Solís, who was the offspring of a marquis and a cousin of Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val.

Final years & death.

Battistini formed his own company of singers following the 1914-1918 war. He toured with them and appeared frequently in concerts and recitals. Everywhere that he performed, he was hailed as a miraculous survivor from a finer, less-Plebeian era of vocal attainment. Consequently, his musical career lasted for almost 50 years. He sang in England for the final time in 1924, and gave his last concert performance one year before his death. His voice was reportedly still steady, responsive and in good overall condition during this period, although it had diminished a little in size and his once silken timbre had grown drier in tone.
On the concert platform, Battistini remained trim and princely looking. He had developed heart disease in his latter years, however, and he collapsed during a tour of Central Europe. His last singing engagement occurred in Graz, Austria, on 17 October 1927. He was then aged almost 72. He withdrew to his estate at Collebaccaro di Contigliano, Rieti, dying there from heart failure a few months later—on 7 November 1928. His posthumous reputation remains high among voice connoisseurs and collectors of historical recordings, with a majority of them considering the lion-voiced Titta Ruffo (1877–1953) to be Battistini’s only rival for the title of the greatest Italian baritone singer on disc.

“Rückert-Lieder” is a song cycle of five Lieder for voice and orchestra or piano by Gustav Mahler, based on poems written by Friedrich Rückert. They were first published in Sieben Lieder aus letzter Zeit.
The songs:
1. Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder! (Do not look at my songs!, 14 June 1901)
2. Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft (I breathed a gentle fragrance, July 1901)
3. Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen (I am lost to the world, 16 August 1901)
4. Um Mitternacht (At midnight, Summer 1901)
5. Liebst du um Schönheit (If you love for beauty, August 1902)
The first four songs were premiered on 29 January 1905 in Vienna, Mahler conducting himself, together with his Kindertotenlieder (also on poems by Rückert). The last song, Liebst du um Schönheit, was not orchestrated by Mahler himself but by Max Puttmann, an employee of the first publisher.
The set of songs is not a cycle in the narrowest sense, because the Lieder are independent, connected only by the poetry and common themes. However, they were published together and most often have been performed together and come to be known as the Rückert-Lieder, although Mahler did set more texts of Rückert. Artists such as Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Kathleen Ferrier have chosen their own order of the Lieder.
The size and constitution of the orchestra varies from song to song, but the total orchestral forces required for performance of the complete set are as follows: two flutes, two oboes (one doubling oboe d’amore), English horn, two clarinets, two bassoons, contrabassoon, four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, bass tuba, timpani, harp, piano, celesta and strings.

