Van Sweelinck tot het einde van de Franse Tijd

The splendour and pageantry of 401 Dutch Operas are the best-kept secret in music history.
Dream along on a fairytale journey through seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Dutch operas, from Amsterdam to The Hague, Utrecht, Maastricht, Leeuwarden and… Zwolle! Look over the shoulders of more than 30 Dutch opera composers from the first 220 years of Dutch opera history, from Sweelinck up to and including the French Period. Marvel at the true first Dutch opera by… Vondel and Padbrué from Haarlem, 1646! Join the battle for the conquest of the Amsterdam Schouwburg by Govert Bidloo, Servaas de Koninck, David Petersen and Hendrik Anders. Experience the golden age of the Hague’s Théâtre Français around the Freemason-composers Colizzi, Zingoni and Van Wassenaer junior. Watch the music-loving Anna of Hanover, William V, and the young princesses Carolina and Louise dance and sing. Be amazed by the French opera adventures of the Mulligen brothers from Haarlem. Meet the Leiden opera composer Gottfried van Swieten, who became a minister in Austria and turned Viennese musical life upside down as the librettist of Haydn’s Schöpfung and Jahreszeiten.

Most seventeenth- and eighteenth-century scores were lost, yet René Seghers managed to rediscover dozens of them. Among them is the first Frisian opera by Jean des Communes, ’t Dorp in het gebergte (The Village in the Mountains). And what of Mozart’s Hague Artaserse, his very first operatic experiment? Beethoven turns out to have composed another opera before Fidelio: Vestas Feuer. Beethoven indeed—born during the fair in Zutphen!

Previously, only two Dutch operas from the seventeenth century were known. From the eighteenth century: none at all. This book brings more than 50 works back into the spotlight, complete with composers’ biographies, opera synopses and discographies.