page_title: Poro (opera)
hierarchical_section_title: Poro (opera)
caption_attribution_description: Alexander and Porus by Charles Le Brun, painted 1673. Le Brun also spelled LEBRUN (b. Feb. 24, 1619, Paris, France--d. Feb. 12, 1690, Paris), painter and designer who became the arbiter of artistic production in France during the last half of the 17th century. Possessing both technical facility and the capacity to organize and carry out many vast projects, Le Brun personally created or supervised the production of most of the paintings, sculptures, and decorative objects commissioned by the French government for three decades during the reign of Louis XIV. Under his direction French artists created a homogeneous style that came to be accepted throughout Europe as the paragon of academic and propagandistic art. [Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1994] Lebrun, Charles (1619-90). French painter and art theorist, the dominant artist of Louis XIV's reign. After training with Vouet he went to Rome in 1642 and worked under Poussin, becoming a convert to the latter's theories of art. He returned to Paris in 1646. From 1661 he became established in the employ of Louis XIV, in 1662 he was raised to the nobility and named Premier Paintre du roi, and in 1663 he was made director of the reorganized Academie, which he turned into a channel for imposing a codified system of orthodoxy in matters of art. His lectures came to be accepted as providing the official standards of artistic correctness and, formulated on the basis of the Classicism of Poussin, gave authority to the view that every aspect of artistic creation can be reduced to teachable rule and precept. In 1698 his small illustrated treatise Methode pour apprendre a dessiner les passions... was posthumously published; in this, again following theories of Poussin, he purported to codify the visual expression of the emotions in painting. Despite the Classicism of his theories, Lebrun's own talents lay rather in the direction of flamboyant and grandiose decorative effects. Among the most outstanding of his works for the king were the Galerie d'Apollon at the Louvre (1663), and the famous Galerie des Glaces (1679-84) and the Great Staircase (1671-78, destroyed in 1752) at Versailles. His importance in the history of French art is twofold: his contributions to the magnificence of the Grand Manner of Louis XIV and his influence in laying the basis of academicism. Many of the leading French artists of the next generation trained in his studio. Lebrun was a fine portraitist and an extremely prolific draughtsman.
context_page_description: Poro, re dell'Indie is an opera seria in three acts by George Frideric Handel. The Italian-language libretto was adapted from Alessandro nell'Indie by Metastasio, and based on Alexander the Great's encounter with King Porus in 326 BC. The libretto had already been set to music by Leonardo Vinci in 1729 and by Antonio Vivaldi among others and was used as the text for more than sixty operas throughout the 18th century.
  Graham Cummings has examined in detail the composition history of Poro in the context of Handel's work on his London operas during the 1730s, and has postulated the principal time of Handel's composing from September 1730 to 16 January 1731, with small revisions prior to the 2 February premiere.
  The opera shifted the story's emphasis from Alessandro to Poro and Cleofide, and their relationship.
context_section_description: Poro, re dell'Indie ("Porus, King of the Indians", HWV 28) is an opera seria in three acts  by George Frideric Handel. The Italian-language libretto was adapted from Alessandro nell'Indie by Metastasio, and based on Alexander the Great's encounter with King Porus in 326 BC. The libretto had already been set to music by Leonardo Vinci in 1729 and by Antonio Vivaldi among others and was used as the text for more than sixty operas throughout the 18th century.
  Graham Cummings has examined in detail the composition history of Poro in the context of Handel's work on his London operas during the 1730s, and has postulated the principal time of Handel's composing from September 1730 to 16 January 1731, with small revisions prior to the 2 February premiere.
  The opera shifted the story's emphasis from Alessandro to Poro and Cleofide, and their relationship.
caption: Alexander and Porus by Charles Le Brun, 1673
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