Armida
Music by Antonín Dvořák · libretto by Jaroslav Vrchlický · premiered 1904
Armida is an opera by Antonín Dvořák in four acts, set to a libretto by Jaroslav Vrchlický that was originally based on Torquato Tasso's epic La Gerusalemme liberata. Dvořák's opera was first performed at Prague's National Theatre on 25 March 1904; the score was published as Opus 115 in 1941. While Armida represents the culmination of Dvořák's experimentation with a Wagnerian style of opera composition, much of the music is in Dvořák's personal style. Vrchlický's libretto parallels the one that Philippe Quinault wrote for Jean-Baptiste Lully in their opera of the same name. Despite three love-duets for Armida and Rinald, their characters are sketchily motivated. Dvořák, determined "to write a big role for Růžena Maturová, his first Rusalka and first Princess in The Devil and Kate" provides her with "the best music, including a gorgeous entrance aria in which she describes dreaming of being a gazelle hunted by a handsome knight".
Text from the Wikipedia article "Armida (Dvořák)", licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
About the Composer
Antonín Leopold Dvořák (8 September 1841 – 1 May 1904) was a Czech composer. He frequently employed rhythms and other aspects of the folk music of Moravia and his native Bohemia, following the Romantic era nationalist example of his predecessor Bedřich Smetana. Dvořák's style has been described as "the fullest recreation of a national idiom with that of the symphonic tradition, absorbing folk influences and finding effective ways of using them", and Dvořák has been described as "arguably the most versatile... composer of his time". Dvořák displayed his musical gifts at an early age, being a talented violin student. The first public performances of his works were in Prague in 1872 and, with…
Text from the Wikipedia article "Antonín Dvořák", licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Other Operas by Antonín Dvořák
- King and Charcoal Burner
- Alfred (1870)
- Dimitrij (1882)