Gasparo angiolini biography for kids

Angiolini, Gasparo

1731–1803

Dancer
Choreographer

Beginnings.

Gasparo Angiolini was born at Florence and began his career as a dancer at Lucca in 1747. Like most of the prominent dancers of his time, he made his debut when he was just a teenager, and his early success brought him soon to Venice, the home of Italy's oldest opera house. He performed there during several seasons, but in his early career he was also associated with the ballets at Spoleto, Turin, and again at Lucca. By his early twenties he had risen through the ranks of these companies and was recognized as a choreographer. After a brief stint in Rome, he made his way to Vienna, where he danced with Maria Teresa Fogliazzi. At the time the notorious eighteenth-century lover Casanova was pursuing Fogliazzi, but Angiolini successfully won her hand in marriage. Following successes in Vienna the two returned to Italy, where they were the lead dancers at Turin. When Franz Hilverding, ballet master of the French theater in Vienna, left to direct the Tsar's ballet in Russia, Angiolini replaced him. Despite several early setbacks, the most productive and creative part of his career soon began in the Austrian capital.

Ballet d 'action.

Angiolini's rise to fame in Vienna coincided with the development of the new genre of dance known as the ballet d'action, danced dramas in which performers used gestures and pantomime to convey a story. The first productions that he staged for the Viennese opera were largely traditional diversionary pieces common to the time. In 1761, though, the French theater in Vienna hired an assistant who took over these tasks, and Angiolini was now free to devote himself to the creation of major dance dramas. In two of these, Don Juan and Sémiramis, the ballet master tried to apply ancient ideas about dance and pantomime. At this early stage in his development as a producer of dance dramas, Angiolini collaborated with Willibald Christoph von Gluck, the Viennese court compose

  • He was born in Florence and

    • The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts > Italian Dance

    Development of Ballet Narrative

    Portrait of Salvatore Viganò


    Salvatore Viganò

    Engraving, [n.d.]  Born in Naples to a family of dancers and musicians, Salvatore Viganò danced for several years in his father's company.  In the late 1780s, he came under the influence of Jean Dauberval, whose approach to the integrated ballet narrative he would both assimilate and transform.  Viganò spent the better part of the following decade in Vienna, where in 1801 he choreographed The Creatures of Prometheus, set to a score by Beethoven and an early example of coreodramma(choreodrama).  He brought this new form of danced narrative to its apogee at La Scala, where he worked for more than fifteen years.  Here, in works such as Otello(Othello), Dedalo(Daedalus), La Vestale(The Vestal Virgin), and I Titani(The Titans), he created what his nineteenth-century biographer, Carlo Ritorni, called "a sublime...expression of poetic ideas and dramatic situations."  Cia Fornaroli Collection, Jerome Robbins Dance Division.

    Maria Medina Viganò as Terpsichore
    Sepia engraving by Carl Pfeiffer after a painting by Joseph Dorffmeister, Vienna, 1794.  Maria Medina was a Spanish dancer who married the Italian choreographer Salvatore Viganò in the late 1780s and performed with him in many successful productions during the next decade.  In this image she wears the sandals and light diaphanous gown that revolutionized ballet costume after the French Revolution.  The new dress, which referred both to contemporary fashion and classical antiquity, allowed the ballerina to move with new freedom.  Jerome Robbins Dance Division.

    Armand Vestris in Macbeth


    Vestris

    Color engraving, [Naples, ca. 1819].  The grandson of Gaetan and the son of Auguste Vestris, Armand followed the family tradition by training as a professional dancer.  He spent several years in London, mounting several successful ballet
  • Gasparo Angiolini was an Italian
  • Gasparo Angiolini was born

    • Gasparo Angiolini facts for kids

    Title page of the original full score of Gluck's 1762 opera Orfeo ed Euridice(Duchesne, Paris, 1764). [The original image has been cropped and lightened.

    Gasparo Angiolini (7 February 1731 – 6 February 1803), real name Domenico Maria Gasparo, son of Francesco Angiolini and Maria Maddalena Torzi, was an Italian dancer, choreographer and composer. He was born in Florence and died in Milan.

    He is known thanks to the polemics with the French ballet master Jean-Georges Noverre. Gasparo Angiolini directed the ballet at the Imperial Theatre in Vienna, taking over the post in 1758, working closely with Christoph Willibald von Gluck on such works as Don Juan ou le Festin de Pierre (1761), and the opera Orfeo ed Euridice (1762). The dancing in both Don Juan and Orpheus were said to have insisted on the "primacy of drama". In addition to collaborating with Gluck, he also composed music for many of his ballets.

    He later succeeded Franz Hilverding as director of the Imperial Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1766. Both Hilverding and Angiolini are credited with bringing the pantomime ballet to Russia. Likewise, Angiolini also attempted to introduce elements of Russian culture into his own work through use of songs, folk dances, and Russian themes.

    In 1772–1773 Angiolini worked in Teatro San Benedetto in Venice. In 1778 he came to Milan to direct the theatre of La Scala.

    Angiolini was a choreographer interested in the dramatic possibilities of dance. He was also an early spokesman for a sense of Italian nationalism and spoke of the sad state where Germany and Russia were supporting better cultural institutions than was Italy.

    His wife was a ballerina Marie Thérèse Foliazzi (1733–1792). Giacomo Casanova was in love with her and admits in his memoirs that he stole her portrait.

    His son (or nephew) Pietro Angiolini was also a dancer and choreographer, his daughter Fortunata Angiolini (1776–1817) and her partner

    Domenico Angiolini

    Date of birth

    09.02.1731

    Date of death

    05.02.1803

    Profession

    composer, choreographer

    Country

    Italy

    Born February 9, 1731 in Florence. Italian choreographer, artist, librettist, composer. Angiolini created a new spectacle for the musical theater. Moving away from the traditional plots of mythology and ancient history, he took Moliere’s comedy as a basis, calling it “Spanish tragicomedy”. Angiolini included the customs and mores of real life in the comedic canvas, and introduced elements of fantasy into the tragic denouement.

    From 1748 he performed as a dancer in Italy, Germany, Austria. In 1757 he began staging ballets in Turin. From 1758 he worked in Vienna, where he studied with F. Hilferding. In 1766-1772, 1776-1779, 1782-1786. (for a total of about 15 years) Angiolini worked in Russia as a choreographer, and on his first visit as the first dancer. As a choreographer, he made his debut in St. Petersburg with the ballet The Departure of Aeneas, or Dido Abandoned (1766), staged according to his own script, inspired by the opera on the same plot. Subsequently, the ballet went separately from the opera. In 1767 he staged the one-act ballet The Chinese. In the same year, Angiolini, while in Moscow, together with St. Petersburg performers, staged the ballet “Rewarded Constancy” by V. Manfredini, as well as ballet scenes in the opera “The Cunning Warden, or the Stupid and Jealous Guardian” by B. Galuppi. Acquainted in Moscow with Russian dances and music, he composed a ballet on Russian themes “Fun about Yuletide” (1767).

    Angiolini gave an important place to music, believing that it “is the poetry of pantomime ballets.” He almost did not transfer ballets already created in the West to the Russian stage, but composed original ones. Angiolini staged: Prejudice Conquered (to his own script and music, 1768), ballet scenes in Galuppi’s Iphigenia in Taurida (The Fu

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