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Servante maîtresse : comédie en deux actes mêlée d'ariettes

The intermezzo La serva padrona first appeared between the acts of Pergolesi’s Il prigioniero superbo in 1733. This was the standard way in which to present an intermezzo. The work served as comic relief in the midst of more solemn opera serie, and incorporated elements of the improvisational commedia del’arte tradition. For instance, the few characters are drawn from stock types, such as the servant Serpina.

Date: 1755

Creator: Pergolesi, Giovanni Battista, 1710-1736 & Federico, Gennaro Antonio, 18th cent

Partner: UNT Music Library

Songs in the new opera call'd Arsinoe, queen of Cyprus

Thomas Clayton’s first opera, Arsinoe, Queen of Cyprus, premiered at Drury Lane in London on 16 January 1705. The opera initially enjoyed success, but two years later, Clayton’s second opera was not well-received. Part of Arsinoe’s popularity may have been due to Catherine Tofts' portrayal of the title character; Toft would later become a star of the English stage.

Date: 1705

Creator: Clayton, Thomas, 1673-1725

Partner: UNT Music Library

Atys : tragédie lyrique en trois actes

The story of Atys was first known operatically through Lully’s opera that premiered in 1676 at the court of St Germain-en-Laye. Marmontel adapted Quinault’s libretto and modified it by removing the prologue and divertissements. He also altered the plot; in lieu of Ovid’s metamorphic ending (to which Quinault had adhered), Atys commits suicide.

Date: 1780

Creator: Piccinni, Niccolò, 1728-1800; Quinault, Philippe, 1635-1688 & Marmontel, Jean François, 1723-1799

Partner: UNT Music Library

Buona figliuola : opera comica

Goldoni turned to Samuel Richardson’s novel Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740) as the inspiration for his La buona figliuola. In 1750, he wrote the play Pamela nubile and then turned it into a libretto for Duni. Although Duni’s La buona figliuola (1756) was a failure, Piccinni’s setting in 1760 was a huge success. The hilarious comedy coupled with Piccinni’s sentimental treatment of Cecchina contributed to the popularity of the opera, which still receives performances to this day. Typical of… more

Date: 1767

Creator: Piccinni, Niccolò, 1728-1800; Goldoni, Carlo, 1707-1793 & Richardson, Samuel, 1689-1761

Partner: UNT Music Library

Atys : tragédie lyrique en trois actes

Date: 1781

Creator: Piccinni, Niccolò, 1728-1800; Quinault, Philippe, 1635-1688 & Marmontel, Jean François, 1723-1799

Partner: UNT Music Library

Achille et Polixene, tragédie dont le prologue & les quatre derniers actes

Achille et Polixene, Jean-Baptiste Lully's last opera, premiered on 7 November 1687, eight months after Lully's death on March 22 of that year. Since the composer had only finished the overture and first act, the score was completed by Pascal Colasse, Lully's secretary and student, to a text by Jean Galbert de Campistron based on events in Virgil's Aeneid.

Date: 1687

Creator: Collasse, Pascal, 1649-1709; Lully, Jean Baptiste, 1632-1687 & Campistron, Jean Galbert de, 1656-1723

Partner: UNT Music Library

Barbier de Seville [Il barbiere di Siviglia] Opéra comique en quatre actes

Paisiello’s Il barbiere di Siviglia was based on the first play, Le barbier de Séville, ou La precaution inutile (1772), of Beaumarchais’s famous trilogy. The controversial commentary on aristocracy caused the play to be banned from the stage for three years. The ban was lifted in 1775 and the work premiered that same year; Beaumarchais finally saw the work performed in 1780 when he was employed by Catherine II in St. Petersburg. Although Rossini’s later opera (of 1816) is more familiar tod… more

Date: 1789

Creator: Paisiello, Giovanni, 1740-1816; Beaumarchais, Pierre Augustin Caron de, 1732-1799 & Framery, Nicolas Etienne, 1745-1810

Partner: UNT Music Library

Serva padrona : intermezzo

Date: [1804,1805]

Creator: Pergolesi, Giovanni Battista, 1710-1736

Partner: UNT Music Library

Platée : comédie-ballet

Jacques Autreau’s play Platée, ou Junon jalouse was based on a story by a second-century Greek author named Pausanias who chronicled his travels (including rituals and traditions) in ten books that represent the different regions of Greece. At the time Le Valois d’Orville appropriated Autreau’s drama for a libretto, it was uncommon for French court operas to include comic features, and even Autreau’s spoken play lacked the comic tone of the opera. Yet, the humor extends beyond the plot; for i… more

Date: 1749

Creator: Rameau, Jean Philippe, 1683-1764 & Le Valois d'Orville, Adrien-Joseph

Partner: UNT Music Library

Tom Jones; comedie lyrique en trois actes

Philidor’s Tom Jones is representative of the continental interest in English literature. Henry Fielding’s homonymous novel served as the foundation for Philidor’s opera, but Philidor pared down the story quite a bit, especially downplaying Tom’s philandering ways. Many secondary characters and situations were also cut, a common technique that librettists employ when adapting prose writings to the stage. Thus, a central plot unfolds in a manner that the audience can follow, and the length re… more

