* Chi è chi -- la storia d'Italia nel melodramma italiano -- dall'A alla Z

Speranza

It is only natural that the History of Italy has inspired opera, since this is the Italian genre par excellence.

* * * * * A * * * * *

ACCIANO. Yaghi-Siyan, Governor of Antioch, Giuseppe Verdi, "I Lombardi alla prima crociata". This was an important historical opera by Verdi, with the brilliant chorus, "O Signore del tetto natio". It was interesting that Verdi was able to recapture the historical connotations from the original poem. 

ADORNO. Antonio. Doge di Genova.Die Gezeichneten (The Branded) is an opera in three acts by Franz Schreker, libretto by the composer, premiered in 1918. Personaggi: Duke Antoniotto Adorno (bass, Walter Schneider), Count Vitelozzo Tamare (baritone, Robert vom Scheidt), Lodovico Nardi, Podestà (bass, Willy Roos), Carlotta Nardi, his daughter (soprano, Else Gentner-Fischer),
Alviano Salvago, a Genoan nobleman (tenor, Karl Ziegler), Guidobald Usodimare, a Genoan nobleman (tenor, Hermann Schramm), Menaldo Negroni, a Genoan nobleman (tenor, Erik Wirl),  Michelotto Cibo, a Genoan nobleman (baritone, Rudolf Brinkmann), Gonsalvo Fieschi, a Genoan nobleman (baritone, Fritz Meurs), Julian Pinelli, a Genoan nobleman (bass, Josef Gareis), Paolo Calvi, a Genoan nobleman (bass, Josef Gareis) Capitaneo di Giustizia (bass, Leo Kaplan), Ginevra Scotti (soprano, Marta Uersfeld), Martuccia, Alviano's housekeeper (contralto, Marie Welling-Bertram), Pietro, a cutthroat (tenor), A youth (tenor, Franz Wartenberg), His friend (bass, Willy Schürmann), A young girl (soprano, Elisabeth Kandt), First senator (tenor, Erik Wirl), Second senator (baritone, Rudolf Brinkmann), Third senator (bass, Josef Gareis), A servant (bass), A maidservant (mezzo-soprano, Anita Franz), First citizen (tenor), Second citizen (baritone, Carl Bauermann), Third citizen (bass, Willy Schürmann), Father (bass, Paul Neumann),  Mother (contralto, Frieda Hammerschmidt), A small boy (silent part), First young man (tenor, Franz Wartenberg), Second young man (baritone, Carl Bauermann), Third young man (bass, Willy Schürmann), A giant citizen (bass, Karl Kröff). The plot is rather complex, and based on the history of Genova. The young Genoan nobleman Alviano Salviago, hunchbacked and deformed, has renounced the love of women. Salviago wants to donate to the people of Genova the island paradise called "Elisio" he has created. Salviago's friends, a group of dissolute young noblemen, have been using an underground grotto on the island to celebrate orgies with young women abducted from prominent Genoan families, and intervene with duke Adorno to stop the transfer of ownership. One of them, count Tamare, has set his sights on Carlotta, daughter of the Podestà. Carlotta rejects him, as she is only interested in Salviago, whose soul she wants to paint. In Act 2, infuriated by Carlotta's rejection, Tamare swears to Adorno that he will take her by force. He also reveals the secret of the grotto. In order to avoid the consequences of this secret becoming public, Adorno agrees to vetoing the transfer. While Salviago is sitting for Carlotta, she tries to bring out his soul, thereby applying all her female charms. Salviago misinterprets these signs, and thinks she is in love with him. In Act 3, the citizens of Genoa take possession of the island. Salviago asks the Podestà for Carlotta's hand in marriage. She evades him, wanders off alone, and in the grotto finally succumbs to Tamare. The duke accuses Salviago of masterminding the abductions. Salviago, besides himself with worry for Carlotta, leads everyone to the underground grotto. Carlotta lies senseless on a bed, while Tamare prides himself on his conquering abilities. Salviago stabs him. Carlotta awakens, Salviago rushes to her side, but with her dying breath she calls for Tamare. Salviago, completely deranged, stumbles over Tamare's body as he makes his way through the stunned crowd.

ADORNO, Gabriele. Fifth doge of Genova. Verdi would spend long winters in Genova, and was very interested in the history of the Genovese republic. Hence this opera.

 

 



 

 

Boccanegra erano di nobiltà recente; il primo di loro ad emergere fu Guglielmo Boccanegra, nominato Capitano del Popolo, che fece erigere nel 1260 il Palazzo San Giorgio, sede della massima autorità Comunale. Da fuoruscito in Francia, ad Aigues-Mortes progettò le mura di quella città per il re di Francia. Simone Boccanegra ebbe a Genova un ruolo analogo se non ancora più ampio di questo suo primo antenato. Boccanegra fu il primo Doge della Repubblica, acclamato a vita il 23 dicembre 1339. Il titolo della Repubblica di Genova a quel tempo era, in realtà, più propriamente chiamato - secondo il dialetto genovese, "duxe" (cuce). Con la nomina di Boccanegra ebbe inizio l'età dei Dogi perpetui e della cosiddetta egemonia popolare che avrebbe contraddistinto il governo nella Repubblica di Genova. Nel 1363 Simone Boccanegra morì, avvelenato per mano di sicari delle famiglie Adorno e Fregoso che da quel momento acuirono la loro lotta per contendersi il controllo del dogato. In Giuseppe Verdi, "Simon Boccanegra". Time: The middle of the 14th century. Place: In and around Genova. The Prologue is set in a piazza in front of the Fieschi palace. Paolo Albiani, a plebeian, tells his ally Pietro that in the forthcoming election of the Doge, his choice for the plebeian candidate is Simon Boccanegra. Boccanegra arrives and is persuaded to stand when Paolo hints that, if Boccanegra becomes Doge, the aristocratic Jacopo Fiesco will surely allow him to wed his daughter Maria. When Boccanegra has gone, Paolo gossips about Boccanegra's love affair with Maria Fiesco. Boccanegra and Maria have had a child, and the furious Fiesco has locked his daughter away in his palace. Pietro rallies a crowd of citizens to support Boccanegra. After the crowd has dispersed, Fiesco comes out of his palace, stricken with grief. Maria has just died (Il lacerato spirito – "The tortured soul of a sad father"). Fiesco swears vengeance on Boccanegra for destroying his family. When Fiesco meets Boccanegra, Fiersco does not inform him of Maria's death. Boccanegra offers reconciliation and Fiesco promises clemency only if Boccanegra lets him have his granddaughter. Boccanegra explains he cannot because the child, put in the care of a nurse, has vanished. He enters the palace and finds the body of his beloved just before crowds pour in, hailing him as the new Doge. Act 1. The first Scene is set in A garden in the Grimaldi palace, before sunrise. Twenty-five years have passed and Boccanegra has exiled many of his political opponents and confiscated their property. Among Boccanegra's political enemies is Fiesco, who has been living in the Grimaldi palace, using the name "Andrea Grimaldi" to avoid discovery and plotting with Boccanegra's enemies to overthrow the Doge. The Grimaldis have adopted an orphaned child of unknown parentage after discovering her in a convent. She is in fact Boccanegra's child and Fiesco's granddaughter They called her "Amelia", hoping that she would be the heir to their family's fortune, their sons having been exiled and their own baby daughter having died. Amelia is now a young woman. Amelia is awaiting her lover, Gabriele Adorno (Aria:Come in quest'ora bruna – "How in the morning light / The sea and stars shine brightly"). Amelia suspects Gabriele Adorno of plotting against Boccangra. When Boccanegra arrives, Amelia warns him of the dangers of political conspiracy. Word arrives that the Doge is coming. Amelia, fearing that the Doge will force her to marry Paolo, now his councillor, urges Adorno to ask her guardian Andrea Grimaldi (in reality, Fiesco) for permission to marry. Fiesco reveals to Gabriele Adorno that Amelia is not a Grimaldi, but a foundling adopted by the family. Gabriele Adorno says that he does not care. Fiesco blesses the marriage. Boccanegra enters and tells Amelia that he has pardoned her exiled brothers. Amelia tells him that she is in love, but not with Paolo who she refuses to marry. Boccanegra has no desire to force Amelia into a marriage against her will. Amelia tells him that she was adopted and that she has one souvenir of her mother, a picture in a locket. The two compare Amelia's picture with Boccanegra's, and Boccanegra realizes that she is his long-lost daughter. Finally reunited, they are overcome with joy. Amelia goes into the palace. Soon after, Paolo arrives to find out if Amelia has accepted him. Boccanegra tells him that the marriage will not take place. Furious, Paolo arranges for Amelia to be kidnapped. The second is set in The council chamber Boccanegra encourages his councillors to make peace with Venice. Boccanegra is interrupted by the sounds of a mob calling for blood. Paolo Albiani suspects that his kidnapping plot has failed. Boccanegra prevents anyone leaving the council chamber and orders the doors to be thrown open. A crowd bursts in, chasing Gabriele Adorno. Gabriele Adorno confesses to killing Lorenzino, a plebeian, who had kidnapped Amelia, claiming to have done so at the order of a high-ranking official. Gabriele Adorno incorrectly guesses the official was Boccanegra and is about to attack him when Amelia rushes in and stops him (Aria: Nell'ora soave – "At that sweet hour which invites ecstasy / I was walking alone by the sea"). Amelia describes her abduction and escape. Before Amelia is able to identify her kidnapper, fighting breaks out once more. Boccanegra establishes order and has Gabriele Adorno arrested for the night (Aria: Plebe! Patrizi! Popolo! – "Plebians! Patricians! Inheritors / Of a fierce history"). Boccanegra orders the crowd to make peace and they praise his mercy. Realizing that Paolo Albiani is responsible for the kidnapping, Boccanegra places him in charge of finding the culprit. He then makes everyone, including Paolo Albiani, utter a curse on the kidnapper. The Act 2 opens in The Doge's apartments. Paolo Albiani has imprisoned Fiesco. Determined to kill Boccanegra, Paolo Albiani pours a slow-acting poison into Boccanegra's water, and then tries to convince Fiesco to murder Boccanegra in return for his freedom. Fiesco refuses. Paolo Albiani next suggests to Gabriele Adorno that Amelia is the Doge's mistress, hoping Adorno will murder Boccanegra in a jealous rage. Gabriele Adorno is furious (Aria: Sento avvampar nell'anima – "I feel a furious jealousy / Setting my soul on fire"). Amelia enters Boccanegra's apartments, seeming to confirm Gabriele Adorno's suspicions. Gabriele Adorno angrily accuses her of infidelity. Amelia claims only to love Gabriele Adorno, but cannot reveal her secret – that Boccanegra is her father – as Gabriele Adorno's family were killed by Boccanegra. Gabriele Adorno hides as Boccanegra is heard approaching. Amelia confesses to Boccanegra that she is in love with his enemy Gabriele Adorno. Boccanegra is angry, but tells Amelia that if Gabriele Adorno changes his ways, he may pardon him. Boccanegra asks Amelia to leave, then drinks the poisoned water, which Paolo Albiani has placed on the table, and falls asleep. Adorno emerges and is about to kill Boccanegra, when Amelia returns in time to stop him. Boccanegra wakes and reveals to Gabriele Adorno that Amelia is his daughter. Gabriele Adorno begs for Amelia's forgiveness (Trio: Perdon, Amelia... Indomito – "Forgive me, Amelia... A wild, / Jealous love was mine"). Noises of fighting are heard – Paolo Albiani has stirred up a revolution against Boccanegra. Gabriele Adorno promises to fight for Boccanegra, who vows that Adorno shall marry Amelia if he can crush the rebels. The Act 3 is set Inside the Doge's palace. The uprising against Boccanegra has been put down. Paolo Albiani has been condemned to death for fighting with the rebels against Boccanegra. Fiesco is released from prison by the Doge's men. On his way to the scaffold, Paolo Albiani boasts to Fiesco that he has poisoned Boccanegra. Fiesco is deeply shocked. Fiesco confronts Boccanegra, who is now dying from Paolo's poison. Boccanegra recognizes his old enemy and tells Fiesco that Amelia is his granddaughter. Fiesco feels great remorse and tells Boccanegra about the poison. Gabriele Adorno and Amelia, newly married, arrive to find the two men reconciled. Boccanegra tells Amelia that Fiesco is her grandfather and, before he dies, names Gabriele Adorno his successor.

 

 

 

The crowd mourns the death of Boccanegra. Roma Teatro dell'Opera, 8 settembre 1952 Giuseppe Verdi - Simon Boccanegra. Mario Filippeschi nel ruolo di Gabriele Adorno

 

ADRIANO, Roman emperor.

José de Nebra: Más gloria es triunfar de sí, o, Adriano en Siria. Girolamo Abos: Adriano in Siria

AGRIPPA. Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, Roman statesman and general.

Samuel Barber, "Antony and Cleopatra".

ATENOBARBO. Gneo Domizio. Roman consul (32 BC).

Samuel Barber:, "Antony and Cleopatra".

ALESSANDRO. Severo. Emperor of Rome.

George Frideric Handel, "Alessandro Severo".

ALESSIO. Saint, of Rome.

Stefano Landi, "Sant'Alessio" (1631), the first opera written on an historical subject.

D'ESTE. Alfonso I. Duke of Ferrara, husband of Lucrezia Borgia.

Gaetano Donizetti, "Lucrezia Borgia". The baritone role. During the period when Vittore Ugo objected to the presentation of the opera in Paris, the role was changed.

D'ESTE. Alfonso II. Duke of Ferrara. He was the patron of Torquato Tasso.

Gaetano Donizetti, "Torquato Tasso".

ALIGHIERI, Dante.

Ambrogio Thomas, "Francesca da Rimini". This opera is special in including an eschatological moment -- quadro I, quadro IV -- where Aligheri is seen along with Virgilio.  Rachmaninov, "Francesca da Rimini". Italian poet Tan Dun: Marco Polo. Sergei Rachmaninoff: Francesca da Rimini

AMALASUNTHA. Queen of the Ostrogoths. André Messager: Isoline (as La Reine Amalasonthe).

AMBROGINI. Angelo -- detto "Il Poliziano". Italian renaissance poet, scholar.

Ruggero Leoncavallo, "I Medici". Poliziano appears as a character. More importantly, Poliziano was Leoncavallo's main source for the history (along with Lorenzo Medici's own memoirs).

ANNA. Of Bavaria, Holy Roman Empress, Queen of Rome and Bavaria. Ignaz Holzbauer: Günther von Schwarzburg.

ANIELLO. Tommaso.

-- detto il "Masaniello".  Neapolitan fisherman, revolutionary leader.



There is a Dipinto di Micco Spadaro of "L'uccisione di Gaspare Carafa". Daniel Auber: La muette de Portici (aka Masaniello). Reinhard Keiser: Masagniello. Reinhard Keiser, "Die neapolitanische Fischer-Empörung oder Masaniello furioso". Auber's opera is loosely based on the historical uprising of Masaniello against Spanish rule in Naples in 1647.



It was very good that Auber found inspiration in this.

In Act 1 we witness the wedding of Alfonso, son of the Viceroy of Naples, with the Spanish Princess Elvira. Alfonso, who has seduced Fenella, the Neapolitan Masaniello's mute sister and abandoned her, is tormented by doubts and remorse, fearing that she has committed suicide. During the festival Fenella rushes in to seek protection from the Viceroy, who has kept her a prisoner for the past month. She has escaped from her prison and narrates the story of her seduction by gestures, showing a scarf which her lover gave her. Elvira promises to protect her and proceeds to the altar, Fenella vainly trying to follow. In the chapel Fenella recognizes her seducer in the bridegroom of the Princess. When the newly married couple come out of the church, Elvira presents Fenella to her husband and discovers from the mute girl's gestures, that he was her faithless lover. Fenella flies, leaving Alfonso and Elvira in sorrow and despair. In Act 2 the fishermen, who have been brooding in silence over the tyranny of their foes, begin to assemble. Pietro, Masaniello's friend, has sought for Fenella in vain, but at length she appears of her own accord and confesses her wrongs. Masaniello is infuriated and swears to have revenge, but Fenella, who still loves Alfonso, does not mention his name. Then Masaniello calls the fishermen to arms and they swear perdition to the enemy of their country. In Act 3 The Naples marketplace. People go to and fro, selling and buying, all the while concealing their purpose under a show of merriment and carelessness. Selva, the officer of the Viceroy's body-guard, from whom Fenella has escaped, discovers her and the attempt to rearrest her is the sign for a general revolt, in which the people are victorious. In Act 4 Fenella comes to her brother's dwelling and describes the horrors, which are taking place in the town. The relation fills his noble soul with sorrow and disgust. When Fenella has retired to rest, Pietro enters with comrades and tries to excite Masaniello to further deeds, but he only wants liberty and shrinks from murder and cruelties. They tell him that Alfonso has escaped and that they are resolved to overtake and kill him. Fenella, who hears all, decides to save her lover. At this moment Alfonso begs at her door for a hiding-place. He enters with Elvira, and Fenella, though at first disposed to avenge herself on her rival, pardons her for Alfonso's sake. Masaniello, reentering, assures the strangers of his protection and even when Pietro denounces Alfonso as the Viceroy's son, he holds his promise sacred. Pietro with his fellow-conspirators leaves him full of rage and hatred. Meanwhile the magistrate of the city presents Masaniello with the Royal crown and he is proclaimed King of Naples. In Act 5 before the Viceroy's palace in a gathering of fishermen, Pietro confides to Moreno that he has administered poison to Masaniello, in order to punish him for his treason, and that the King of one day will soon die. While he speaks, Borella rushes in to tell of a fresh troop of soldiers, marching against the people with Alfonso at their head. Knowing that Masaniello alone can save them, the fishermen entreat him to take the command of them once more and Masaniello, though deadly ill and half bereft of his reason, complies with their request. The combat takes place, while an eruption of Vesuvius is going on. Masaniello falls in the act of saving Elvira's life. On hearing these terrible tidings Fanella rushes to the terrace, from which she leaps into the abyss beneath, while the fugitive noblemen take again possession of the city. Bibliografia. Bartolommeo Capasso, "La casa e la famiglia di Masaniello. Ricordi della storia e della vita napolitana", Napoli, Giannini Editore (1919), Bartolommeo Capasso, Masaniello. La sua vita la sua rivoluzione, Napoli, Luca Torre (1993), Giuseppe Campolieti, Masaniello. Trionfo e caduta del celebre capopopolo nello sfondo della tumultuosa Napoli del Seicento, Novara, Istituto geografico De Agostini, 1989.  Francesco Capecelatro, Diario di Francesco Capecelatro contenente la storia delle cose avvenute nel Reame di Napoli negli anni 1647-1650 vol. I, Napoli, Stabilimento Tipografico di Gaetano Nobile, 1850. URL consultato il 17-9-2008. Benedetto Croce, "Storia del Regno di Napoli", Bari, Laterza, 1980. Silvana D'Alessio, "Contagi. La rivolta napoletana del 1647-48: linguaggio e potere politico", Firenze, Centro Editoriale Toscano, 2003.  Silvana D'Alessio, Masaniello. La sua vita e il suo mito in Europa, Salerno, Salerno Editrice, 2007.  Eduardo De Filippo, Tommaso d'Amalfi, Torino, Einaudi, 1980. Tommaso de Santis, Storia del tumulto di Napoli, Trieste, Colombo Coen, 1858. URL consultato il 17-9-2008. Roberto De Simone; Thomas Asselijn; Christian Weise, Masaniello nella drammaturgia europea e nella iconografia del suo secolo, Gaetano Macchiaroli Editore, 1998.  Salvatore Di Giacomo, Celebrità napoletane, Tranio, Vecchi, 1896. Vittorio Dini, Masaniello. L'eroe e il mito, Roma, Newton Compton, 1995.  Ascanio Filomarino, Lettere in Francesco Palermo (a cura di), Narrazioni e documenti sulla storia del regno di Napoli dall'anno 1522 al 1667, Firenze, Giovan Pietro Vieusseux, 1846, pp. 379-393. URL consultato il 5-8-2008.. Mario Forgione, Masaniello. 7-16 Luglio 1647. Cronaca di dieci giorni rivoluzionari, Napoli, EDI, 1994. Alessandro Giraffi, Le rivolutioni di Napoli, Venezia, Filippo Alberto, 1648. URL consultato il 17-9-2008. Vittorio Gleijeses, La Storia di Napoli vol. II, Napoli, Società Editrice Napoletana, 1974. Ottorino Gurgo, Lazzari. Una storia napoletana, Napoli, Guida Editori, 2005. ISBN 88-7188-857-X URL consultato il 5-8-2008. Aurelio Musi, La rivolta di Masaniello nella scena politica barocca, Napoli, Guida Editori, 1989.   Aurelio Musi, Protagonisti nella Storia di Napoli, Napoli, Elio De Rosa, 1994. Nicola Napolitano, Masaniello e Giulio Genoino. Mito e coscienza di una rivolta, Napoli, Fausto Fiorentino Editore, 1962. Gaetano Parente, Masaniello. Storia del Secolo XVII, Firenze, Vincenzo Batelli e Figli, 1838. URL consultato il 17-9-2008. Giovan Battista Piacente, Le rivoluzioni del Regno di Napoli negli anni 1647-1648 e l'assedio di Piombino e Portolongone, Napoli, Tipografia di Giuseppe Guerrera, 1861. URL consultato il 17-9-2008. Antonio Romano, Memorie di Tommaso Aniello d'Amalfi detto Masaniello. Responsabilità della Chiesa nella sconfitta della rivoluzione napoletana e guerra d'indipendenza, Napoli, Edizioni del Delfino, 1990. Michelangelo Schipa, La così detta rivoluzione di Masaniello: da memorie contemporanee inedite, Napoli, Pierro, 1918. Michelangelo Schipa, Giuseppe Galasso (a cura di), Studi masanielliani, Napoli, Società Napoletana di Storia Patria, 1997.

ANNIBALE. Carthaginian ruler.

Johann Adolf Hasse, Domènec Terradellas, Giovanni Battista Lampugnani and Pietro Domenico Paradie, "Annibale in Capua".

ARAGONA. Giovanna d'. Duchessa di Amalfi.

La tragedia prende spunto da un fatto storico accaduto ad Amalfi ai primi del XVI secolo riguardante Giovanna d'Aragona, figlia dello sfortunato Enrico d'Aragona a sua volta figlio naturale del re di Napoli Ferrante I. Giovanna nel 1497 aveva sposato il duca d'Amalfi don Alfonso Todeschini Piccolomini, di cui rimase però vedova poco dopo il matrimonio. L'aiuto nell'amministrazione dei suoi beni, prestatole dal maggiordomo di corte, il patrizio napoletano Antonio Beccadelli di Bologna, si trasformò in un legame affettivo: i due si sposarono clandestinamente ed ebbero due figli. La notizia del matrimonio venne tuttavia conosciuta dal fratello di Giovanna, il cardinale Luigi d'Aragona, il quale, disapprovando il legame per motivi di rango sociale, si ritiene abbia fatto uccidere la sorella, i suoi tre figli, e lo sposo morganatico che era riuscito a espatriare nel Ducato di Milano. Nel 1510, al momento dei tragici eventi, l'unico fratello vivente di Giovanna era il cardinale Luigi: l'altro fratello Carlo, marchese di Gerace, nato dopo la morte del padre, era deceduto nel 1501. La vicenda della sventurata duchessa d'Amalfi era stata narrata da Matteo Bandello (Novelle, Novella XXVI, Il signor Antonio Bologna sposa la duchessa di Malfi e tutti dui sono ammazzati). Webster l'aveva tuttavia conosciuta attraverso Il Palazzo del piacere (titolo originale The Palace of Pleasure), di William Painter. Webster's play is based on events that occurred in 1508, recounted by William Painter in "The Palace of Pleasure". The Duchess of Amalfi is Giovanna d'Aragona, daughter of Arrigo d'Aragona, Marquis of Gerace, and an illegitimate son of Ferdinand I of Naples. The duchess's  husbands were Alfonso Piccolomini, Duke of Amalfi, and Antonio Bologna. Webster's play begins as a love story, with the Duchess of Amalfi who marries beneath her class. It ends as a nightmarish tragedy as her two brothers exact their revenge, destroying themselves in the process. Jacobean drama continued the trend of stage violence and horror set by Elizabethan tragedy, under the influence of Seneca, and there is a great deal of all that in the later scenes of the play. The complexity of some of its characters, particularly Bosola and the Duchess, plus Webster's poetic language, ensure the play is often considered among the greatest tragedies of English renaissance drama. Characters include Ferdinand, the Duke of Calabria and twin brother of the Duchess of Amalfi. Unlike his rational brother the Cardinal, Ferdinand is given to fits of rage and violent outbursts disproportionate to the perceived offence. He gradually loses his sanity—he believes he is a wolf and digs up graves— (lycanthropia) but, upon seeing his dead sister, has the grace to regret hiring Bosola to kill her. (In reality, his name was Carlo, Marquis of Gerace.) The other character is The Cardinal. The brother to the Duchess and Ferdinand. A corrupt, icy official in the Roman Catholic Church who keeps a mistress—not uncharacteristic of the time—he has arranged a spy (Bosola) to spy upon his sister - all this on the quiet, however, leaving others ignorant of his plotting. Of remorse, love, loyalty, or even greed, he knows nothing, and his reasons for hating his sister are a mystery. (Historically, his name was Luigi or Lodovico.)

"La duchessa di Amalfi" is an opera in three acts by  Stephen Oliver, based on the eponymous play by John Webster. Oliver originally wrote this opera, for a production at the Oxford Playhouse on commission from the Oxford University Opera Club. The premiere was on November 23, 1971, with the following cast members: Jillian Crowe (The Duchess), Keith Jones (Antonio), Marion Milford (Julia), Peter Reynolds (The Cardinal), Stephen Oliver (Bosola). Oliver then rewrote the work, and the revised version received its US premiere at Santa Fe Opera on August 5, 1978.

ARMINIO. Germanic chieftain. George Frideric Handel: Arminio.

ARRIGO. Guerriero veronese alla battaglia di Legnano.  The battle of Legnano was fought on May 29, 1176, between the forces of the Holy Roman Empire, led by Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, and the Lombard League.

The tenor role in Verdi's "La Battaglia di Legnano". Personaggi: Federico Barbarossa ( basso), i  due consoli (bassi), il podestà di Como (basso), Rolando, duce milanese (baritono), Lida, sua moglie (soprano), Arrigo, guerriero veronese (tenore) Marcovaldo, prigioniero alemanno (baritono), Imelda, ancella di Lidia (mezzosoprano) Uno scudiero di Arrigo (tenore). Un araldo (tenore).

 

ARRIGO. The tenor role in Verdi's, "I Vespri Siciliani". I Vespri siciliani sono un evento storico avvenuto nella Sicilia del XIII secolo. Secondo la tradizione, la rivoluzione del Vespro fu organizzata in gran segreto dai principali esponenti della nobiltà siciliana. Quattro furono i principali organizzatori: Giovanni da Procida, della famosa Scuola medica salernitana, medico di Federico II; Alaimo di Lentini, Signore di Lentini; Gualtiero di Caltagirone, Barone, Signore di Caltagirone; e Palmiero Abate, Signore di Trapani e Conte di Butera.

Guido di Monteforte, governor of Sicily under Charles d'Anjou, king of Naples. Lord of Bethune, le sire -- a French officer.  Conte di Vaudemont, a French officer. ARRIGO, un siciliano. Giovanni da Procida, dottore. La duchessa Elena, sorella del Duca Frederico d'Austria. Bibliografia:  Steven Runciman (1958),  I vespri siciliani, 1997, Edizioni Dedalo.  Leonardo Bruni (1416), History of the Florentine People, Harvard, 2001.  "Sicilian Vespers" in Encyclopedia Britannica. Santi Correnti, «Il Vespro» Giovanni Battista Niccolini (1882), Vespro Siciliano: storia inedita, per cura di Corrado Gargiolli. Pubblicato da D. G. Brigola. Francesco Benigno e Giuseppe Giarrizzo, Storia della Sicilia, vol. 3, ed. Laterza, Roma-Bari, 1999.

ASTORGA Emanuele d'. Italian composer. Johann Joseph Abert: Astorga

ATTILA. The Hun.

Giuseppe Verdi: Attila.

AUGUSTO. Cesare Augusto. Roman Emperor.

Samuel Barber: Antony and Cleopatra (as Octavius Caesar). Also: "La clemenza di Augusto".

In "Cinna, ossia La clemenza di Augusto", Augusto is the baritone role.

AURELIANO. Emperor of Rome.

Gioachino Rossini: Aureliano in Palmira

*****B*****

BARBERINI. Maffeo. Pope Urban VIII.

Philip Glass, "Galileo Galilei". The pope appears as both Cardinal Maffeo Barberini and Pope Urban VIII.

BERNARDONE.  San Francesco d'Assisi, born Giovanni di Pietro di Bernardone, but nicknamed Francesco, "the Frenchman", by his father, 1181/1182 – October 3, 1226.

 

 

Italian friar and preacher. He founded the men's Order of Friars Minor, the women’s Order of St. Clare, and the Third Order of Saint Francis for men and women not able to live the lives of itinerant preachers followed by the early members of the Order of Friars Minor or the monastic lives of the Poor Clares. Though he was never ordained to the Catholic priesthood, Francis is one of the most venerated religious figures in history.

