Joseph Bologne “Chevalier de Saint-Georges” (ca.1739-1799)

Contemporaries of Joseph Bologne, the “Chevalier de Saint-Georges” (ca.1739-1799) knew him the best swordsman in Europe as well as one of the leading musicians and composers of his day. The man that John Adams, the second president of the United States, deemed ““the most accomplished” person in Europe was born to a teen-aged enslaved woman in Guadeloupe. His father, a French aristocrat, brought the boy and his mother to Paris and introduced the young “Chevalier de Saint-Georges” into society and insured he had the best available education. He quickly became famed for his fencing. Saint-Georges defeated every challenger, including one who taunted him with a racially-derogatory name. After reaching the pinnacle of the art of swordplay Saint-Georges turned his attention to composition, violin, and conducting. He was the leading candidate for the most prestigious operatic post in France, director of the Académie Royale de Musique; however, some of the singers wrote a letter to the king stating that they would not work for a mixed-race conductor.

L’Amant Anonyme, the only surviving and most successful opera of Saint-Georges, is based on a play by Stéphanie Félicité de Genlis. Madame de Genlis, a successful author and friend of Saint-Georges, was also the first woman to be appointed an official tutor to members of the royal family. L’Amant Anonyme recounts the story of Valcour, who loves his close friend Léontine, and secretly showers her with love letters and presents. The peasant wedding scene in L’Amant Anonyme may be the inspiration for the peasant wedding in Mozart’s Don Giovanni. Opera Ritrovata is proud to have presented one of the few performances of music from L’Amant Anonyme in the United States.

Élisabeth Jacquet de La Guerre (1665-1729)

Elisabeth-Claude Jacquet de La Guerre (1665-1729) surmounted seemingly invincible odds as a girl born into the middle class in seventeenth-century France. She would become one of the leading composers of her day. At the tender age of eight she began performing for the Sun King, Louis XIV. Four years later Louis XIV decided that this promising prodigy should be brought to his court (Madame de Montespan, the king’s powerful “official mistress,” oversaw her education). Elisabeth’s opera, the first by a woman to be performed at the Paris Opéra (Académie Royale de musique) features classical gods disrupting human nuptials.

George N. Gianopoulos (b. 1985)

The Last Silent Voice, an Opera in One Act, Op. 32 was written in the fall of 2014 for the opera troupe The Chamber Opera Players of Los Angeles and premiered in a fully-staged version in November of that year. Originally scored for piano, soprano and baritone leading roles and a chorus consisting of soprano, mezzo-soprano and tenor, the sixteen minute one act opera was then orchestrated for piano and string quartet. This arrangement, Op. 32b is dedicated to Opera Ritrovata. The science fiction-tinged libretto, written by Monique Boudreau, follows a husband and wife through a psychological dilemma that ends in hysteria.