Ranieri de 'Calzabigi

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Ranieri Simone Francesco Maria de 'Calzabigi (born December 23, 1714 in Livorno , † July 1795 in Naples ) was an Italian poet and librettist .

Life

Calzabigi possibly studied in Livorno and Pisa and was a member of the Accademia Etrusca in Cortona and the Accademia dell'Arcadia under the name Liburno Drepanio .

In 1743 he entered the service of a ministry in Naples , where he also began his work as a librettist. However, because of his involvement in a poisoning trial, he had to leave the city and went to Paris , where he met Giacomo Casanova in 1750 , with whom he became friends (his brother Giovanni Antonio Calzabigi later founded the French national lottery together with Casanova). The heroic-comic poem La Lulliade, which parodies the career of Jean-Baptiste Lully and is full of rich allusions to the aesthetic and cultural aspects of the Parisian Buffonist dispute, dates from this period . In 1755 he published a reprint of the works of his friend Pietro Metastasio with the publisher Gerbauld .

After leaving France, he went to Vienna, where from 1761 he held the post of "consigliere alla Camera dei Conti dei Paesi Bassi" and later a "consigliere di SMIR Apostolica". Through the mediation of Count Giacomo Durazzo , director of the Vienna Court Theater , he met Christoph Willibald Gluck and Gasparo Angiolini . He wrote three opera libretti for Gluck (see below). He became the driving force behind the so-called Gluck opera reform , which strictly separates secco recitatives and virtuoso da capo arias of Napoletan opera in favor of a flow of accompaniment scenes and simple, sometimes song-like arias as well as dramatic, following the plot and dramaturgy involved choirs, dances and pantomimes. In the foreword to the opera Alceste , Calzabigi formulated the foundations of her reform of the opera seria for the undersigned Gluck : “My aim was to return the music to its true office: to serve the drama in its expression and its changing images, without the plot to interrupt or to catch her cold with useless and superfluous jewelry. "

As a result of a scandal, he had to leave Vienna on the orders of Empress Maria Theresia . In 1775 he stayed in Pisa; he later moved to Naples, where he took an active part in the city's literary life until his death.

Works

Libretti for Christoph Willibald Gluck

Other texts set to music

Fonts

  • Dissertazione su le poesie drammatiche del sig. abate Pietro Metastasio (dissertation on the dramatic poems of abbot Pietro Metastasio) , Paris 1755, Turin 1757 and Livorno 1774

literature

Web links

References and comments

  1. ↑ Einstein, Alfred: Gluck. His life - his works. London 1954, p. 144.
personal data
SURNAME Calzabigi, Ranieri de '
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Calzabigi, Ranieri Simone Francesco Maria de '(full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian poet and librettist
DATE OF BIRTH December 23, 1714
PLACE OF BIRTH Livorno
DATE OF DEATH July 1795
Place of death Naples