 



 

San Francesco d'Assissi is an opera in three acts and eight scenes by Olivier Messiaen, written in 1983. It concerns Saint Francis of Assisi, the title character, and displays the composer's devout Catholicism. The world première took place in Paris on 28 Nov. 1983. The subject of each scene is borrowed from the Fioretti and the Reflexions on the Stigmata, books written by anonymous Franciscans of the 14th century. There are seven characters: Saint Francis, the Leper, the Angel, Brother Elias, and three Brothers especially beloved of Saint Francis--Brother Leo, Brother Masseo, and Brother Bernard. Throughout the opera one must see the progress of grace in the soul of Saint Francis. In the first Act 1, the first scene is The Cross, when Saint Francis explains to Brother Leo that for the love of Christ he must patiently endure all contradictions, all suffering. This is the "Perfect joy.". The Scene 2 is the Lauds, where affter the recitation of Matins by the Brothers, Saint Francis, remaining alone, prays that he might meet a leper and be capable of loving him. Scene 3: The Kissing of the Leper, at a leper-hospital, a leper, horribly blood-stained and covered in pustules, rails against his disease. Saint Francis enters and, sitting close to him, speaks gently. An angel appears behind a window and says: "Leper, your heart accuses you, but God is greater than your heart." Troubled by the voice and by the goodness of Saint Francis, the leper is stricken with remorse. Saint Francis embraces him and, miraculously, the leper is cured and dances for joy. More important than the cure of the leper is the growth of grace in the soul of Saint Francis and his exultation at having triumphed over himself. Act 2. Scene 4: The Journeying Angel. On a forest road on La Verna an angel appears, disguised as a traveler. His knocking on the door of the monastery makes a terrific sound, symbolising the inrush of Grace. Brother Masseo opens the door. The Angel asks Brother Elias, the vicar of the Order, a question about predestination. Brother Elias refuses to answer and pushes the Angel outside. The Angel knocks on the door again and puts the same question to Brother Bernard, who replies with much wisdom. The Angel having gone, Brother Bernard and Brother Masseo look at each other, Bernard remarking, "Perhaps it was an angel..." Scene 5: The Angel-Musician The Angel appears to Saint Francis and, to give him a foretaste of celestial bliss, plays him a solo on his viol. This solo is so glorious that Francis swoons. Scene 6: The Sermon to the Birds

Set at Assisi, at the Carceri, with a large green oak tree in spring with many birds singing. Saint Francis, followed by Brother Masseo, preaches a sermon to the birds and solemnly blesses them. The birds reply with a great chorus in which are heard not only birds of Umbria, especially the blackcap, but also birds of other countries, of distant lands, notably the Isle of Pines, close to New Caledonia.Act 3 Scene 7: The Stigmata On La Verna at night in a cave beneath an overhanging rock, Saint Francis is alone. A great Cross appears. The voice of Christ, symbolized by a choir, is heard almost continually. Five luminous beams dart from the Cross and successively strike the two hands, the two feet, and the right side of Saint Francis, with the same terrific sound that accompanied the Angel's knocking. These five wounds, which resemble the five wounds of Christ, are the divine confirmation of Saint Francis's holiness. Scene 8: Death and the New Life Saint Francis is dying, stretched out at full length on the ground. All the Brothers are around him. He bids farewell to all those he has loved, and sings the last verse of his Canticle of the Sun, the verse of "our sister bodily Death". The Brothers sing Psalm 141. The Angel and the Leper appear to Saint Francis to comfort him. Saint Francis utters his last words: "Lord! Music and poetry have led me to Thee [...] in default of Truth [...] dazzle me for ever by Thy excess of Truth..." He dies. Bells ring. Everything disappears. While the choir hymns the Resurrection, a patch of light illuminates the spot where previously the body of Saint Francis lay. The light increases until it becomes blinding. The curtain falls.

BOCCACCIO, Giovanni. Italian writer, poet.

Franz von Suppé: Boccaccio. Franz von Suppé, nome d'arte di Francesco Ezechiele Ermenegildo Cav. di Suppé-Demelli (nato a Spalato, Dalmazia, 18 aprile 1819 – Vienna, 21 maggio 1895), è stato un compositore austriaco, di origine dalmata. Franz von Suppé's parents named him Francesco Ezechiele Ermenegildo Cavaliere di Suppé-Demelli when he was born on April 18, 1819, in Split, Dalmatia, Austrian Empire. His Belgian ancestors may have emigrated there in the 18th century.^[3] His father – a man of Italian and Belgian ancestry – was a civil servant in the service of the Austrian Empire, as was his father before him; Suppé's mother was Viennese by birth. He was a distant relative of Gaetano Donizetti. He simplified and Germanized his name when in Vienna, and changed "cavaliere di" to "von". Outside Germanic circles, his name may appear on programmes as Francesco Suppé-Demelli.

It was very good that Suppe found inspiration here. "Boccaccio, ossia il principe di Palermo" is an operetta in three acts by Franz von Suppé to a libretto by Camillo Walzel and Richard Genée, based on the play by Jean-François-Antoine Bayard, Adolphe de Leuven, Léon Lévy Brunswick and Arthur de Beauplan, based in turn on the Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio. The opera was first performed at the Carltheater, Vienna, February 1, 1879. An English translation was done by Oscar Weil and Gustav Hinrichs ca. 1883. Personaggi: Fiametta, Lambertuccio's foster-daughter; Giovanni Boccaccio, novelist and poet. Beatrice, Lambertuccio's wife. Isabella, Lotteringhi's wife. Peronella - Pietro, Prince of Palermo (tenor); Lambertuccio, the grocer. Lotteringhi, the cooper - baritone. Scalza, the barber - baritone. Leonello, Boccaccio's student friend - baritone. Checco, a beggar - bass. Fratelli, the bookseller - baritone. Majordomo - baritone. Beggars, students, servants, Donna Pulci's daughters - chorus. Time: 1331. Place: Florence. In early-Renaissance Florence, the erotic novellas of the poet Boccaccio cause a stir and the locals are divided into the female fans of his scandalous tales and their jealous husbands. A plot is hatched by the husbands to chase Boccaccio from the city and have him locked up. But Boccaccio has other plans, including one to win the hand of the Duke's daughter Fiametta, which he finally succeeds in doing after finding favour with the Duke. Suppé's finest operetta. Arias, duets, and ensembles: "Ich sehe einen jungen Mann dort stehn" (Boccaccio). "Hab’ ich nur deine Liebe" (Fiametta, later with Boccaccio). Act 1 Finale (book-burning). Serenade (Boccaccio, Pietro, Leonetto). Cooper's Song (Lotteringhi). Waltz Trio "Wie pocht mein Herz so ungestüm" (Fiametta, Isabella, Peronella). Lovers' Sextet. Duet "Florenz hat schöne Frauen (Mia bella florentina)" (Fiametta, Boccaccio). Act 3 Finale (Boccaccio's counsel). References: Lamb, Andrew (1992), 'Boccaccio' in The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, ed. Stanley Sadie (London) ISBN 0-333-73432-7. ^ Music Australia [1]. External links [edit]. 'Old and sold' profile of Boccaccio

Categories: 1879 operas. Adaptations of works by Giovanni Boccaccio. Decameron. Operas by Franz von Suppé. German-language operettas

BOCCANEGRA. Simone, first Doge of Genoa. Giuseppe Verdi: Simon Boccanegra. Vide "ADORNO, Gabriele".

BONAPARTE, Carolina. -- Queen Consort of Naples and Sicily, sister of Napoleon. Pauline Bonaparte, Princess of France, sister of Napoleon.


Ivan Caryll, "The Duchess of Dantzic".

It was good Caryll found inspiration in this. For the history of Italy, it is only illustrative of how French the Italian aristocracy was (or wasn't).



BORGIA. Cesare. Figlio di Rodrigo Borgia (papa Alessandro VI), fratello (e amante) di Lucrezia Borgia.

Leoncavallo: "Cesare Borgia": terza parte della trilogia rinascimentale: "Il creposcolo".

BORGIA. Saint Francis -- 4th Duke of Gandía, Spanish Superior-General of the Jesuits
Ernst Krenek: Karl V.

BORGIA. Lucrezia. Daughter of Rodrigo Borgia (Pope Alexander VI), Duchess of Ferrara.

Gaetano Donizetti, "Lucrezia Borgia", to a libretto by Felice Romani, tratto da Vittore Ugo.

BORROMEO. San Carlo. Italian cardinal.

Hans Pfitzner, "Palestrina". This must be the third opera on saints. Note that saints start their lives NOT as saints. Cfr. "Sant'Alessio".

BROGNI, Gian Francesco. Italian cardinal.



Fromental Halévy, "La Juive". It was good Halevy found inspiration on this.

José Mardones as Cardinal Brogni. Photograph by Herman Mishkin. It is a good opera.


BRUTO. Marcus Junius Brutus the Younger, Roman politician, co-assassin of Julius Caesar. Giselher Klebe: Die Ermordung Cäsars

***** C *****

CAGLIOSTRO, Alessandro. Alessandro Cagliostro (Giuseppe Balsamo), Italian adventurer and imposter.

 

Johann Strauss II, "Cagliostro in Wien". Mikael Tariverdiev: Graf Cagliostro. Cagliostro appears as a principal character in the 1794 opera Le congrès des rois, a collaborative work of 12 composers. The French composer Victor Dourlen (1780–1864) composed the first act to "Cagliostro, ou Les illuminés" which premiered on 27 November 1810. The second and third act were composed by Anton Reicha (1770–1836). The Irish composer William Michael Rooke (1794–1847) wrote an unperformed work Cagliostro. Adolphe Adam wrote the opéra comique Cagliostro which premiered on 10 February 1844. Albert Lortzing wrote in 1850 the libretto for a comic opera in three acts, Cagliostro, but did not compose any music for it. Johann Strauß (Sohn) wrote the operetta Cagliostro in Wien (Cagliostro in Vienna) in 1875. The French composer Claude Terrasse (1867–1923) wrote Le Cagliostro which premiered in 1904. The Polish composer Jan Maklakiewicz (1899–1954) wrote the ballet in three scenes Cagliostro w Warszawie which premiered in 1938. The Romanian composer Iancu Dumitrescu (1944–) wrote the 1975 work Le miroir de Cagliostro for choir, flute and percussion. The opera Cagliostro by the Italian composer Ildebrando Pizzetti (1880–1968) was performed on Italian radio in 1952 and at La Scala on 24 January 1953. The comic opera Graf Cagliostro was written by Mikael Tariverdiev in 1983. Friedrich Schiller wrote an unfinished novel Der Geisterseher (The Ghost-Seer) between 1786 and 1789 about Cagliostro. Johann Wolfgang Goethe wrote a comedy based on Cagliostro's life, also in reference to the Affair of the Diamond Necklace, The Great Cophta (Der Groß-Coptha) which was published in 1791. Alexandre Dumas, père used Cagliostro in several of his novels (especially in Joseph Balsamo). Cagliostro is mentioned by Friedrich Nietzsche in section 194 of Beyond Good and Evil, first published in 1886: "One type wants to possess a people – and all the higher arts of a Cagliostro and Catiline suit him to that purpose." Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy wrote the supernatural love story Count Cagliostro where the Count brings to life a long dead Russian Princess, materializing her from her portrait. The story was made into a 1984 Soviet TV movie Formula of Love. In The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle the central character, Professor Challenger, is referred to as Cagliostro by a newspaper editor who disbelieves his account of his expedition. The Phantom comic book featured Cagliostro as a character in the story The Cagliostro Mystery from 1988, written by Norman Worker and drawn by Carlos Cruz. In the DC Comics universe, Cagliostro is described as an immortal (JLA Annual 2), a descendant of Leonardo da Vinci as well as an ancestor of Zatara and Zatanna (Secret Origins 27). Also, the DC Comics supervillain known as the Fadeaway Man wields an item called the Cloak of Cagliostro, which allows him to teleport. Cagliostro is a character in Robert Anton Wilson's The Historical Illuminatus Chronicles. Cagliostro is frequently alluded to in Umberto Eco's novel Foucault's Pendulum. Mikhail Kuzmin wrote a novella called The Marvelous Life of Giuseppe Balsamo, Count Cagliostro (1916). Cagliostro is a character in Psychoshop, a novel by Alfred Bester and Roger Zelazny. Josephine Balsamo, a descendent of Joseph Balsamo who calls herself Countess Cagliostro, appears in Maurice Leblanc's Arsene Lupin novels. Cagliostro makes several cameo appearances as a vampire in Kim Newman's Anno Dracula novels. The manga Rozen Maiden reveals Count Cagliostro to be merely one of many different aliases adopted by the legendary dollmaker Rozen. He was shown to be in prison whittling wood. The French film director Georges Méliès (1861–1938) directed the 1899 film Le Miroir de Cagliostro. ^Cagliostro has been played in film by Hans Stüwe (Cagliostro, 1929, silent movie directed by Richard Oswald), Orson Welles (Black Magic, 1949), Howard Vernon (Erotic Rites of Frankenstein, 1972), Bekim Fehmiu (Cagliostro, 1975), Jean Marais (Cagliostro in Wien), 1978^[15], Nodar Mgaloblishvili (Formula of Love, 1984 (TV)), Nicol Williamson (Spawn, 1997), Christopher Walken (The Affair of the Necklace, 2001). In the 1943 German epic Münchhausen, Cagliostro appears as a powerful, morally ambiguous magician, portrayed by Ferdinand Marian. Cagliostro appears as a villainous magician in an episode of the 1960s series Thriller, entitled "The Prisoner in the Mirror"; he is played by Henry Daniell and Lloyd Bochner. The second Lupin III movie goes by the title of The Castle of Cagliostro, drawing on Maurice Leblanc's Arsene Lupin novels. Cagliostro appears as the main antagonist of the film, a ruler of a fictional country bearing the same name who influences the world's economy through counterfeiting. The Mummy (1932 film), starring Boris Karloff, was adapted from an original story treatment by Nina Wilcox Putnam, titled "Cagliostro" for Karloff to star in. Based on Cagliostro and set in San Francisco, the story was about a 3000-year old magician who survives by injecting nitrates. In Jean Plaidy's book "The Queen of Diamonds" about the Affair of the Diamond Necklace.

CARUSO, Enrico.  Enrico Caruso, Italian tenor. Edwin Penhorwood: Too Many Sopranos (spoofed as "Enrico Carouser")

CASANOVA, Giacomo. Italian adventurer and libertine. Giacomo Girolamo Casanova (nato a Venezia, 2 April 1725 – 4 June 1798. Italian adventurer and author from the Republic of Venice.Giacomo Girolamo Casanova was born in Venice in 1725 to actress Zanetta Farussi, wife of actor and dancer Gaetano Giuseppe Casanova.

Dominick Argento: Casanova's Homecoming is an opera in three acts to an English libretto by the composer, based in part on Giacomo Casanova's memoirs.

It was first performed by the Minnesota Opera in Saint Paul, Minnesota in 1985.

 

The opera has set numbers with recitative and spoken dialog. It is set in Venice in 1774.

Albert Lortzing, "Casanova".

CASCA, Servilius, co-assassin of Julius Caesar.

CASSIO, Gaio Longino. Roman politician, co-assassin of Julius Caesar. Giselher Klebe: Die Ermordung Cäsars

CAVALCANTI. Guido. Florentine poet. Guido Cavalcanti (between 1250 and 1259 – August 1300) was a Florentine poet, as well as an intellectual influence on his best friend, Dante Alighieri. Cavalcanti was born in Florence at a time when the comune was beginning its economic, political, intellectual and artistic ascendancy as one of the leading cities of Renaissance. The disunited Italian peninsula was dominated by a political particularism that pitted each city-state one against the other, often with this factionalism contributing the fractious and sometimes violent political environments of each comune.

Ezra Pound and George Antheil, "Cavalcanti". The libretto is by Ezra Pound.

 

 

The music is by George Antheil.

 

 

Ezra Pound published his own translations under the title The Sonnets and Ballate of Guido Cavalcanti and in 1936, he edited the Italian poet's works as Rime. A reworked translation of Donna me prega formed the bulk of Canto XXXVI in Pound's long poem The Cantos. Pound's main focus was on Cavalcanti's philosophy of love, which he viewed as a continuing expression of a pagan, neo-platonic tradition stretching back through the troubadours and early medieval Latin lyrics to the world of pre-Christian polytheism. Pound also composed a three-act opera titled Cavalcanti at the request of Archie Harding, a producer at the BBC, to music by George Antheil.

CELLINI, Benvenuto Italian sculptor, goldsmith, artisan.

It was very good that Berlioz found inspiration in this. While the Italian stamp celebrates Cellini's work rather than his person, there is a nice statue to be found in Firenze on Ponte Vecchio.

Hector Berlioz: Benvenuto Cellini.

CENCI, Beatrice. Italian noblewoman, protagonist of a famous murder trial. Beatrice Cenci (Italian: [beaˈtritʃe ˈtʃentʃi]; 6 February 1577 – 11 September 1599) was an Italian noblewoman. She is famous as the protagonist in a lurid murder trial in Rome.Beatrice was the daughter of Francesco Cenci, an aristocrat who, due to his violent temper and immoral behaviour, found himself in trouble with papal justice more than once. They lived in Rome in the rione Regola, in the Palazzo Cenci, built over the ruins of a medieval fortified palace at the edge of Rome's Jewish ghetto. Together with them lived also Beatrice's elder brother, Giacomo, Francesco's second wife, Lucrezia Petroni and Bernardo, the young boy born from Francesco's second marriage. Among their other possessions there was a castle, La Rocca of Petrella Salto, a small village near Rieti, north of Rome.
According to the legend, Francesco Cenci abused his wife and his sons and reached the point of committing incest with Beatrice. He was jailed for other crimes, but thanks to the leniency with which the nobles were treated, he was freed early. Beatrice tried to inform the authorities about the frequent mistreatments, but nothing happened, although everybody in Rome knew what kind of person her father was. When he found out that his daughter reported against him, he sent Beatrice and Lucrezia away from Rome to live in the family's country castle at La Petrella del Salto in the Abruzzi mountains. The four Cenci decided they had no alternative but to try to get rid of Francesco, and together organised a plot. In 1598, during one of Francesco's stays at the castle, two vassals (one of whom had become Beatrice's secret lover) helped them to drug the man, but this failed to kill Francesco. Following this Beatrice, her siblings and stepmother bludgeoned Francesco to death with a hammer and threw the body off a balcony to make it look like an accident. However, no one believed the death to be accidental.
Somehow his absence was noticed and the papal police tried to find out what happened. Beatrice's lover was tortured and died without revealing the truth. Meanwhile, a family friend who was aware of the murder ordered the killing of the second vassal to avoid any risk. The plot was discovered and the four members of the Cenci family were arrested, found guilty and sentenced to death. The common people of Rome, knowing the reasons for the murder, protested against the tribunal's decision, obtaining a short postponement of the execution. However, Pope Clement VIII, fearing a spate of familial murders (the Countess of Santa Croce had recently been murdered by her son for financial gain), showed no mercy. On 11 September 1599, at dawn, they were taken to Sant'Angelo Bridge, where the scaffold was usually built.
In the cart to the scaffold, Giacomo was subjected to continual torture. On reaching the scaffold his head was smashed with a mallet. His corpse was then quartered. The public spectacle continued with the executions of first Lucrezia and finally Beatrice; both took their turns on the block to be beheaded with a sword. Only the 12-year-old, Bernardino, was spared, yet he, too, was led to the scaffold and forced to witness the execution of his relatives before returning to prison and having his properties confiscated (to be given to the pope's own family). It was decreed that Bernardino should then become a galley slave for the remainder of his life; however, he was released a year later.
Beatrice was buried in the church of San Pietro in Montorio. For the people of Rome she became a symbol of resistance against the arrogant aristocracy and a legend arose: every year on the night before her death, she came back to the bridge carrying her severed head.

Havergal Brian, "The Cenci" (1951). Alberto Ginastera, "Beatrice  Cenci". "Beatrice Cenci" is an opera in two acts by Alberto Ginastera to a  libretto by William Shand, based on the historical family of Beatrice Cenci, the Chroniques italiennes by Stendhal, and The Cenci by Percy Shelley. The first performance was on 10 September 1971 by the Opera Society of Washington in Washington, D.C., as part of the opening of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The stage direction was by Gerald Freedman, with choreography by Joyce Trisler, and the conductor was Julius Rudel. New York City Opera first staged the work on 1 April 1973. The European premiere of Beatrix Cenci took place at the Geneva Opera in September 2000.  The opera is in two acts and 14 scenes. The setting is the Cenci Palace, Rome, in the late 16th century. Count Francesco Cenci has arranged for a masked ball to celebrate the death of his two sons at Salamanca. The people despise the Count, and his daughter Beatrix and his second wife Lucrecia live in fear of him. Beatrix wants to escape by having her former suitor, Orsino, communicate a letter to the Pope. Orsino, who has taken Holy Orders, destroys the letter. At the ball, the guests are repelled at the idea of the Count celebrating the deaths of his own sons. They leave, to the terror of Beatrix, who does not want to be alone in her father's company. Orsino enters and covers his destruction of Beatrix's letter by saying that the Pope has rejected her plea. Left alone, the Count rapes Beatrix. When in exile after reporting her father's act, Beatrix's older brother Giacomo convinces Beatrix to kill her father. She then hires two assassins for the task, Olimpio and Marzio. Lucrecia gives Cenci a sleeping potion. The assassins kill the Count and conceal his body. Months later, Orsino announces that the Count’s body has been discovered. One of the assassins has been killed, and the other has confessed to the murder. Beatrix is arrested for the crime, and then bound and tortured. Finally, she is executed at the scaffold. Berthold Goldschmidt, "Beatrice Cenci", Alessandro Londei e Brunella Caronti, "Beatrice Cenci" (2006). James Rolfe: "Beatrice Chancy".

CHAUCER, Geoffrey Chaucer, English author, poet, philosopher, courtier and diplomat
Reginald De Koven, "The Canterbury Pilgrims".

CIMBER. Tillio Cimber, co-assassin of Julius Caesar Giselher Klebe: Die Ermordung Cäsars (as Metellus Cimber)

CINNA. Helvius Cinna, Roman poet. Lorenzo Ferrero: Le piccole storie – ai margini delle guerre
Giselher Klebe: Die Ermordung Cäsars.

Vide AUGUSTO, "La clemenza di Augusto".

CINNA. Lucius Cornelius Cinna, Roman consul. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Lucio Silla

CLAUDIO.  Emperor Claudius of Rome. George Frideric Handel: Agrippina

CLEMENTE VII. Papa. Vide Medici, Giulio Giuliano de'.

CLEOPATRA. Cleopatra VII, Pharaoh of Egypt. Samuel Barber: Antony and Cleopatra Domenico Cimarosa: La Cleopatra. Carl Heinrich Graun: Cesare e Cleopatra. Louis Gruenberg: Antony and Cleopatra. Henry Kimball Hadley: Cleopatra's Night. George Frideric Handel: Giulio Cesare (in Egitto). Felip Pedrell: Cléopâtre. Jules Massenet: Cléopâtre

CLELIA. early Roman figure, possibly legendary. Filippo Amadei, Giovanni Battista Bononcini and George Frideric Handel: Muzio Scevola

COCLES. Orazio.  Roman military officer. Filippo Amadei, Giovanni Battista Bononcini and George Frideric Handel: Muzio Scevola

COLLATINO Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, Roman consul, husband of Lucretia. Benjamin Britten: The Rape of Lucretia

COLONNA. Stefano Colonna (1265–1348), Roman political figure. Richard Wagner: Rienzi

COLOMBO.  Christopher, Genoese explorer of the New World.

Born in Genova.

Ramón Carnicer: Cristoforo Colombo. Alberto Franchetti: Cristoforo Colombo. Darius Milhaud: Christophe Colomb. Manuel de Falla: Atlàntida. Lleonard Balada: Cristóbal Colón. Lleonard Balada: Death of Columbus. Philip Glass: The Voyage

COSTANTINO. I. Emperor Constantine I "The Great" of Rome. Gaetano Donizetti: Fausta

CORIOLANO. Gaius Marcius Coriolanus, legendary Roman leader. Francesco Cavalli: Coriolano.

CORNARO, Caterina. Nobil Donna Catherine Cornaro (Venetian: Catarina) (25 November 1454 – 10 July 1510) was Queen of Cyprus from 1474 to 1489 and declared a "Daughter of Saint Mark" in order that Venice could claim control of Cyprus after the death of her husband, James II ("James the Bastard"). Catherine was a daughter of Nobil Huomo Marco Cornaro (Venice, December, 1406 – Venice, 1 August 1479), Cavaliere del Sacro Romano Impero (Knight of the Holy Roman Empire) and Patrizio Veneto (Patrician of Venice), by his wife Fiorenza Crispo. Her father was presumably a namesake grandson of Marco Cornaro, Doge of Venice from 1365 to 1368.[2] She was the younger sister of the Nobil Huomo Giorgio Cornaro (1452 – 31 July 1527), "Padre della Patria" and Knight of the Holy Roman Empire.[citation needed] The Cornaro family had produced four Doges. Her family had long associations with Cyprus, especially with regard to trade and commerce. In the Episkopi area, in the Limassol District, the Cornaro family administered various sugar-mills and exported Cypriot products to Venice.[citation needed] Fiorenza Crispo was a daughter of Nicholas Crispo, Lord of Syros. The identity of her mother is uncertain as Crispo had two known wives. Either could be the mother. According to his own correspondence, Niccolò was a son-in-law of Jacopo of Lesbos.[3] An account by Caterino Zeno dated to 1574 names another wife, Eudokia-Valenza of Trebizond. This Valenza was a reported daughter of John IV of Trebizond and Bagrationi. However her alleged parents were married in 1426 and one of Valenza's daughters was reportedly married in 1429. John IV and his wife are unlikely to have been the grandparents of a married woman only three years following their own marriage. Valenza is considered likely to have been a sister of John IV, instead of a daughter. In this case her parents would be Alexios IV of Trebizond and Theodora Kantakouzene.[4] Niccolò had been created lord of Syros by his father Francesco I Crispo, Duke of the Archipelago. His mother was Florence Sanudo, a member of the previous reigning dynasty of the Archipelago.[5] Florence was Lady of Milos. She was the daughter and successor of Marco Sanudo, Lord of Milos from 1341 to 1376. Marco was a younger son of William I Sanudo, Duke of the Archipelago from 1303 to 1323.[6] Catherine was painted by Dürer, Titian, Bellini and Giorgione.[citation needed] Marriage and reign [edit] In 1468, James II of Cyprus, otherwise known as James the Bastard, became King. In 1468 he chose Caterina for a wife and Queen of the Kingdom of Cyprus. The King's choice was extremely pleasing to the Republic of Venice as it could henceforth secure the commercial rights and other privileges of Venice in Cyprus. They married in Venice, on 30 July 1468, by proxy, when she was only 14 years old. She finally travelled to Cyprus and married in person at Famagusta in October or November 1472. James died soon after the wedding due to a sudden illness, and according to his will, Caterina, who at the time was pregnant, acted as regent. She became monarch when their infant son James died in August 1474 before his first birthday, under suspicious circumstances. The kingdom had long since declined, and had been a tributary state of the Mameluks since 1426. Under Caterina, who ruled the island from 1474 to 1489, the island was controlled by Venetian merchants, and on 14 March 1489 she was forced to abdicate and to sell the administration of the country to the Republic of Venice. According to George Boustronios, "On 14 February, the Queen dressed in black and accompanied by the Barons and their ladies, set off on horseback. Six knights held her horse's reins. From the moment she left Nicosia, her eyes kept streaming with tears. Upon her departure, the whole population was bewailing."[this quote needs a citation] Having been deposed in February of that year, Caterina was finally obliged to leave the island on 14 May 1489.[citation needed] Later life at Asolo [edit] The last Crusader state became a colony of Venice, and as compensation, Catherine was allowed to retain the title of Queen and was made the Sovereign Lady of Asolo, a county in the Veneto of Italy, in 1489. Asolo soon gained a reputation as a court of literary and artistic distinction, mainly as a result of it being the fictitious setting for Pietro Bembo's platonic dialogues on love, Gli Asolani. Catherine died in Venice in 1510.
Legacy. The operas "Catharina Cornaro" (1841) by Franz Lachner and "Caterina Cornaro, ossia la regina di Cipro" (1844) by Gaetano Donizetti are based on her life. The Cornaro Institute, a charitable organisation based in Larnaca for the promotion of art and other culture, memorialises her name in Cyprus. Also in Cyprus, in October 2011, the Cyprus Antiquities Department announced Caterina Cornaro's partially ruined summer palace, in Potamia, would be renovated in a one million euro restoration project, becoming a cultural centre. References [edit] ^ Wills, Garry. Venice, Lion City (New York, Simon and Schuster, 2001), 136.
^ Cawley, Charles (12 June 2011), Profile of Marco Cornaro and his children, Foundation for Medieval Genealogy, retrieved July 2012 ,[better source needed]
^ Cawley, Charles, Profile of Niccolò Crispo and his children, Foundation for Medieval Genealogy, retrieved December 2011 ,[better source needed]
^ Cawley, Charles, Profile of Alexios IV and his children, Foundation for Medieval Genealogy, retrieved December 2011 ,[better source needed]
^ Cawley, Charles, Profile of Francesco I and his children, Foundation for Medieval Genealogy, retrieved December 2011 ,[better source needed]
^ Cawley, Charles, Profile of Marco and his descendants, Foundation for Medieval Genealogy, retrieved December 2011 ,[better source needed]
^ a b Churchill, Lady Randolph Spencer; Davenport, Cyril James Humphries (1900). The Anglo-Saxon Review. John Lane. pp. 215–22. Retrieved 13 March 2013.
^ H. E. L. Mellersh; Neville Williams (May 1999). Chronology of world history. ABC-CLIO. p. 569. ISBN 978-1-57607-155-7. Retrieved 13 March 2011.
^ cornaroinstitute.org
^ Demetra Molyva, 'Palace of Cyprus’s last queen to be restored' in The Cyprus Weekly (Cyprus newspaper), 7 October 2011
Royal titles
Preceded by
Helena PalaiologinaQueen consort of Cyprus
1472–1473Succeeded by
None
Preceded by
James IIIQueen of Cyprus
1474–1489Succeeded by
Office abolished by Venetian Republic, but succession remains in dispute to this day – see Pretenders
[hide]
Monarchs of the Kingdom of Cyprus
Guy
Amalric
Hugh I
Henry I
Hugh II
Hugh III
John I
Henry II
Hugh IV
Peter I
Peter II
James I
Janus
John II
Charlotte
Louis
James II
James III
Catherine
Persondata
NameCorner, Catherine
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth25 November 1454
Place of birthVenice
Date of death10 July 1510
Place of deathVenice
Categories:
1454 births
1510 deaths
People from Venice (city)
Roman Catholic monarchs
Cypriot queens consort
Queens regnant
Medieval women
15th-century female rulers
House of Cornaro.

