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December 31

1483 - The Franco-Flemish composer Gilles Joye died in Bruges. My favorite thing about him comes from the Grove, "From 1449 he was a singer at St Donatian, Bruges, where the documents report him frequently as having been involved in street-fighting, refusing to take part in polyphony when the chapter abolished the Feast of Fools, visiting brothels and lodging a concubine widely known as Rosabelle."

1647 - Giovanni Maria Trabaci, Italian composer and organist who had been maestro di cappella reale to the Spanish viceroys since 1614, died in Naples. 

1716 - Paolo Tommaso Alberghi, Italian violin virtuoso, composer and teacher, who studied with Tartini and spent his whole career at his hometown, becoming first violinist at the Duomo in 1753 and maestro di cappella in 1760, was baptized in Faenza. 

1799 - Jean François Marmontel, French librettist and man of letters, who had provided Rameau, Dauvergne, Grétry and Piccinni with libretti, died in Abloville at the age of 76.

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December 30

1566 - The Bolognese lutenist, composer and musicologist Alessandro Piccinini, who claimed to have invented the archlute, was born in Bologna to Leonardo Maria Piccinini, also a lutenist. 

1655 (Dec. 26 or 30) - Cavalli's dramma per musica, Erismena, to a libretto by Aurelio Aureli, was premiered at the Teatro San Apollinare in Venice. 

1678 - The English composer William Croft, a protégé of John Blow and organist of the Chapel Royal and Westminster Abbey, was baptized in Nether Ettington, Warwicks.

1680 - Antonio Sartorio, one of the most successful opera composers in Venice of his time, as well as Kapellmeister to Duke Johann Friedrich of Braunschweig-Lüneburg from 1666 to 1675 and vicemaestro di cappella at San Marco since 1676, died in Venice at the age of 50.  

1777 - Maximilian III Joseph, Elector of Bavaria, patron of the arts, composer and instrumentalist, died in Munich aged 50. He was a pupil of Andrea Bernasconi, and Sacchini, Traetta and Mozart among others had written operas for his court. 

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Ariadne's aria "Misera sventurata" from Porpora's Arianna in Nasso, sung by Karina Gauvin, accompanied by Il Complesso Barocco under Alan Curtis. 

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December 29

1602 - Jacopo Corsi, Florentine patron and composer, whose generous patronage led to the birth of opera, died in Florence at the age of 41. Not only did he sponsor Peri's Dafne and Euridice, he was in fact the one who started composing Dafne.

1721 - Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, later Marquise de Pompadour, more famously known as Madame de Pompadour, mistress of Louis XV and patron of the arts, who established her own theater, the Théâtre des Petits Cabinets, in 1747, and often took the leading role in the performances there, was born in Paris. 

1728 - Vivaldi's dramma per musica L'Atenaide, ossia Gli affetti generosi, to a libretto by Apostolo Zeno, was premiered at the Teatro della Pergola in Florence. 

1733 - Porpora's dramma per musica, Arianna in Nasso, to a libretto by Paolo Rolli, was premiered at the Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre in London, with Francesca Cuzzoni in the title role, Senesino as Theseus and the contralto Francesca Bertolli as the god Liber/Bacchus. 

1785 - The German composer Johann Heinrich Rolle, who played the violin at Frederick the Great’s court and became Magdeburg’s city music director after the death of his father, Christian Friedrich Rolle, died in Magdeburg aged 69.

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Mary Magdalene's aria "Pompe inutili" from Caldara's oratorio Maddalena ai piedi di Cristo, sung by Maria Cristina Kiehr, with René Jacobs conducting the Orchestre de la Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. (Thank Jupiter that this isn't one of those atrocious Jacobs recordings with historically-uninformed re-orchestration with arbitrary cuts...)

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The duet "Non d'altro riposo nel sonno m'appago" from Caldara's 1726 pastorale, Nigella e Tirsi, sung by the Danish soprano Ditte Andersen and the Swedish mezzo-soprano Ann Hallenberg, accompanied by Lautten Compagney under Wolfgang Katschner. 

(This recording from Berlin Classics is an excellent compilation of music by Caldara, Gasparini, Ariosti, the Bononcini brothers et al., and in fact one of my absolute favorite.)

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December 28

1736 - The Venetian composer and vice-Kapellmeister of the Habsburg court since 1717, Antonio Caldara, died in Vienna at the age of 65 or 66. Trained in his hometown possibly with Legrenzi and Domenico Gabrielli, Caldara became the first composer in Venice to write trio sonatas, and after an eight-year stint as maestro di cappella da chiesa e del teatro at the court of Ferdinando Carlo, the last Gonzaga Duke of Mantua, he went to Rome yet before long left for Barcelona when the Papal city was besieged by the Habsburg troops during the War of Spanish Succession. In Barcelona he found himself in the service of the Habsburg claimant to the Spanish throne, Charles III, who would in a few years become Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI and Caldara's principal patron for the rest of his life. In 1709 Caldara returned to Rome and succeeded Handel as the director of Prince Ruspoli's musical establishment, supplying the prince with countless cantatas for his weekly conversazioni, at the same time applying for positions at Vienna, but only after Marc'Antonio Ziani's death in 1715 did he finally receive appointment from the emperor and officially become vice-Kapellmeister in 1717, with J.J. Fux as his superior. However, with Fux putting his focus on the sacred aspect of the musical life at the court, Caldara was in charge of the dramatic, composing the most important operas for the emperor and empress while also providing many oratorios. 

