Ulisse

Ulisse is an opera in a Prologue and two acts composed by Luigi Dallapiccola to his own libretto based on the legend of Ulysses. It premiered at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin (in German translation by Karl-Heinrich Kreith as Odysseus) on 29 September 1968 conducted by Lorin Maazel with Erik Saedén in the title role. Ulisse was Dallapiccola's last opera and took eight years to compose. As in his previous operas, Volo di notte and Il prigioniero, his declared theme was "the struggle of man against some force much stronger than he".^[1]

Roles

• Ulisse – baritone
• Calypso – soprano
• Nausicaa – soprano
• Re Alcinoo – bass
• Demodoco – tenor
• Circe – mezzo-soprano
• La madre di Anticlea – soprano
• Tiresia – tenor
• Pisandro – baritone
• Antinoo – baritone
• Eurimaco – tenor
• Melanto – mezzo-soprano
• Eumeo – tenor
• Telemaco – contralto
• Penelope – soprano
• Ancella 1 – soprano
• Ancella 2 – contralto

Notes and references

1. Warrack and West (1996)

Sources

• Casaglia, Gherardo (2005). "Dallapiccola". Almanacco Amadeus. Accessed 24 June 2009 (Italian).
• Gelli, Piero (ed.), "Ulisse", Dizionario dell'Opera, Baldini Castoldi Dalai, 2007, ISBN 88-6073-184-4. Accessed online 16 March 2009
• Shirley, Wayne, Luigi Dallapiccola's Sketch for Ulisse, The Moldenhauer Archives, Library of Congress
• Warrack, John and West, Ewan, "Dallapiccola, Luigi", The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Opera, 1996. Accessed online via subscription 25 June 2009