CORNARO. Giorgio Cornaro, Italian nobleman, father of Catherine Cornaro.

 

Gaetano Donizetti: Caterina Cornaro (as Andrea Cornaro). "Caterina Cornaro, ossia, la Regina di Cipro" is a tragedia lirica, or opera, in a prologue and two acts by Gaetano Donizetti. Giacomo Sacchèro wrote the Italian libretto after Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges' libretto for Halévy's La regina di Cipro (1841). It is based on the life of Caterina Cornaro, (1454-1510), Queen of Cyprus from 1474 to 1489. It premiered at the Teatro San Carlo, Naples on 12 January 1844. Following the success of "Linda di Chamounix", "Caterina Cornaro, ossia la regina di Cipro" was commissioned by Bartolomeo Merelli, impresario of the Kaertnerthortheater in Vienna, and was partly composed in 1842, just before "Don Pasquale", and completed during the following summer. The Viennese realised that the same subject had been set to music the preceding year by Franz Lachner and the debut was cancelled. Donizetti dedicated himself instead to "Maria di Rohan", presented at the Theater am Kärntnertor in June 1843, and searched for a suitable theatre for Caterina. Two months after the triumph of "Dom Sébastien" in Paris, "Caterina Cornaro ossia la regina di Cipro" was booed at the San Carlo in Naples. Donizetti, who had been unable to be present at rehearsals or to oversee the orchestration, had clearly predicted the opera's failure, in a January 1844 communication to his brother-in-law, "I am anxiously awaiting news of the fiasco of "Caterina Cornaro, ossia la regina di Cipro" in Naples. La Goldberg as a prima donna is my first disaster without knowing it. I wrote for a soprano, they give me a mezzo! God knows if Coletti, if Fraschini intend their roles as I intend them. God knows what a catastrophe censorship has brought". In the winter of 1844-45, Donizetti devoted himself to a revision which provided a different ending. The new version was presented in Parma in February 1845, with Marianna Barbieri-Nini in the title role. It was the last of Donizetti's operas to have its première during his lifetime. A contemporary revival took place at the Teatro San Carlo, Naples in 1972, with Leyla Gencer, Renato Bruson and Giacomo Aragall. Gencer sang a concert version the following year at Carnegie Hall, New York. In the same year, Montserrat Caballé sang Caterina in Paris at the Salle Pleyel and followed it with concert performances in London, Barcelona and Nice, some of which have been preserved on record. Winton Dean has noted how the tenor role in Caterina Cornaro is marginalized compared to the conventions of Italian opera of the day. Dean also commented on the particularly menacing quality of the assassins' chorus in the opera.
RoleVoice typePremiere Cast, 12 January 1844 (Conductor: Antonio Farelli). Caterina Cornaro soprano Fanny Goldberg; Matilde, Caterina's friendmezzo-sopranoAnna Salvetti; Gerardo tenor Gaetano Fraschini; Lusignano, King of Cyprus baritone Filippo Coletti; Mocenigo, ambassador of VenicebassNicola Benevento; Andrea Cornaro, Caterina's fatherbassMarco Arati; Strozzi, head of the SgherritenorAnafesto Rossi; A knight of the KingtenorDomenico Ceci. Place: Venice and Cyprus
Time: 1472. The wedding of Caterina, daughter of Andrea Cornaro, to a young Frenchman, Gerardo, is postponed when Mocenigo brings word that Lusignano, King of Cyprus, wishes to marry her. After much intrigue, involving Lusignano being slowly poisoned by Mocenigo, Gerardo joins the Knights of the Cross to help Lusignano defend Cyprus against the Venetians. Lusignano is mortally wounded; as he dies he entrusts his people to Caterina's care. Gerardo then returns to Rhodes. In the revised finale for the Parma production, Lusignano informs Caterina that Gerardo has been killed in battle.
Recordings YearCast
(Caterina Cornaro, Gerardo,
Andrea Cornaro)Conductor,
Opera House and OrchestraLabel[4]
1972Montserrat Caballé,
José Carreras,
Enrique SerraCarlo Felice Cillario,
London Symphony Orchestra and Chorus
(Recording of a concert performance at The Royal Festival Hall, 10 July)Audio CD: Opera d'Oro
Cat: OPD-1266
1995Denia Mazzola,
Pietro Ballo,
Marzio GiossiGianandrea Gavazzeni,
"I Pomeriggi Musicali" di Milano and Teatro Donizetti di Bergamo Chorus
(Recording of a performance in the Teatro Donizetti di Bergamo, 21 Sept)Audio CD: Agora Musica
Cat: AG 046.2
[edit] References
Notes
^ Dean, Winton, "Music in London: Caterina Cornaro" (September 1972). The Musical Times, 113 (1555): pp. 881, 883.
^ Dean, Winton, "Donizetti's Serious Operas" (1973-1974). Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 100: pp. 123-141.
^ Casaglia, Gherardo (2005) "12 Gennaio 1844". Retrieved 24 November 2012 (Italian)
^ Source for recording information: operadis-opera-discography.org.uk
Sources
Ashbrook, William, Donizetti and His Operas, Cambridge University Press, 1982, ISBN 0-521-23526-X ISBN 0-521-23526-X
Holden, Amanda (Ed.), The New Penguin Opera Guide, New York: Penguin Putnam, 2001. ISBN 0-14-029312-4
Osborne, Charles, The Bel Canto Operas of Rossini, Donizetti, and Bellini, Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1994 ISBN 0-931340-71-3
Weinstock, Herbert, Donizetti and the World of Opera in Italy, Paris, and Vienna in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century, New York: Pantheon Books, 1963. ISBN 63-13703
[edit] External links
Libretto (Italian)
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Caterina_Cornaro_(opera)&oldid=540574548"
Categories:
Italian-language operas
Operas by Gaetano Donizetti
Operas
1844 operas
Teatro San Carlo world premieres

CRASSO. Marcus Licinius Crassus, Roman general and politician. Francesco Cavalli: Pompeo Magno.

CRISPO. Flavio Giulio Crispo, Caesar of the Roman Empire. Gaetano Donizetti: Fausta


***** D *****

DONATI. Rinuccio. Gianni Schicchi is  referred to in Dante's Inferno Canto XXX. Dante visits the Circle of Impersonators, and sees a man savagely attacking another. Dante is told that the attacker is Schicchi, condemned to Hell for making the will of Buoso Donati highly favorable to Schicchi while impersonating him. Buoso wishes to make a will, but is put off by his son, Simone. Once it is too late, Simone fears that Buoso Donati, before his illness, may have made a will unfavourable to him. Simone Donati calls on Gianni Schicchi for advice, and Gianni Schicchi has the idea of impersonating Buoso Donati and making a new will. Simone Donati promises Gianni Schicchi he will be well rewarded, but Gianni Schicchi takes no chances, "leaving" a considerable sum and Buoso's mule to himself (though most goes to Simone), and makes the bequests conditional on Simone's distributing the estate within fifteen days, otherwise everything will go to charity. This was an actual incident that took place in 13th century Florence. Dante had several reasons for his harsh treatment of Gianni Schicchi: Dante's wife was Gemma Donati. Alighieri despised members of the peasant class such as Schicchi. Dante's class prejudice displays itself in several episodes in the Inferno; in one, three noble Florentines, who have died and gone to Hell, ask Dante for news of their home city. A disgusted Dante tells them that the city is now dominated by the nouveau riche.

 

The role of the tenor, Rinuccio, was created by Giulio Crimi in Puccini's opera, "Gianni Schicchi".

DIOCLEZIANO.  Emperor Diocletian of Rome. Henry Purcell, "Dioclesian".

DOLABELLA. Publius Cornelius Dolabella, Roman general. Samuel Barber, "Antony and Cleopatra".


***** E *****

ELIOGABALO. Emperor Elagabalus of Rome (Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus). Francesco Cavalli: Eliogabalo. Pietro Simone Agostini: Eliogabalo


FARNESE.  Elisabetta. Principessa di Parma e regina di Spagna. Queen Consort to Philip V of Spain.




John Barnett, "Farinelli".  1782 was the year of the death of Farinelli. "Farinelli" is an opera in two acts, described as 'serio-comic', by John Barnett, to a libretto by his brother Charles Zachary Barnett. Produced in 1839, it is the third of the composer's large-scale operas, and was the last to reach the stage. The hero is the castrato singer Farinelli. The success of Barnett's 1834 opera, The Mountain Sylph, encouraged further commissions, though neither was as successful as the Sylph. Fair Rosamond appeared in 1837, and Farinelli was premiered on 8 February 1839 at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. The book is an adaptation of the anonymous Farinelli, ou le Bouffe du Roi, premiered in Paris in 1835. The story is based on the facdt that, while Farinelli was in the service of Philip V of Spain, the beauty of Farinelli's singing was able to cure the king of his melancholia. For the purpose of the opera Farinelli becomes a tenor. At the premiere the role was taken by the composer and singer Michael William Balfe. In fact the role was originally written as a baritone for Henry Philips. who had taken the role of Hela in the Sylph, but he withdrew following a quarrel with the theatre manager. At the first night, Balfe broke down through a fit of nervousness, and this naturally affected the reception of the opera, which nevertheless received over 50 performances. Barnett's subsequent opera, Kathleen was however never brought to the public stage, although it was rehearsed at the theatre of which Barnett was then part proprietor. Roles [edit] RoleVoice typePremiere Cast, February 2, 1839 (Conductor: Mr. Hawes). Personaggi: Philip V, King of SpainMr. Sutton. Don Gil Polo, his chamberlainMr. Giubiloi. Farinelli tenor Michael William Balfe. ELISABETTA FARNESE regina di of Spagna. sopranoEmma Romer Leonora, niece to Gil PolosopranoMiss Poole Theodore, a pagesopranoMiss Fowle Chorus: courtiers, citizens, etc. The opera is set in the Prado. Gil Polo is plotting against the King. Farinelli, who is in love with the chamberlain's niece, Leonora, learns of the plot. His singing rouses the melancholic king to action; Gil is dismissed and exiled, Farinelli is honoured and can marry Leonora. Notes [edit] ^ Salaman, 213. Sources [edit] C.Z. Barnett, Farinelli, a serio-comic opera in two acts, London, 1839 C. K. Salaman, English Opera in the Musical Times, vol. 18 no. 411, 1877. Categories:  Operas. 1839 operas. Operas set in Iberia.

ENZIO. Enzio of Sardinia, king of Sardinia. Johann Joseph Abert: König Enzio and Enzio von Hohenstaufen (2nd version)

EZIO. Flavio. Roman general Giuseppe Gazzaniga: Ezio. George Frideric Handel: Ezio. Gaetano Latilla: Ezio. Giuseppe Verdi: Attila

***** F *****

FALIERO. Marino. Doge of Venice.

Gaetano Donizetti: Marino Faliero.

It was good Donizetti found inspiration on this. "Marino Faliero" is a tragedia lirica, or tragic opera, in three acts by Gaetano Donizetti. Giovanni Emanuele Bidéra wrote the Italian libretto, with revisions by Agostino Ruffini, after Casimir Delavigne's play. It is inspired by Lord Byron's drama "Marino Faliero" (1820) and based on the life of Marino Faliero (c.1285-1355), the Venetian Doge
Rossini had commissioned both Donizetti and Vincenzo Bellini to write operas for the Théâtre-Italien in Paris. Bellini's contribution was the hugely successful "I puritani". Donizetti's opera, which premiered on 12 March 1835 (a few months after "I puritani") was not nearly as much of a success. Still "Marino Faliero" was presented in London that same year and at the Teatro Alfieri in Florence in 1836. It also marked Donizetti's first opera to have its premiere in Paris. Personaggi: Marin Faliero, the Doge of VenicebassLuigi Lablache; Israele Bertucci, chief of the Venetian Arsenal baritone Antonio Tamburini. FERNANDO,  Faliero's friend and in love with Elena tenor creato da Giovanni Battista Rubini. Steno, member of the Council of Fortybass. Leoni, Member of the Council of Tentenor. Elena, The Doge's wifesopranoGiulia Grisi. Irene, Elena's servant soprano
Vincenzo, the Doge's servanttenor. Beltrame, a sculptor bass. Pietro, a gondolierbassNicolay Ivanov
Guido, a fishermanbass. Gentlemen, knights, craftsmen, fishermen, servants, soldiers. Place: Venice
Time: 1355. Elena, the wife of Marin Faliero, Doge of Venice, is continually subjected to attacks on her reputation by the patrician Steno whose advances she has rejected. Steno then insults Israele Bertucci, the chief of the Venetian Arsenal in front of his workers. Steno is punished for these offenses, but Faliero is infuriated by the leniency of the punishment. Israele convinces Faliero to join a conspiracy against the Council of Forty, of which Steno is a member. Meanwhile, Elena is in love with Faliero's friend Fernando, who wants to leave the city to save her from dishonour. During a masked ball, Fernando challenges Steno to a duel for having insulted Elena once again. When Fernando is found dying in the place where the conspirators were to meet, Faliero vows to avenge his death. The conspiracy collapses following a betrayal by one of its members and the Doge is condemned to death. Before his execution, Elena confesses her love affair with Fernando to him. Faliero begins to curse her, but sensing that his death is imminent, pardons her instead. Faliero is led off. Alone on the stage, Elena hears the sound of the executioner's axe, screams and faints.[2]
Recordings [edit] YearCast: Marino Faliero, Israele Bertucci, Fernando, ElenaConductor, Opera House and OrchestraLabel[3] 1976Cesare Siepi, Licinio Montefusco, Giuliano Ciannella,
Marisa GalvanyElio Boncompagni, RAI Milan Symphony OrchestraAudio CD: Bongiovanni
Cat: 2408/9-2;[4] Myto Records Cat: MCD 054.314 2002Michele Pertusi, Roberto Servile, Rockwell Blake, Mariella DeviaOttavio Dantone, Orchestra and Chorus of Teatro Regio Parma
(Recording of a performance in Parma, 2 January)Audio CD: House of Opera Cat: CD 820
2008Giorgio Surian, Luca Grassi, Ivan Magri, Rachele StanisciBruno Cinquegrani, Orchestra and Chorus of Bergamo Musica Festival Gaetano Donizetti, (Filmed at the Teatro Donizetti, Bergamo, 31 October and 2 November)DVD: Naxos, Cat: VD 2.110616-17. References [edit Notes
^ *Casaglia, Gherardo, "12 Marzo 1835", Almanacco Amadeus, 2005. Accessed 2 October 2009 (in Italian). ^ Part of this synopsis is a translation from Marin Faliero (opera) on the Italian Wikipedia.
^ Recordings of Marino Faliero on operadis-opera-discography.org.uk
^ Tom Kaufman, "Marino Faliero", Opera Today online, 31 May 2006 Sources
Ashbrook, William, Donizetti and His Operas, Cambridge University Press, 1982, ISBN 0-521-23526-X ISBN 0-521-23526-X. Holden, Amanda (Ed.), The New Penguin Opera Guide, New York: Penguin Putnam, 2001. ISBN 0-14-029312-4 Osborne, Charles, The Bel Canto Operas of Rossini, Donizetti, and Bellini, Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1994 ISBN 0-931340-71-3 Weinstock, Herbert, Donizetti and the World of Opera in Italy, Paris, and Vienna in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century, New York: Pantheon Books, 1963. ISBN 63-13703 External links [edit] Libretto (Italian) Categories:  Italian-language operas Operas by Gaetano Donizetti 1825 operas Operas Operas based on plays. Operas set in Italy


FARINELLI. Italian castrato singer.

Daniel Auber, "La part du diable (or Carlo Broschi) (as Carlo Broschi).
John Barnett: Farinelli

FAUSTA. Fausta Flavia Maxima, Empress of Rome, second wife of Constantine the Great
Gaetano Donizetti: Fausta. Vide "Crispo".

FIESCHI. Giovanni Luigi  (1523 – Genova, 2 gennaio 1547). Nobile italiano.



Divenne orfano a 10 anni e gravato della responsabilità del nome e del potere, vive le ostilità verso i Doria e l'impero di Carlo V, continuando i rapporti amichevoli con la Francia.

"Fieschi"  is an opera by composer EdoardoLalo.

 The libretto, by Charles Beauquier, is based on Schiller's 1784 play, "Die Verschwörung des Fiesco zu Genua", an account of the conspiracy in 1547 led by Fieschi against the ruling Doria family. It had its first staged performance at the Nationaltheater, Mannheim on 16 June 2007. The concert premiere took place on 27 July 2006 at the Festival de Radio France et Montpellier with Roberto Alagna in the title role. The UK premiere took place on 10 March 2008, in a production by University College Opera. Place: Genoa, Italy. Time: 1547. Act 1. Fiesque’s palace, an evening party. Leonore, Fiesque’s wife, confides that her marriage is in ruins: she has seen her husband with another woman. Fiesque’s enemy, (Gianettino Doria), instructs the assassin Hassan to murder Fiesque. Fiesque declares his love for the princess Julie Doria, Gianettino’s sister. Verrina, Fiesque’s old friend and ally, worries that Fiesque has gone off the rails and now prizes pleasure above his country’s honour. Hassan accosts Fiesque but Fiesque easily overpowers him. Hassan, fearful for his life, offers to do anything Fiesque asks, and Fiesque instructs him to mix with the townspeople and report what they are saying about the Dorias. Scene 1: A crowded market place. Hassan plies the townspeople with drink and incites gossip.Verrina enters and whips the public up into a frenzy of rebellion. Scene 2: A chamber in Fiesque’s palace. Fiesque reflects on a dream he had the night before: the image of his wedding day was shattered by visions of him being crowned Doge and celebrated by crowds of adoring subjects. Leonore arrives, worn down by the tension in her marriage. Fiesque reassures her that within two days she will have proof of his enduring love for her. Hassan enters and recounts to the audience the events of the market place. He reports that Julie has engaged him to poison Leonore; he will betray her intentions to Fiesque and have twice the money! Verrina visits Fiesque at home with the painter Romano and the activists Borgonino and Sacco. He wants to test whether Fiesque is still committed to rebelling against the Dorias or if he has become concerned only with his own pleasure.To test this Verrina brings a painting of the death of Virginius to see if it elicits a reaction in Fiesque. By the end of the scene Verrina’s confidence in Fiesque is restored, and the building blocks for the revolution set in place. Act 3 opens with the first scene in A vault in Fiesque’s palace. Borgonino organises an underground gathering of Fiesque’s supporters to plan the revolution. Leonore tries to soothe her own anxiety and sense of foreboding. She hears a woman approaching and hides. Julie enters and sings about the pleasures of being a coquette, but eventually confesses her genuine love for Fiesque. Fiesque arrives and begins an impassioned love scene with Julie. At its climax, however, Fiesque reveals his fidelity to Leonore, and denounces Julie for being guilty of intent to murder. Fiesque and Leonore are reunited; Julie swears vengeance, but Fiesque has her captured. Scene 2: The port of Genoa. The sacking of Genoa, and victory for the Fieschi: the Dorias are overthrown. Fiesque is made ruler of Genoa and Leonore begs Fiesque’s forgiveness for mistrusting him. Fiesque invites Verrina to join in the celebrations, but Verrina is reluctant, troubled by Fiesque's display of ambition and taste for celebrity. Verrina pleads with Fiesque to renounce his regal trappings in favour of leading a true republic, but Fiesque makes light of Verrina’s concerns. Eventually, disillusioned by the change in his friend and fearful for the future of the country, Verrina kills Fiesque.

FOSCARI. Francesco Foscari, Doge of Venice.

Giuseppe Verdi: I due Foscari. 1457 is the year of the death of Francesco Foscari. I due Foscari (The Two Foscari) is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, based on a historical play, The Two Foscari by Lord Byron. Verdi had considered the Byron play as a subject as early as 1843. But when he proposed such an opera to La Fenice in Venice, it was rejected as unsuitable. The story included criticism of actions of the Republic of Venice, which was offensive to the great families of Venice that had governed the Republic, including the extant Foscari family. At the same time, a new opera on the subject of Lorenzino de' Medici, which Verdi proposed for the Teatro Argentina in Rome, was rejected by that house. I due Foscari was substituted and it was given its premiere performance there on 3 November 1844. Until the 1860s, the opera was seen in Italy in at least 22 towns and cities, including Florence, Bologna, Cremona, Milan, Naples and Modena through the 1846 season. It appeared in Lisbon in 1846, and in Palermo and Turin between 1850 and 1851. The first performances in the UK were given in London at Her Majesty's Theatre on 10 April 1847. In the US, the opera was first presented in Boston on 10 May 1847.^[3] Paris saw a production in December 1846 at the Théâtre des Italiens, and it was taken up by several major Italian opera houses. In modern times Foscari has received occasional productions. La Scala presented it in 1988, also with Renato Bruson, a version which is available on DVD. It was performed by the Teatro San Carlo in Naples in 2000 and recorded on DVD. The Royal Opera House presented the opera in June 1995 with Vladimir Chernov and June Anderson in the major roles. Florida's Sarasota Opera included it in March 2008 as part of its "Verdi Cycle". It was presented during the 2008/09 seasons of La Scala and the Bilbao Association of Lovers of Opera (ABAO) in Bilbao, Spain. Also, concert opera performances have been common. The Opera Orchestra of New York has presented concert versions three times: the first in October 1981 with Renato Bruson in the title role; the second in April 1992 with Vladimir Chernov as the Doge; and the third in December 2007, with Paolo Gavanelli as the Doge. The Los Angeles Opera presented a new production in September 2012, with the company's general director and tenor Plácido Domingo singing the baritone role of Francesco Foscari for the first time. Performances were conducted by the company's music director, James Conlon. The cast included tenor Francesco Meli as Jacopo Foscari and soprano Marina Poplavskaya as Lucrezia.^[5] The production was directed by Thaddeus Strassberger, his debut for the Los Angeles opera.^[6] Operabase shows nine productions in nine cities (three of which are concert performances) having taken place (or planned) in the 2011 to 2013 period. RolesRoleVoice typePremiere Cast, 3 November 1844. Francesco Foscari, Doge of Venice baritone Achille De Bassini. Jacopo Foscari, his son -- tenor -- Giacomo Roppa. Lucrezia Contarini, Jacopo Foscari's wife soprano Marianna Barbieri-Nini. Jacopo Loredano, Member of the Council of TenbassBaldassare Miri. Barbarigo, a SenatortenorAtanasio Pozzolini
Pisana, Friend and confidant of Lucreziamezzo-sopranoGiulia Ricci. Attendant on the Council of Tentenor
Servant of the Dogebass. Members of the Council of Ten and the Junta, Maidservants of Lucrezia, Venetian Ladies, crowd and masked men and women; Jailors, Gondoliers, Pages, and the two sons of Jacopo Foscari
Synopsis. Place: Venice. Time: 1457. Act 1. Scene 1: Outside the Council Chamber of the Doge's Palace
Members of the Council of Ten are waiting to enter the Council Chamber to try the case of Jacopo Foscari, the son of the Doge, who has been accused of murder. Upon the arrival of Loredano (Jacopo's sworn enemy) and his friend Barbarigo, they announce that the Doge has already entered the Chamber. They all enter the Chamber. Having recently returned from exile, Jacopo is brought from the prison and expresses his love at seeing Venice again: Dal più remoto esilio / "From the most distant place of exile". When summoned to enter the Chamber and told that he can expect the Council to be merciful, Jacopo explodes in rage: Odio solo ed odio atroce / "Only hatred, cruel hatred, is locked within their breasts". He enters the Chamber. Scene 2: A hall in the palace. Lucrezia Contarini, Jacopo's wife, learns from her ladies in waiting that the trial is proceeding in the Council Chamber. She quickly demands to see the Doge, Jacopo's father, but is told that she should pray for Jacopo's freedom. Angrily, she implores heaven to be merciful: Tu al cui sguardi onni possente / "Thou beneath whose almighty glance all men rejoice or weep". Her friend Pisana enters in tears; she relays the news that Jacopo has been sentenced to further exile and this provokes another furious outburst from Lucrezia: La clemenza! s'aggiunge lo scherno! / "Their mercy? Now they add insult!". Pisana and the ladies beg her to trust in the mercy of God. Scene 3: Outside the Council Chamber.  The Council of Ten leaves the Chamber proclaiming that the evidence was clearly sufficient to convict Jacopo and that their actions will be seen as just and fair. Scene 4: The Doge's private room. The Doge, Francesco Foscari, enters and wearily sits down. He expresses anguish at what has happened to his son but, as his father, feels there is nothing he can do to save him: O vecchio cor che batte / "Oh ancient heart that beats in my breast...". In tears, Lucreza comes in and, when she tries to decry the actions of the Council, Francesco reminds her of his position as upholder of the law of Venice. Angrily, she denounces the law as being filled only with hatred and vengeance and demands that he return her husband to her: Tu pur lo sai che giudice / "You know it all too well". The scene ends with the Doge lamenting the limits of his power and the conflicts between being both ruler and father, while Lucrezia continues to demand his help. The sight of his tears gives her some hope. Act 2. Scene 1: The state prison. Jacopo is alone in prison and laments his fate. He imagines that he is being attacked by Carmagnola, a famous condottiere (soldier) who was executed in Venice (Non maledirmi o prode / "Mighty warrior, do not curse me", and he faints. Still delirious, he finds Lucrezia is with him; she tells him of the Council's decision and the punishment of further exile. However, she tries to keep some hope alive and promises to join him in exile if need be. The Doge arrives and declares that in spite of the fact that he was forced to act severely, he loves his son. Jacopo is comforted - Nel tuo paterno amplesso / "In a father's embrace my sorrow is stilled" - but is further disturbed by the Doge's claim that his duty must override his love of his son. Loredano arrives to announce the official verdict and to prepare Jacopo for his departure. He is contemptuous of the pleas of the Foscari and orders his men to remove Jacopo from his cell. In a final trio, Jacopo, the Doge, and Lucrezia express their conflicting emotions and, as Jacopo is taken away, father and daughter-in-law leave together. Scene 2: The Council Chamber. Loredano is adamant: there shall be no mercy and Lucrezia and her children will not be allowed to accompany Jacopo on his banishment. The Doge laments his inability to help, acting, as he must, in the role of Doge before that of father. Lucrezia enters with her two children. Jacopo embraces them while Lucrezia pleads with the councilors to no avail. Jacopo is taken away.
[edit] Act 3. Scene 1: The Piazetta of San Marco. While the people who have gathered express their joy at being together, Loredano and Barbarigo wait for the galley that will take Jacopo away to exile. He is led out, followed by his wife and Pisana, and expresses his feelings for Lucrezia: All'infelice veglio / "Unhappy woman, unhappy through me alone". Together, in a huge choral number, Jacopo, Lucrezia, Pisano, Barbarigo, Loredano, and the people of Venice each express their feelings. Jacopo begins: O padre, figli, sposa / "Father, children, wife, I bid you a last farewell", and the scene ends with Jacopo escorted onto the galley while Lucrezia faints in Pisana's arms. Scene 2: The Doge's Palace. The grief-stricken Doge expresses his feelings - Egli ore parte! ("Now he is going!") - and pictures himself alone in his old age. Barbarigo brings him proof that his son was in fact innocent, while Lucrezia comes in to announce Jacopo's death: Più non vive... l'innocente / "He is no more... the innocent". As she leaves, a servant announces that the Council of Ten wish to meet with the Doge. The Council, through its spokesman Loredano, announces that it has decided that Francesco, due to age, should give up his position as Doge. Angrily, he denounces their decision: Questa dunque è l'iniqua mercede / "This then is the unjust reward...". He asks for his daughter-in-law to be brought in and gradually lays down the trappings of his office. When Lucrezia enters and addresses him with the familiar title "Prince", he declares "Prince! That I was; now I am no longer." Just then, the bell of San Marco is heard announcing that a successor has been chosen. As it tolls a second time, Francesco recognizes that the end has come: Quel bronzo feral / "What fatal knell". As the bell tolls again, he dies; Loredano notes that "I am paid."