Feodor Chaliapin, the greatest russian bass, was born on 13 February 1873 in Kazan. His musical education started as a member of the choir in the local church. He had only 4 years of formal schooling and at the age of 17 he left an abusive home (his father had become an alcoholic) and joined a travelling theatre company. There he met Dmitri Uzatov, a retired tenor, who gave classical singing education to Chaliapin. He debuted with the Tbilisi Opera, then Mariinsky (later Kirov) now the Mariinsky Theatre, and later joined the Bolshoi Opera in Moscow.
In 1902, Chaliapin sang Boito’s Mefistofele with Enrico Caruso at La Scala and became the best bass in Europe during those years. His debut at the Met for the season of 1906 – 07 was announced with great expectations. He sang Mefistofele, Il barbiere di Siviglia and Don Giovanni. The reaction of New York critics was puzzling and, with only one exception, they detested him. They accused him of clowning on the revered stage of The Met. Only one critic, Henry T. Finck, maintained that the Russian bass was one of the great singing actors of all times.
Chaliapin shocked the American critics the first time. Always against convention, he created his own interpretation of the operatic character he played. In Mefistofele, he came on the stage with his magnificent half naked body. The critics could not accept his characterization but the public did. Chaliapin had an enormous popular success. For each performance, he commanded 33 000 American dollars of today. Chaliapin did not set foot again on American soil until 1921.
In between those years, he created the title role of Massenet’s Don Quichotte in 1910, which the composer had written for him. He sang Boris Godunov in Paris in 1908 and in 1914 -15 he sang Russian Opera in London, just before the pistol shot at Sarajevo touched off the WW1 conflict. But even in the midst of this feast of Russian music, Chaliapin misbehaved.
With him, it was as always a matter of money. He was the highest paid artist in Russia , with a salary of 37 000 roubles a year from the Imperial Opera House. Sir Thomas paid him 250 pound sterling a performance for the season of Russian Opera at the Drury Lane Theatre . Chaliapin had a house in Moscow , another one in St Petersburg and an estate at Yaroslavl. He was a rich man.
It always came as a shock that this big man with a big lusty voice, big warm personality, a zest for good eating, drinking and talk, the magnetism of a handsome, vigorous and virile male, a man so big in every way, could be so stingy about money, while he was everywhere acclaimed as a great artist. After the Russian revolution, Chaliapin stayed in Moscow for a time, singing at the Bolshoi, returned for a short period to the Mariinsky Theatre at the end of the war but finally left Russia in 1921, never to return.
There are some funny anecdotes going around about the great Russian bass. Chaliapin was always an actor, on and off the stage. A legend grew up about his romantic escapades and his readiness with his fists. In Chicago a story broke into the newspapers about his attentions to a lady member of the opera company, which caused a lively bout with a fellow artist courting the same lady.
Another newspaper story told of Chaliapin quarrelling with another artist and getting his nose broken. This story went all over the world, reaching even his secretary in Russia, who cabled anxiously to know what had happened. Chaliapin’s version was that he had been misunderstood by dolts who knew nothing of opera in general and Boris Godunov in particular. He had merely been rehearsing the Palace scene, showing the tenor who sang the role of Prince Shouisky how the mad Czar cuffed and cursed the Prince. He cabled his secretary that if he, Chaliapin, had had his nose broken, there would have been news of a tenor’s funeral the next day!
Feodor Ivanovich Chaliapin married twice. His first wife was Lola Ignatievna, an Italian dancer and they had five children: Kira, Tanya, Lydia, Boris and Feodor. After the divorce, she migrated back to the Soviet Union, where she stayed for the rest of her life. Marie Valentinovna, an Estonian, was his second wife, a charming and cultured woman. She brought to the household two children by her first husband and bore Chaliapin three daughters, Marfa, Maria and Daska. Two wives, eight children, two step children, were the centre of his universe.

The Voice

With a voice of commanding power, range and technique which were unconventional but remarkably secure, Chaliapin achieved a highly personal balance between the demands of declamation and musical line. Even in his vocal declining years, he was an actor of immense energy and perfect attention to detail, whose presence held all eyes glued to him whenever he was on the stage.
His vocal technique was superb. The voice was even throughout its range, allowing him to tackle selected baritone roles as successfully as his customary bass roles. It was sharply focused, free of vibrato and could be fined down to the merest thread of sound when the music (or rather Chaliapin’s knowledge of music) demanded it. He was one of the first singers who appled psychological technique to operatic acting. The way he used to stand, the way he moved, what he wore and the rhythm of his speech translated to music were nothing short of revolutionary in opera!
Rachmaninov claimed that Chaliapin sang as Tolstoy wrote, which we may observe for example with his interpretation of Mefistofele – his ‘Son lo spirito’ was marked by a demonic whistle and a terrifying interpretation. There was almost a conversational quality in Chaliapin’s deep, low voice combined with dramatic ability.

Feodor Ivanovich Chaliapin died in Paris in 1938. The legend had departed but fortunately it is still with us through his recordings, which are gems among opera lovers.

Lucia Valentini Terrani (August 29, 1946, Padua – June 11, 1998, Seattle) was an Italian coloratura mezzo-soprano, particularly associated with Rossini roles.
Born Lucia Valentini, she studied first at the Padua Music Conservatory, and later at the Accademia Benedetto Marcello in Venice. She made her stage debut in Brescia, as Angelina in La cenerentola, a role with which she would remain closely associated throughout her career. She made her debut at La Scala in 1973, again as Angelina, and quickly established herself in the Rossini repertoire, singing in L’italiana in Algeri, Il barbiere di Siviglia, Il viaggio a Reims. She also sang the many “trouser roles” such as Tancredi, Malcolm in La donna del lago, Pippo in La gazza ladra, Calbo in Maometto secondo, Arsace in Semiramide, Isolier in Le comte Ory, etc. She also sang a few roles of the baroque repertory, notably Alcina in Vivaldi’s Orlando furioso, and Bradamante in Handel’s Alcina. However, she did not restrict herself to the belcanto and expanded her repertoire to include roles such as Dorabella, Eboli, Quickly, Mignon, Carmen, Charlotte, Dulcinée, Jocasta.
She enjoyed a very successful international career, appearing in Paris, London, Moscow, Buenos Aires, Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, etc. She made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1974, as Isabella L’italiana in Algeri.
Valentini married Italian actor Alberto Terrani, pseudonym of Alfredo Bolognesi, in 1973, and added his stage surname to hers. She was diagnosed with leukemia in 1996, and went to the famous Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle for treatment, where her colleague and friend José Carreras was treated for the same affliction. Sadly she was not as lucky as Carreras, and died of complications following a bone marrow transplant at the age of 51.
One of the leading contemporary Italian coloratura mezzos, she had a rich, creamy and agile voice used with fine musicianship, and had a good stage presence.
Her recordings include L’italiana in Algeri (1978), La cenerentola (1980), Nabucco (1982), Falstaff (with Renato Bruson, conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini, 1982), and Don Carlos (opposite Placido Domingo, Katia Ricciarelli and Ruggero Raimondi, led by Claudio Abbado, 1983-84).
A small square close to the Teatro Verdi in Padua, the city of her birth, has been named Piazzetta Lucia Valentini Terrani in her honour.

