Armida
Music by Antonio Salieri · libretto by Marco Coltellini · premiered 1771
Armida (Italian pronunciation: [arˈmiːda]) is an operatic dramma per musica by Antonio Salieri in three acts, set to a libretto by Marco Coltellini. The plot is based on the epic poem Gerusalemme liberata by Torquato Tasso. Lully, Handel and Traetta, to name but a few, had already composed operas based on the situations that Tasso originally developed. The plot of all of these, and Salieri's work, is based on the relationship between Armida and the Crusader Rinaldo. Salieri's opera was first performed at the Vienna Burgtheater on 2 June 1771, and his composition was much influenced by the aesthetics of Christoph Willibald Gluck, who attempted to reform opera seria by tying the drama more closely to the music. Salieri's overture follows the principles set out by Gluck in the preface to Alceste. Other Gluckian influences display themselves in the frequent interplay of soloist and chorus, and the heavy use of chorus overall. Nonetheless, Gluck himself would also go on to produce his own adaptation of the story six years later.
Text from the Wikipedia article "Armida (Salieri)", licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
About the Composer
Antonio Salieri (18 August 1750 – 7 May 1825) was an Italian composer and teacher of the classical period. He was born in Legnago, south of Verona, in the Republic of Venice, and spent his adult life and career as a subject of the Habsburg monarchy. Salieri was a pivotal figure in the development of late 18th-century opera. As a student of Florian Leopold Gassmann, and a protégé of Christoph Willibald Gluck, Salieri was a cosmopolitan composer who wrote operas in three languages. Salieri helped to develop and shape many of the features of operatic compositional vocabulary, and his music was a powerful influence on contemporary composers. Appointed the director of the Italian opera by the…
Text from the Wikipedia article "Antonio Salieri", licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.