FOUCHE, Giuseppe. Duke of Otranto. Umberto Giordano: Madame Sans-Gêne

MALATESTA, Paolo, conte di Ghiaggiuolo. Francesca da Rimini, contemporary and literary subject of Dante. Emil Ábrányi: Paola és Francesca. Emanuele Borgatta: Francesca da Rimini. Paolo Carlini: Francesca da Rimini. Fournier-Gorre: Francesca da Rimini. Pietro Generali: Francesca da Rimini. Hermann Goetz: Francesca da Rimini. Franco Leoni: Francesca da Rimini. Gioacchino Maglioni: Francesca da Rimini Luigi Mancinelli: Paolo e Francesca. Saverio Mercadante: Francesca da Rimini. Francesco Morlacchi: Francesca da Rimini. Eugene Nordal: Francesca da Rimini. Salvatore Papparlado: Francesca da Rimini. Gaetano Quilici: Francesca da Rimini. Sergei Rachmaninoff: Francesca da Rimini (as Francesca Malatesta). Giuseppe Staffa: Francesca da Rimini. Feliciano Strepponi: Francesca da Rimini. Antonio Tamburini: Francesca da Rimini. Ambroise Thomas: Francesca da Rimini. Riccardo Zandonai: Francesca da Rimini. Alfredo Aracil: Francesca o El infierno de los enamorados.

FRANCESCO. Saint Francis of Assisi, founder of the Franciscans. Olivier Messiaen: Saint François d'Assise

BARBAROSSA. Frederick I "Barbarossa", Holy Roman Emperor. Giuseppe Verdi: La battaglia di Legnano

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GABRINI, Niccola. Cola di Rienzo, son of Lorenzo Gabrini.



Cola's father's forename was shortened from "Lorenzo" to "Rienzo". His own forname, "Nicola," was shortened to "Cola". Hence the Cola di Rienzo, or Rienzi, by which he is generally known. RIENZI.  Cola di Rienzo, Roman tribune. Richard Wagner: Rienzi.



Cola di Rienzo, al secolo Nicola di Lorenzo Gabrini o in romanesco Cola de Rienzi (Roma, 1313 – Roma, 8 ottobre 1354), tribuno, divenne noto perché tentò, nel periodo finale del medioevo, di restaurare il comune nella città di Roma straziata dai conflitti tra papi e baroni. Si autodefiniva "l'ultimo dei tribuni del popolo". Alla sua figura il compositore Richard Wagner ha dedicato l'opera lirica Rienzi, l'ultimo dei tribuni. L'8 ottobre 1354, un suo capitano che aveva destituito sollevò il popolo e lo condusse a Campidoglio. Là Cola, abbandonato da tutti i suoi, tentò per l'ultima volta di arringare i romani, che risposero dando fuoco alle porte. Cola allora cercò di scampare travestendosi da popolano pezzente, alterando anche la voce. Ma fu riconosciuto dai braccialetti che non si era tolto («Erano 'naorati: non pareva opera de riballo»), smascherato e condotto in una sala per essere giudicato. «Là addutto, fu fatto uno silenzio. Nullo uomo era ardito toccarelo», finché un popolano «impuinao mano ad uno stocco e deoli nello ventre.» Gli altri seguirono, ad infierire, ma Cola era già morto. Il cadavere fu trascinato fino a San Marcello in via Lata, di fronte alle case dei Colonna, e lì lasciato appeso per due giorni e una notte. Il terzo giorno fu trascinato a Ripetta, presso il Mausoleo di Augusto, che era sempre un territorio dei Colonna, lì bruciato (commenta l'Anonimo: «Era grasso. Per la moita grassezza da sé ardeva volentieri»), e le ceneri disperse. His latter term of office was destined to be even shorter than his former one. Having vainly besieged the fortress of Palestrina, Cola returned to Rome, where he treacherously seized the soldier of fortune, Giovanni Moriale, who was put to death, and where, by other cruel and arbitrary deeds, he soon lost the favour of the people. Their passions were quickly aroused and a tumult broke out on 8 October. Cola attempted to address them, but the building in which he stood was set on fire, and while trying to escape in disguise he was murdered by the mob. The doors of the capitol were destroyed with axes and with fire. And while the senator attempted to escape in a plebeian garb, he was dragged to the platform of his palace, the fatal scene of his judgments and executions. After enduring the protracted tortures of suspense and insult, he was pierced with a thousand daggers, amidst the execrations of the people. Bibliografia: Anonimo romano, Cronica, Adelphi 1981 e 1991 (cap. XVIII e XXVII) la vita di Cola di Rienzo nella Cronica (testo) Ferdinand Gregorovius, Storia della città di Roma nel Medioevo, Einaudi 1973 (libro XI, capp. V, VI, VII) Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri, Cola di Rienzo, Roma, Salerno Editrice, 2002, ISBN 88-8402-387-4 Ronald G. Musto, Apocalypse in Rome. Cola di Rienzo and the Politics of the New Age, Berkeley & Los Angeles, University of California Press, 2003, 436 pp

GALILEI. Galileo. Italian scientist. Philip Glass: Galileo Galilei

GALLA. Placidia, Roman regent, daughter of Emperor Theodosius I. Jaume Pahissa i Jo: Gal·la Placídia (1913)

GARIBALDI. Giuseppe. Italian freedom fighter. Gavin Bryars, Philip Glass and others: The Civil Wars: A Tree Is Best Measured When It Is Down.

GESUALDO. Carlo. Italian composer and murderer. Alfred Schnittke: Gesualdo

GIOCONDO. Lisa del.  Italian woman, subject of Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa. Née Gherardini [15 June 1479 – 15 July 1542 or ca. 1551. Also known as Lisa Gherardini, Lisa di Antonio Maria (or Antonmaria) Gherardini and Mona Lisa, was a member of the Gherardini family of Florence and Tuscany in Italy. Her name was given to Mona Lisa, her portrait commissioned by her husband and painted by Leonardo da Vinci during the Italian Renaissance. Little is known about Lisa's life. Born in Florence and married in her teens to a cloth and silk merchant who later became a local official, she was mother to five children and led what is thought to have been a comfortable and ordinary middle-class life. Lisa outlived her husband, who was considerably her senior. Centuries after Lisa's death, Mona Lisa became the world's most famous painting and took on a life separate from Lisa, the woman. Speculation by scholars and hobbyists made the work of art a globally recognized icon and an object of commercialization. In 2005, Lisa was definitively identified as the model for the Mona Lisa.
^{Lisa's Florentine family was old and aristocratic but over time had lost its influence.[3] They were well off but not wealthy, and lived on farm income in a city that was among the largest in Europe and economically successful, while there were great disparities in wealth among its inhabitants.[4]
Antonmaria di Noldo Gherardini, Lisa's father, had lost two wives, Lisa di Giovanni Filippo de' Carducci, whom he married in 1465, and Caterina di Mariotto Rucellai, whom he married in 1473. Both died in childbirth.[5] Lisa's mother was Lucrezia del Caccia, daughter of Piera Spinelli, and Gherardini's wife by his third marriage in 1476.[5] Gherardini at one time owned or rented six farms in Chianti that produced wheat, wine and olive oil and where livestock was raised.[6]
Lisa was born in Florence on 15 June 1479 on Via Maggio,[5] although for many years it was thought she was born on one of the family's rural properties, Villa Vignamaggio just outside Greve.[7] She is named for Lisa, a wife of her paternal grandfather.[8] The eldest of seven children, Lisa had three sisters, one of whom was named Ginevra, and three brothers, Giovangualberto, Francesco, and Noldo.[9]
The family lived in Florence, originally near Santa Trinita and later in rented space near Santo Spirito, most likely because they were not able to afford repairs to their former house when it was damaged. Lisa's family moved to what today is called Via dei Pepi and then near Santa Croce, where they lived near Ser Piero da Vinci, Leonardo's father.[10] They also owned a small country home in St. Donato in the village of Poggio about 32 kilometres (20 mi) south of the city.[11] Noldo, Gherardini's father and Lisa's grandfather, had bequeathed a farm in Chianti to the Santa Maria Nuova hospital. Gherardini secured a lease for another of the hospital's farms and, so that he could oversee the wheat harvest, the family spent summers there at the house named Ca' di Pesa.[6]}On 5 March 1495, Lisa married Francesco di Bartolomeo di Zanobi del Giocondo, a modestly successful cloth and silk merchant, becoming his third wife at age 15. Lisa's dowry was 170 florins and the San Silvestro farm near her family's country home, a sign that the Gherardini family was not wealthy at the time and reason to think she and her husband loved each other.[12] The property lies between Castellina and San Donato in Poggio, near two farms later owned by Michelangelo.[10] Neither poor nor among the most well-to-do in Florence, the couple lived a middle-class life. Lisa's marriage may have increased her social status because her husband's family may have been richer than her own.[12] Francesco is thought to have benefited because Gherardini is an "old name".[13] They lived in shared accommodation until 5 March 1503, when Francesco was able to buy a house next door to his family's old home in the Via della Stufa. Leonardo is thought to have begun painting Lisa's portrait the same year.[14][15]


Central Florence. Francesco and Lisa lived on Via della Stufa (red), about 1 kilometre (0.6 mi) north of the Arno River. Lisa's parents lived closer to the river, at first north and later south (purple).
Lisa and Francesco had five children: Piero, Camilla, Andrea, Giocondo, and Marietta, four of them between 1496 and 1507.[16] Lisa lost a baby daughter in 1499.[11] Lisa also raised Bartolomeo, the son of Francesco and his second wife, Camilla di Mariotto Rucellai, who was about a year old when his mother died. Lisa's stepmother, Caterina di Mariotto Rucellai, and Francesco's first wife were sisters, members of the prominent Rucellai family.
Camilla and Marietta became Catholic nuns. Camilla took the name Suor Beatrice and entered the convent of San Domenico di Cafaggio, where she was entrusted to the care of Antonmaria's sister, Suor Albiera and Lisa's sisters, Suor Camilla (who was acquitted in a scandalous visitation by four men at the convent) and Suor Alessandra.[17] Beatrice died at age 18[17] and was buried in the Basilica di Santa Maria Novella.[18] Lisa developed a relationship with Sant'Orsola, a convent held in high regard in Florence, where she was able to place Marietta in 1521. Marietta took the name Suor Ludovica and became a respected member of the convent in a position of some responsibility.[19]
Francesco became an official in Florence. He was elected to the Dodici Buonomini in 1499 and to the Signoria in 1512, where he was confirmed as a Priori in 1524. He may have had ties to Medici family political or business interests. In 1512 when the government of Florence feared the return of the Medici from exile, Francesco was imprisoned and fined 1,000 florins. He was released in September when the Medici returned.[18][20]
In one account, Francesco died in the plague of 1528. Lisa fell ill and was taken by her daughter Ludovica to the convent of Sant'Orsola, where she died about four years later at the age of 63.[21][22] In a scholarly account of their lives, Francesco was nearly 80 years old when he died in 1539. Lisa may have lived until at least 1551, when she would have been 71 or 72.[11]
In June 1537 in his will among many provisions, Francesco returned Lisa's dowry to her, gave her personal clothing and jewelry and provided for her future. Upon entrusting her care to their daughter Ludovica and, should she be incapable, his son Bartolomeo, Francesco wrote, "Given the affection and love of the testator towards Mona Lisa, his beloved wife; in consideration of the fact that Lisa has always acted with a noble spirit and as a faithful wife; wishing that she shall have all she needs…".[23]

Max von Schillings: Mona Lisa (as Mona Fiordalisa).





GIOVANNA I. of Naples, Queen of Naples. Juan Manén: Giovanna di Napoli.

GIULIA Caesaris, daughter of Julius Caesar, 4th wife of Pompey the Great
Francesco Cavalli: Pompeo Magno

GIULIANO. Salvatore. Sicilian peasant.


Lorenzo Ferrero, "Salvatore Giuliano."

GIULIANO. Salvatore. Lorenzo Ferrero, "Salvatore Giuliano". Set in Sicily, the story is based on the life of the legendary historical figure Salvatore Giuliano (1922-1950), a Sicilian peasant who fought the Italian authorities in the name of a separatist movement. Place: Western Sicily, Montelepre and surrounding mountain. Time: The second half of the 1940s. In an empty village at dawn a shot is heard and there is a glimpse of a man running. When the village awakes a representative of EVIS, the Volunteer Army for the Independence of Sicily, arrives to address the inhabitants and to introduce Salvatore Giuliano to them. In his speech, the man incites the villagers to endorse EVIS' fight for independence. After pledging his support to the cause, Giuliano remains alone with his lieutenant, Gaspare Pisciotta. They are discussing how to liberate Giuliano's mother from prison when, unexpectedly, she returns to him escorted by a Mafioso. Giuliano realizes that he has contracted a debt with the Mafia. In his mountain stronghold, Giuliano relates his life story to Maria, a Swedish journalist who came to interview him. He recalls that he became a bandit by chance, due to poverty and the injustice of the Italian state. He confesses that he hopes for a pardon and emigration to America. The interview is interrupted by the Mafioso who returned to claim his dues. He asks Giuliano to attack the communists' Labour Day parade at Portella della Ginestra in exchange for Mafia protection and help with his request for amnesty. Giuliano agrees. After the massacre, Colonel Ugo Luca, the head of the newly formed special police force for the suppression of banditry, is joined in the village square by a deputy who brings the minister's order to liquidate Giuliano because by now he knows too much. In the meantime, at his sister's wedding reception Giuliano carries out an irreparable act and executes five Mafiosi, who came to inform him that a reward for his capture has been set by the authorities in Rome. Appalled by this crime, the Mafioso meets Colonel Luca at Portella, and while the police are carrying away the corpses, they agree to unite their forces against Giuliano. Pisciotta is summoned to the Colonel, who succeeds in convincing him to betray Giuliano, in exchange for his own life. In a desperate final attempt, Pisciotta tries to persuade Giuliano to escape but he refuses to leave. In the empty village, as in the beginning, the shadows of two men appear on the background: one shoots and the other falls. The village lights go out and the voice of a woman is heard calling: "Giuliano!"

 

GIULIO CESARE. Julius Caesar, Consul and Dictator of Rome. Francesco Cavalli: Pompeo Magno
Carl Heinrich Graun: Cesare e Cleopatra. George Frideric Handel: Giulio Cesare (in Egitto). Giselher Klebe: Die Ermordung Cäsars. Antonio Sartorio: Giulio Cesare in Egitto

GOFFREDO. Godfrey of Bouillon, Frankish knight, leader of the First Crusade. George Frideric Handel: Rinaldo (as Goffredo)

GORETTI.  St Maria Goretti, 20th century Catholic martyr. Marcel Delannoy: Maria Goretti, radiophonic opera

GRAMSCI. Antonio Gramsci, Italian political theorist. Luigi Nono: Al gran sole carico d'amore

GUICCIOLI. Teresa, Contessa Guiccioli, Italian mistress of Lord Byron. Virgil Thomson: Lord Byron


---- H -----

HAMILTON. Emma, Lady. English mistress of Horatio, Lord Nelson. Sir William Hamilton, British diplomat, husband of Emma, Lady Hamilton. Lennox Berkeley: Nelson

GISCO. Hasdrubal Gisco, Carthaginian general. Francesco Cavalli: Scipione affricano

ISSICRATEA. Queen Hypsicratea of Pontus, consort of Mithradates VI. Francesco Cavalli: Pompeo Magno (as Issicratea). Alessandro Scarlatti: Mitridate Eupatore

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LAMBERTAZZI, Imelda. Opera by Donizetti to a libretto, based on a play by Gabriele Sperduti. Sperdut's play describes a supposedly historical incident in the 13^th-century wars between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. Sgricci had already set the concise and dramatically effective libretto by Andrea Leone Tottola to music in 1827. Lamberto, patriarch of the Lambertazzi family, is goaded into continuing conflict with the Geremei family by his son Orlando; and after his daughter Imelda is forced to disclose her love for Bonifacio, an emissary sent by the rival clan to sue for piece, Orlando kills Bonifacio (off-stage) with a poisoned sword. Imelda sucks the blood from his wound and, dying, is dragged on stage by her brother and rejected scornfully by her father. Not a pretty picture, but it presages Verdi in its confrontation of love and duty, and Donizetti's music brings it vividly to life.


LASCARIS. Beatrice di Tenda.



Caterina Beatrice Lascaris di Ventimiglia e Tenda, detta "Beatrice di Tenda" (nata a Tenda, 1372 – Binasco, 13 settembre 1418), figlia del conte di Tenda Pietro Lascaris e di donna Poligena, discendeva da un ramo della famiglia imperiale bizantina dei Lascaris tramite Eudossia Lascaris figlia di Teodoro II Lascaris, imperatore di Nicea, e moglie di Guglielmo Pietro I di Ventimiglia, capostipite del ramo ligure della famiglia Lascaris di Ventimiglia (XIII secolo). Caterina Beatrice sposò in prime nozze il condottiero Facino Cane che la rapì dal castello paterno, portandola con sé nelle sue imprese guerresche, nelle quali Beatrice si dimostrò piuttosto partecipe e battagliera.
Seppe anche rivestire il ruolo di pacata consigliera durante la lotta di Cane per la conquista del potere sul ducato di Milano. Dopo essere rimasta vedova, nel 1412, si risposò con il duca di Milano Filippo Maria VISCONTI, portando in dote quattromila ducati d'oro e alcuni importanti territori piemontesi. Il matrimonio era stato imposto da Cane, che, lasciando il proprio patrimonio al Visconti, aveva posto come condizione che questi ne sposasse la vedova. Figura: La targa posta nel 1869 sulle mura del Castello di Binasco per ricordare il delitto del 1418 Nel 1418, probabilmente allo scopo di sottrarle gli ingenti beni, fu accusata dal marito di adulterio con un domestico, tale Michele Orombelli. Dopo aver confessato sotto tortura venne condannata a morte e decapitata nel castello di Binasco, insieme al suo presunto amante, il 13 settembre 1418. Il piano fu ordito, secondo alcuni, con la complicità della nobildonna Agnese del Maino, dama di compagnia di Beatrice e amante del marito Filippo. Sembra inoltre che il marito non sopportasse Beatrice a causa del carattere forte ed invasivo della donna, che trattava il duca quasi alla stregua di un precettore. Secondo la tradizione popolare Beatrice non si era resa responsabile di alcun tradimento, ma questo non impedì a Filippo di essere salutato con grande cortesia dal papa Martino V - allora suo alleato nell'interesse reciproco di espandere i propri domini nell'Italia centrosettentrionale - quando il pontefice passò da Milano quell'anno stesso. Alla sua vita si ispira il melodramma di Vincenzo Bellini del 1833 Beatrice di Tenda, tratto a sua volta dal libro omonimo del 1825 di Carlo Tedaldi Fores. « Quando suo marito Facino Cane morì, Filippo Maria Visconti, che era 20 anni più giovane di lei, la sposò per impadronirsi delle ricchezze dei Cane. Ben presto però fu pretestuosamente accusata ingiustamente di adulterio e decapitata, assieme al presunto amante. Questa drammatica vicenda venne portata in musica da Vincenzo Bellini » (Piero Cocconi). Il 13 giugno 1869 il comune di Binasco ha dedicato questa lapide monumentale in memoria di Beatrice di Tenda nel proprio Castello: « CON TURPE SCONOSCENZA RICAMBIANDO LA ILLIBATA FEDE L'ASSECURATO TRONO FILIPPO MARIA VISCONTI
SPEGNEVA NELLA NOTTE DEL 13 SETTEMBRE 1418 IN QUESTE MURA L'ONORANDA CONSORTE BEATRICE DI TENDA L'ORRORE DEL FATTO FECONDI E RITEMPRI NE' FIGLI D'ITALIA GLI AFFETTI PIÙ PURI I DOVERI PIÙ SACRI AUSPICE IL MUNICIPIO ALCUNI OBLATORI POSERO IL 13 GIUGNO 1869 Lo Storico del Comune Damiano Muoni scrisse » Inoltre le sono state dedicate alcune vie (una a Binasco) soprattutto in val Roia. Opere letterarie.  Diodata Roero Saluzzo, Il Castello di Binasco, Firenze, della Tipografia e Calcografia Goldoniana, 1824. Carlo Tedaldi Fores, Beatrice di Tenda Tragedia Istorica, Milano, della Società Tipogr. de' Classici Italiani, 1825. Pietro Marocco, Il Castello di Binasco, Milano, Felice Rusconi, 1829. Giambattista Bazzoni, Racconti Storici : Macaruffo Venturiero o La Corte del Duca Filippo Maria Visconti, Milano, Presso Omobono Manini, 1832. Eugenio Mastrozzi, Il Pellegrino di Binasco Scene della Storia Milanese, Pavia, Tipografia Fusi e Comp., 1844. Felice Turotti, Beatrice di Tenda, Milano, Borroni e Scotti, 1845. Damiano Muoni, Binasco ed altri comuni dell'agro milanese, Milano, Già Boniotti, 1864. Inaugurazione a Binasco della lapide monumentale a Beatrice di Tenda, Milano, Tip. Letteraria, 1869. G. C., Beatrice di Tenda Racconto Storico del Professore G. C., Codogno, Tipografia Cairo, 1885. Note [modifica] ^ La Battaglia di Borgomanero sul sito del comune di Borgomanero (No) ^ A. Manzoni, Opere scelte vol.1, ed. Passigli, 1832, p. 344 ^ P. C. Decembrio, Vita di Filippo Maria Visconti, Milano 1983, p. 79 ^ N. Capponi, La battaglia di Anghiari, Milano 2011, pp. 33-34 Collegamenti esterni [modifica] (FR) Jean Galliani, Lascaris di Ventimiglia, in Généalogie des familles nobles Controllo di autorità VIAF: 50573713  Portale Biografie Portale Medioevo Portale Storia. Categorie:  Nati nel 1372, Morti nel 1418, Morti il 13 settembre
Nati a Tenda (Francia), Morti a Binasco, Persone giustiziate per decapitazione, Ventimiglia (famiglia) | [altre]. Opera Bellini. LASCARIS, Beatrice, di TENDA. Beatrice di Tenda, Italian noblewoman. Vincenzo Bellini: Beatrice di Tenda. Bellini's opera is the story of  the woman who was the widow of the condottiere Facino Cane and later the wife of Duke Filippo Maria Visconti, in 15th century Milan. Visconti has grown tired of Beatrice. Beatrice regrets her impetuous marriage to him after her first husband's death, a marriage that has delivered her and her people into the Duke's tyrannical power. Time: 1418 Place: The Castle of Binasco, near Milan^[1] Act 1. Filippo attends a ball at the Castle Binasco in Italy, shadowed as usual by the sinister Rizzardo. He is fed up with everyone paying obeisance to his wife. His sycophantic courtiers tell him how much they sympathize, and suggest that Beatrice's servants are all plotting against him. Beautiful harp music is heard. Agnese, the current object of Filippo's lust, sings from afar that life is empty without love. Filippo echoes her thoughts and states how much he loves her; she has no equal. His courtiers again sympathize with him and encourage him to seize the moment. Agnese disappears and all leave. Then Agnese reappears, this time singing for Orombello. Mysteriously, she wishes that her heart will guide him to her arms and, as in all good opera plots, the object of her lust makes his entrance. Orombello splutters that he does not know where he is or why he is there. Comforted by Agnese, he begins to relax and agrees that he is deeply in love and, when asked about a letter, shows her the one he is carrying. "Such misfortune!" The letter he is referring to is one of many he has written to Beatrice and not the one that Agnese had sent to him. Agnese's world falls apart, her tenderness turns to vitriol, and the two of them spit out a dramatic aria and leave.
Beatrice enters one of her secret places with her ladies. She is happy, but soon loses her poise and laments how misguided she has been to have married the evil Duke Filippo. As they all go to leave, Filippo sees them in the distance and, believing she is avoiding him, demands that she be brought back. The two of them accuse and rage at each other, with Filippo producing some secret papers stolen from Beatrice's apartment.
In another scene, slightly the worse for wear, Filippo's soldiers discuss his silence and temper. Beatrice enters carrying a portrait of her beloved, deceased husband, Facino. She is bemoaning the fact that everyone has abandoned her when Orombello enters protesting that he has not. Excitedly, he tells her his plans to rally the troops and help her free herself. She crushes him saying, in so many words, that she does not rate his expertise in security matters. Stunned, Orombello protests his love and, even when begged to do so, will not leave her presence; instead, he kneels down in front of her, at which moment Agnese and Filippo enter and accuse the two traitors of having an affair. Everyone now joins in with accusation, counter accusation, attack and defence. The upshot is that Filippo has the pair arrested — to be tried in Court for adultery. The courtiers learn of the terrible torture that has been applied to Orombello. Then, the Court is summoned and Filippo sets out the case for the prosecution. Beatrice is dragged in, and she protests that the Court has no jurisdiction. Next, Orombello is hauled in and, after desperately seeking forgiveness from Beatrice, proclaims her innocence. Beatrice regains her will to live and something in her speaking touches Filippo's heart. He announces that the sentence should be delayed. The Court overrules him stating that more torture should be applied until the truth is spoken. Again, Filippo changes his mind and, supporting the Court's decision, instructs that, indeed, more torture seems to be necessary to extract the truth. The Court rises. Filippo and Agnese, full of remorse, are left alone and Agnese, realizing that things have gone much further than she had expected, begs Filippo to drop all the charges; but Filippo, not wishing to look weak, dismisses the idea. Filippo now goes through several stages of torment and is obviously still deeply in love with Beatrice. Just as he has made up his mind to drop all the charges, with cruel timing, men still loyal to the late condottiere Facino arrive, to invade the castle. As a result, Filippo signs the death warrant now handed to him by Anichino* and tries to justify his actions to the crowd, blaming Beatrice's behaviour. There is a scene in which we see Beatrice's ladies outside Orombello's cell, while Beatrice prays. The action reaches its finale.

LEONE. Pope St Leo I "The Great". Giuseppe Verdi: Attila (as Leone)

LEONE. Brother Leo, friend and confidant of Francis of Assisi. Olivier Messiaen: Saint François d'Assise

LEPIDO (i) Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, Roman triumvir Samuel Barber: Antony and Cleopatra
(ii) Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, heir to Emperor Caligula of Rome. Reinhard Keiser: Octavia


LUCAN. Lucan, Roman poet. Claudio Monteverdi: L'incoronazione di Poppea

LUCREZIA.  Roman noblewoman raped by Sextus Tarquinius (legendary). Benjamin Britten: The Rape of Lucretia. Ottorino Respighi: Lucrezia

***** M *****

MACEDONIO. Lucius Aemilius Paullus Macedonicus, Roman general, natural father of Scipio Aemilianus. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Il sogno di Scipione, K. 126

MECENA. Gaius Maecenas, political adviser to Octavian (Caesar Augustus). Samuel Barber: Antony and Cleopatra

MALATESTA,  Giovanni Malatesta, husband and murderer of Francesca da Rimini. Sergei Rachmaninoff: Francesca da Rimini (as Lanciotto Malatesta). Riccardo Zandonai: Francesca da Rimini (as Giovanni lo Sciancato)

MALATESTA, Malatestino, Lord of Rimini. Riccardo Zandonai: Francesca da Rimini (as Malatestino dall'Occhio)

MALATESTA, Paolo. Brother-in-law and lover of Francesca da Rimini. Sergei Rachmaninoff: Francesca da Rimini. Riccardo Zandonai: Francesca da Rimini (as Paolo il Bello)

MARCELLO,  Benedetto. Italian composer. Joachim Raff: Benedetto Marcello

MARIA CELESTE. Sister Maria Celeste, Italian nun, illegitimate daughter of Galileo Galilei. Philip Glass: Galileo Galilei

MARIA LUISA. Duchess of Parma, wife of Napoleon I

MARC'ANTONIO -- vide ANTONIO. Mark Antony, Roman politician and general
Samuel Barber: Antony and Cleopatra. Domenico Cimarosa: La Cleopatra. Louis Gruenberg: Antony and Cleopatra. Henry Kimball Hadley: Cleopatra's Night. Giselher Klebe: Die Ermordung Cäsars
Jules Massenet: Cléopâtre

Marcus Aurelius Valerius Maximianus Herculius, aka Maximian, Roman ruler
Gaetano Donizetti: Fausta

Maximinian, co-Emperor of Rome
Henry Purcell: Dioclesian


MEDICI. Cosimo de'.  ruler of Florence. Issue: Piero the Gouty, Giovanni de' Medici, and Carlo di Cosimo de' Medici (illegitimate). Halevy's opera is based on a supposed fourth child of Medici: Ginevra de' Medici, who was thought dead for a time. The episode is retold in "The History of Florence" by Louis-Charles Delécluze.

Fromental Halévy: "Guido e Ginevra, ossia La Peste di Firenze", grand opera in five acts by Fromental Halévy to a libretto by Eugène Scribe.



