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Ferruccio Tagliavini
Ferruccio Tagliavini (; 14 August 191329 January 1995) was an Italian operatic lyric tenor mainly active in the 1940s and 1950s. Tagliavini was hailed as the heir apparent to Tito Schipa and Beniamino Gigli in the lyric-opera repertory due to the exceptional beauty of his voice, but he did not sustain his great early promise across the full span of his career. Early life and education Born in Cavazzoli, Reggio Emilia on 14 August 1913, Tagliavini was the son of Erasmo and Barbara Neviani. His father was a wine merchant, and in his youth he spent much of his time caring for his maternal grandmother. He also displayed an early aptitude for singing, and at the age of 12 appeared in his first professional stage work, a children's opera pastiche, staged in Reggio Emilia on 7 November 1925. In this production, he sang the "Romanza" from ''Pagliacci'' and was cited in reviews as a highlight of the show for the quality of his voice with one reviewer comparing his singing even at this age ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reggio Emilia
Reggio nell'Emilia (; ), usually referred to as Reggio Emilia, or simply Reggio by its inhabitants, and known until Unification of Italy, 1861 as Reggio di Lombardia, is a city in northern Italy, in the Emilia-Romagna region. It has about 172,518 inhabitants and is the main ''comune'' (municipality) of the province of Reggio Emilia.The inhabitants of Reggio nell'Emilia are called ''Reggiani'', while the inhabitants of Reggio di Calabria, in the southwest of the country, are called ''Reggini''. The old town has a hexagonal form, which derives from the ancient walls, and the main buildings are from the 16th–17th centuries. The commune's territory lies entirely on a plain, crossed by the Crostolo stream. History Ancient and early Middle Ages Reggio began as a historical site with the construction by Marcus Aemilius Lepidus (consul 187 BC), Marcus Aemilius Lepidus of the Via Aemilia, leading from Piacenza to Rimini (187 BC). Reggio became a judicial administration centre, with ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, essayist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most opera composers, Wagner wrote both the libretto and the music for each of his stage works. Initially establishing his reputation as a composer of works in the romantic vein of Carl Maria von Weber and Giacomo Meyerbeer, Wagner revolutionised opera through his concept of the ''Gesamtkunstwerk'' ("total work of art"), whereby he sought to synthesise the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, with music subsidiary to drama. The drama was to be presented as a continuously sung narrative, without conventional operatic structures like Aria, arias and Recitative, recitatives. He described this vision in a List of prose works by Richard Wagner, series of essays published between 1849 and 1852. Wagner realised these ideas most fully in the first ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
L'arlesiana
() is an opera in three acts by Francesco Cilea to an Italian libretto by Leopoldo Marenco. It was originally written in four acts, and was first performed on 27 November 1897 at the Teatro Lirico in Milan. It was revised as a three-act opera in 1898, and a prelude was added in 1937. The opera is based on the play (1872) by Alphonse Daudet, which was itself inspired by a short story from his collection '' Letters From My Windmill'' () and is best known for the incidental music composed by Georges Bizet. Three famous arias from this opera are the "" written for a tenor, "" for a baritone, and for a mezzo-soprano, "". Julian Budden, ''L'arlesiana'', in ''Grove Music Online'', accessed 10 April 2007. Additionally, in 2011, the aria "" from the 4-act version was added to the present score by the publisher. Performance history In 2007, research at the Università degli Studi di Pavia placed the aria "" ("") in the first version of . The aria had been cut from the work after t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Teatro Dell'Opera Di Roma
The Teatro dell'Opera di Roma (Rome Opera House) is an opera house in Rome, Italy. Originally opened in November 1880 as the 2,212 seat ''Costanzi Theatre'', it has undergone several changes of name as well modifications and improvements. The present house seats 1,560. Original Teatro Costanzi: 1880 to 1926 The Teatro dell'Opera was originally known as the ''Teatro Costanzi'' after the contractor who built it, (1819–1898). It was financed by Costanzi, who commissioned the Milanese architect Achille Sfondrini (1836–1900), a specialist in the building and renovation of theatres. The opera house was built in eighteen months, on the site where the house of Heliogabalus stood in ancient times, and was inaugurated on 27 November 1880 with a performance of ''Semiramide'' by Gioachino Rossini. Designing the theatre, Sfondrini paid particular attention to the acoustics, conceiving the interior structure as a "resonance chamber", as is evident from the horseshoe shape in particular. W ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Teatro Municipale (Reggio Emilia)