1779 - The Neapolitan composer and nephew of Francesco Feo, Gennaro Manna, who succeeded Domenico Sarro as Naples' maestro di cappella in 1744, died in the Parthenopean city aged 64. 

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"Redoutable enfant du tonnerre" from Act II Scene 5 of Destouches' Callirhoé, with João Fernandes as Corésus and Hervé Niquet conducting Le Concert Spirituel. (The recording is of the 1743 version, but I don't think there's one of the 1712 original.)

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December 27

1585 - The French poet Pierre de Ronsard, who had served at both the French and the Scottish courts, died at the Priory of St. Cosme near Tours. Jacques Mauduit composed a requiem mass for his funeral. 

1696 - Giovanni Bononcini's dramma per musica, Il trionfo di Camilla, regina de' Volsci, to a libretto by Silvio Stampiglia after Vergil, was premiered at the Teatro San Bartolomeo in Naples, with the soprano Vittoria Tarquini as the title heroine. (The recently discovered "Handel" opera Germanico - nothing but a publicity stunt from Sony BMG, as it is obviously not composed by Handel, but probably by Bononcini or Ariosti - contains an aria from Camilla. Track 23, I believe.) 

1712 - Destouches' tragédie-opéra, Callirhoé, to a libretto by Pierre-Charles Roy after Pausanias (sadly not after the hysterical Greek novel by Chariton, as I had wished), was premiered at the Paris Opéra. 

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Licida's aria "Gemo in un punto e fremo" from Act II of Galuppi's L'Olimpiade, sung by the German mezzo-soprano Franziska Gottwald, accompanied by the Venice Baroque Orchestra under Andrea Marcon. I shall refrain from saying more things inappropriate for a good old Stoic, but I'll tell you that this opera is apparently so homoerotic that it has made its way to Netflix... (Also videos of the entire opera can be found on YouTube, and even La Fenice posted the first two acts themselves - I wonder if Dynamic will complain to YouTube about that...)

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December 26

Well, as I said yesterday, a million operas premiered on this day. Therefore I only picked the ones that I'm very familiar with. For more information go visit AmadeusOnline, but beware that the almanac seems to list every opera performed during the Carnival season, including those whose exact premiere dates weren't recorded in historical documents. N.B.: all the operas listed here are drammi per musica. 

1687 - Johann Georg Pisendel, German composer and arguably the greatest violinist in Germany of his time, who officially became the Konzertmeister of the Dresden court orchestra in 1730, was born in Cadolzburg. He studied the violin with Torelli and Vivaldi, and benefited much from the latter in particular, and was the teacher of J.G. Graun and Franz Benda. 

1709 - Handel's Agrippina, to a libretto by Cardinal Vincenzo Grimani, was premiered at the Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo in Venice, with the soprano Margherita Durastanti as the empress, the soprano-castrato Valeriano Pellegrini as my pupil Nero, the contralto Francesca Vanini-Boschi as Nero's buddy (not so much in the opera), the future emperor Otho, and the bass Antonio Francesco Carli as my arch-nemesis, the current emperor Claudius. Handel's first biographer John Mainwaring recorded, "The theatre, at almost every pause, resounded with shouts and acclamations of viva il caro Sassone! (Long live the dear Saxon!) and other expressions of approbation too extravagant to be mentioned."

1716 - Antonio Lotti's Alessandro Severo, to a libretto by Apostolo Zeno, was premiered at the Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo in Venice, with the great sopranos Faustina Bordoni in the title role of the teenage emperor Alexander Severus, Marianna Benti-Bulgarelli "la Romanina" as the emperor's mother Julia Mamaea, and the contralto Diano Vico as the empress Sallustia. 

1718 - Vivaldi's Teuzzone, to a libretto by Apostolo Zeno, was premiered at the Teatro Arciducale in Mantua.

1729 - Porpora's Semiramide riconosciuta, to a libretto by Metastasio, was premiered at the Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo in Venice, with the contralto Lucia Facchinelli in the title of the Assyrian queen disguised as her son after the death of her husband (well, I think that's mostly Diodorus Siculus' doing), and the great castrati Nicolini as the Indian prince Scitalce, Farinelli as the queen's little brother Mirteo, and Domenico Gizzi as the queen's confidant Sibari.

1731 - The French dramatist, aesthetician and inventor of the genre opéra-ballet (with L’Europa galante, a collaboration with André Campra), Antoine Houdar de Lamotte, died in Paris at the age of 59.

1731 - Hasse's Catone in Utica, to a libretto by Metastasio, was premiered at the Teatro Regio in Turin, with Farinelli as Arbace. 

