Rossini composed this piece of opera buffa to ridicule bad sopranos. It is usually featured by a duet of girls but in this case it is interpreted by a chorus that cannot avoid smiles. :)
This is still TheBigFoto but this week is going to be dedicated to classical music [ Gioachino Rossini ] I haven’t had much time for photos, but this music and videos are great.
Today you can enjoy La Gazza Ladra (The thieving magpie, La urraca ladrona)
Orchestra version * if you have not much time start at min. 2:10 of the video
Bedřich Smetana (2 March 1824 – 12 May 1884) was a Czech composer who pioneered the development of a musical style which became closely identified with his country’s aspirations to independent statehood. He is thus widely regarded in his homeland as the father of Czech music. Internationally he is best known for his opera The Bartered Bride, and for the symphonic cycle Má vlast (“My Fatherland”) which portrays the history, legends and landscape of the composer’s native land.
Smetana was naturally gifted as a pianist, and gave his first public performance at the age of six. After his conventional schooling, he studied music under Josef Proksch in Prague. His first nationalistic music was written during the 1848 Prague uprising, in which he briefly participated. After failing to establish his career in Prague, he left for Sweden, where he set up as a teacher and choirmaster in Gothenburg, and began to write large-scale orchestral works. During this period of his life Smetana was twice married; of six daughters, three died in infancy.
In the early 1860s, a more liberal political climate in Bohemia encouraged Smetana to return permanently to Prague. He threw himself into the musical life of the city, primarily as a champion of the new genre of Czech opera. In 1866 his first two operas, The Brandenburgers in Bohemia and The Bartered Bride, were premiered at Prague’s new Provisional Theatre, the latter achieving great popularity. In that same year, Smetana became the theatre’s principal conductor, but the years of his conductorship were marked by controversy. Factions within the city’s musical establishment considered his identification with the progressive ideas of Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner inimical to the development of a distinctively Czech opera style. This opposition interfered with his creative work, and may have hastened the health breakdown which precipitated his resignation from the theatre in 1874.
By the end of 1874, Smetana had become completely deaf but, freed from his theatre duties and the related controversies, he began a period of sustained composition that continued for almost the rest of his life. His contributions to Czech music were increasingly recognised and honoured, but a mental collapse early in 1884 led to his incarceration in an asylum, and his subsequent death. Smetana’s reputation as the founding father of Czech music has endured in his native country. [wikipedia]
“Today’s” masterpiece is dedicated to a river, not the popular Blue Danube, but the Vltava the river that runs through the beautiful Prague (I was there last summer both over the Danube and the Vltava – El Moldava [ES]- Die Moldau [DE])
Franz Peter Schubert (January 31, 1797 – November 19, 1828) was an Austrian composer. He wrote some 600 Lieder, nine symphonies (including the famous “Unfinished Symphony”), liturgical music, operas, some incidental music, and a large body of chamber and solo piano music.
Schubert was born into a musical family, and received formal musical training through much of his childhood. While Schubert had a close circle of friends and associates who admired his work (amongst them the prominent singer Johann Michael Vogl), wide appreciation of his music during his lifetime was limited at best. He was never able to secure adequate permanent employment, and for most of his career he relied on the support of friends and family. He made some money from published works, and occasionally gave private musical instruction.
He died at the age of thirty-one after a brief unconfirmed illness. Interest in Schubert’s work increased dramatically in the decades following his death. Composers like Franz Liszt, Robert Schumann and Felix Mendelssohn discovered, collected, and championed his works in the 19th century, as did musicologist Sir George Grove. Franz Schubert is now widely considered to be one of the greatest of all composers. [wikipedia]
Schubert’s immortal “Serenade” was written in 1826. It is simply a lovely melody from first note to last, written upon the inspiration of the moment, and yet characterized by absolute perfection of finish and a grace and beauty of which one never tires.
Dolomiti - le Odle viste dal Seceda. Credit: gigi62