Date: 1766

Creator: Philidor, F. D. (François Danican), 1726-1795; Poinsinet, Antoine Alexandre Henri, 1735-1769; Davesne, Bertin, 1714-1742 & Fielding, Henry, 1707-1754

Partner: UNT Music Library

Didon; tragédie lyrique en trois actes

With Didon, Piccinni demonstrated his ability to combine both Italian and French styles to create a compelling tragédie lyrique. The opera includes lyrical Italian melodies and a second-act finale, as well as French choruses and numbers that transition continuously without pauses. Didon was premiered at Fountainebleau on 16 October 1783, and it remained one of Piccinni’s most popular French operas, with performances through the first part of the nineteenth century. The story of Dido had been… more

Date: 1815

Creator: Piccinni, Niccolò, 1728-1800 & Marmontel, Jean François, 1723-1799

Partner: UNT Music Library

Iphigénie en Tauride. Tragédie lirique en quatre actes

The contrast between Piccinni and Gluck can perhaps best be illustrated with Iphigénie en Tauride, as Piccinni’s opera appeared just two years after Gluck’s work on the same subject. In fact, supporters of Piccinni (“Piccinnistes”) hoped that the Italian composer would demonstrate the superiority of his style with Iphigénie, and scholars have used these settings to illustrate the difference between the two composers.

Date: 1781

Creator: Piccinni, Niccolò, 1728-1800 & Dubreil, Alphonse Ducongé, 1734-1801

Partner: UNT Music Library

Alceste: tragedie opera en trois actes

According to Grove Music, "when Admetus, King of Pherae in Thessaly, is ill and about to die an oracle announces that he will be saved if someone else is willing to die in his stead. His wife Alcestis displays her conjugal devotion by offering herself; she dies and Admetus recovers. Under the influence of tragédie lyrique, Calzabigi enriched his libretto with choruses, ballets and opportunities for impressive scenery."

Date: 1776

Creator: Gluck, Christoph Willibald, Ritter von, 1714-1787; Calzabigi, Ranieri de, 1714-1795 & Du Roullet, François Louis Gaud Lebland, marquis, 1716-1786

Partner: UNT Music Library

Devil to pay: or, The wives metamorphos'd

English libretto to Charles Coffey's ballad opera The devil to pay or, The wives metamorphos'd. The Devil to Pay is an adaptation of Thomas Jevon’s play The Devil of a Wife (1686). Nearly fifty years later, the ballad opera appeared at Drury Lane with Charles Coffey and John Mottley each responsible for half of the three acts. However, a much shorter and more well-received one-act version, edited by Theophilus Cibber, is represented in the printed libretto. Today Coffey is generally the onl… more

Date: 1732

Creator: Coffey, Charles, d. 1745; Mottley, John, 1692-1750 & Jevon, Thomas, 1652-1688

Partner: UNT Music Library

Beggar's opera

This is a 1735 fourth ed. of the three-act ballad opera "The beggar's opera" by John Christopher Pepusch and John Gay. It includes the score for the overture (for violins (2), viola, and bass ensemble) and the melodies of each song. The inscription, "Nos haec novimus esse nihil" (transl. as, We know these to be nothing) that appears on the t.p. is an epigram by Marcus Valerius Martialis from his Books of Epigrams. On the back of the t.p. appears the advertisement of these works printed by Joh… more

Date: 1735

Creator: Pepusch, John Christopher, 1667-1752 & Gay, John, 1685-1732

Partner: UNT Music Library

The encore concerto for piano and orchestra

This is a holograph score of Don Gillis "The Encore Concerto for Piano and Orchestra." Gillis's dedicated this his first piano concerto to his friend Joseph Kahn. The entire score is in loose white onionskin pages and black ink. It is part of the UNT Music Library's Don Gillis Special Collection, which can be accessed at <http://www.library.unt.edu/music/special-collections/gillis/the-don-gillis-collection-1>. Page 96A is an alternative re-orchestrated version that replaces the essentially c… more

Date: 1956

Creator: Gillis, Don, 1912-1978

Partner: UNT Music Library

Esther, a sacred oratorio in score

This is a ca. 1794 score of "Esther," a sacred oratorio by Handel. According to the Grove Dictionary of Music, the English libretto of the oratorio was probably a collaborative work between John Arbuthnot and Alexander Pope with additional words by Samuel Humphreys. The engraved frontispiece that precedes the t.p. bears the title "Apotheosis of Handel," and the inscription, "The portrait from an original picture of Hudson's in the possession of Dr. Arnold. Designed by Rebecca [Biagio]. Engrave… more

Date: 1794