Tancredi is a melodramma eroico (opera seria or ‘heroic’ opera) in two acts by composer Gioachino Rossini and librettist Gaetano Rossi, based on Voltaire’s play Tancrède (1759). The opera made its first appearance in Venice at the Teatro La Fenice on February 6, 1813, after Il signor Bruschino premiered in late January, giving the composer less than a month to have completed Tancredi. The overture, borrowed from La pietra del paragone, is a popular example of Rossini’s characteristic style, and is a regular part of the concert and recording repertoire.
This opera is considered by Stendhal, Rossini’s earliest biographer, to be Rossini’s greatest masterpiece. The title role of Tancredi is so vocally demanding that casting the part has traditionally proved to be challenging. It requires a true contralto or a mezzo-soprano with a strong lower register who possesses great vocal agility and endurance. The title role encompasses two lengthy arias and four duets.
Though Rossini first composed his opera with a happy ending in mind (as required by the opera seria tradition), he eventually had the poet Luigi Lechi rework the libretto to emulate the original tragic ending by Voltaire. Thus, in the Ferrara ending, Tancredi wins the battle but is mortally wounded. Only then does he learn that Amenaide never betrayed him, and Agirio marries the lovers in time for Tancredi to die in his wife’s arms. In the Venice ending (1816), the dying Solamir professes Amenaide’s innocence, and Tancredi returns home in triumph. It is in this version that the opera is usually performed today.
Tancredi premiered in 1813 at La Fenice in Venice with Adelaide Malanotte in the title role and it was soon mounted at major opera houses throughout Italy, including the Teatro Comunale di Bologna (1814), the Teatro Apollo in Rome (1814), the Teatro Regio di Torino (1814), La Fenice (1815), the Teatro del Fondo in Naples (1816), and the Teatro San Moisè in Venice (1816).
The opera was first performed in England at the King’s Theatre in London on 4 May 1820 with Fanny Corri-Paltoni as Amenaide. Its French premiere was given by the Théâtre-Lyrique Italien at the Salle Louvois in Paris on 23 April 1822 with Giuditta Pasta in the title role. It was performed in Portugal for the first time at the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos on 18 September 1822 and was given its La Scala premiere on 8 November 1823 with Brigida Lorenzani as Tancredi. The United States premiere occurred on 31 December 1825 at the Park Theatre in New York City using the revised version by Lechi. The Paris Opéra mounted the work for the first time with Maria Malibran in the title role on 30 March 1829.
After a 1833 revival at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, Tancredi was not mounted again until almost 120 years later. The Maggio Musicale Fiorentino revived the work on 17 May 1952 with Giulietta Simionato in the title role, Teresa Stich-Randall as Amenaide, Francesco Albanese as Argirio, Mario Petri as Orbazzano, and Tullio Serafin conducting.
Following the discovery of the long-lost tragic ending and the preparation of the critical edition by Philip Gossett and others at the University of Chicago in 1976, the work was revived 25 years later, at which time mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne performed the title role with the Houston Grand Opera on 13 October 1977. Ms. Horne, who is now strongly associated with the title role, insisted on the tragic Ferrara ending, citing that it is more consistent with the overall tone of the opera. Indeed, most of the recordings of this opera today use the Ferrara conclusion, while some include the Venice finale as an extra track.
Horne’s triumphant performance of Tancredi in Houston soon led to invitations from other opera houses to sing the role, and it is largely through her efforts that the opera enjoyed a surge of revivals during the latter half of the 20th century. She sang the part for performances at the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma (1977), the San Francisco Opera (1979), the Aix-en-Provence Festival (1981), La Fenice (1981, 1983), and the Lyric Opera of Chicago (1989) among others.
One of the best Tancredi was Lucia Valentini Terrani (in ’80).
While Tancredi is not one of the more frequently mounted operas, it has now become less of a rarity on the opera stage. Contralto Ewa Podleś achieved recognition in the title role, performing it at the Vlaamse Opera (1991), La Scala (1993), the Berlin State Opera (1996), the Canadian Opera Company (2005), the Caramoor International Music Festival (2006), the Teatro Real (2007) and Opera Boston (2009) among others. She also recorded the role on the Naxos label in 1995. Bulgarian mezzo-soprano Vesselina Kasarova has also been praised in the role, singing it at the Salzburg Festival (1992), the Opera Orchestra of New York (1997), and on a 1996 recording with the Bavarian Radio Chorus and Munich Radio Orchestra.
Pier Luigi Pizzi staged a production of Tancredi at the Teatro Rossini in Pesaro in 1999, a production which was later transported to the Rossini Opera Festival in 2004. In 2005 it went to Rome and Florence (where it was filmed for DVD with Daniela Barcellona in the title role), and then was presented by the Deutsche Oper Berlin in 2011, with Alberto Zedda conducting. Barcellona sang Tancredi again in a new staging of the opera at the Teatro Regio di Torino in November 2009 after reprising the part in February 2009 at the Teatro de la Maestranza. The Theater an der Wien mounted the work for the first time in October 2009 with Vivica Genaux in the title role and René Jacobs conducting. The Théâtre des Champs-Élysées presented the opera in concert in December 2009 with Nora Gubisch as Tancredi.

