Seven of Claudio Monteverdi's operas are lost, apart from a few
fragments, out of ten the Italian composer wrote in whole or in part
between 1607 and 1643. A few librettos from these early baroque works
have survived. Opera as a genre emerged during Monteverdi's creative
lifetime, and he became a principal exponent of this new form, first at
the Mantuan court and later as director of music at St Mark's Basilica
in Venice. The loss of these works, written during a critical period of
early opera history, has been much regretted by historians and
musicologists, but reflects the habit of the times, when stage music was
thought to have little relevance beyond its initial performance and
often vanished quickly. Contemporary documents, including many letters
written by Monteverdi, have provided most of the available information
on the lost works, and have established that four of them were completed
and performed in the composer's lifetime. Of the little music that has
survived, the lamento from L'Arianna (1608) is frequently performed.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_operas_by_Claudio_Monteverdi>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
919:
A coalition of native Irish, led by Niall Glúndub, failed in
their attempt to drive the Vikings of the Uí Ímair from Ireland
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Islandbridge>
1752:
In adopting the Gregorian calendar under the terms of the
Calendar (New Style) Act 1750, the British Empire skipped eleven days:
(September 2 was followed directly by September 14).
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar_(New_Style)_Act_1750>
1927:
In a freak automobile accident, dancer Isadora Duncan was
strangled to death in Nice, France, by her scarf after it was caught on
the wheel of a car in which she was a passenger.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isadora_Duncan>
1954:
In a top secret nuclear test, a Soviet Tu-4 bomber dropped a
40-kiloton atomic weapon just north of Totskoye village, exposing some
45,000 soldiers and 10,000 civilians to nuclear fallout.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Totskoye_nuclear_exercise>
2007:
Late-2000s financial crisis: The Northern Rock bank received a
liquidity support facility from the Bank of England, sparking a bank
run—the United Kingdom's first in 150 years.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Rock>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
middling:
1. Of intermediate or average size, position, or quality; mediocre.
2. (colloquial, regional Britain) In fairly good health.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/middling>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats
nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts: to return love for hate,
to include the excluded, and to say, "I was wrong."
--Sydney J. Harris
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Sydney_J._Harris>
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