It was premiered on 5 March 1838 by the Paris Opera at the Salle Le Peletier. Guido et Ginevra was only a moderate success for Halévy, not nearly as applauded as his previous grand opera "La Juive" (1835) or as "La reine de Chypre" which followed it (1841). However, after its premiere it was soon played in all the major European centres. When the opera was revived in Paris in 1840 it was cut to four acts. It was translated into Italian and performed in three acts by the Théâtre-Italien at the Salle Ventadour beginning on 17 February 1870. It was performed in German in Mannheim beginning on 3 April 1879, and Hamburg, on 20 March 1882. No recent productions are known. The opera contains touches of the composer's innovative orchestration, with a melophone in Act II, and with Ginevra's tomb scene set to dark woodwind and brass instruments using diminished harmonies. Personaggi: Cosimo de Médicis (bass, Nicolas Levasseur); Manfredi, Duke of FerrarabassNicolas-Prosper Dérivis; Guido, a young sculptortenorGilbert Duprez; Forte-Braccio, condottieretenorJean-Étienne-Auguste Massol
Lorenzo, steward to MédicisbassMolinier; Téobaldo, sacristan of Florence CathedralbassFerdinand Prévost; Ginevra, daughter of Médicis sopranoJulie Aimée Dorus-Gras; Ricciarda, a singermezzo-sopranoRosine Stoltz; Léonore, chambermaid of GinevrasopranoMme Morin; Antonietta, young peasantsopranoMaria Flécheux. Scribe drew the elements of his plot from "The History of Florence" by Louis-Charles Delécluze. The Medici court. Ginevra de' Medici is to be married to the Duke of Ferrara. In Act 2, during the ceremony, a poisoned veil she has been given causes her to faint away in a death-like trance. The sculptor Guido mourns her. It is assumed that she has "the plague". Act 3 at
The Medici vault. Buried in the Medici vault she awakes. In Act 4, Guido offers her shelter. In Act 5, in the village of Camaldoli Ginevra is reunited with her father, who agrees to her marriage with Guido. A procession of thanksgiving ends the opera.
References [edit]
Notes
^ Loewenberg1978, column795; Chouquet 1873, p. 400; see also OCLC 459206797.
^ Loewenberg 1978, column795.
^ www.amadeusonline.net
Sources
Chouquet, Gustave (1873). Histoire de la musique dramatique en France (in French), pp. 309–425. Paris: Didot. View at Google Books.
Hallman, Diana (2003). "The Grand Operas of Fromental Halévy", in The Cambridge Companion to Grand Opera, ed. David Charlton.
Loewenberg, Alfred (1978). Annals of Opera 1597–1940 (third edition, revised). Totowa, New Jersey: Rowman and Littlefield. ISBN 978-0-87471-851-5.
Macdonald, Hugh (2001). Guido et Ginevra, article in Grove Music Online.

MEDICI. Giovanni de'.  Pope Pius IV. -- vide "MEDICI, Giovanni de'" Hans Pfitzner: Palestrina

MEDICI. Giuliano di Piero de' Medici (nato a Firenze, 28 ottobre 1453 – Firenze, 26 aprile 1478) è stato un politico italiano. Brother of Lorenzo il Magnifico.  La Congiura dei Pazzi, conclusa il 26 aprile 1478, fu il tentativo eseguito da alcuni membri dalla ricca famiglia di banchieri della Firenze del Rinascimento, i Pazzi appunto, di stroncare l'egemonia dei Medici con alcuni aiuti esterni. La congiura si concluse con l'uccisione di Giuliano de' Medici e il ferimento di Lorenzo il Magnifico, che si salvò solo grazie alla sua destrezza. I componenti della famiglia Medici, da sempre al centro della politica cittadina, hanno subito almeno una congiura per generazione. Cosimo de' Medici venne esiliato per motivi politici per un anno, mentre suo figlio Piero de' Medici scampò per miracolo a un'imboscata tesagli da Luca Pitti sulla via per Careggi, e così anche le generazioni successive, Leone X avrebbe dovuto essere ucciso dal suo medico, istruito da un gruppo di cardinali a lui avversi, e Cosimo I de' Medici rischiò di essere impallinato al passaggio del suo corteo davanti a Palazzo Pucci. La congiura dei Pazzi fu però l'unica congiura che riuscì nell'intento di eliminare un componente della famiglia e portò conseguenze durevoli, in giornate concitate che rimasero indelebili nella memoria dei fiorentini che vi parteciparono. Bertoldo di Giovanni, medaglia della congiura dei Pazzi, in basso mostra Lorenzo che si salva dai congiurati, scena ambientata attorno al vecchio coro di Santa Maria del Fiore, con in alto il profilo di Lorenzo. Dal 1469 Firenze era di fatto retta dai figli di Piero de' Medici, scomparso quell'anno, Lorenzo de' Medici,e Giuliano de' Medici, che allora avevano rispettivamente venti e sedici anni. Lorenzo de' Medici seguiva attivamente la vita politica con lo stesso metodo di suo nonno Cosimo de' Medici, cioè senza ricevere incarichi diretti ma controllando tutte le magistrature e i punti chiave attraverso uomini di fiducia. Non è chiaro se l'idea di una congiura nacque a Firenze dalla famiglia Pazzi o piuttosto a Roma, nella mente del loro più importante alleato, Francesco della Rovere (Papa Sisto IV). In ogni caso l'idea di eliminare fisicamente i signori di fatto di Firenze catalizzò tutta una serie di figure a loro avverse, che si organizzarono nella congiura vera e propria. Con l'elezione al soglio pontificio di Sisto IV Della Rovere (1471), il nuovo papa, sfrenato nepotista, aveva manifestato infatti l'interesse ad impadronirsi dei ricchi territori fiorentini per i suoi nipoti, tra i quali il nobile Girolamo Riario, e per le sue costose opere a Roma (come l'abbellimento e riorganizzazione della Biblioteca Vaticana da lui promosso). Egli inoltre vedeva con occhio sfavorevole le mire espansionistiche dei Medici verso la Romagna.
Francesco della Rovere aveva anche già manifestato la sua opposizione ai Medici, esautorandoli dall'amministrazione delle finanze pontificie in favore della famiglia dei Pazzi, appunto. Essi sostenevano davanti a Lorenzo de' Medici che questo cambio di preferenza era dovuto solo ai loro meriti commerciali, non a scorrettezze, ma Il Magnifico probabilmente aspettò il momento giusto per vendicarsi di questo smacco commerciale. Tenere le finanze pontificie infatti portava enorme prestigio e ricchezza, sia dalle commissioni sui movimenti, sia dallo sfruttamento delle miniere di allume dei Monti della Tolfa, in territorio pontificio presso Civitavecchia, le uniche allora conosciute in Italia, garantendo il monopolio di questo insostituibile fissante per la tintura dei panni e per i colori delle miniature. Quindi i Pazzi e il papa erano in stretta alleanza a Roma, ma ancora l'idea di una congiura non doveva essersi manifestata, anzi le due famiglie fiorentine, sebbene rivali, erano anche imparentate dopo il matrimonio tra Guglielmo de' Pazzi e Bianca de' Medici, sorella di Lorenzo, nel 1469. La scintilla che accese gli animi viene di solito individuata nella questione dell'eredità di Beatrice Borromei, moglie di Giovanni de' Pazzi. Nel 1477, dopo la morte del suo ricchissimo padre Giovanni Borromei, Lorenzo fece promulgare una legge retroattiva che privava le figlie femmine dell'eredità in assenza di fratelli, facendola passare direttamente ad eventuali cugini maschi. Così Lorenzo evitò una notevole crescita del patrimonio dei Pazzi. La frattura tra le due famiglie si manifestò rapidamente, anche quando Lorenzo rinfacciò ai Pazzi di aver prestato trentamila ducati al papa affinché suo nipote si impossessasse della Contea di Imola, così pericolosamente a ridosso dei territori fiorentini, prestito che il Banco Medici aveva già rifiutato e che egli aveva chiesto di non fare a nessun banco fiorentino. Fu probabilmente in quel periodo (1477 circa) che la congiura prese piede, soprattutto ad opera di Jacopo e Francesco de' Pazzi. Ad essi si aggiunse Francesco Salviati, arcivescovo di Pisa, in attrito coi Medici che avevano tramato per non dargli la cattedra fiorentina favorendo invece un loro congiunto, (Rinaldo Orsini). La guida di Firenze liberata sarebbe dovuta spettare a Girolamo Riario. Il papa si premurò di trovare altri appoggi esterni: la Repubblica di Siena, il Re di Napoli, oltre alle truppe inviate dalle città di Todi, di Città di Castello, di Perugia e Imola (tutti territori pontifici). Il pontefice raccomandò di evitare spargimenti di sangue, ma questo suggerimento venne ignorato dai congiurati: i due Medici infatti dovevano essere eliminati fisicamente. Il braccio dell'azione, inteso come responsabile dell'omicidio o con stratagemmi o di suo pugno, era rappresentato da Giovan Battista Montesecco, sicario di professione. Recentemente è stata scoperta, dal professor Marcello Simonetta, una lettera cifrata che prova con certezza il fondamentale coinvolgimento di Federico da Montefeltro, Duca d'Urbino, nella congiura, e Lorenzo non sospettò mai di lui. Sabato 25 aprile 1478 . Originariamente, il piano prevedeva di uccidere i due rampolli della famiglia Medici, Lorenzo de' Medici e Giuliano de' Medici, durante un banchetto che essi avevano organizzato alla Villa Medici, Fiesole il 25 aprile, tramite l'uso di veleno che Jacopo de' Pazzi e il Riario avrebbero nascosto in una delle libagioni destinate ai due fratelli. L'occasione del banchetto era data dall'elezione a cardinale del diciottenne Raffaele Riario, forse ignaro delle trame dei congiurati -- in realtà forse avvisato dallo zio Sisto IV. I Pazzi si erano di recente imparentati con i Medici, tramite il matrimonio della sorella di Lorenzo e Giuliano, Bianca de' Medici con Guglielmo de' Pazzi. Quel giorno però un'indisposizione improvvisa di Giuliano rese vana l'impresa che fu rimandata al giorno successivo, durante la Messa in Santa Maria del Fiore. Domenica 26 aprile 1478.
La domenica l'ignaro cardinale Riario Sansoni invitò tutti alla messa in Duomo da lui officiata, come ringraziamento della festa organizzata il giorno prima in suo onore. Alla messa si recarono Lorenzo de' Medici, Giuliano de' Medici e i congiurati, i Pazzi, con l'eccezione però del Montesecco, che si rifiutò di colpire a tradimento dentro un luogo consacrato. Vennero allora ingaggiati in fretta e furia due preti in sostituzione: Stefano da Bagnone e il vicario apostolico Antonio Maffei da Volterra.
Essendo però Giuliano de' Medici ancora indisposto, Bernardo Bandini (il sicario destinato a Giuliano de' Medici) e Francesco de' Pazzi decisero di andare a prenderlo personalmente. Nel percorso dal Palazzo Medici a Santa Maria del Fiore, i cronisti ricordano come i congiurati abbracciassero a tradimento Giuliano de' Medici per vedere se indossasse una cotta di maglia sotto le vesti, ma egli a causa di un'infezione ad una gamba era uscito senza indossare il solito giaco sotto le vesti, che lo proteggeva, e senza il suo "gentile", nome scherzoso con il quale usava chiamare il suo coltello da guerra, che gli sbatteva contro la gamba ferita. Quando arrivarono in chiesa la messa era già iniziata. Al momento solenne dell'elevazione, mentre tutti erano inginocchiati, si scatenò il vero e proprio agguato. Mentre Giuliano cadeva in un lago di sangue sotto i colpi del Bandini, Lorenzo, accompagnato dall'inseparabile Angelo Poliziano e dai suoi scudieri Andrea e Lorenzo Cavalcanti, veniva ferito di striscio sulla spalla dagli inesperti preti e riusciva a entrare in sacrestia, dove chiuse le pesanti porte e si barricò. Il Bandini si avventò, ormai in ritardo, e sfogò la sua foga su Francesco Nori, che interpose il suo corpo tra l'omicida e Lorenzo, sacrificando la sua vita e dando la possibilità a Lorenzo di fuggire. Giuliano de' Medici venne sepolto in San Lorenzo, in quella che sarà la Sagrestia Nuova di Michelangelo. A un sopralluogo nella sua tomba condotto nel 2004 fu ritrovato il suo teschio con i segni di un profondo taglio nella testa. Un frammento di camicia insanguinata è stato a lungo ritenuto un brandello della camicia indossata da Giuliano de’ Medici al momento dell’uccisione in duomo. Come tale fu inserito in una teca ed esposto nel Museo Mediceo allestito in Palazzo Medici Riccardi: solo recentemente è stato dimostrato trattarsi di un brandello dell’abito del duca Alessandro, assassinato nel 1537. Attesta però, quasi reliquia laica, il perdurare del potere evocativo della Congiura che si era proposta di cambiare la storia fiorentina.  Jacopo de' Pazzi aveva completamente sbagliato la valutazione della risposta della popolazione fiorentina. Quando si presentò in Piazza della Signoria con un gruppo di compagni a cavallo gridando "Libertà!" invece di essere acclamato venne assalito dalla folla in un incontenibile movimento popolare che dal Duomo a tutta la città si accaniva contro i congiurati. Le truppe del papa e delle altre città che attendevano appostate attorno a Firenze, al suono delle campane sciolte si insospettirono e lo stesso Jacopo de' Pazzi uscì dalla città portando la notizia del fallimento, per cui non fu sferrato nessun attacco. L'epilogo fu molto doloroso per i Pazzi e per i loro alleati tanto che entro poche ore dall'agguato Francesco, ferito nell'agguato e rifugiatosi nella sua casa, e l'arcivescovo di Pisa Francesco Salviati penzolavano impiccati dalle finestre del Palazzo della Signoria. Al grido di "Palle, palle!", ispirato al blasone dei Medici, i Palleschi scatenarono infatti una vera e propria caccia all'uomo in città, che fu feroce e fulminea. Pochi giorni dopo anche Jacopo de' Pazzi veniva impiccato, e anche il suo congiunto, non responsabile della congiura, Renato de' Pazzi, e i loro corpi gettati nell'Arno. Bernardo Bandini riuscì a fuggire dalla città, arrivando a rifugiarsi a Costantinopoli, ma venne scovato e consegnato a Firenze per essere giustiziato il 29 dicembre 1479. Il suo cadavere impiccato venne ritratto da Leonardo da Vinci. Giovan Battista da Montesecco, sebbene non avesse partecipato all'esecuzione della congiura, venne arrestato e, dopo essere stato sottoposto alla tortura, rivelò i particolari della macchinazione, compreso il coinvolgimento del papa, che egli additò come il principale responsabile. Fu decapitato. I due preti assassini vennero catturati pochi giorni dopo e linciati dalla folla: ormai tumefatti e senza orecchie, giunsero al patibolo in Piazza della Signoria e vennero impiccati. Lorenzo non fece niente per mitigare la furia popolare, così fu vendicato senza che le sue mani si macchiassero di colpe. I Pazzi vennero tutti arrestati o esiliati e i loro beni confiscati. Fu proibito che il loro nome comparisse su alcun documento ufficiale e vennero cancellati tutti gli stemmi di famiglia dalla città, compresi quelli che erano presenti su alcuni fiorini coniati dal loro banco, che furono riconiati. In un primo momento il papa scomunicò la città di Firenze, ma successivamente si trovò isolato quando Ferrante d'Aragona appoggiò Lorenzo, che si era recato personalmente a Napoli. Lorenzo colse così l'occasione per serrare il potere nelle sue mani: subordinò infatti le assemblee comunali e la struttura della Repubblica a un consiglio di 70 membri, in larga parte persone di sua fiducia, che doveva rispondere solo a lui. Uno dei più antichi e famosi resoconti della vicenda fu scritto in latino da Angelo Poliziano stesso, che aveva assistito direttamente ai fatti.
In seguito Lorenzo riuscì a pacificarsi sia con Alfonso che con papa Sisto: in entrambi i casi usò la cultura e l'arte come ambasciatori di Firenze e della sua necessaria libertà e indipendenza: partirono così per Napoli Giuliano, Benedetto da Maiano e Antonio Rossellino, mentre un gruppo di artisti fiorentini affrescò a Roma la nuova Cappella Sistina tra il 1481 e il 1482. Note: vedi catalogo della mostra "Denaro e Bellezza. I banchieri, Botticelli e il rogo delle vanità" Firenze, Palazzo Strozzi, 17 settembre 2011-22 gennaio 2012. Voci correlate [modifica] Medaglia della Congiura dei Pazzi
La congiura de' Pazzi (tragedia di Vittorio Alfieri) Assedio di Colle Val d'Elsa. Bibliografia: Medici, Associazioni alberghi del libro d'oro, Nike edizioni, 2001.Le grandi famiglia di Firenze, Marcello Vannucci, Newton Compton Editori, 2006. Vedi anche la bibliografia su Firenze. Collegamenti esterni [modifica] Una cronologia dei giorni della Congiura Uno studio sulla congiura (DOC) Un articolo sulle responsabilità di Federico da Montefeltro nella congiura. Portale Firenze Portale Storia.
Categorie:  Storia di Firenze Rinascimento. The Pazzi conspiracy was a plot by members of the Pazzi family and others to displace the de' Medici family as rulers of Renaissance Florence. On 26 Apr. 1478 there was an attempt to assassinate Lorenzo de' Medici and his brother Giuliano de' Medici. Lorenzo was wounded but survived. Giuliano was killed. The partial failure of the plot served to strengthen the position of the de' Medici.

The Pazzi were banished from Florence. Ruggero Leoncavallo, "I Medici" (1893), with a libretto by the composer. "I Medici" premièred at the Teatro Dal Verme in Milan on 9 November 1893. It was not successful in its day and has never become part of the standard repertoire. Conductor: Rodolfo Ferrari.  Come riusci' Lorenzo de' Medici a sfuggire ai pugnali dei cospiratori? E perchè il complotto dei Pazzi falli' cosi' miseramente?

 

 

 

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La mattina del 26 aprile 1478 era prevista una solenne cerimonia in Santa Maria del Fiore in onore del diciotenne Raffaele Riario Sansoni, appena nominato cardinale da papa Sisto IV. Completamente ignaro delle trame del suo superiore, Riario Sansoni invito’ i Medici alla funzione, fornendo cosi’ ai cospiratori un’occasione d’oro per la loro eliminazione. Due falsi preti vennero segretamente introdotti nella cattedrale, mentre l’esercito pontificio si accampava presso i confini della repubblica fiorentina, pronto ad intervenire a favore dei congiurati. Il piano sembro’ inizialmente destinato al fallimento. Per una leggera indiposizione, Giuliano de’ Medici voleva infatti disertare la messa ufficiale del cardinal Sansoni, ma l’intervento diretto di Francesco de’ Pazzi lo convinse ad accettare l’invito all’ultimo minuto. Durante il tragitto verso la chiesa, tramite una lunga serie di pretesti, i cospiratori abbracciarono piu’ volte i fratelli Medici per assicurarsi che non avessero protezioni sotto le vesti. Al momento dell’elevazione eucaristica, nel cuore della funzione religiosa, scatto’ inesorabile l’agguato. Giuliano de' Medici non ebbe alcun modo di difendersi. Attaccato contemporaneamente da Francesco de’ Pazzi e Bernardo Bandini Baroncelli, Giovanni de' Medici cadde a terra in un lago di sangue, massacrato da oltre diciannove colpi di spada. Lorenzo de' Medici invece riusci’ ad evitare i colpi degli avversari, fuggendo verso l’altare. Qui pero’ fu assalito dai due assassini del fratello, che gli infersero una brutta ferita al collo. Tuttavia, con disperata prontezza di spirito, l’uomo riusci’ comunque a raggiungere la sacrestia, dove un gruppo di amici fedeli lo protesse e gli forni’ le prime cure. La ferita di Lorenzo de' Medici venne succhiata per timore che le spade dei cospiratori fossero intinte nel veleno. Nel frattempo un gran numero di fedeli era fuggito terrorizzato dal Duomo, annunciando a gran voce la drammatica morte dei fratelli Medici. Convinto dell’esito positivo del complotto, Cesare Salviati si reco’ a Palazzo Vecchio per ottenere il controllo politico della città. Qui pero’ l’astuto prelato trovo’ l’inaspettata resistenza di Cesare Petrucci, Gonfaloniere di Giustizia, che scateno’ la folla in difesa del governo. Passata la sopresa iniziale, infatti, la maggioranza dei fiorentini si schiero’ nettamente contro i congiurati, braccandoli in maniera spietata. Solo Jacopo de’ Pazzi e il Baroncelli riuscirono a scappare vivi da Firenze, mentre Salviati e Francesco de’ Pazzi venivano barbaramente impiccati alle finestre dei palazzi governativi. L’apparizione di un acciaccato Lorenzo de’ Medici dal balcone di casa sua galvanizzo’ ulteriormente la folla, che guidata dai Palleschi - sostenitori popolari della famiglia fiorentina - continuo’ il feroce linciaggio dei cospiratori e dei loro complici. Si calcola che nella repressione del complotto siano state uccise oltre ottanta persone - il peggior bagno di sangue avvenuto a Firenze durante tutto il XV secolo. Tra le numerose vittime vi furono anche degli innocenti come Jacopo Bracciolini, segretario privato di Girolamo Riario, e Renato de’ Pazzi, fratello dei congiurati: i loro corpi furono gettati nell’Arno insieme a quelli dei due falsi preti - Stefano da Bagnone e Antonio Maffei di Volterra -, torturati e uccisi in Piazza della Signoria.  Persino l’onesto Giovan Battista Montesecco, che pure aveva rifiutato di partecipare ai tentativi di assassinio, non sfuggi’ alla vendetta medicea. Arrestato e seviziato, confesso’ il ruolo del papa nella cospirazione poco prima di essere decapitato di fronte a Palazzo Vecchio. Nei mesi successivi anche Jacopo de’ Pazzi e il Baroncelli vennero scovati e giustiziati dalle autorità fiorentine. Lorenzo non fece nulla per placare la collera dei suoi seguaci: anzi, approfitto’ dell’occasione per cacciare dalla città i superstiti della famiglia Pazzi, confiscando quasi tutte le loro proprietà e cancellando i loro stemmi da ogni insegna della repubblica.  Naturalmente restavano aperti i conti con il pontefice, vera e propria mente occulta del complotto. Inizialmente Sisto IV prosegui’ nei suoi disegni antimedicei, scomunicando la città di Firenze e preparandosi ad invadere militarmente la Toscana. Ma l’inattesa alleanza tra Medici, Sforza e Aragonesi lo costrinse a sfogare la propria collera sul ben piu’ debole Ducato di Ferrara, subendo anche qui le rimostranze dei principali stati italiani. Mori’ nell’agosto 1484, dileggiato persino dal popolo romano. La congiura dei Pazzi sanci’ il definitivo controllo di Firenze da parte dei Medici, che - pur mantenendo in vita le istituzioni formali dell’antica repubblica - continuarono ad esercitare un ferreo dominio sulla politica cittadina. La vicenda ha ispirato numerose opere letterarie, incluse una cronaca in latino di Angelo Poliziano e una tragedia teatrale di Vittorio Alfieri, ed il melodramma di Leoncavallo.  Personnagi: Giuliano de' Medici, tenor -- creato da Francesco Tamagno).

Lorenzo de' Medici (baritone, creato da Ottorino Beltrami), Simonetta Cattanei (soprano lirico, creato da Adelina Stehle-Garbin), Fioretta de' Gori (soprano drammatico, creato da Adele Gini Pizzorni), Giambattista da Montesecco (bass, creato da Giovanni Scarneo), Francesco Pazzi (bass, creato da Ludovico Contini), Bernardo Bandini Baroncelli (tenore, creato da Giovanni Pagliano), Il Poliziano (baritone, creato da Vittorio Bellati), Archbishop Salviati (bass, creato da Gaetano Biancardi), Simonetta's mother (mezzo-soprano, creato da Federica Casali). Leoncavall's opera, "I Medici, ossia la congiura dei Pazzi -- L'assassinio di Giuliano de' Medici") is set in Forence and concerns intrigues centering around the Medici family, and the Pazzi Conspiracy. Giuliano de' Medici loves Simonetta Cattanei, who tries to warn him of the conspiracy against his family. But Simonetta is killed by Montesecco, a murderer hired by Pope Sesto V. Giuliano is killed by the conspirators, but Lorenzo de' Medici escapes with the help of the poet Poliziano. He then wins the support of the people, who lynch the conspirators. A recording of the opera was released in 2010 on Deutsche Grammopho: Placido Domingo (Giuliano de Medici), recorded in July 2007 at the Teatro Comunale Florence. References: "Almanacco 9 November 1893" AmadeusOnline. Retrieved 30 August 2010.  Robert J. Farr (August 2010). "Review - Leoncavallo - I Medici". Music Web International. Retrieved 30 August 2010. Categories:  Operas Operas by Ruggero Leoncavallo. Italian-language operas 1893 operas Operas set in Italy Operas based on actual events House of Medici. Italian-language opera stubs.

MEDICI. Giulio Giuliano de'. Papa Clemente VII. In Berlioz, "Benvenuto Cellini". Nato a Firenze, 26 maggio 1478 – Roma, 25 settembre 1534). Hector Berlioz: Benvenuto Cellini. Ernst Krenek: Karl V. Vide MEDICI.



MEDICI, Lorenzo de' , "Lorenzo the Magnificent", Italian statesman. Ruggero Leoncavallo, "I Medici", "La congiura dei Pazzi, ossia l'assassinio di Giuliano de' Medici alla messa de Santa Maria de' Fiore, Firenze".

MEDICI. Lorenzo (Lorenzino) di Pierfrancesco -- detto anche Lorenzaccio (nato a Firenze, 22 marzo 1514 – Venezia, 26 febbraio 1548), è stato un politico, scrittore e drammaturgo italiano, esponente della famiglia Medici. Appartenente al ramo popolano della celebre dinastia, è passato alla storia soprattutto come assassino di suo cugino, il Duca Alessandro de' Medici. Nato a Firenze, Lorenzino ("Lorenzaccio") de' Medici era figlio di Pierfrancesco de' Medici e di Maria Soderini. Dopo la morte del padre (1520), che avvenne quando era appena fanciullo, fu allevato dalla madre e dai tutori Giovanni Francesco Zeffi e Varino Favorino di Camerino alla villa del Trebbio, dove crebbe accanto al futuro Cosimo I de' Medici e al futuro Duca Alessandro, figlio illegittimo probabilmente del cardinale Giulio de' Medici. Nel 1526 fu portato con il fratello minore Giuliano e con Cosimo a Venezia per sfuggire dall'agitazione a Firenze, con l'arrivo dei Lanzichenecchi. La loro messa in salvo in anticipo fu provvidenziale perché solo un anno dopo, alla notizia del Sacco di Roma che aveva destabilizzato Papa Clemente VII, un Medici, signore a distanza di Firenze, i signori vennero cacciati da Firenze. Lorenzino visitò così Treviso, Padova e Vicenza, prima di tornare in Toscana. Nel 1529, Lorenzino de' Medici figurava a Bologna, probabilmente per sfuggire al sacco del Mugello da parte delle truppe imperiali e pontificie che si apprestavano a cingere Firenze sotto il famoso assedio. Nel 1530, Lorenzino de' Medici andò a Roma, dove si guadagnò una cattiva fama di tagliatore di teste alle statue antiche (nientemeno che dall'arco di Costantino), che gli valse una disonorevole cacciata dalla città e il soprannome di "Lorenzaccio". Rientrato a Firenze quello stesso anno egli divenne ben presto il compagno degli eccessi del Duca Alessandro de' Medici, da poco instaurato nel ruolo di governatore della città. L'amicizia con Alessandro fu molto stretta e non priva di punti oscuri e, forse, di risvolti morbosi. Secondo i resoconti dell'epoca i due sarebbero stati compagni negli eccessi licenziosi, abituati a recarsi insieme nei bordelli e spesso visti in pubblico montare lo stesso cavallo. La sera del 5 gennaio 1537 Lorenzino de' Medici fece venire Alessandro de' Medici nei propri appartamenti e lo lasciò solo, con la promessa di tornare presto con una sua sorella e con la moglie di Leonardo Ginori. Alessandro de' Medici nel frattempo si addormentò e Lorenzino de' Medici tornò solo dopo qualche ora, assieme al sicario di professione chiamato Scoronconcolo. I due dunque trovarono il duca Alessandro de' Medici addormentato ed inerme, senza guardie e che da solo aveva assecondato i loro piani, che prevedevano di ucciderlo accoltellandolo nel sonno. Alessandro de' Medici si svegliò però dopo i primi assalti e fu ucciso solo dopo una violenta lotta. Tra le motivazioni del tradimento di Lorenzino sono state portati ad esempio la sottomissione che Alessandro de' Medici pretendeva da tutti, compreso Lorenzino de' Medici stesso, che si sentiva invece come un suo pari; o le questioni ereditarie che lo avevano svantaggiato. Ma forse vi potevano essere anche dei segreti morbosi tra i due, che comunque non sono mai stati provati. Firenzevisse la morte del tirannico Alessandro de' Medici come una liberazione, e anche fuori da Firenze furono in molti che si rallegrarono dell'eliminazione di un personaggio così sgradevole -- tra i quali Caterina de' Medici, regina di Francia. Con Alessandro de' Medici si estinse il ramo principale dei Medici, sebbene egli lasciasse due figli piccoli, Giulio e Giulia, che però vennero dichiarati non capaci di governare perché nati illegittimi da un padre già dalla genealogia incerta. Salì così alla ribalta un giovane di diciassette anni, che rappresentava da parte di padre il ramo secondario dei Medici e da parte di madre quello primario, Cosimo I de' Medici, che perciò fu scelto come nuovo duca della città, anche con il beneplacito dei fiorentini e dell'Imperatore Carlo V. Lorenzino comunque fu costretto a scappare per il suo delitto e si rifugiò prima a Bologna, poi a Venezia, protetto da Monsignor Giovanni Della Casa. Lo stesso anno si unì alle truppe dei fuoriusciti fiorentini di Filippo Strozzi ed andò a combattere contro Cosimo I de' Medici in quella che fu la battaglia di Montemurlo, dove Cosimo de' Medici ebbe la meglio sugli esuli. Nel timore dei sicari di Cosimo I Lorenzino de' Medici continuò a spostarsi freneticamente. Lorenzino de' Medici andò a Costantinopoli, poi in Francia, da Caterina de' Medici dove visse alcuni anni, dal 1537 al 1541. Nel 1542, Lorenzino de' Medici fu di nuovo in Toscana per cercare di ostacolare Cosimo I de' Medici nella sua opera di unificazione dello stato toscano, poi tornò a Venezia. Nel 1544, Lorenzino de' Medici tornò in Francia e poi di nuovo a Venezia. Qui ormai si era stabilito per via dell'amore verso una nobildonna. Appoggiò comunque i tentativi di estromettere Cosimo comandati dal Burlamacchi nel 1546 e da Giulio I Cybo-Malaspina (1547-1548). Nel 1548 Lorenzino venne assassinato a Venezia per mano di due sicari ("due volterrani" menzionati in una lettera: Bebo da Volterra e Cecchino da Bibbona) che lo uccisero in Campo San Polo davanti alla casa della sua amante, Elena Barozzi. Nuove ricerche dimostrano che il segretario mediceo Giovanni Francesco Lottini, a lungo considerato il mandante dell'omicidio, fu invece estraneo al delitto. Lasciò una figlia naturale appena infante, di nome, "Lorenzina de' Medici", che fu allevata dai parenti ed ebbe un matrimonio con un nobile romano, Giulio Colonna. Lorenzino de' Medici fu anche uno scrittore. Nell'"Apologia" difese sé stesso dalla colpa dell'assassinio con notevole capacità e eloquenza, dichiarando che il suo gesto era stato mosso dall'amore verso la libertà. Per questa ragione unica egli aveva seguito l'esempio di Bruto e finto il ruolo di amico e cortigiano. Il tono dell'apologia è eloquente e a volte elevato, ma guardando alla biografia di Lorenzaccio ci si rende conto che egli ha spesso smentito proprio con la sua condotta il fine nobile che si vantava di professare. Scrisse anche una commedia intitolata l'Aridosia. Note [modifica] ^ Bernardo Segni, Storie florentine di Messer Bernardo Segni, gentiluomo florentino, dall'anno MDXXVII. al MDLV, Glauco Masi, Livorno 1830, Vol. III, p.724 ^ Stefano Dall'Aglio, Il presunto colpevole. Giovan Francesco Lottini e l'assassinio di Lorenzino de' Medici, in "Rivista Storica Italiana" CXXI (2009), pp. 840-856 Bibliografia: Luigi Alberto Ferrai, Lorenzino de' Medici e la societa' cortigiana del Cinquecento, Milano, Hoepli, 1891. Stefano Dall'Aglio, L'assassino del duca. Esilio e morte di Lorenzino de' Medici, Firenze, L.S. Olschki, 2011. Altri progetti [modifica] Wikisource contiene opere originali di o su Lorenzino de' Medici Wikiquote contiene citazioni di o su Lorenzino de' Medici Collegamenti esterni [modifica] Una pagina su Lorenzino Estratto dall'Apologia Medaglia di Lorenzino de' Medici Scheda sul film Lorenzino de' Medici (1935) Controllo di autorità VIAF: 88751312 LCCN: n50013588 Portale Biografie Portale Letteratura Portale Medici Portale Storia Portale Teatro. Categorie: Politici italiani del XVI secolo

