Roman

A Roman or Romans is a thing or person of or from the city of Rome

Roman or Romans may also refer to:

History

Johan Helmich Roman

Johan Helmich Roman (26 October 1694 – 20 November 1758) was a Swedish Baroque composer. He has been called "the father of Swedish music" or "the Swedish Handel." He was the leader of Swedish Opera through most of Swedish Opera's Age of Liberty.

Life

Roman was born in Stockholm into the family of Johan Roman, a member of the Swedish royal chapel. The family name "Roman" may be derived from the Finnish place name Rauma, since Johan's ancestors lived in Finland. The boy probably received his first music lessons from his father. He joined the royal chapel in 1711 as violinist and oboist. Around 1715 the King granted Roman permission to study abroad, and the young composer spent some six years in London. He almost certainly studied under Johann Christoph Pepusch, met Francesco Geminiani, Giovanni Bononcini, and, most importantly, George Frideric Handel, whose music made a lasting impression on Roman.

Roman returned to Sweden in 1721. He was soon appointed deputy master of the royal chapel, and six years later he became Chief Master of the Swedish Royal Orchestra. Roman's life during the 1720s was full of organisational activity which led to much improved standards at the chapel, and, in 1731, the first public concerts in Sweden. Roman's only work published during his lifetime, a collection of 12 sonatas for flute, violone and harpsichord, appeared in 1727. In 1730 Roman married, but his wife died just four years later. In 1734 the composer left Sweden to visit several European countries—Austria, England, France, Germany, and Italy. He returned to Stockholm in 1737, bringing back a wealth of music by various composers for the royal chapel to perform. In 1738 Roman married again. In 1740 he was elected a member of the newly established Royal Academy of Sciences.

Louisa Ulrika of Prussia

Louisa Ulrika of Prussia (Swedish: Lovisa Ulrika; German: Luise Ulrike) (24 July 1720 – 16 July 1782) was Queen of Sweden between 1751 and 1771 by her marriage to King Adolf Frederick, and queen mother during the reign of King Gustav III.

Background

Louisa Ulrika was born in Berlin as the daughter of Frederick William I of Prussia and his wife Sophia Dorothea of Hanover, and was thus a younger sister of both Wilhelmine of Bayreuth and Frederick the Great. She was given the Swedish name Ulrika because Queen Ulrika Eleonora of Sweden had been her god mother. She exchanged letters with her godmother, and it was thought that she would marry a future son by Ulrika Eleonora, as Ulrika Eleonora herself had once been considered as a consort for Louisa Ulrika's father. However, Ulrika Eleonora remained childless.

Adolf Frederick, King of Sweden

Adolf Frederick or Adolph Frederick (Swedish: Adolf Fredrik, German: Adolf Friedrich; 14 May 1710 in Gottorp – 12 February 1771, in Stockholm) was King of Sweden from 1751 until his death. He was the son of Christian August of Holstein-Gottorp, Prince of Eutin and Albertina Frederica of Baden-Durlach.

The first King from the House of Holstein-Gottorp, Adolph Frederick was a weak monarch, instated as first in line of the throne following the parliamentary government's failure to reconquer the Baltic provinces in 1741–43. Asides from a few attempts—supported by pro-absolutist factions among the nobility—to reclaim the absolute monarchy held by former predecessors, he remained a mere constitutional figurehead until his death, by popular belief attributed to a heavy consumption of semlas. His reign saw an extended period of internal peace, although the finances stagnated following failed mercantilist doctrines pursued by the Hat administration ended only in the 1765–66 parliament, where the Cap opposition overtook the government and enacted reforms towards greater economic liberalism as well as a Freedom of Press Act almost unique at the time for its curtailing of all censorship, retaining punitive measures only for libeling the monarch or the Lutheran state church.

Gustav III of Sweden

Gustav III (24 January [O.S. 13 January] 1746 – 29 March 1792) was King of Sweden from 1771 until his assassination in 1792. He was the eldest son of King Adolph Frederick and Queen Louise Ulrika, who was a sister of Frederick the Great, King of Prussia.

He was a vocal opponent of what he saw as abuses by the nobility of a permissiveness established by parliamentarian reforms that had been worked out since the death of Charles XII. He seized power from the government in a coup d'état in 1772, ending the Age of Liberty and venturing into a campaign to restore royal autocracy. This was completed by the Union and Security Act in 1789, sweeping away most of the last pretences of Riksdag rule. As a bulwark of enlightened despotism, he spent considerable public funds on cultural ventures: this contributed among his critics to controversy about his reign. Attempts to seize Norway with Russian assistance, and then to recapture the Baltic provinces by a war against Russia, were unsuccessful, although much of Sweden's former military might was restored. An admirer of Voltaire, Gustav legalized Catholic and Jewish presence in the realm and enacted wide-ranging reforms aimed at economic liberalism, social reform and the abolition, in many cases, of torture and capital punishment, although the much-praised Freedom of the Press Act (1766) was severely curtailed by amendments in 1774 and 1792, which effectively extinguished all independent media.