麻豆约拍

Donald Macleod journeys through a century of music-making in Naples which put even its great rival Venice's culture in the shade.

Alessandro Scarlatti, whose death in 1725 offered new opportunities to Neapolitan musicians. The music of Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, whose death at the age of 26 gave him a mythical status, causing many works to be falsely ascribed to him. The music of the prolific but unfortunate Domenico Cimarosa, who lost his father to a building accident in childhood, and had to overcome poverty to establish an international opera career, ended by political wrangling which saw him go into hiding fearing for his life.

Donald Macleod also follows the lives of some of the young graduates of the conservatoire in Naples who carried their training across Europe, cementing the city's reputation as a cultural hothouse and explores some of the music that would have been heard at the new theatre dedicated to comedy that the king had ordered built in the 1770s. He discovers that the royal grip had not fully loosened when it came to the rulebook for audiences at the new venue.