Scrittori italiani del XVI secolo Drammaturghi italiani del XVI secolo Nati nel 1514 Morti nel 1548

Nati il 22 marzo Morti il 26 febbraio Nati a Firenze Morti a Venezia Famiglia Medici Criminali italiani Persone morte assassinate | [altre] Lorenzino de' Medici (March 23, 1514 – February 26, 1548), sometimes called Lorenzaccio de' Medici, was an Italian writer remembered primarily as the assassin of Alessandro de' Medici, duke and ruler of Florence. Lorenzino de' Medici Spouse(s)Elena Barozzi Issue Lorenzina de' Medici Noble familyMedici FatherPierfrancesco II de' Medici MotherMaria Soderini Born(1514-03-23)23 March 1514 Florence Died: 26 February 1548(1548-02-26) (aged 33). Venice. Lorenzino was born in Florence, Italy, the son of Pierfrancesco II de' Medici and Maria Soderini. Lorenzino was educated at Camerino together with Cosimo and Alessandro de' Medici. He and the latter were later involved in several public scandals involving their escapades. In 1526 Lorenzino was brought with Cosimo to Venice to escape the Landsknechts falling on Florence, and was also saved from the expulsion of the Medici from that city following the Sack of Rome which crushed the power of the most powerful member of the family, Pope Clement VII. After a period in Veneto, Bologna and Rome (where he gained the nickname "Lorenzaccio", "Bad Lorenzo", for his habit of decapitating statues), he returned to his native city in 1530, after the end of the Imperial siege which installed Alessandro de' Medici as duke. Probably prompted by Filippo Strozzi, Lorenzino de' Medici and the killer Scoronconcolo murdered duke Alessandro de' Medici on January 5, 1537. Lorenzino de' Medici entrapped Alessandro de' Medici through the ruse of a promised arranged sexual encounter with Lorenzino's young aunt, Caterina, abandoned by her husband, Leonardo de' Ginori, a disreputable spendthrift and gambler, who fled to Naples to escape his creditors. After the murder of Alessandro de' Medici, Lorenzino de' Medici fled to Bologna, and from there to Venice, Turkey, France, and then back to Venice. He wrote a public defense of his actions (the Apologia), claiming that, as an ideal heir of Marcus Junius Brutus, dedication to human liberty had forced him to kill Alessandro de' Medici. As a writer, Lorenzino also authored the play Aridosio, which gained him notable critics. Cosimo I de' Medici became Duke of Florence, and condemned Lorenzino to death. Two assassins in Cosimo's pay killed Lorenzino in 1548 in front of his lover's house at Campo San Polo, Venice. Bibliography: Luigi Alberto Ferrai, Lorenzino de' Medici e la societa' cortigiana del Cinquecento (Milan: Hoepli. 1891). Stefano Dall'Aglio, L'assassino del duca. Esilio e morte di Lorenzino de' Medici (Florence: L.S. Olschki. 2011). External links [edit]. Portrait of a Florentine Nobleman, possibly Lorenzino de' Medici[dead link]. Authority controlVIAF: 88751312 Persondata NameMedici, Lorenzino Alternative names Short description Date of birthMarch 23, 1514 Place of birthFlorence Date of deathFebruary 26, 1548 Place of deathVenice

Categories:  1514 births 1548 deaths 1537 crimes 1548 crimes House of Medici People from Florence Italian writers Assassinated Italian people Italian assassins 16th-century Italian people

16th-century writers Executed Italian people People executed for murder Assassins of heads of state

16th-century executions by Italy People executed by Florence Giovanni Pacini, "Lorenzino de' Medici: tragedia per musica". Also, Silvano Bussoti, "Lorenzaccio" (1968), tratto da Musset.

MESSALINA. Valeria. Roman Empress. Isidore de Lara: Messaline


METELLA. Caecilia Dalmatica, fourth wife of Lucius Cornelius Sulla. George Frideric Handel: Silla

METELLA. Cornelia. Pompey's second wife. George Frideric Handel: Giulio Cesare (in Egitto) (as Cornelia)

MONTFORTE -- vide Arrigo. Guy de Montfort, Count of Nola, Anglo-Italian condottiero
Giuseppe Verdi: Les vêpres siciliennes


MUZIO. Gaius Muzio Scaevola, Roman figure. Francesco Cavalli: Mutio Scevola
George Frideric Handel: Muzio Scevola

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NERONE. Emperor Nero of Rome.




Arrigo Boito: Nerone.


George Frideric Handel: Agrippina
Reinhard Keiser: Octavia. Pietro Mascagni: Nerone (as Claudio Cesare Nerone). Claudio Monteverdi: L'incoronazione di Poppea. Anton Rubinstein: Néron. Juan Manén: Acté and Neró i Acté


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OTTAVIA. Empress Claudia Octavia of Rome, consort of Nero. Reinhard Keiser: Octavia
Claudio Monteverdi: L'incoronazione di Poppea.

OTTAVIA. Octavia the Younger, fourth wife of Mark Antony. Samuel Barber: Antony and Cleopatra. Jules Massenet: Cléopâtre

ORBIANA. Sallustia. Wife of Emperor Alexander Severus of Rome. George Frideric Handel: Alessandro Severo

ORSINI. Pierfrancesco II, detto "Vicino") Italian condottiero.




Alberto Ginastera: Bomarzo. (Nato a Roma, 4 luglio 1523 – Bomarzo, 28 gennaio 1585), è stato signore di Bomarzo dal 1542 al 1585. Dopo la carriera militare che lo vede impegnato dal 1545 al 1557, Pierfrancesco Orsini si ritira a vita privata nel suo palazzo di Bomarzo. È conosciuto soprattutto come committente del Sacro Bosco, oggi identificato con il nome di Parco dei Mostri, un complesso monumentale di sculture e fontane dalle caratteristiche peculiari che lo differenziano dai giardini coevi, fatti realizzare nei dintorni da altri signori, come Villa d'Este a Tivoli, Villa Lante a Bagnaia o il giardino di Palazzo Farnese a Caprarola. Pierfrancesco Orsini nasce a Roma il 4 luglio del 1523 nella parrocchia di Santa Maria in Traspontina da Gian Corrado Orsini, signore di Bomarzo, e da Clarice Orsini, figlia del cardinale Franciotto Orsini signore di Monterotondo. Non ci sono finora notizie sulla sua infanzia. Il testamento del padre del 1526 affida il tutorato dei figli minori Pierfrancesco e Maerbale al maggiore Girolamo ma già nel 1528 le fonti cessano di nominare Girolamo, probabilmente già morto, e i bambini sono affidati al patronato dell'Abate di Farfa. Negli anni '39-'40 Vicino è a Venezia dove frequenta il circolo letterario legato all'editore Giolito che annovera i poeti Giuseppe Betussi, Francesco Maria Molza e Franceschina Baffo. Il Betussi e la Baffo gli dedicheranno anche dei versi. Negli stessi anni a Venezia conosce una giovane romana di cui si innamora, Adriana dalla Roza. A causa di una rissa viene allontanato da Venezia e fa ritorno nel Lazio, dove Adriana lo segue. Nel 1541 è a Viterbo, dove assiste come dedicatario alla rappresentazione teatrale della Cangiaria, commedia attribuita a Sacco da Viterbo, forse identificabile con il medico Girolamo Sacchi^[3]. Il cardinale Alessandro Farnese il Giovane è arbitro nel 1542 della fase finale della controversia ereditaria aperta alla morte di Gian Corrado fin dal 1535 ed assegna a Vicino i feudi di Bomarzo, Collepiccolo, Castelvecchio, Montenero e Mompeo e mentre il fratello Maerbale riceve Chia, Penna, Giove, Collestatte, e Torreorsina. Maerbale eleggerà domicilio a Penna e Vicino a Bomarzo. Nel 1544 sposa Giulia Farnese, figlia di Galeazzo, signore di Latera, imparentandosi così con la famiglia del cardinale Alessandro, al quale resterà sempre legato, e quindi con l'allora pontefice Paolo III. A parte la sua dubbia partecipazione all'assedio di Perpignan, la sua carriera militare inizia nel 1545 quando Paolo III lo vuole fra i consulenti per la progettazione delle fortificazioni di Borgo, occasione in cui è ricordato con Torquato Conti, signore di Poli, che diverrà suo cognato, e in cui forse ha modo di conoscere Michelangelo. Nel 1546 è al seguito delle truppe pontificie di rinforzo all'esercito dell'Imperatore Carlo V nella guerra contro i principi protestanti riuniti nella lega di Smalcalda. Fatto prigioniero, è liberato nel 1547, come testimonia la lapide del pozzo alla base della chiesa di Santa Maria Assunta a Bomarzo, fatto costruire da Giulia Farnese come voto per la liberazione del marito. Successivamente, segue le sorti della politica farnesiana, in difficoltà dopo la morte di Paolo III. Nel 1552 è a Bomarzo,come attesta l'iscrizione situata nel Sacro Bosco, ma già l'anno successivo è al fianco di Orazio Farnese, duca di Parma, e fratello del cardinale Alessandro, con cui partecipa ad una fase del continuo scontro tra la Francia e l'Impero, dalla parte dei francesi. Nello stesso 1553, durante l'assedio di Hesdin dove i francesi erano asserragliati, Orazio Farnese viene ucciso e Vicino cade prigioniero insieme con Torquato Conti e lo resterà per circa due anni, riuscendo a rientrare a Bomarzo solo nel 1556, dopo la pace di Cateau-Cambresis. Negli ultimi anni della carriera militare, è al servizio di papa Paolo IV come comandante della fanteria di Velletri. Durante la "guerra d'Italia" del 1556-57 che oppone il papa al viceregno spagnolo di Napoli, è testimone della distruzione del paese di Montefortino, oggi Artena, ordinata dallo stesso pontefice^[4]. Gli abitanti erano passati, insieme con il signore locale, appartenente alla famiglia Colonna, dalla parte degli spagnoli uccidendo in un agguato cento fanti appartenenti proprio al reparto al comando di Vicino. La reazione di Paolo IV è violenta: ordina al comandante della cavalleria Giulio Orsini di espugnare e distruggere il borgo e giustiziare tutti gli abitanti, rei di tradimento. Non si conosce il ruolo preciso di Vicino nell'operazione ma sembra che non partecipasse all'assedio, entrando a Montefortino solo dopo che Giulio aveva eseguito l'ordine del pontefice. Horst Bredekamp e Maurizio Calvesi ritengono che la crudeltà dell'accaduto abbia negativamente impressionato Vicino e abbia influenzato, se non determinato, il suo ritiro dalla vita militare. Alla fine del 1557 infatti Vicino lascia il comando di Velletri. L'ultima sua azione di una qualche rilevanza politica è la mediazione che compie a Firenze nel 1558 per il matrimonio di Paolo Giordano Orsini, duca di Bracciano, suo parente, con Isabella de' Medici, figlia del duca di Toscana Cosimo I. I dati biografici sono riscontrabili in massima parte in Bredekamp 1989 e Calvesi 2000, cui si rimanda per le fonti antiche originali (vedi bibliografia per il riferimento in forma estesa), passim ^ Giuseppe Zander, Gli elementi documentari sul Sacro Bosco in "Quaderni dell'Istituto di Storia dell'Architettura", n. 7-8-9, Roma, 1955 ^ Quirino Galli (a cura di), La Cangiaria, Agnesotti, Viterbo, 1972 ^ Vittorio Aimati, Arato e seminato col sale, Ful.Vi.A. editrice, Artena, 2001 Comune di Bomarzo Medaglia - ritratto di Vicino Orsini Sito web sulla famiglia Orsini Categorie:  Nati nel 1523 Morti nel 1585 Nati il 4 luglio Morti il 28 gennaio Nati a Roma Orsini.


OTTONE. Emperor Marcus Salvius Otho of Rome.



Antonio Vivaldi: Ottone in villa

OTTONE, re di Italia. Adelaide di Borgogna, ossia Ottone, re d'Italia (Adelaide of Burgundy, or Otto, King of Italy) is a two-act opera composed by Gioachino Rossini (with contributions by Michele Carafa) to a libretto by Giovanni Schmidt. It was premièred at the Teatro Argentina in Rome on 27 December 1817.^[1]

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PAGANINI. Niccolò Paganini, Italian violinist and composer.



Sir Harrison Birtwistle: The Second Mrs Kong


PALESTRINA. Giovanni Pierluigi da. Italian composer.



Hans Pfitzner: Palestrina.

 

 

 

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It was very good that Pfitzner found inspiration in this. Palestrina is an opera by the German composer Hans Pfitzner, first performed in 1917. The composer referred to it as a Musikalische Legende (musical legend), and wrote the libretto himself, based on a legend about the Renaissance musician Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina, who saves the art of contrapuntal music (polyphony) for the Church in the sixteenth century, through his composition of the Missa Papae Marcelli. The wider context is that of the European Reformation and the role of music in relation to it. The character of Cardinal Borromeo is depicted, and a General Congress of the Council of Trent is the centrepiece of Act II. The conductor of the premiere was Bruno Walter. On 16 February 1962, the day before he died, Walter ended his last letter with: "Despite all the dark experiences of today I am still confident that Palestrina will remain. The work has all the elements of immortality".^[1]RoleVoice typePremiere Cast, 12 June 1917
(Conductor: Bruno Walter)
Giovanni Pierluigi da PalestrinatenorKarl Erb
Lukrezia, his wife, recently diedcontraltoLuise Willer
Ighino, his sonsopranoMaria Ivogün
Silla, his pupilmezzo-sopranoEmmy Krüger
Bernardo Novagerio, cardinal legatetenorPaul Kuhn
Bishop of BudojatenorWilli Birrenkoven
Carlo Borromeo, a Roman cardinalbaritoneFritz Feinhals
Giovanni Morone, cardinal legatebaritoneFriedrich Brodersen
Count Luna, ambassador of the King of SpainbaritoneAlfons Gustav Schützendorf
Pope Pius IVbassPaul Bender
Bishop Ercole Severolus, Master of Ceremonies of the Council of Trentbass-baritoneAlfred Bauerberger
Cardinal Christoph Madruscht, Prince Bishop of TrentbassMax Gillman
Theophilus, Bishop of Imolatenor
The Cardinal of Lorrainebass
Abdisu, Patriarch of Assyriatenor
Anton Brus von Müglitz, Archbishop of Praguebass
Avosmediano, Bishop of Cadizbass-baritone

Act One
^{A room in Palestrina's house, Rome, around 1560
(Scene 1) Palestrina's student Silla is trying over a secular lyric he has written, and planning to make a new life in Florence, where he hopes to find his own voice as a singer and song-writer. Rome clings to its old-fashioned polyphony as closely as it defends its religion. (2) Ighino and Silla discuss their singing: Silla thinks a singer should stand alone, but Ighino thinks that real strength lies subordinating the individual self to the larger complex idea. He is sad because his father has lost heart: fame made others jealous, his marriage led the Pope to dismiss him, and his wife died knowing this. Since then Palestrina has written nothing. Silla sings to him his new song. (3) Cardinal Borromeo is visiting Palestrina to explain that, because of growing secularism, the Pope plans to banish polyphony from the Mass and other offices, to burn the polyphonic masterpieces, and to revert entirely to the Gregorian chant. Emperor Ferdinand I hopes that a new polyphonic Mass can be written which will appease his fears. Borromeo wants Palestrina to undertake this, but, lacking the spirit, he refuses, and Borromeo leaves in anger. (4) Palestrina ponders his loss of faith and the weakness of love. In his despair, spirits of the great music-masters of previous ages appear and surround him. (5) The spirits tell Palestrina he belongs to their elect and must fulfil the task. He protests that in the modern consciousness ("Bewusstseins"), art cannot thrive. The spirits reply that this is his earthly mission: he must bring the light to his generation. They vanish. (6) In the darkness of his room angels begin to appear, singing the Mass, and his dead wife's spirit approaches. Not seeing them, Palestrina feels a surge of joy as the walls and ceiling open up to celestial light full of glory and angels, who sing the Gloria. In a creative transport Palestrina's pen is inspired, and as it all fades, he sinks exhausted to sleep, surrounded by sheets of music strewn all around. (7) Silla and Ighino enter while he sleeps, and find the music: it is a complete Mass, written in one night. Ighino rejoices, but Silla is sceptical.}

^{[edit] Act Two}

^{The Great Hall in Cardinal Madruscht's Palace in Trent
(Scene 1) Bishop Severolus and the Papal legate Novagerio prepare the hall for the final General Congress of the Council of Trent. The Cardinal of Lorraine (who has reached compromise with the Pope) and Count Luna, representative of the King of Spain (favouring Protestantism) must be seated equally and without precedence. (2) Cardinal Madruscht and Novagerio discuss the coming decision while awaiting the delegates, and they greet Borromeo. (3) While delegates arrive, Borromeo and Novagerio talk politics: Emperor Ferdinand and his son Maximilian plan to have dominion of the Catholic world (including Germany) from the throne of Spain, in union with the Kingship of Rome, which is offered to Maximilian even though he is secretly inclined to Lutheranism. But the Pope will preserve dogma by the interpretation of imperial decrees. Borromeo explains that Palestrina has refused the commission for the new polyphonic Mass. Novagerio insists that Palestrina must be forced into subordination, or be crushed. (4) Cardinal Madruscht deplores Lorraine's compromise with Rome, and urges the Cardinal of Prague to stand fast for doctrinal Reforms. The Spanish arrive and look scornfully at the Italians and the Bishop of Budoja. Morone, the other papal legate, arrives and the Council begins. (5) Morone opens the meeting hoping for unity of purpose between Emperor, Pope and Princes. The question of the polyphonic Mass is raised, but Borromeo tells them it is unfinished. The issue of the vernacular Mass and breviary arises, but then Count Luna and Cardinal of Lorraine dispute precedence, and Budoja disrupts proceedings to deflect Count Luna's case. Chaos breaks out: the meeting is adjourned till the afternoon, when everything must be resolved. The delegates disperse. (6) Lorraine protests to Morone that he should have precedence, but Morone is angry that he has provoked Count Luna. Novagerio appeals to Lorraine to consider the interests of the Pope. Badoja makes himself objectionable. (7) The Spanish servants, and a group of German and Italian servants, shout abuse at each other and a battle with daggers ensues. Cardinal Madruscht appears with a troop of soldiers, and commands them to shoot to kill. A volley is fired, and many fall dead and wounded: all the survivors are seized and carried off for torture.}

^{[edit] Act Three}

^{Palestrina's house in Rome, as in the First Act.
(Scene 1) Palestrina, aged and very tired, waits in his room with Ighino and some choristers. Borromeo imprisoned him for refusing the commission, but Ighino handed the music of the Mass over to save his father from the hangman. Now it is being sung before the Pope. Ighino begs his father to reawaken to life and to embrace the son who loves him. Suddenly the voices of singers from the Papal chapel are heard from the street singing 'Evviva Palestrina, the Saviour of Music!' (2) Papal singers come into the room, saying how greatly the Mass has pleased everyone. Pope Pius IV himself enters with eight Cardinals (including Borromeo), Palestrina kneels, and the Pope asks him to return and lead the Sistine Choir until the end of his days. Then they leave, but Borromeo remains and prostrates himself in tears, begging Palestrina's forgiveness. Palestrina raises him up, kisses him on the cheek and embraces him, for both are shattered vessels that must be filled with the breath of love. Borromeo, much chastened, departs: Ighino embraces his father, and asks if he will now be happy. Silla has gone to Florence, but Ighino will remain: in joy the boy rushes out into the street. Palestrina looks at his wife's portrait, and with an expression of devotion to God sits at the organ and begins to play.}

Johann Sachs: Palestrina


PERGOLESI. Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, Italian composer. Emilio Arrieta: Pergolesi
Paolo Serrao: Pergolesi


PETRONIO. Gaius Petronius Arbiter, Roman courtier, writer. Claudio Monteverdi: L'incoronazione di Poppea

PEZZA. Michele Pezza, Neapolitan guerilla leader, known as "Fra Diavolo".

 

 

Daniel Auber's opera, "Fra Diavolo", is loosely based on the life of the Itrani bandit, active in southern Italy in the period 1800-1806, who went under the name of "Fra' Diavolo" -- brother devil. Zerlina, daughter of the innkeeper of Terracina, is in love with an impoverished soldier, Lorenzo, but her father wants her to marry the rich old Francesco. Lorenzo is in pursuit of the notorious bandit "Fra' Diavolo". "Fra' Diavolo" himself arrives at the inn, disguised as a marquis, and robs two English travellers, Lord and Lady Cockburn. Lorenzo manages to retrieve part of the stolen goods and is rewarded with enough money to marry Zerlina. "Fra' Diavolo" is determined to rob the travellers again and enlists the help of his two henchmen, Giacomo and Beppo. During the night the three of them sneak into Zerlina's room and steal her dowry. Lorenzo appears and mistakes the "Fra' Diavolo" (dressed as a 'marquis') for a rival in love. The next day, Zerlina is forced to marry Francesco as she now no longer has her dowry. "Fra' Diavolo" instructs his henchmen to warn him when Lorenzo and his troop of soldiers have left the town so he can safely rob again, but the two are recognised in the crowd by Zerlina, and "Fra' Diavolo" is tricked into appearing and arrested when the signal is given as arranged. Zerlina is free to marry Lorenzo again.

PISCIOTTA. Gaspare. Sicilian peasant. Lorenzo Ferrero, "Salvatore Giuliano"

PISO. Gaius Calpurnius. Roman senator. Reinhard Keiser: Octavia

PIO IV (papa) -- vide MEDICI, Giovanni de'.


POLIZIANO -- vide Ambrogini.

POLO. Marco. (Nato a Venezia, 15 settembre 1254 – Venezia, 8 gennaio 1324) è stato un mercante, ambasciatore e viaggiatore italiano, appartenente al patriziato veneziano. Insieme al padre Niccolò e allo zio Matteo Polo, fu tra i primi occidentali ad arrivare fino in Cina, da lui chiamata Chatai, percorrendo la via della seta. Le cronache del suo viaggio sono state trascritte in francese dallo scrittore pisano Rustichello, suo compagno di prigionia a Genova. Furono raccolte in un libro intitolato Deuisament du monde^[1], meglio noto come il Milione. Dal 1982 Marco Polo è stato raffigurato sulla banconota da 1.000 lire italiane che hanno avuto corso legale fino al 1995.^[2]

Marco Polo, Italian adventurer. Tan Dun: Marco Polo. c.1254 – January 8-9, 1324)^[1] was an Italian merchant traveler from the Republic of Venice^[2][3] whose travels are recorded in Livres des merveilles du monde, a book which did much to introduce Europeans to Central Asia and China.

He learned the mercantile trade from his father and uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo, who traveled through Asia, and apparently met Kublai Khan. In 1269, they returned to Venice to meet Marco for the first time. The three of them embarked on an epic journey to Asia, returning after 24 years to find Venice at war with Genoa; Marco was imprisoned, and dictated his stories to a cellmate. He was released in 1299, became a wealthy merchant, married and had three children. He died in 1324, and was buried in San Lorenzo. Tan Dun's opera, "Marco Polo", is set to an English libretto by Paul Griffiths. It premiered in Munich on 7 May 1996. Described variously as an "opera within an opera" and a "fantasia on an epic journey", the multi-layered storyline is loosely based on the journey of Marco Polo from Venice to China. In the opera, Marco Polo becomes two characters: Marco, who represents the real person and is sung by a mezzo-soprano, and Polo who represents his memory and is sung by a tenor. The work is scored for vocal soloists, a chorus of 20 and a large orchestra of both modern and medieval European instruments as well as instruments from the cultures that Marco Polo passed through on his journey, including sitar, pipa, sheng, tabla and Tibetan horns and bells. Marco Polo won the 1998 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition. Marco Polo began as a commission by the Edinburgh International Festival in the late 1980s. However, it was not completed until 1995 and received its first performance at the Munich Biennale on 7 May 1996 directed by Martha Clarke. Its US premiere followed on 8 November 1997 at the New York City Opera. Marco Polo was first seen in the UK in November 1998 in a concert performance at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. Its most recent revival was a November 2008 production at De Nederlandse Opera in Amsterdam directed by Pierre Audi and released on DVD in 2009. Roles [edit] Memory: Polo (tenor)
Being 1: Marco (mezzo-soprano) Being 2: Kublai Khan (bass) Nature: Water (soprano) Shadow 1: Rustichello/Li Po (tenor) Shadow 2: Sheherazada/Mahler/Queen (mezzo-soprano) Shadow 3: Dante/Shakespeare (baritone) Recordings [edit] Marco Polo (CD Sony 62912) - World premiere recording with Thomas Young and Alexandra Montano in the title roles, the Cappella Amsterdam, and the Netherlands Radio Chamber Orchestra conducted by the composer. Recorded live at Yakult Hall, Amsterdam on 20 June 1996. Marco Polo (DVD Opus Arte OA1010D) - The 2008 production of the opera by De Nederlandse Opera, with Charles Workman and Sarah Castle in the title roles and conducted by the composer. Recorded live at Het Muziektheater, Amsterdam, on 13 and 18 November 2008. Notes and references [edit] ^ G. Schirmer ^ Smith (December 2007) ^ grawemeyer.org Sources [edit] G. Schirmer, Tan Dun: Marco Polo, programme notes. Accessed 31 August 2009. Kerner, Leighton, "Mind voyager", The Village Voice, 11 November 1997. Accessed via subscription 31 August 2009. Smith, Patrick J., "Tan Dun: Marco Polo", Opera News, December 1997. Accessed via subscription 31 August 2009. White, Michael, "Huddersfield, centre of the musical universe", The Independent, 29 November 1998. Accessed 31 August 2009. Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Marco_Polo_(opera)&oldid=546100492"
Categories:  Compositions by Tan Dun Operas Operas set in China 1996 operas English-language operas Marco Polo Yuan Dynasty in fiction

POMPEO.  Pompey the Great, Roman military and political leader
Francesco Cavalli: Pompeo Magno

POPPEA.  Empress Poppaea Augusta Sabina, consort of Roman Emperors Nero and Otho.


George Frideric Handel: Agrippina. Claudio Monteverdi: L'incoronazione di Poppea

PORSENA. Lars Porsena, King of Etruria. Filippo Amadei, Giovanni Battista Bononcini and George Frideric Handel: Muzio Scevola

PROCIDA. Giovanni.  Italian medieval physician and diplomat. Giuseppe Verdi: I Vespri Siciliani. Vide: ARRIGO.

