Raquel Pierotti

Raquel Pierotti (born December 17, 1952, Montevideo, Uruguay) is a mezzo-soprano opera singer. She specialized in coloratura roles in the Rossini and Handel repertoire.

Biography

Raquel Pierotti was born in Montevideo, Uruguay where she got her graduation at the National Opera School and made her operatic debut in 1973 as Damigella nuziale in Mozart’s Nozze di Figaro. During the next six years she worked in many operatic productions singing Magic Flute, Don Giovanni, Madama Butterfly, Rigoletto as well as in many chamber and symphonic concerts. She won the First Prize in the “Maurice Ravel National Contest” and in the “Artigas - Washington Contest”. In 1979 she moved to Spain. She won the “Plácido Domingo Award” in 1979 and the 2º Grand Prix in 1980 both in the “Francisco Viñas Singing Competition”. In the same year she won the First Prize in the “Mozart Singing Competition” organized by Barcelona’s Mozarteum and the Gold Medal from Radio Nacional de España (Spanish National Broadcasting) given to the most promising debutant of the season.

The Barber of Seville

The Barber of Seville, or The Futile Precaution (Italian: Il barbiere di Siviglia, ossia L'inutile precauzione [il barˈbjɛːre di siˈviʎʎa osˈsiːa l iˈnuːtile prekautˈtsjoːne]) is an opera buffa in two acts by Gioachino Rossini with an Italian libretto by Cesare Sterbini. The libretto was based on Pierre Beaumarchais's French comedy Le Barbier de Séville (1775). The première of Rossini's opera (under the title Almaviva, o sia L'inutile precauzione) took place on 20 February 1816 at the Teatro Argentina, Rome.

Rossini's Barber has proven to be one of the greatest masterpieces of comedy within music, and has been described as the opera buffa of all "opere buffe". Even after two hundred years, it remains a popular production.

Composition history

Rossini's opera recounts the events of the first of the three plays by French playwright Pierre Beaumarchais that revolve around the clever and enterprising character named Figaro. Mozart's opera Le nozze di Figaro, composed 30 years earlier in 1786, is based on the second part of the Beaumarchais trilogy. The first Beaumarchais play was originally conceived as an opéra comique, but was rejected as such by the Comédie-Italienne. The play as it is now known was premiered in 1775 by the Comédie-Française at the Théâtre des Tuileries in Paris.

La Cenerentola

La Cenerentola, ossia La bontà in trionfo (Cinderella, or Goodness Triumphant) is an operatic dramma giocoso in two acts by Gioachino Rossini. The libretto was written by Jacopo Ferretti, based on the fairy tale Cendrillon by Charles Perrault. The opera was first performed in Rome's Teatro Valle on 25 January 1817.

Rossini composed La Cenerentola when he was 25 years old, following the success of The Barber of Seville the year before. La Cenerentola, which he completed in a period of three weeks, is considered to have some of his finest writing for solo voice and ensembles. Rossini saved some time by reusing an overture from La gazzetta and part of an aria from The Barber of Seville and by enlisting a collaborator, Luca Agolini, who wrote the secco recitatives and three numbers (Alidoro's "Vasto teatro è il mondo", Clorinda's "Sventurata!" and the chorus "Ah, della bella incognita"). The facsimile edition of the autograph has a different aria for Alidoro, "Fa' silenzio, odo un rumore"; this seems to have been added by an anonymous hand for an 1818 production. For an 1820 revival in Rome, Rossini wrote a bravura replacement, "La, del ciel nell'arcano profondo". The light, energetic overture has been in the standard repertoire since its premiere as La Cenerentola.

Raquel

Raquel is a Portuguese and Spanish variation of the name Rachel.

Raquel may refer to:

Doña Francisquita

Doña Francisquita is a zarzuela in three acts composed by Amadeo Vives to a Spanish libretto by Federico Romero and Guillermo Fernández Shaw and based on Lope de Vega's play La discreta enamorada (The Ingenious Lover). With its colourful score and comic story of multiple love triangles which ends happily for the young lovers, Francisquita and Fernando, Doña Francisquita is considered a classic of the zarzuela genre, and Vives' masterpiece.

Performance history

Doña Francisquita premiered at the Teatro Apolo in Madrid on 17 October 1923. It became very popular, receiving over 5000 performances throughout the Spanish-speaking world in the years immediately following its premiere. The work is still regularly performed in Spain and Latin America, but like most works in this genre, has only rarely been seen elsewhere. It was, however, performed in French translation at Monte Carlo, Brussels and Vichy in 1934 and received a major production at Washington National Opera in 1998.