Orpheus (Ancient Greek:‛Oρφεύς) was a legendary musician, poet, and prophet in ancient Greek religion and myth. The major stories about him are centered on his ability to charm all living things and even stones with his music; his attempt to retrieve his wife, Eurydice, from the underworld; and his death at the hands of those who could not hear his divine music. As an archetype of the inspired singer, Orpheus is one of the most significant figures in the reception of classical mythology in Western culture, portrayed or alluded to in countless forms of art and popular culture including poetry, opera, and painting.
To the Greeks, Orpheus was a founder and prophet of the so-called “Orphic” mysteries. He was credited with the composition of the Orphic Hymns, a collection of which survives. Shrines containing purported relics of Orpheus were regarded as oracles. Some ancient Greek sources note Orpheus’s Thracian origins.
According to Apollodorus and a fragment of Pindar, Orpheus’s father was Oeagrus, a Thracian king; or, according to another version of the story, the god Apollo. His mother was the muse Calliope; or, a daughter of Pierus, son of Makednos. His birthplace and place of residence was in Pimpleia, Olympus. In Argonautica the location of Oeagrus and Calliope’s wedding is close to Pimpleia, near Olympus. While living with his mother and her eight beautiful sisters in Parnassus, he met Apollo, who was courting the laughing muse Thalia. Apollo fell in love with Orpheus and the two became lovers. Apollo, as the god of music, gave Orpheus a golden lyre and taught him to play it. Orpheus’s mother taught him to make verses for singing. Strabo mentions that he lived in Pimpleia. He is also said to have studied in Egypt.
Orpheus is said to have established the worship of Hecate in Aegina. In Laconia Orpheus is said to have brought the worship of Demeter Chthonia and that of the Kores Sōteiras (Greek,Κόρες Σωτείρας) savior maid. Also in Taygetus a wooden image of Orpheus was said to have been kept by Pelasgians in the sanctuary of the Eleusinian Demeter.
The most famous story in which Orpheus figures is that of his wife Eurydice (sometimes referred to as Euridice and also known as Agriope). While walking among her people, the Cicones, in tall grass at her wedding, Eurydice was set upon by a satyr. In her efforts to escape the satyr, Eurydice fell into a nest of vipers and she suffered a fatal bite on her heel. Her body was discovered by Orpheus who, overcome with grief, played such sad and mournful songs that all the nymphs and gods wept. On their advice, Orpheus travelled to the underworld and by his music softened the hearts of Hades and Persephone (he was the only person ever to do so), who agreed to allow Eurydice to return with him to earth on one condition: he should walk in front of her and not look back until they both had reached the upper world. He set off with Eurydice following, and, in his anxiety, as soon as he reached the upper world, he turned to look at her, forgetting that both needed to be in the upper world, and she vanished for the second time, but now forever.
The story in this form belongs to the time of Virgil, who first introduces the name of Aristaeus (by the time of Virgil’s Georgics, the myth has Aristaeus chasing Eurydice when she was bitten by a serpent) and the tragic outcome. Other ancient writers, however, speak of Orpheus’s visit to the underworld in a more negative light; according to Phaedrus in Plato’s Symposium, the infernal gods only “presented an apparition” of Eurydice to him. Ovid says that Eurydice’s death was not caused by fleeing from Aristaeus but by dancing with naiads on her wedding day. In fact, Plato’s representation of Orpheus is that of a coward, as instead of choosing to die in order to be with the one he loved, he instead mocked the gods by trying to go to Hades and get her back alive. Since his love was not “true”—he did not want to die for love—he was actually punished by the gods, first by giving him only the apparition of his former wife in the underworld, and then by being killed by women.
The story of Eurydice may actually be a late addition to the Orpheus myths. In particular, the name Eurudike (“she whose justice extends widely”) recalls cult-titles attached to Persephone. The myth may have been derived from another Orpheus legend in which he travels to Tartarus and charms the goddess Hecate.
The descent to the Underworld of Orpheus is paralleled in other versions of a worldwide theme: the Japanese myth of Izanagi and Izanami, the Akkadian/Sumerian myth of Inanna’s Descent to the Underworld, and Mayan myth of Ix Chel and Itzamna. The Nez Perce tell a story about the trickster figure, Coyote, that shares many similarities with the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. This is but one theme present in a larger “North American Orpheus Tradition” in American Indian oral tradition.The myth theme of not looking back, an essential precaution in Jason’s raising of chthonic Brimo Hekate under Medea’s guidance, is reflected in the Biblical story of Lot’s wife when escaping from Sodom. The warning of not looking back is also found in the Grimms’ folk tale “Hansel and Gretel”. More directly, the story of Orpheus is similar to the ancient Greek tales of Persephone captured by Hades and similar stories of Adonis captive in the underworld. However, the developed form of the Orpheus myth was entwined with the Orphic mystery cults and, later in Rome, with the development of Mithraism and the cult of Sol Invictus.
According to a Late Antique summary of Aeschylus’s lost play Bassarids, Orpheus at the end of his life disdained the worship of all gods save the sun, whom he called by the name of his former lover Apollo. One early morning he went to the oracle of Dionysus at Mount Pangaion to salute his god at dawn, but was ripped to pieces by Thracian Maenads for not honoring his previous patron (Dionysus) and buried in Pieria. Here his death is analogous with the death of Pentheus. Pausanias writes that Orpheus was buried in Dion and that he met his death there. He writes that the river Helicon sank underground when the women that killed Orpheus tried to wash off their blood-stained hands in its waters.
Ovid also recounts that the Ciconian women, Dionysus’ followers, spurned by Orpheus, who had forsworn the love of women after the death of Eurydice and had taken only youths as his lovers, first threw sticks and stones at him as he played, but his music was so beautiful even the rocks and branches refused to hit him. Enraged, the women tore him to pieces during the frenzy of their Bacchic orgies. Medieval folkore put additional spin on the story: in Albrecht Dürer’s drawing of Orpheus’ death, a ribbon high in the tree above him is lettered Orfeus der erst puseran (“Orpheus, the first sodomite”) an interpretation of the passage in Ovid where Orpheus is said to have been “the first of the Thracian people to transfer his love to young boys.”
His head and lyre, still singing mournful songs, floated down the swift Hebrus to the Mediterranean shore. There, the winds and waves carried them on to the Lesbos shore, where the inhabitants buried his head and a shrine was built in his honour near Antissa; there his oracle prophesied, until it was silenced by Apollo.
The lyre was carried to heaven by the Muses, and was placed among the stars. The Muses also gathered up the fragments of his body and buried them at Leibethra[53] below Mount Olympus, where the nightingales sang over his grave. After the river Sys flooded[54] Leibethra, the Macedonians took his bones to Dion. His soul returned to the underworld, where he was reunited at last with his beloved Eurydice. Another legend places his tomb at Dion, near Pydna in Macedon. In another version of the myth Orpheus travels to Aornum in Thesprotia, Epirus to an old oracle for the dead. In the end Orpheus commits suicide from his grief unable to find Eurydice. Another account relates that he was struck with lightning by Zeus for having revealed the mysteries of the gods to men.