PUBLIO. Publius Valerius Publicola, Roman consul. George Frideric Handel: Muzio Scevola


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RICCI. Historical character in Cilea's "Gloria", based on the historical play by V. Sardou, "Hatred". A version of the Romeo-and-Juliet story set in Sienna.  Aquilante de' Bardi, a Guelph noblemanbassNazzareno De Angelis
Gloria, Aquilante's daughtersopranoSalomea Krusceniski
Folco (Bardo),[9] Aquilante's sonbaritonePasquale Amato
Lionetto de' Ricci ("Il Fortebrando"),[10] a Ghibelline captaintenorGiovanni Zenatello
Sienese womansopranoNilde Ponzano
Woman from Orvietomezzo-sopranoAdele Ponzano
The bishopbassCostantino Thos
Nobles, townspeople, officials, guards


RUGGERO II. D'Altavilla (nato a Mileto, 22 dicembre 1095 – Palermo, 26 febbraio 1154) , conosciuto anche come "Ruggero il normanno", figlio e successore di Ruggero I di Sicilia della dinastia degli Altavilla, fu re di Sicilia, Puglia e Calabria dal 1130 al 1154. Gli sono tributati l'accorpamento sotto un unico regno di tutte le conquiste normanne dell'Italia meridionale e l'organizzazione di un governo efficiente, personalizzato e centralizzato. King Roger II of Sicily.




Roger II (22 December 1095  – 26 February 1154) was King of Sicily, son of Roger I of Sicily and successor to his brother Simon. He began his rule as Count of Sicily in 1105, later became Duke of Apulia and Calabria (1127), then King of Sicily (1130).

By the time of his death at the age of 58, Roger had succeeded in uniting all the Norman conquests in Italy into one kingdom with a strong centralized government. Karol Szymanowski, "King Roger". Place: Sicily. Time: 12th Century. The story concerns the enlightenment of the Christian King Roger II by a young shepherd who represents pagan ideals. Act 1. Often known as the "Byzantine" Act. The Shepherd is introduced to King Roger and his court during mass at the Palermo cathedral. Despite calls for his punishment as a heretic by the Archbishop, Roxana, Roger's wife, convinces the King not to kill him. Roger orders the young man to appear at the palace that night, where he will explain himself and submit to the King's judgement. Act 2. The "Oriental" Act, representing India and the Middle East As instructed, the Shepherd appears at the palace gates. Roxana sings a seductive song which is clearly a response to the visitor, causing Roger to grow increasingly agitated. As the Shepherd is led in, he describes his faith in detail and soon almost the entire court joins him in an ecstatic dance. Roger attempts to chain him, but the Shepherd easily breaks free, and leaves the palace with almost all of those assembled following him. At first the King and his Arab advisor, Edrisi are left alone, but soon it is decided that Roger will join the Shepherd. Act 3. The "Greco-Roman" Act. In an ancient Greek theater, King Roger and Edrisi rejoin Roxana, who informs her husband that only the Shepherd can free him of his fear and jealousy. A fire is lit, and the Shepherd's followers commence another dance, while the Shepherd is transformed into Dionysus. As the dance ends and the participants leave the stage, Roger is left transformed by the experience, and sings a joyous hymn at the arrival of the morning sun. Bibliografia: Alessandro di Telese, "Ruggero II, re di Sicilia" Ciolfi, Cassino, 2003 (trad. it. di Vito Lo Curto), Erich Caspar, "Ruggero II (1101-1154) e la fondazione della monarchia normanna di Sicilia", con un saggio introduttivo di Ortensio Zecchino, Roma - Bari: Laterza, 1999 (ed. orig. Roger II. (1101 - 1154) und die Gründung der normannisch-sicilischen Monarchie, Innsbruck: Wagner 1904). Pierre Aubé, "Ruggero II re di Sicilia, Calabria e Puglia: un normanno nel Mediterraneo", Milano 2006 (ed. orig. Roger II de Sicilie, Paris 2001). Donald Matthew, "I Normanni in Italia", Laterza, Roma-Bari, 1997 (ed.orig. The Norman Kingdom of Sicily, 1992). Metcalfe, Alex. "The Muslims of Medieval Italy". Edinburgh University Press. Edinburgh, 2009 ISBN 0748620087 John Julius Norwich, I Normanni nel Sud 1016-1130. Mursia: Milano 1971 (ed. orig. The Normans in the South 1016-1130. Longmans: Londra, 1967). John Julius Norwich, "Il Regno del Sole 1130-1194", Mursia: Milano 1971 (ed. orig. The Kingdom in the Sun 1130-1194. Longman: Londra, 1970). Hubert Houben, "Ruggero II di Sicilia: un sovrano tra Oriente e Occidente". Laterza, Roma 1999. Antonino Rallo, "L'Isola di Re Ruggero". Romanzo storico. Coppola, Trapani, 2008. Helen Wieruszowski, "Roger II of Sicily, Rex-Tyrannus, In Twelfth-Century Political Thought", Speculum, Vol. 38, No. 1. (Jan., 1963), pp 46-78. (EN) William Tronzo, The Cultures of his Kingdom. Roger II and the Cappella Palatina in Palermo. Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1997. Statua sulla facciata del Palazzo Reale di Napoli: Ruggero il Normanno, Ruggero II d'Altavilla - Hauteville (Ruggero II di Sicilia), re di Napoli.

ROSA.  Salvatore. Italian painter and poet.




Antônio Carlos Gomes: Salvator Rosa. Salvator Rosa is an opera seria in four acts composed by Antônio Carlos Gomes to a libretto in Italian by Antonio Ghislanzoni. It premiered at the Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa on 21 March 1874. The plot is based on Eugène de Mirecourt's 1851 adventure novel, Masaniello, in turn loosely based on the lives of the Italian painter and poet, Salvator Rosa and Masaniello, a Neapolitan fisherman, who became leader of the 1647 revolt against the Spanish Habsburg rule in Naples. Salvator Rosa was Gomes' fifth opera and the third to have its world premiere in Italy. He and his librettist, Ghislanzoni, had originally wanted to call the opera Masaniello, after Eugène de Mirecourt's novel on which it is based. However, Auber's 1828, La muette de portici set in the same historical period, was already known in Italy by that name. Instead, Ghislanzoni made Salvator Rosa (a secondary character in de Mirecourt's novel) the chief protagonist. The central love affair between Isabella and Masaniello in the novel became one between Salvator Rosa and Isabella in the opera. Like many fictional works based on the life of Salvator Rosa, de Mirecourt's novel derived from an 1824 biography of the painter by Lady Morgan, The Life and Times of Salvator Rosa, which perpetuated the legends that Rosa had been imprisoned by bandits when he was a young man and that he returned to Naples in 1647 to aid Masaniello in his revolt against Spanish rule.^[1] It is the latter legend which forms the basis of Ghislanzoni's libretto.
Salvator Rosa premiered at the Teatro Carlo Felice on 21 March 1874 in a performance conducted by Giovanni Rossi with Guglielmo Anastasi in the title role, Leone Giraldoni as Masaniello, Romilda Pantaleoni as Isabella, and the French bass François-Marcel Junca as her father, the Duke of Arcos.^[2] Following the Genoa premiere, the opera was performed in Italy at the Teatro Regio di Torino (1875), the Teatro Riccardi in Bergamo (1876), and the Teatro Regio di Parma (1882). In Latin America, it was first performed in Uruguay at the Teatro Solis in 1876, but it was another six years before the opera was performed in Brazil, Gomes' native country. The Brazilian premiere took place in the city of Belém on 29 July 1882. Although largely forgotten now apart from its great aria for bass, "Di sposo, di padre", the opera's rare 20th century revivals include those in Rio de Janeiro at the Theatro Municipal in 1946 (attended by Gomes' daughter and broadcast on Brazilian radio), São Paulo at the Theatro Municipal in 1977, and at New York City's Amato Opera in 1987.^[3] The opera was revived again in 2000 with the Dorset Opera, Fernando del Valle in the title role, and 2004 at the Festival della Valle d'Itria in Martina Franca.^[4]Il duca d'Arcos, Viceroy of NaplesbassFrançois-Marcel Junca
Isabella, his daughtersopranoRomilda Pantaleoni
Salvator Rosa, a painter in love with IsabellatenorGuglielmo Anastasi
Masaniello, rebel leader and friend of RosabaritoneLeone Giraldoni
Gennariello, a young friend of Rosa and Masaniellosoprano (en travesti)Clelia Blenio
Fernandez, commander of the Spanish troopstenorGiacomo Origo
Il conte di Badajoz, a Spanish noblemantenorCarlo Casarini
Corcelli, a brigand allied to the Spanish rulersbassEmanuele Dall'Aglio
Bianca, a Spanish ladymezzo-sopranoAntonietta Pozzoni-Anastasi
Suora Ines, a nunsopranoClelia Cappelli [6]
Fra Lorenzo, a monkbassLuigi Torre



RUSTICHELLO. Da Pisa, Italian writer Tan Dun: Marco Polo


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SALIERI. Antonio Salieri, Italian-Austrian composer. P. D. Q. Bach (Peter Schickele): A Little Nightmare Music. Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov: Mozart and Salieri.

SANZIO. Raphael, Italian painter. Anton Arensky: Raphael

SAVONAROLA. Girolamo. Politico italiano.  Girolamo Maria Francesco Matteo Savonarola (nato a Ferrara, 21 settembre 1452 – Firenze, 23 maggio 1498) è stato un politico italiano. Appartenente all'ordine dei frati domenicani, profetizzò sciagure per Firenze e per l'Italia propugnando un modello teocratico per la Repubblica fiorentina instauratasi dopo la cacciata dei Medici. Nel 1497 fu scomunicato da papa Alessandro VI, l'anno dopo fu impiccato e bruciato sul rogo come «eretico, scismatico e per aver predicato cose nuove»,  e le sue opere furono inserite nel 1559 nell'Indice dei libri proibiti. There is a piazza to his memory in Florence. With a nice statue.
But a nicer one is in Ferrara. Gli scritti del Savonarola sono stati riabilitati dalla Chiesa nei secoli seguenti fino ad essere presi in considerazione in importanti trattati di teologia. Ora è servo di Dio. La causa della sua beatificazione è stata avviata il 30 maggio 1997 dall'arcidiocesi di Firenze.
Florentine heretic and book-burner.  Venutogli meno l'appoggio francese, fu messo in minoranza rispetto al risorto partito dei Medici che nel 1498 lo fece arrestare e processare per eresia. Il processo fu palesemente manipolato: Savonarola subì la tortura della corda, quella del fuoco sotto i piedi e fu quindi posto per un'intera giornata sul cavalletto, riportando lussazioni su tutto il corpo. Alla fine venne condannato ad essere bruciato in piazza della Signoria con due suoi confratelli, Domenico Buonvicini, da Pescia, e Silvestro Maruffi, da Firenze. All'alba del 23 maggio 1498, alla vigilia dell'Ascensione, i tre religiosi, già imprigionati nell'"alberghetto" dentro la torre di Arnolfo, dopo aver ascoltato la messa nella Cappella dei Priori nel Palazzo della Signoria, furono condotti sull'arengario del palazzo stesso dove subirono la degradazione da parte del Tribunale del Vescovo. Nello stesso luogo vi erano anche il Tribunale dei Commissari Apostolici e quello del Gonfaloniere e dei Signori Otto di Guardia e Balìa, questi ultimi i soli che potevano decidere sulla condanna. Dopo la degradazione i tre frati furono avviati verso il patibolo, innalzato nei pressi dove poi sorgerà la Fontana del Nettuno e collegato all'arengario del palazzo da una passerella alta quasi due metri da terra. La forca, alta cinque metri, si ergeva su una catasta di legna e scope cosparse di polvere da sparo per bombarde. Fra le urla della folla fu appiccato il fuoco a quella catasta che in breve fiammeggiò violentemente, bruciando i corpi oramai senza vita degli impiccati. Le ceneri dei tre frati, del palco e d'ogni cosa arsa furono portate via con delle carrette e gettate in Arno dal Ponte Vecchio, anche per evitare che venissero sottratte e fatte oggetto di venerazione da parte dei molti seguaci del Savonarola mescolati fra la folla. Dice infatti il Bargellini che "ci furono gentildonne, vestite da serve, che vennero sulla piazza con vasi di rame a raccogliere la cenere calda, dicendo di volerla usare per il loro bucato". La mattina dopo, come già detto, il luogo dove avvenne l'esecuzione apparve tutto coperto di fiori, di foglie di palma e di petali di rose. Nottetempo, mani pietose avevano così voluto rendere omaggio alla memoria dell'ascetico predicatore, iniziando la tradizione che dura tuttora. Il punto esatto nel quale avvenne il martirio e oggi avviene la Fiorita era indicato da un tassello di marmo, già esistente, dove veniva collocato il "Saracino" quando si correva la giostra. Questo lo si deduce da "Firenze illustrata" di Del Migliore, il quale così scrive: "alcuni cittadini mandavano a fiorire ben di notte, in su l'ora addormentata, quel luogo per l'appunto dove fu piantato lo stile; che v'è per segno un tassello di marmo poco lontano dalla fonte". Al posto dell'antico tassello per il gioco del Saracino, v'è attualmente la lapide circolare che ricorda il punto preciso dove fu impiccato e arso "frate Hieronimo". La lapide, in granito rosso, porta un'iscrizione in caratteri bronzei.

