When we think of Haydn, what comes to mind? Maybe the two late, great oratorios: The Creation and The Seasons. Or his vast number of symphonies, or his string quartets, or the masses. Not, perhaps, the baryton trios (of which there are more than 125); nor, for that matter, the operas, though again there are plenty. To a degree Haydn's operas - and those by a host of his late-18th-century contemporaries, successful in their day but obscure in ours - have been sidelined due to our understandable fascination with Mozart's and, to a lesser degree, our admiration of Gluck's. Many composers of the Classical period specialised in opera. Though in his enormous and comprehensive output, Haydn could be said - paradoxically-to have specialised in everything, he would have regarded his operas as representing an important strand of his work.
Haydn's life in professional music began, aged eight, as a treble at Vienna's St Stephen's Cathedral. He managed to escape 'il coltello' (the castrating knife) before his voice broke, so in his early teens he entered upon the career of a practical musician in the musically hyperactive city of Vienna itself. After meeting the leading composer Nicola Porpora (1686-1768) - also a vocal teacher of renown (the castrato Farinelli was one of his pupils) - Haydn became the Italian's musical assistant, and was able to familiarise himself with the world of opera at the highest level. He would also get to know Gluck and Pietro Metastasio, the most admired librettist of the day. When scarcely out of his teens, Haydn's own operatic debut came with the commissioning of Der krumme Teufel (The Limping Devil), a Singspiel (see panel, left) for the playwright and man-of-the-theatre Johann Felix von Kurz - known as Bernardon. Performed at the Kärntnertortheater in 1753 when Haydn was 21, its score has sadly disappeared, as is the case with many of his operas.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der September 2023-Ausgabe von BBC Music Magazine.
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Diese Geschichte stammt aus der September 2023-Ausgabe von BBC Music Magazine.
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Discovering Donizetti - Thanks to a two-year lockdown project, nearly 200 previously lost Donizetti songs will now see the light of day
Thanks to a two-year lockdown project, nearly 200 previously lost Donizetti songs will now see the light of day. For most people, undertaking a lockdown project meant learning to bake sourdough bread, getting fit with Joe Wicks, or taking up a language. But Professor Roger Parker, the eminent historian of Italian opera and emeritus professor at King's College London, had something far more ambitious in mind. He set about unearthing songs by Gaetano Donizetti - many of which had been lost since the composer's lifetime - and the enterprise turned into a two-year labour of love.
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Västra Karup Sweden
The spirit of soprano Birgit Nilsson is alive and well in the town of her birth, home to a festival dedicated to her memory
Federico Colli
\"At this moment in time we don't need more virtuosi. We need musicians to engage with the philosophy of music
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What happens when classical music-style levels of ambition, invention and sheer length are brought to pop? The answer, as Meurig Bowen explains, is Prog Rock
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