Il mondo della luna
Music by Baldassare Galuppi · libretto by Carlo Goldoni · premiered 1750 · at Teatro San Moisè
Il mondo della luna (The World of the Moon) is an opera (dramma giocoso) in 3 acts by Baldassare Galuppi. The Italian-language libretto was by Carlo Goldoni. It premiered on 29 January 1750 at the Teatro San Moisè, Venice. The music has been described as "clear, with expressivity obtained through melodic and textural changes." Galuppi's music exploits "the capacity of the music to illustrate and portray the text," with special attention for Buonafede, credulous old man who is the central character of the plot. The opera by Galuppi is the first based on Goldoni's libretto. The same libretto was later also set by several other composers, such as Pedro António Avondano (1765), Giovanni Paisiello (1774 under the title Il credulo deluso, 1783), Gennaro Astarita (1774), Joseph Haydn (1777), Michele Neri Bondi (1790, libretto revised by Domenico Somigli), and Marcos Portugal (1791, in Portuguese, under the title O lunático iludido). Paisiello composed four different versions of operas based on this libretto (one of them, 1783, was a reduction in two acts by Marco Coltellini; another, 1774, was performed as Il credulo deluso).
Text from the Wikipedia article "Il mondo della luna (Galuppi)", licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
About the Composer
Baldassare Galuppi (18 October 1706 – 3 January 1785) was a Venetian composer, born on the island of Burano in the Venetian Republic. He belonged to a generation of composers, including Johann Adolph Hasse, Giovanni Battista Sammartini, and C. P. E. Bach, whose works are emblematic of the prevailing galant music that developed in Europe throughout the 18th century. He achieved international success, spending periods of his career in Vienna, London and Saint Petersburg, but his main base remained Venice, where he held a succession of leading appointments. In his early career Galuppi made a modest success in opera seria, but from the 1740s, together with the playwright and librettist Carlo…
Text from the Wikipedia article "Baldassare Galuppi", licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Other Operas by Baldassare Galuppi
- Didone abbandonata (1740)
- Gustavo primo, re di Svezia (1740)
- Il filosofo di campagna (1754)