“Orfeo ed Euridice” (French version: Orphée et Eurydice; English translation: Orpheus and Eurydice) is an opera composed by Christoph Willibald Gluck based on the myth of Orpheus, set to a libretto by Ranieri de’ Calzabigi. It belongs to the genre of the azione teatrale, meaning an opera on a mythological subject with choruses and dancing. The piece was first performed at Vienna on 5 October 1762. Orfeo ed Euridice is the first of Gluck’s “reform” operas, in which he attempted to replace the abstruse plots and overly complex music of opera seria with a “noble simplicity” in both the music and the drama.
The opera is the most popular of Gluck’s works, and one of the most influential on subsequent German opera. Variations on its plot—the underground rescue-mission in which the hero must control, or conceal, his emotions—include Mozart’s The Magic Flute, Beethoven’s Fidelio and Wagner’s Das Rheingold.
Though originally set to an Italian libretto, Orfeo ed Euridice owes much to the genre of French opera, particularly in its use of accompanied recitative and a general absence of vocal virtuosity. Indeed, twelve years after the 1762 premiere, Gluck re-adapted the opera to suit the tastes of a Parisian audience at the Académie Royale de Musique with a libretto by Pierre-Louis Moline. This reworking was given the title Orphée et Eurydice, and several alterations were made in vocal casting and orchestration to suit French tastes.

