Atoms and Arias A Portuguese professor explores the poisons and potions of opera.
By Kate Yandell | March 22, 2013 The Scientist
João Paulo André went to his first opera as a third-year student studying chemistry at the University of Coimbra in Portugal. “I saw La Traviata, and I was so impressed,” he says. Since then he has faithfully read about and attended operas while pursuing his chemistry career.
In November 2011, André combined his two passions creating a multimedia lecture that explores the roles of chemical compounds and practitioners of the science in opera plots.
According to André, the pairing is a natural one, as opera actually chronicled the heady, early days of chemical discovery. Joseph Haydn’s Der Apotheker (also known as Lo Speziale) and Gaetano Donizetti’s one-act opera, Il Campanello, for example, both featured pharmacists as main characters. In 1768, as Joseph Priestley, Antoine Lavoisier, and Carl Wilhelm Scheele, who would eventually discover oxygen, were immersed in their chemical labors, Haydn debuted Der Apotheker, a story about competition and love that plays out in the pharmacy. “There was something in the air. Chemistry was coming to be called a modern science,” Andé says. Il Campanello was first performed publicly in 1836, a time when many natural compounds were being isolated. It includes songs about long, complicated prescriptions. These “apothecary operas” illustrate the cultural pull chemistry used to have.
A Portuguese professor explores the poisons and potions of opera.
By Kate Yandell | March 22, 2013
The Scientist
João Paulo André went to his first opera as a third-year student studying chemistry at the University of Coimbra in Portugal. “I saw La Traviata, and I was so impressed,” he says. Since then he has faithfully read about and attended operas while pursuing his chemistry career.
In November 2011, André combined his two passions creating a multimedia lecture that explores the roles of chemical compounds and practitioners of the science in opera plots.
According to André, the pairing is a natural one, as opera actually chronicled the heady, early days of chemical discovery. Joseph Haydn’s Der Apotheker (also known as Lo Speziale) and Gaetano Donizetti’s one-act opera, Il Campanello, for example, both featured pharmacists as main characters. In 1768, as Joseph Priestley, Antoine Lavoisier, and Carl Wilhelm Scheele, who would eventually discover oxygen, were immersed in their chemical labors, Haydn debuted Der Apotheker, a story about competition and love that plays out in the pharmacy. “There was something in the air. Chemistry was coming to be called a modern science,” Andé says. Il Campanello was first performed publicly in 1836, a time when many natural compounds were being isolated. It includes songs about long, complicated prescriptions. These “apothecary operas” illustrate the cultural pull chemistry used to have.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-2iAK...
Gaetano Donizetti - Il campanello (1836) - Duet for Enrico & Annibale - "Ho una bella"
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