Nicola Antonio Porpora (1686-1768)
- Letatus a più voci con Istrumenti (1744)
Performers: Isabelle Poulеnаrd (soprano); Choeur Éclаts; Les Pаssions; Jean-Marc Andriеu (conductor)
Further info: Nicola Antonio Porpora (1686-1768) - Messa à 4 voci
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Italian teacher and composer. Son of a bookseller, Carlo Porpora, and
his wife Caterina, he attended the Conservatorio dei Poveri di Gesù
Cristo from 29 September 1696. At age 22, he composed his first opera,
'L’Agrippina' (1708), but after that, the presence in Naples of the
great Alessandro Scarlatti prevented advancement in the theater. But in
1711, he was employed as maestro di cappella for Prince Philipp
Hesse-Darmstadt, then residing as military commander in Naples, and then
for the Portuguese ambassador in Rome from June 1713. From 1715 to
1722, he was a teacher at the Conservatorio di San Onofrio. Among his
pupils were the poet and librettist Pietro Metastasio, the composer
Johann Adolph Hasse, and the celebrated castrati Antonio Uberti (known
as “Porporino”), Farinelli, and Caffarelli. His most important teaching
post was in Venice at the Ospedale degli Incurabili, the famous music
school for girls, from 1726 to 1733. In 1733 he went to London as chief
composer to the Opera of the Nobility, a company formed in competition
to Handel’s opera company. In London he wrote five operas, among them
'Polifemo', 'Davide e Betsabea', and 'Ifigenia in Aulide', with parts
for his remarkable pupil Farinelli. When the Opera of the Nobility and
Handel’s company closed, Porpora left England, in 1736. He subsequently
taught in Venice and Naples, where he produced several comic operas. In
1747 he was in Dresden and from 1748 to 1751 was chapelmaster there. He
went to Vienna in 1752, where he gave composition lessons to the young
Haydn, and in 1758 returned to Naples. A revision of his opera 'Il
Trionfo di Camilla' (first produced 1740) was given there in 1760 but
failed, and Porpora’s last years were spent in poverty. In addition to
about 50 operas, he composed a number of oratorios, masses, motets, and
instrumental works.
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