Nicola (Antonio) Porpora (or Niccolò Porpora) (17 August 1686 – 3 March 1768) was an Italian composer of Baroque operas (see opera seria) and teacher of singing, whose most famous singing student was the castrato Farinelli. One of his other students was composer Matteo Capranica. Porpora was born in Naples. He graduated from the music conservatory Poveri di Gesù Cristo of his native city, where the civic opera scene was dominated by Alessandro Scarlatti.
Porpora’s first opera, “Agrippina”, was successfully performed at the Neapolitan court in 1708. His second, “Berenice”, was performed at Rome. In a long career, he followed these up by many further operas, supported as maestro di cappella in the households of aristocratic patrons, such as the commander of military forces at Naples, prince Philip of Hesse-Darmstadt, or of the Portuguese ambassador at Rome, for composing operas alone did not yet make a viable career. However, his enduring fame rests chiefly upon his unequalled power of teaching singing. At the Neapolitan Conservatorio di Sant’Onofrio and with the Poveri di Gesù Cristo he trained Farinelli, Caffarelli, Salimbeni, and other celebrated vocalists, during the period 1715-1721. In 1720 and 1721 he wrote two serenades to librettos by a gifted young poet, Metastasio, the beginning of a long, though interrupted, collaboration. In 1722 his operatic successes encouraged him to lay down his conservatory commitments.
After a rebuff from the court of Charles VI at Vienna in 1725, Porpora settled mostly in Venice, composing and teaching regularly in the schools of La Pietà and the Incurabili. In 1729 the anti-Handel clique invited him to London to set up an opera company as a rival to Handel’s, without success, and in the 1733-1734 season, even the presence of his pupil, the great Farinelli, failed to save the dramatic company in Lincoln’s Inn Fields (the “Opera of the Nobility”) from bankruptcy.
An interval as Kapellmeister at the Dresden court of the Elector of Saxony from 1748 ended in strained relations with his rival in Venice and Rome, the hugely successful opera composer Johann Adolph Hasse and his wife, the prima donna Faustina Bordoni, and resulted in Porpora’s departure in 1752. From Dresden he went to Vienna, where he gave music lessons to the young Joseph Haydn, who lived with Porpora as accompanist and in the character of a valet, but allowed later that he had learned from the maestro “the true fundamentals of composition”. Then Porpora returned in 1759 to Naples.
From this time Porpora’s career was a series of misfortunes: his florid style was becoming old-fashioned, his last opera, “Camilla”, failed, his pension from Dresden stopped, and he became so poor that the expenses of his funeral were paid by a subscription concert. Yet at the moment of his death Farinelli and Caffarelli were living in splendid retirement on fortunes largely based on the excellence of the old maestro’s teaching.
A good linguist, who was admired for the idiomatic fluency of his recitatives, and a man of considerable literary culture, Porpora was also celebrated for his conversational wit. He was well-read in Latin and Italian literature, wrote poetry and spoke French, German and English.
Besides some four dozen operas, there are oratorios, solo cantatas with keyboard accompaniment, motets and vocal serenades. Among his larger works, his 1720 opera Orlando, one mass, his Venetian Vespers, and the opera “Arianna in Nasso” (1733 according to HOASM) have been recorded.