# Galant Opera



## JSBach85 (Feb 18, 2017)

The galant style started from 1720s to the 1770s and seems to have been fashionable by this time. This style featured a return to simplicity after the complexity of the late Baroque era. C. P. E. Bach and Daniel Gottlob Türk, who were among the most significant theorists of the late 18th century, contrasted the galant with the "learned" or "strict" styles. The galant style was drawn then in opposition to the strictures of the Baroque style, emphasizing light elegance in place of the Baroque's dignified seriousness and high grandeur. American musicologist William S. Newman makes the distinction into a Rococo phase followed by an international pre-Classic phase.

For some the style is associated mainly with keyboard music, although this style is also appreciated in operas composed on this period. Some of the most prominent galant style composers are: C.P.E. Bach, J.P. Rameau, Baldassare Galuppi, Carl Stamitz, Domenico Scarlatti, Johann Adolf Hasse, C.H. Graun. For beginners, can be difficult to differenciate between late baroque and galant style as well as the boundary between galant style and pre-classical is not always clear.

Personally I enjoy galant style operas. I think It would be great to have a thread dedicated to it. I am now listening to Galuppi L'Olimpiade opera (1745). L'Olimpiade was a famous opera with a variety of versions of prominent composers and is set in Ancient Greece at the time of the Olympic Games.

*Galuppi - L'Olimpiade (1745)*

Mark Tucker, Ruth Rosique, Roberta Invernizzi, Romina Basso, Franziska Gottwald, Furio Zanasi, Filippo Adami
Venice Baroque Orchestra. Andrea Marcon.


----------