Born (1452-09-21) Born: 21 September 1452 Ferrara. Died: 23 May 1498(1498-05-23) (aged 45)
Florence ParentsNiccolo Savonarola Elena Savonarola. Girolamo Savonarola (Italian: [savonaˈroːla]; 1452–1498) was an Italian Dominican friar and preacher active in Renaissance Florence, and known for his prophecies of civic glory and calls for Christian renewal. Savonarola denounced clerical corruption, despotic rule and the exploitation of the poor. Savonarola prophesied the coming of a biblical flood and a new Ciro from the north who would reform the Church. This seemed confirmed when Carlo VIII of France invaded Italy and threatened Florence. While Savonarola intervened with the king, the Florentines expelled the ruling Medici and, at the friar’s urging, established a popular republic. Declaring that Florence would be the New Jerusalem, the world center of Christianity and richer, more powerful, more glorious than ever, Savonarola institutes a puritanical campaign, enlisting the active help of Florentine youth. In 1495 when Florence refuses to join Pope Alexander VI’s Holy League against the French, Savonarola was summoned to Rome. Savonarola disobeys and further defied Alessandro VII by preaching under a ban, highlighting his campaign for reform with processions, bonfires of the vanities, and pious theatricals. In retaliation, Alessandro VI excommunicated him and threatened to place Florence under an interdict. A trial by fire proposed by a rival Florentine preacher to test Savonarola’s divine mandate was a fiasco and popular opinion turned against him. Savonarola was imprisoned. Under torture, Savonarola confesses that he has invented his visions and prophecies. On May 23, 1498, Savonarola is condemned, hanged and burned in the main square of Florence. Savonarola’s devotees, the Piagnoni, kept his cause of republican freedom and religious reform alive well into the next century, although the Medici – restored to power with the help of the papacy – eventually broke the movement. Girolamo Maria Francesco Matteo Savonarola was born on September 21, 1452, in Ferrara. His grandfather, Michele Savonarola, was a noted physician and polymath. Savonarola's mother Elena claimed a lineage from the Bonacossi family of Mantova. She and her husband Niccolo had seven children, of whom Girolamo was third. His grandfather and his father, a struggling businessman, oversaw his education.
After his grandfather's death in 1468, Savonarola may have attended the public school run by Battista Guarino, son of Guarino da Verona, where he would have received his introduction to the Classics as well as to the poetry and writings of Petrarca, father of Renaissance humanism. Earning an arts degree at the University of Ferrara, he prepared to enter medical school, following in his grandfather's footsteps. At some point, however, Savonarola abandons his career intentions. In his early poems he expresses his preoccupation with the state of the Church and of the world. He began to write poetry of an apocalyptic bent, notably "On the Ruin of the World" (1472) and "On the Ruin of the Church" (1475) in which he singled out the papal court at Rome for special obloquy. About the same time he seems to have been thinking about a life in religion. As he later told his biographer, a sermon he heard by a preacher in Faenza persuaded him to abandon the world. Most of his biographers reject or ignore the account of his younger brother and follower, Maurelio (later fra Mauro), that in his youth Girolamo had been spurned by a neighbour, Laudomia Strozzi, to whom he proposed marriage. True or not, in a letter he wrote to his father when he left home to join the Dominican order he hints at being troubled by desires of the flesh. There is also a story that on the eve of his departure he dreamed that he was cleansed of such thoughts by a shower of icy water which prepared him for the ascetic life.[6] In the unfinished treatise he left behind, later called "De contemptu mundi," or On Contempt for the World, he calls upon readers to fly from this world of adultery, sodomy, murder and envy. On April 25, 1475, he went to Bologna where he knocked on the door of the Convent of San Domenico, of the Order of Friars Preachers, and asked to be admitted. As he told his father in his farewell letter, he wanted to become a knight of Christ. SCREEN ANDRE AND GRANT~§
Friar [edit]. In the convent, Savonarola took vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience and after a year was ordained to the priesthood. He studied Scripture, logic, Aristotelian philosophy and Thomistic theology in the Dominican studium, practised preaching to his fellow friars and engaged in disputations. He then matriculated in the theological faculty to prepare for an advanced degree. Even as he continued to write devotional works and to deepen his spiritual life he was openly critical of what he perceived as the decline in convent austerity. In 1478 his studies were interrupted when he was sent to the Dominican priory of Santa Maria degli Angeli in Ferrara as assistant master of novices. The assignment might have been a normal, temporary break from the academic routine, but in Savonarola's case it was a turning point. One explanation is that he had alienated certain of his superiors, particularly fra Vincenzo Bandelli, or Bandello, a professor at the studium and future master general of the Dominicans, who resented the young friar’s opposition to modifying the Order’s rules against the ownership of property.[7] In 1482, instead of returning to Bologna to resume his studies, Savonarola was assigned as lector, or teacher, in the Convent of San Marco in Florence. In San Marco, fra Savonarola taught logic to the novices, wrote instructional manuals on ethics, logic, philosophy, and government, composed devotional works, and prepared his sermons for local congregations. As he recorded in his notes, his preaching was not altogether successful. Florentines were put off by his foreign-sounding Ferrarese speech, his strident voice, and (especially to those who valued humanist rhetoric) his inelegant style.[9] While waiting for a friend in the Convent of San Giorgio he was studying Scripture when he suddenly conceived "about seven reasons" why the Church was about to be scourged and renewed.[10] He broached these apocalyptic themes in San Gimignano where he went as Lenten preacher in 1485 and again in 1486, but a year later, when he left San Marco for a new assignment, he had said nothing of his "San Giorgio revelations" in Florence. For the next several years Savonarola lived as an itinerant preacher with a message of repentance and reform in the cities and convents of north Italy. As his letters to his mother and his writings show, his confidence and sense of mission grew along with his widening reputation.[12] In 1490, he was reassigned to San Marco. It seems that this was due to the initiative of the humanist philosopher-prince, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, who had heard Savonarola in a formal disputation in Reggio Emilia and been impressed with his learning and piety. Pico was in trouble with the Church for some of his unorthodox philosophical ideas (the famous "900 theses") and was living under the protection of Lorenzo the Magnificent, the Medici de facto ruler of Florence.[13] To have Savonarola beside him as a spiritual counselor, he persuaded Lorenzo that the friar would bring prestige to the convent of San Marco and its Medici patrons.[14] After some delay, apparently due to the interference of his former professor, fra Vincenzo Bandelli, now Vicar General of the Order, Lorenzo succeeded in bringing Savonarola back to Florence, where he arrived in May or June of that year. Savanarola preached on the First Epistle of John and on the Book of Revelation, drawing such large crowds he eventually moved to the Cathedral. Without mentioning names, he made pointed allusions to tyrants who usurped the freedom of the people, and he excoriated their allies, the rich and powerful who neglected and exploited the poor.[15] Complaining of the evil lives of a corrupt clergy, he now called for repentance and renewal before the arrival of a divine scourge. Scoffers dismissed him as an over-excited zealot and "preacher of the desperate," and sneered at his growing band of followers as "Piagnoni," Weepers or Wailers, an epithet they adopted. In 1492 Savonarola warned of "the Sword of the Lord over the earth quickly and soon" and envisioned terrible tribulations to Rome. Around 1493 (these sermons have not survived) he began to prophesy that a New Cyrus was coming over the mountains to begin the renewal of the Church.[16]
In late autumn of 1494 King Charles VIII crossed the Alps with a formidable army throwing Italy into political chaos.[17] His arrival was widely understood as proof of Savonarola’s gift of prophecy. In the fall Charles advanced on Florence, sacking Tuscan strongholds and threatening to punish the city for refusing to support his expedition. As the populace took to the streets to expel Piero, the late Lorenzo de’ Medici’s son and successor, Savonarola led a delegation to the camp of the French king. He pressed Charles to spare Florence and enjoined him to take up his divinely appointed role as the reformer of the Church. After a short, tense occupation of the city and another intervention by fra Girolamo (as well as the promise of a huge subsidy), the French resumed their journey southward on November 28, 1494. Savonarola now declared that by answering his call to penitence the Florentines had begun to build a new Ark of Noah which had saved them from the waters of the divine flood.
Even more sensational was the message in his sermon of December 10:[18] "I announce this good news to the city, that Florence will be more glorious, richer, more powerful than she has ever been; First, glorious in the sight of God as well as of men: and you, O Florence will be the reformation of all Italy, and from here the renewal will begin and spread everywhere, because this is the navel of Italy. Your counsels will reform all by the light and grace that God will give you. Second, O Florence, you will have innumerable riches, and God will multiply all things for you. Third, you will spread your empire, and thus you will have power temporal and spiritual."
This astounding guarantee may have been an allusion to the traditional patriotic myth of Florence as the new Rome which Savonarola would have encountered in his readings in Florentine history. In any case, it encompassed both temporal power and spiritual leadership. Savonarola is discussed in Chapter VI of Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince;; ("Concerning New Principalities Which Are Acquired By One’s Own Arms And Ability"), Fra Girolamo Savonarola was seen by Machiavelli as an incompetent, ill-prepared, and 'unarmed prophet', unlike 'Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, Theseus' (Machiavelli's The Prince)[19] Of Savonarola, Machiavelli wrote: "If Moses, Cyrus, Theseus, and Romulus had been unarmed they could not have enforced their constitutions for long — as happened in our time to Fra Girolamo Savonarola, who was ruined with his new order of things immediately the multitude believed in him no longer, and he had no means of keeping steadfast those who believed or of making the unbelievers to believe." With Savonarola’s advice and support (as a non-citizen and cleric he was ineligible to hold office), a Savonarolan political party, dubbed ‘the Frateschi,’ took shape and steered the friar’s program through the councils. The oligarchs most compromised by their service to the Medici were barred from office. A new constitution enfranchised the artisan class, opened minor civic offices to selection by lot and granted every citizen in good standing the right to a vote in a new parliament, the Consiglio Maggiore, or Great Council. At Savonarola’s urging the Frateschi government, after months of debate, passed a "Law of Appeal" to limit the longtime practice of using exile and capital punishment as factional weapons. Savonarola declared a new era of "universal peace." On January 13, 1495 he preached his great Renovation Sermon to a huge audience in the Cathedral, recalling that he had begun prophesying in Florence four years earlier, although the divine light had come to him more than fifteen, maybe twenty years ago. Savonarola now claimed that he had predicted the deaths of Lorenzo de' Medici and of Pope Innocent VIII in 1492 and the coming of the sword to Italy —the invasion of King Charles of France. As he had foreseen, God had chosen Florence, the navel of Italy, as his favorite and he repeated: if the city continued to do penance and began the work of renewal it would have riches, glory and power. If the Florentines had any doubt that the promise of worldly power and glory had heavenly sanction Savonarola emphasized this in a sermon of April 1, 1495, in which he described his mystical journey to the Virgin Mary in heaven. At the celestial throne Savonarola presents the Holy Mother a crown made by the Florentine people and presses her to reveal their future. Mary warns that the way will be hard both for the city and for him, but she assures him that God will fulfill his promises: Florence will be "more glorious, more powerful and richer than ever, extending its wings farther than anyone can imagine." She and her heavenly minions will protect the city against its enemies and support its alliance with the French. In the New Jerusalem that is Florence peace and unity will reign.[22] Buoyed by liberation and prophetic promise, the Florentines embraced Savonarola’s campaign to rid the city of vice. At his repeated insistence, new laws were passed against sodomy (which included male and female same sex relations), adultery, public drunkenness, and other moral transgressions, while his lieutenant fra Silvestro Maruffi organized boys and young men to patrol the streets to curb immodest dress and behaviour. For a time, Pope Alexander VI (1492–1503) tolerated fra Girolamo’s strictures against the Church, but he was moved to anger when Florence declined to join his new Holy League against the French invader and blamed it on Savonarola’s pernicious influence. An exchange of letters between Alessandro VI and Savonarola ended in an impasse which Savonarola tried to break by sending His Holiness a little book recounting his prophetic career and describing some of his more dramatic visions. This was the Compendium of Revelations, a brilliant self-dramatization which was one of the farthest-reaching and most popular of his writings.
The pope was not mollified. Alessandro VI summoned Savonarola to appear before him in Rome, and when Savonarola refused, pleading ill health and confessing that he was afraid of being attacked on the journey, Alexander banned him from further preaching. For some months Savonarola obeyed, but when he saw his influence slipping he defied Alessandro VI and resumed his sermons which became more violent in tone. He not only attacked secret enemies at home whom he rightly suspected of being in league with the papal Curia, he condemned the conventional, or tepid Christians who were slow to respond to his calls. Savonarola dramatized his moral campaign with special masses for the youth, processions, bonfires of the vanities and religious theater in San Marco. He and his close friend, the humanist poet Girolamo Benivieni, composed lauds and other devotional songs for the Carnival processions of 1496, 1497 and 1498, replacing the bawdy carnival songs of the era of Lorenzo de’ Medici. These continued to be copied and performed after his death, along with songs composed by Piagnoni in his memory. A number of them have survived. On May 12, 1497, Pope Alexander VI excommunicated Savonarola and threatened the Florentines with an interdict if they persisted in harboring him. On March 18, 1498, after much debate and steady pressure from a worried government, Savonarola withdrew from public preaching. Under the stress of excommunication, Savonarola composed his spiritual masterpiece, "The Triumph of the Cross", a celebration of the victory of the Cross over sin and death and an exploration of what it means to be a Christian. This he summed up in the theological virtue of caritas, or love. In loving their neighbor, Christians return the love which they have received from their Creator and Savior. Savonarola hinted at performing miracles to prove his divine mission, but when a rival Franciscan preacher proposed to test that mission by walking through fire, he lost control of the public discourse. Without consulting him, his confidant fra Domenico da Pescia offered himself as his surrogate and Savonarola felt he could not afford to refuse. The first trial by fire in Florence for over four hundred years was set for April 7. A crowd filled the central square, eager to see if God would intervene and if so, on which side. The nervous contestants and their delegations delayed the start of the contest for hours. A sudden rain drenched the spectators and government officials cancelled the proceedings. The crowd disbanded angrily; the burden of proof had been on Savonarola and he was blamed for the fiasco. A mob assaulted the convent of San Marco. Fra Girolamo, Fra Domenico, and Fra Silvestro Maruffi were arrested and imprisoned. Under torture, Savonarola confesses to having invented his prophecies and visions. Then he retracted. Then, he confessed again. In his prison cell in the tower of the government palace he composed meditations on Psalms 51 and 31. On the morning of May 23, 1498, Savonarola was led out into the main square where, before a tribunal of high clerics and government officials, he was condemned as heretic and schismatic, and sentenced to die forthwith. Stripped of their Dominican garments in ritual degradation, Savonarola mounted the scaffold in his thin white shirt. Savonarola was  hanged, while fires were ignited below him to consume his body. To prevent devotees from searching for relics, their ashes were carted away and scattered in the Arno
Resisting censorship and exile, the friars of San Marco fostered a cult of the martyr and venerated Savonarola as a saint. They encouraged women in local convents and surrounding towns to find mystical inspiration in his example,[33] and, by preserving many of his sermons and writings, they helped keep his political as well as his religious ideas alive. The return of the Medici in 1512 ended the Savonarola-inspired republic and intensified pressure against the movement, although both were briefly revived in 1527 when the Medici were once again forced out. In 1530, however, Pope Clement VII (Giulio de’ Medici), with the help of soldiers of the Holy Roman Emperor, restored Medici rule, and Florence became an hereditary dukedom. Piagnoni were silenced, hunted, tortured, imprisoned and exiled, and the movement, at least as a political force, came to an end. A plaque commemorates the site of Savonarola’s execution in the Piazza della Signoria, Florence.
Savonarolan religious ideas found a reception elsewhere. In Germany and Switzerland the early Protestant reformers, most notably Martin Luther himself, read some of the friar’s writings and praised him as a martyr and forerunner whose ideas on faith and grace anticipated Luther’s own doctrine of justification by faith alone. In France many of his works were translated and published and Savonarola came to be regarded as a precursor of evangelical, or Huguenot reform.[36] Within the Dominican Order Savonarola was repackaged as an innocuous, purely devotional figure –"the evolving image of a Counter-Reformation saintly prelate"[37]—and in this benevolent and unthreatening guise his memory lived on. Philip Neri, founder of the Oratorians, a Florentine who had been educated by the San Marco Dominicans, also defended Savonarola's memory.
In the mid-nineteenth century, the ‘New Piagnoni’ found inspiration in the friar’s writings and sermons for the Italian national awakening known as the Risorgimento. By emphasizing his political activism over his puritanism and cultural conservatism they restored Savonarola’s voice for radical political change. The venerable Counter Reformation icon ceded to the fiery Renaissance reformer. This somewhat anachronistic image, fortified by much new scholarship, informed the major new biography by Pasquale Villari, who regarded Savonarola’s preaching against Medici despotism as the model for the Italian struggle for liberty and national unification.[38] In Germany, the Catholic theologian and church historian Joseph Schnitzer edited and published contemporary sources which illuminated Savonarola’s career. In 1924 he crowned his vast research with a comprehensive study of Savonarola’s life and times in which he presented the friar as the last best hope of the Catholic Church before the catastrophe of the Protestant Reformation.[39] In the Italian Popular Party founded by Don Luigi Sturzo in 1919, Savonarola was revered as a champion of social justice, and after 1945 he was held up as a model of reformed Catholicism by leaders of the Christian Democratic Party. From this milieu, in 1952, came the third of the major Savonarola biographies, the Vita di Girolamo Savonarola by Roberto Ridolfi.[40] For the next half century Ridolfi was the guardian of the friar’s saintly memory as well as the dean of Savonarola research which he helped grow into a scholarly industry. Today with most of Savonarola’s treatises and sermons and many of the contemporary sources–chronicles, diaries, government documents and literary works–available in critical editions, scholars can provide fresh, better informed assessments of his character and his place in the Renaissance, the Reformation and modern European history. The present-day Church has considered his beatification.[41] Bibliography Almost thirty volumes of Savonarola’s sermons and writings have so far been published in the Edizione nazionale delle Opere di Girolamo Savonarola (Rome, Angelo Belardetti, 1953 to the present). For editions of the 15th and 16th centuries see Catalogo delle edizioni di Girolamo Savonarola (secc. xv-xvi) ed. P. Scapecchi (Florence, 1998).
Prison Meditations on Psalms 51 and 31 ed. John Patrick Donnelly, S.J.
The Compendium of Revelations in Bernard McGinn ed. Apocalyptic Spirituality: Treatises and Letters of Lactantius, Adso of Montier-en-Der, Joachim of Fiore, the Franciscan Spirituals, Savonarola (New York, 1979
Savonarola A Guide to Righteous Living and Other Works ed. Konrad Eisenbichler (Toronto, University of Toronto Press) 2003
Selected Writings of Girolamo Savonarola Religion and Politics, 1490-1498 ed. Anne Borelli and Maria Pastore Passaro (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2006) Charles Villiers Stanford wrote an opera titled Savonarola, which had its premiere in Hamburg on 18 April 1884.[42]
Luigi Dallapiccola used text from Savonarola's Meditation on the Psalm My hope is in Thee, O Lord in his 1938 choral work Canti di prigionia. William Byrd used the text of Savonarola's Infelix ego in his work by the same name as part of the Cantiones Sacrae 1591 xxiv-xvi. Fiction [edit] Eliot, George, Romola (1863). Mann, Thomas, Fiorenza (1909) Van Wyck, William, Savonarola: A Biography in Dramatic Episodes (1926) Hines and King, Fire of Vanity (1930) Salacrou, Armand, Le terre est ronde (1938) Bacon, Wallace A., Savonarola A Play in Nine Scenes (1950) Lenau, Nikolaus, Savonarola The 1917 story "Savonarola" Brown by Max Beerbohm concerns an aspiring playwright, author of an unfinished, unintentionally absurd retelling of the life of Savonarola. His four-act play took him nine years to write, is eighteen pages long, and features a romance between Savonarola and Lucrezia Borgia, and also cameos by Dante Alighieri, Leonardo da Vinci, and St. Francis of Assisi. The novel The Palace by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro features Savonarola as the main antagonist of the vampire Saint Germain. The novel The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell and Dustin Thomason makes extensive references to Savonarola. The novel The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant makes extensive references to Savonarola. The Agony and the Ecstasy, Irving Stone's novelization of Michelangelo's life, depicts the events in Florence from the Medici's point of view.
The novel Kámen a bolest ("suffering and the stone"), Karel Schulz's historical novel about the life of Michelangelo features Savonarola as an important character.
The novel Sabbath's Theater by Philip Roth makes reference to Savonarola.
The novel The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie
The portmanteau film Immoral Tales by Walerian Borowczyk features Savonarola in its fourth and final episode. In her novel The Passion of New Eve, Angela Carter describes the preaching leader of an army of god-fearing child soldiers as a "precocious Savonarola".
In the novel I, Mona Lisa (U.K. title Painting Mona Lisa) by Jeanne Kalogridis, he is given a negative slant, as the Medicis are portrayed as sympathetic and noble.
In novel, The Poet Prince, Kathleen McGowan has made him as one of the enemies of Tuscan people in their pursuit of artistic fame during his reign.
The young adult novel The Smile by Donna Jo Napoli shows Savonarola as he was observed by a young Mona Lisa.
In the 2002 Colophon: a Novel of Renaissance Florence, author Jo Ford features Savonarola along with a fictional young Venetian scholar/booklover and prospective library-thief. Against the backdrop of a world changing not only due to public backlash toward church corruption but also to the explosion of book printing in Europe, there develops a clash between the young scholar’s Humanist values of broader education and the beauty of book manuscripts as works of art against Savonarola’s campaign to burn all non-theological or non-ascetic possessions in Bonfires of the Vanities. Other characters include Lorenzo de' Medici and Sandro Botticelli.
The fourth segment of Walerian Borowczyk's 1974 anthology film, Immoral Tales, is set during the reign of Pope Alexander VI. A character called "Friar Hyeronimus Savonarola," played by Philippe Desboeuf, holds a sermon in which he publicly condemns the corruption of the church and the sexual depravity of the papacy. Borowczyk juxtaposes Savonarola's sermon with the Pope enjoying a threesome with his daughter, Lucrezia Borgia, and his son, Cesare Borgia. Savonarola is arrested and publicly burned to death. In the 1976 film Network, the network programming executive played by Faye Dunaway refers to crusading reporter Howard Beale as a "a magnificent messianic figure, inveighing against the hypocrisies of our times, a strip Savonarola, Monday through Friday."
In Showtime's The Borgias, Savonarola is portrayed by Steven Berkoff. He is repeatedly seen preaching to Florentine crowds. Cardinal Della Rovere (who will become Pope Julius II) visits the friar to inquire about his "vision" of the French army marching on Florence. The manga-anime series Gunslinger Girl features an episode where two of the protagonists, Jean and Rico visit Florence. There Savonarola is mentioned among other famous people who lived in the city, while he shares his surname with one of the series antagonists. Savonarola appears as an assassination target in the videogame Assassin's Creed II. Dall'Aglio, Stefano, Savonarola and Savonarolism (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies. 2010). Herzig,Tamar, Savonarola's Women: Visions and Reform in Renaissance Italy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2008). Lowinsky, Edward E., Music in the Culture of the Renaissance and Other Essays (University of Chicago Press, 1989).
Macey, Patrick, Bonfire Songs: Savonarola’s Musical Legacy (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1998).
Machiavelli; cited in Chapter IV of Niccolò Machiavelli's The Prince (Concerning New Principalities Which Are Acquired By One’s Own Arms And Ability). Savonarola was seen by Machiavelli as incompetent, ill-prepared 'prophet' unlike 'Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, Theseus' (Machiavelli's The Prince) http://onetenthblog.wordpress.com/readings/machiavelli-the-prince-chapter-iv/
Martines, Lauro, Fire in the City: Savonarola and the Struggle for the Soul of Renaissance Florence (2006) ISBN 0-224-07252-8 Meltzoff, Stanley, Botticelli, Signorelli and Savonarola (Florence, 1987)
Polizzotto, Lorenzo, The Elect Nation: The Savonarola Movement in Florence 1494-1545 (Oxford, 1994) Steinberg, Ronald M., Fra Girolamo Savonarola, Florentine Art and Renaissance Historiography (Athens, Ohio, 1977) Weinstein, Donald and Hotchkiss, Valerie R., eds. Girolamo Savonarola Piety, Prophecy and Politics in Renaissance Florence Catalogue of the Exhibition (Dallas, Bridwell Library, 1994). References ^ text in Weinstein, Savonarola The Rise and Fall of a Renaissance Prophet, p. 122 ^ "English translations in Savonarola A Guide to Righteous Living and Other Works ed. Konrad Eisenbichler (Toronto, Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2003) 61-68 ^ Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola, Vita Hieronymi Savonarolae ed. Elisabetta Schisto (Florence, 1999) 114. ^ Reported by fra Benedetto Luschino in his Vulnera Diligentis ed. Stefano Dall' Aglio (Florence, 2002) pp. 22-3, 301. ^ "Like you, I am made of flesh and my sensuality wars against my reason; I have a cruel fight to keep the devil from my back." Translated from Girolamo Savonarola, Lettere e scritti apologetici eds. Ridolfi, Romano, Verde (Rome, 1984), p. 6. ^ La Vita del Beato Girolamo Savonarola ed. Roberto Ridolfi (Florence, 1937) p 8.
^ Michael Tavuzzi O.P., "Savonarola and Vincent Bandello," Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 59 (1999) 199-224. ^ Selected Writings of Girolamo Savonarola Religion and Politics, 1490-1498 Translated and edited by Anna Borelli and Maria Pastore Passaro (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2006). ^ "He satisfied almost no one either in his gestures or in his manner of speaking, as I who was there for all of Lent recall. At the end there were fewer than twenty-five people, men, women and children." Translated from "Epistola di fra Placido Cinozzi," in P. Villari, E. Casanova, Scelta di prediche e scritti di fra Girolamo Savonarola con nuovi documenti intorno alla sua vita (Florence, 1898) p. 11. ^ Armando F. Verde O.P., "'Et andando a San Gimignano a predicarvi.' Alle origini della profezia savonaroliana," Vivens Homo IX (1998) pp. 269-298.
^ Donald Weinstein, Savonarola The Rise and Fall of a Renaissance Prophet (New Haven, 2011)pp. 36-7 ^ Translation of letter from fra Girolamo to his mother, 25 January 1490, Girolamo Savonarola, A Guide to Righteous Living and Other Works, Konrad Eisenbichler (Toronto, 2003) 38-41.
^ William G. Craven, Pico della Mirandola Symbol of His Age: Modern Interpretations of a Renaissance Philosopher (Geneva, Switzerland, 1981). ^ Tavuzzi, "Savonarola and Vincenzo Bandello," 216-17. ^ "Le lezioni o i sermoni sull' Apocalisse di Girolamo Savonarola (1490) 'nova dicere et novo modo, '"ed. Armando F. Verde O.P., Imagine e Parola, Retorica Filologica-Retorica Predicatoria (Valla e Savonarola) Memorie Domenicane, n.s.(1988) 5-109 ^ Weinstein, Savonarola, Rise and Fall of a Renaissance Prophet pp. 87-96. ^ David Abulafia, The French Descent Into Renaissance Italy (Aldershot, 1995). ^ Quoted in Donald Weinstein, Savonarola and Florence Prophecy and Patriotism in the Renaissance (Princeton University Press, 1970) 143. On Florentine civic mythology, Nicolai Rubinstein, "The Beginnings of Political Thought in Florence. A Study in Medieval Historiography," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes (V, 1942) 198-227; Hans Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance 2d ed. (Princeton University Press, 1966).
^ "Concerning New Principalities Which Are Acquired By One’s Own Arms And Ability," The Prince by Machiavelli http://onetenthblog.wordpress.com/readings/machiavelli-the-prince-chapter-iv/
^ On Savonarola and Florentine constitutional reform see Felix Gilbert, "Florentine Political Assumptions in the Period of Savonarola and Soderini," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes XII (1957) 187-214, and Nicolai Rubinstein, "Politics and Constitution in Florence at the End of the Fifteenth Century," Italian Renaissance Studies ed. E.F. Jacob (London, 1963). The Frateschi’s success in blocking patricians from holding office has been questioned, most notably by Roslyn Cooper, "The Florentine Ruling Group under the ‘Governo Popolare’, 1494-1512," Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History (1984/5) 71-181. ^ English translation in Borelli, Passaro, Selected Writings of Girolamo Savonarola 59-76. ^ Mark J. Zucker, "Savonarola Designs a Work of Art: the Crown of The Virgin in the Compendium of Revelations," Machiavelli Studies 5 (1966) eds Vincenzo De Nardo, Christopher Fulton pp.119-145 ; Rab Hatfield, "Botticelli’s Mystic Nativity, Savonarola and the Millennium," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 58 (1995) 89-114.
^ On homoeroticism in Florence and Savonarola’s campaign against it, Michael Rocke, Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence (New York, 1996). More generally, on youth culture, see Richard Trexler, Public Life in Renaissance Florence (New York, 1980). ^ "Compendium of Revelations," translated in Apocalyptic Spirituality: Treatises and Letters of Lactantius, Adso of Montier-en-Der, Joachim of Fiore, the Franciscan Spirituals, Savonarola ed. Bernard McGinn (New York, 1970) 211-270. ^ English translation of a Benivieni laud in Borelli, Passaro, Selected Writings of Girolamo Savonarola 231-3. ^ Patrick Macey, Bonfire Songs Savonarola’s Musical Legacy (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1998). Published with a CD of performances of Carnival Songs, Laude and Motets by the Eastman Capella Antiqua. ^ Brief of Pope Alexander VI excommunicating Savonarola: The History of Girolamo Savonarola and of His Times, Pasquale Villari, Leonard Horner, trans., London, Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, & Green, 1863, Volume 2, pp.392-394. ^ Girolamo Savonarola, Triumphus Crucis Latin and Italian texts ed. Mario Ferrara (Rome, 1961) ^ Lauro Martines, Lawyers and Statecraft in Renaissance Florence(Princeton, 1968) pp. 202-3 ^ Complete interrogation records in I processi di Girolamo Savonarola (1498) ed. I.G. Rao, P. Viti, R.M. Zaccaria (Florence, 2001); French translation and commentary, Robert Klein, Le proces de Savonarole (Paris, 1957) ^ Girolamo Savonarola, Prison Meditations on Psalms 51 and 31 Tr., Ed. John Patrick Donnelly S.J. (Milwaukee, Marquette University Press, 1994).
^ An eyewitness account by the Piagnone Luca Landucci in A Florentine Diary from 1460 to 1516 trans. Alice De Rosen Jervis (London, 1927) pp.142-143. ^ Lorenzo Polizzotto, "When Saints Fall Out: Women and the Savonarolan Reform Movement in Early Sixteenth Century Florence," Renaissance Quarterly 46 (1993) 486-525; Sharon T. Strocchia, "Savonarolan Witnesses: the Nuns of San Iacopo and the Piagnone Movement in Sixteenth-century Florence," The Sixteenth Century Journal 38 (2007), 393-418; Tamar Herzig, Savonarola’s Women: Visions and Reform in Renaissance Italy (University of Chicgo Press,2008); Strocchia, Nuns and Nunneries in Renaissance Florence (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009. ^ Polizzotto, The Elect Nation, Chapters 5-8; Weinstein, Savonarola The Rise and Fall of a Renaissance Prophet, Chapter 25. ^ Cecil Roth, The Last Florentine Republic (London, 1925). ^ Weinstein, Savonarola Rise and Fall, 360, note 26, drawing on works in German (Nolte) and Italian (Simoncelli and Dall’ Aglio).
^ Lorenzo Polizzotto, The Elect Nation p. 443. ^ Pasquale Villari, The Life and Times of Girolamo Savonarola trans. by Linda Villari 2 vols (New York, 1890). ^ Joseph Schnitzer, Savonarola Ein Kulturbild aus der Zeit der Renaissance 2 vols (Munich, 1924); Italian translation Savonarola trans. Ernesto Rutili 2 vols (Milan, 1931). No English translation. ^ Roberto Ridolfi, Vita di Girolamo Savonarola 6th ed. with additional notes by Armando F. Verde O.P. (Florence, 1981.) ^ Innocenzo Venchi, O.P. "Iniziative dell'Ordine Domenicano per promuovere la causa di beatificazione del Ven. fra Girolamo Savonarola O.P.," Studi Savonaroliani Verso il V centenario ed. Gian Carlo Garfagnini (Florence, 1996) pp. 93-97 ^ Grove's Dictionary, 5th ed. Further reading [edit] Dall’Aglio, Stefano "Savonarola and Savonarolism" (Toronto, 2010) Macey, Patrick Bonfire Songs: Savonarola's Musical Legacy Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1988. Polizzotto, Lorenzo "The Elect Nation; The Savonarola Movement in Florence 1494-1545" (Oxford, 1994) Ridolfi, Roberto "Vita di Girolamo Savonarola" 6th ed., ed. A.F. Verde, Florence, 1997). Weinstein, Donald "Savonarola the Rise and Fall of a Renaissance Prophet" (New Haven, 2011)   Catholic Encyclopedia entry on Girolamo Savonarola NNDB entry on Girolamo Savonarola NameSavonarola, Girolamo Alternative names Short descriptionItalian Dominican friar Date of birthSeptember 21, 1452 Place of birthFerrara, Italy Date of deathMay 23, 1498 Place of deathFlorence, Italy Categories:  Executed Roman Catholic priests Italian Roman Catholics Italian torture victims Members of the Dominican Order People excommunicated by the Roman Catholic Church Italian people executed by burning People executed by the Papal States by burning People executed for heresy People from Ferrara Rulers of Florence University of Ferrara alumni 1452 births 1498 deaths. Sir Charles Villiers Stanford: Savonarola (1884). In the first half of the 1880s, Stanford collaborated with the author Gilbert à Beckett on two operas, Savonarola, and The Canterbury Pilgrims. The former was well received at its premiere in Hamburg in April 1884, but received a critical savaging when staged at Covent Garden in July of the same year.[52] Parry commented privately, "It seems very badly constructed for the stage, poorly conceived and the music, though clean and well-managed, is not striking or dramatic."[52] The most severe public criticism was in The Theatre,[52] whose reviewer wrote, "The book of Savonarola is dull, stilted, and, from a dramatic point of view, weak. It is not, however, so crushingly tiresome as the music fitted to it. Savonarola has gone far to convince me that opera is quite out of [Stanford's] line and that the sooner he abandons the stage for the cathedral, the better for his musical reputation."

SCIPIONE. Scipio Aemilianus, aka Scipio Africanus the Younger, Roman general, nephew and adopted son of Scipio Africanus the Elder. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Il sogno di Scipione, K. 126

SCIPIONE. Scipio Africanus, aka Scipio Africanus the Elder, Roman general. Francesco Cavalli: Scipione affricano. Gioacchino Albertini: Scipione Africano. George Frideric Handel: Scipione
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Il sogno di Scipione, K. 126. Antonio Sacchini: Scipione in Cartagena

SENECA. Seneca the Younger, Roman philosopher, dramatist.




Gavin Bryars, Philip Glass and others: The Civil Wars: A Tree Is Best Measured When It Is Down. Reinhard Keiser: Octavia
Claudio Monteverdi: L'incoronazione di Poppea

SESTO. Sextus Pompey, Roman general, son of Pompey the Great. Francesco Cavalli: Pompeo Magno. George Frideric Handel: Giulio Cesare (in Egitto) (as Sesto)

STRADELLA. Alessandro Stradella, Italian composer.




Friedrich von Flotow: Alessandro Stradella. Louis Niedermeyer: Stradella at least 2 other operas

STREPPONI. Giuseppina.




Operatic soprano. Lorenzo Ferrero: Risorgimento!

SULLA. Lucius Cornelius Sulla, Roman general and dictator. George Frideric Handel: Silla
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Lucio Silla


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TARQUINIO. Lucius Tarquinius, one of 3 kings of Rome. Filippo Amadei, Giovanni Battista Bononcini and George Frideric Handel: Muzio Scevola

TARQUINIO. Sesto  Tarquinio, son of Lucio Tarquinio Superbo, re di Rome. Benjamin Britten, "The Rape of Lucretia".

TASSO. Torquato Tasso, Italian poet.



Gaetano Donizetti, "Torquato Tasso".

TENDA -- vide LASCARIS.

TITO. Emperor of Rome. Antonio Caldara: La clemenza di Tito. Christoph Willibald Gluck: La clemenza di Tito. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: La clemenza di Tito. Josef Mysliveček: La clemenza di Tito and settings of La clemenza di Tito by about 40 other composers

TITO TORQUATO. Tito Manlio, Roman dictator. Antonio Vivaldi: Tito Manlio.

TOLOMEI. Pia de', nata a Siena, ... – Castel di Pietra, XIII secolo). Gentildonna senese identificata, secondo una tradizione legata agli antichi commentatori della Divina Commedia, con la Pia citata da Dante nel V canto del Purgatorio. La sua biografia è stata ricostruita a tavolino a partire dal passo dantesco, integrando varie informazioni d'archivio. Su queste informazioni venne ricamato l'episodio dell'omicidio di Pia per permettere al marito di risposarsi con un'altra donna. Nel canto V del Purgatorio, tra i morti che hanno subito violenza e si sono pentiti solo in fin di vita, appare una donna molto dolce, che scambia alcune parole con Dante assieme ad altre anime. Svela di chiamarsi Pia e vuole essere ricordata in terra per accelerare il suo purgarsi. Ella enuncia gentilmente e brevemente al pellegrino il luogo in cui nacque, Siena, e in cui fu uccisa, la Maremma. Allude amaramente al suo assassino, il marito, come a colui che, dandole la morte, non rispettò la promessa di indissolubile fedeltà dell'anello nuziale. Pia racconta la sua storia a Dante con una concisione quasi cronachistica, a sottolineare il suo completo distacco dalla vita e dal mondo terreno: tutta l'enfasi di Pia è nel suo «Ricorditi». È l'unica anima nel canto dalla quale traspare un velo di cortesia, chiedendo al poeta di ricordarla tra i vivi, solo quando si sarà riposato dal lungo viaggio. Dopo il tumultuoso crescendo del racconto dell'anima precedente, Bonconte da Montefeltro, il canto si chiude con il tono elegiaco e malinconico dell'appello di Pia. Quel «Ricorditi di me...» così struggente è diventato uno dei versi più famosi del poema (anche se non è l'unica anima a formulare tale richiesta) ed è permeato di femminile levità, sottolineata dall'uso dell'articolo determinativo davanti al nome («la Pia»), tipico del linguaggio familiare. Pia ha bisogno che Dante preghi per lei, perché sa che nessuno della sua famiglia lo farebbe: lo chiede per accelerare la sua salita verso il paradiso. La celebrità di questo passo è però dovuta soprattutto all'alone di mistero che circonda la figura di Pia. L'identificazione con Pia de' Tolomei è ormai universalmente accettata, anche se non è mai stata documentata in modo decisivo: i commentatori antichi del poema la indicarono subito come una donna della famiglia dei Tolomei di Siena, sposa di Baldo d'Aldobrandino de' Tolomei. Pia sarebbe stata sposata a Nello dei Pannocchieschi, signore del Castel di Pietra in Maremma, podestà di Volterra e Lucca, capitano della Taglia guelfa nel 1284 e vissuto almeno fino al 1322, anno in cui fece testamento. È documentato il suo secondo matrimonio, da vedovo, con Margherita Aldobrandeschi, contessa di Sovana e Pitigliano: in questo vuoto (gli archivi tacciono su chi fosse stata la prima moglie di Nello) fu inserita la figura di Pia de' Tolomei. Nello infatti possedeva il Castel di Pietra in Maremma, dove nel 1297 egli avrebbe fatto assassinare la donna, facendola gettare da una finestra, dopo averla rinchiusa per un po' nel suo castello, forse per la scoperta della sua mai provata infedeltà, forse per liberarsi di lei, desiderando il nuovo matrimonio. Secondo altri commentatori antichi potrebbe essere stata uccisa per aver commesso qualche fallo (tesi di Jacopo della Lana, l'Ottimo e Francesco da Buti); secondo altri ancora, quali Benvenuto e l'anonimo fiorentino del XIV secolo, per uno scatto di gelosia del marito.
Come sopra detto, Nello di Inghiramo dei Pannocchieschi della Pietra sposò sicuramente la Margherita Aldobrandeschi dalla quale ebbe anche un figlio, Binduccio o Bindoccio, che morì a tredici anni perché buttato in un pozzo a Massa Marittima per mano di sicari della famiglia Orsini. Chi fosse la prima moglie del conte Pannocchieschi nessuno ancora lo può dire. Inoltre, al tempo di Nello, in casa Tolomei non esisteva nessuna figlia o nipote che si chiamasse Pia. Un Tolomei, comunque, sposò una Pia Malavolti. Il matrimonio (di interesse) non durò molto. Sembra che la Pia avesse molti amanti. Di fatto il Tolomei decise velocemente di farla sparire dalla circolazione, nel perfetto stile del tempo. L'incarico dell'esilio fu affidato proprio a Nello. Pia fu così "rapita" e portata in Maremma dove morì miseramente. La fama del personaggio di Pia de' Tolomei è documentata da numerosi libri, alcuni anche monografici, e film sulla sua storia, oltre a un'opera di Donizetti, che ne rinverdì il mito nell'Ottocento, e un'opera rock, anticipata dall'album Pia come la canto io, di Gianna Nannini. La Pia de' Tolomei: leggenda romantica, poemetto di Bartolomeo Sestini (1822). Pia de' Tolomei, tragedia di Carlo Marenco (1836). Pia de' Tolomei, poemetto popolare di Giuseppe Moroni detto il Niccheri (1873). Pia de' Tolomei, romanzo di Carolina Invernizio (1879). Pia de' Tolomei, poemetto di Giuseppe Baldi (1889). Pia de' Tolomei. Romanzo storico, romanzo di Diana Da Lodi (1900). La leggenda della Pia, romanzo di Decimo Mori (1907). Pia de' Tolomei. Composizione in ottava rima secondo la tradizione cantata, poemetto di Guglielmo Amerighi (1972). Matrimonio di sangue, romanzo di Mario Sica (2007). La Gemma di Siena, di Marina Fiorato. Musica [modifica]
Pia de' Tolomei, opera di Gaetano Donizetti e Salvadore Cammarano (1837), tratta dal poemetto di Bartolomeo Sestini (1822). La Pia, dalla Divina Commedia di Dante, melodia di Antonino Palminteri (1881 circa). Dante's prayer, Loreena McKennitt (1997). Divina Commedia, opera di Marco Frisina (2007). Pia come la canto io, album di Gianna Nannini (2007). La Pia de' Tolomei, opera rock di Gianna Nannini, su testo di Pia Pera (2010). Cinema [modifica]. Pia de' Tolomei, regia di Gerolamo Lo Savio (1910). Pia de' Tolomei, regia di Esodo Pratelli (1941). Pia de' Tolomei, regia di Sergio Grieco (1958). Bibliografia [modifica]. Umberto Bosco e Giovanni Reggio, La Divina Commedia - Purgatorio, Le Monnier, 1988. Altri progetti [modifica]. Commons contiene immagini o altri file su Pia de' Tolomei. Collegamenti esterni [modifica]. Bartolomeo Sestini, Pia de' Tolomei, Sonzogno, Milano, 1887; Borroni e Scotti, Milano, 1848
 Portale Biografie Portale Medioevo
Categorie:
Morti nel XIII secolo
Nati a Siena
Morti in provincia di Grosseto
Persone morte assassinate
Personaggi citati nella Divina Commedia (Purgatorio)
| [altre]
Pia, Nello's wifesopranoFanny Tacchinardi Persiani
Ghino Degli Armieri, Nello's cousintenorAntonio Poggi
Nello Della PietrabaritoneGiorgio Ronconi
Rodrigo, Pia's brothercontraltoRosina Mazzarelli
Piero, a hermitbassAlessandro Meloni
Ubaldo, Nello's servanttenorAlessandro Giacchini
BicesopranoMarietta Bramati
Lamberto, old servant of Pia's familybassAlessandro Cecconi
Servants, bridesmaids, hermits
Ghino has fallen in love with Pia, wife of his cousin Nello, a Ghibelline lord. When she refuses his love, as revenge Ghino informs Nello that he has discovered a secret message (found by the mischievous servant Ubaldo) proving that Pia has an adulterous relation. It tells of a secret meeting to be held between Pia and her lover. Ghino goes to the place described in the message, and does find Pia with a man. Ghino does not know that the man is not her lover but her brother Rodrigo, a Guelph, whom she is helping to escape from Nello's prison. Rodrigo manages to escape, but Pia is captured and imprisoned.
Ghino again offers her his love, promising to give her freedom in exchange; but the woman still refuses. Impressed by Pia's virtue and informed of the true identity of her alleged lover, Ghino repents and, mortally wounded in battle, reveals the truth to Nello. However, Nello had already given to his servant Ubaldo the order to kill Pia by poisoning. Nello rushes to stop the servant, but it is too late: he finds his wife is dying. On her deathbed, Pia forgives her husband, and effects a reconciliation between him and Rodrigo.

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VALENTINIANO. III, Western Roman Emperor. George Frideric Handel, "Ezio".

VARO. Publio Quinctilio. Roman general. George Frideric Handel, "Arminio"

VERDI, Giuseppe.  Italian composer and senator.

Lorenzo Ferrero, "Risorgimento!"

VERO, Lucio. See Vologases IV of Parthia

VINDEX. Gaio Giulio, Roman general. Anton Rubinstein, "Nerone".

VISCONTI. Filippo Maria.

Ruler of Milan, husband of Beatrice di Tenda. Vincenzo Bellini: "Beatrice di Tenda".

VOLOGASES. IV of Parthia, king. Girolamo Abos: Lucio Vero, ossia, Il Vologeso

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YAGHI-SIYAN --  vide "Acciano".

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ZENOBIA. In Rossini, "Aureliano in Palmira" -- vide "Aureliano".