1740 - The Nuovo Teatro Regio in Turin, designed by Filippo Juvarra and supervised by Benedetto Alfieri after the former's death, was inaugurated with Francesco Feo's Arsace, to a libretto by Antonio Salvi. 

1747 - Galuppi's L'Olimpiade, to a libretto by Metastasio, was premiered at the Regio Teatro Ducale in Milan, with the soprano Regina Mingotti as Aristea and the soprano-castrato Angelo Maria Monticelli as Megacle. 

1767 - Gluck's Alceste, to a libretto by a certain guy whose name I abhor to say Ranieri de' Calzabigi after Euripides (Alkestis is by far the most boring Euripidean play, as a classicist, I guarantee you), was premiered at the Burgtheater in Vienna ("insuccesso" - "without success," adds AmadeusOnline, hahaha!), with the soprano Antonia Bernasconi in the title role. 

1770 - Mozart's first serious opera, Mitridate, re di Ponto, to a libretto by Vittorio Amedeo Cigna-Santi after Jean Racine, was premiered at the Regio Teatro Ducale in Milan, with the sopranos Antonia Bernasconi and Anna Francesca Varese as Aspasia and Ismene respectively, the soprano-castrato Pietro Benedetti as Mithridates' younger son Xiphares, and the alto-castrato Giuseppe Cicognani as his elder brother Pharnaces. 

1772 - Mozart's Lucio Silla, to a libretto by Giovanni de Gamerra and revised by Metastasio, was premiered at the Teatro Regio Ducale in Milan, with the soprano Anna de Amicis as Giunia, daughter of Marius, the soprano-castrato Venanzio Rauzzini as the proscribed Senator Cecilius, the soprano Felicità Suardi as Lucius Cornelius Cinna, and the tenor Bassano Morgnoni as the dictator Sulla. 

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December 25

1231 - Folquet de Marseille, Bishop of Toulouse and one of the founders of the Dominican Order, who used to be a merchant and troubadour, the only one of his kind to appear in Dante's Paradiso, died in Toulouse.

1583 - Orlando Gibbons, the leading composer and keyboard player of the early 17th-century England, was baptized in Oxford. 

1711 - The French composer, violinist and conductor, Jean-Joseph Cassanéa de Mondonville, famed for his operas and grands motets, was baptized in Narbonne.

1719 - Benedetto Vinaccesi, Brescian composer who had been an organist at the Basilica di San Marco since 1704, died in Venice.

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December 24

1453 - John Dunstaple (Dunstable, Dumstable, Dunstapell, Donstaple, etc. - many variations of his last name exist), the most prominent English composer in the first half of the 15th century, died (in London?).

1474 - The Florentine composer, organist and singer Bartolomeo degli Organi, also known as Baccio Fiorentino, who later held posts in several churches and served as principal organist at the Duomo since 1509, was born in Florence.

1679 - The Apulian composer Domenico Natale Sarro (Sarri), who spent almost his entire life in Naples, becoming maestro di cappella to the city in 1728 and to the court in 1737, was born in Trani. He was the first composer to set a dramma per musica by Metastasio to music (Didone abbandonata in 1724), and composed the inaugural opera, Achille in Sciro (with the contralto Vittoria Tesi as Achilles), for the Teatro San Carlo in 1737.

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December 23

1582 - The Florentine composer, organist, poet and writer on music Severo Bonini, who studied with Giulio Caccini, was born in Florence. 

1597 - Martin Opitz, regarded by many the father of modern German poetry, who also provided many secular texts for Heinrich Schütz, including Dafne, considered the first opera in the German language, which he paraphrased from Rinuccini’s libretto for Jacopo Peri, was born in Bunzlau (Bolesławiec).

1628 - Girolamo Giacobbi, Bolognese composer who had been maestro di cappella at the Basilica di San Petronio from 1604 to 1628, died in Bologna at the age of 61. According to Grove, he "was one of the first composers outside Florence to write in the new monodic style."

1689 - The prolific French composer Joseph Bodin de Boismortier, who greatly expanded the repertoire for the transverse flute, was born in Thionville.

1716 - The German composer Johann Heinrich Rolle, who played the violin at Frederick the Great's court and became Magdeburg's city music director after the death of his father, Christian Friedrich Rolle, was born in Quedlinburg. 

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Zelenka's Requiem in D Major, composed in 1733 for the funeral of Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, performed here by Collegium 1704 under Václav Luks. 

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December 22

1639 - The French dramatist Jean Racine, the epitome of the French classical style, was baptized in Paris. 

1723 - The German composer, bass viol player and harpsichordist Carl Friedrich Abel, who created the successful Bach-Abel concert series in London together with J.C. Bach, was born in Cöthen to the musician Christian Ferdinand Abel.

1745 (Dec.22/23) - Jan Dismas Zelenka, Bohemian composer who had served at the Saxon court since 1710/11 (and almost became their Kapellmeister after Heinichen’s death had there been no Hasse) and a student of J.J. Fux, died in Dresden at the age of 66.