The Teatro Municipale (also since the 1980s called the Teatro Municipale Valli due to being named after the actor Romolo Valli) is a theatre in Reggio Emilia, Northern Italy. Following the destruction by fire of the 1741 Teatro Cittadella in April 1851, the new theatre was designed by the architect Cesare Costa and constructed in the Neoclassical architecture, neoclassical style between 1852 and 1857.Lynn, Karyl Charna, ''Italian Opera Houses & Festivals'', Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2005 p. 235 Its inauguration took place on 21 April 1857 with the performance of the ''Vittor Pisani'' by local composer Achille Peri. It is the pre-eminent public theatre of the city and is located in its historical centre next to the public park and near the smaller and more recent theatre Teatro Ariosto. It sponsors concerts, operas and ballet performance, while the adjacent, smaller, and more recently built Teatro Ariosto serves a more intimate stage for dramatic performances. The theatre has a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Il Campiello
''Il campiello'' (''The Little Square'') is an opera in three acts by Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari. The libretto was by Mario Ghisalberti, after the famous comedy of the same name written for the 1756 Venetian Carnival by the great Venetian playwright, Carlo Goldoni. Referred to as a ''commedia lirica'', it is an ensemble opera influenced by Mozart, as well as Giuseppe Verdi's last opera '' Falstaff''. It is concerned with the public lives of the volatile inhabitants of a "campiello" in Venice and is sung in the local dialect (except for two Neapolitan roles). Performance history ''Il campiello'' was first performed at La Scala, Milan, on 11 February 1936 under Gino Marinuzzi and as opera director Marcello Govoni. It has remained in the Italian repertory and occasionally been performed abroad. The Fujiwara Opera gave the Japanese premiere in Tokyo in July 1978. They revived it in July 2001 under Marco Titotto, including some Italian singers from the 1992 Trieste Trieste ( , ; ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Magda Olivero
Magda Olivero (née Maria Maddalena Olivero) (25 March 1910 – 8 September 2014), was an Italian operatic soprano. Her career started in 1932 when she was 22, and spanned five decades, establishing her "as an important link between the era of the verismo composers and the modern opera stage". She has been regarded as "one of the greatest singers of the twentieth century". Life and career Born as Maria Maddalena Olivero in Saluzzo, Italy, she followed complete musical studies (piano, harmony and composition), graduating in piano at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Turin. She later studied singing outside the Conservatory and made her singing debut in 1932 on radio performing Nino Cattozzo's (1886–1961) oratorio, ''I Misteri Dolorosi''. Landini, Giancarlo Olivero, Maria Maddalena, detta Magda', in ''Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (2017)''. Olivero performed widely and increasingly successfully until 1941, when she married the industrialist Aldo Busch and retired from th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
La Fenice
Teatro La Fenice (; "The Phoenix Theatre") is a historic opera house in Venice, Italy. It is one of "the most famous and renowned landmarks in the history of Italian theatre" and in the history of opera as a whole. Especially in the 19th century, La Fenice became the site of many famous operatic premieres at which several works by the four major bel canto era composers— Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, and Verdi—were performed. Its name reflects its role in permitting an opera company to "rise from the ashes" despite losing the use of three theatres to fire, the first in 1774 after the city's leading house was destroyed and rebuilt but not opened until 1792; the second fire came in 1836, but rebuilding was completed within a year. The third fire was the result of arson, and destroyed the house in 1996 leaving only the exterior walls; it was rebuilt and re-opened in November 2004. In order to celebrate this event, the tradition of the Venice New Year's Concert started. H ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
L'amico Fritz
''L'amico Fritz'' () is an opera in three acts by Pietro Mascagni, premiered in 1891 to a libretto by P. Suardon ( Nicola Daspuro) (with additions by Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti), based on the 1864 French novel ' by Émile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian. While the opera enjoyed some success in its day and is probably Mascagni's most famous work after ''Cavalleria rusticana'', today it is performed far more rarely than ''Cavalleria'', which remains Mascagni's only enduringly popular work outside Italy, where ''L'amico Fritz'' and ''Iris'' are still in the active repertoire. The "Cherry Duet" between Fritz and Suzel in act 2 is the best known piece in the opera and is often performed separately in concert. Performance history The opera was first performed in Rome at the Teatro Costanzi, on 31 October 1891. Other first performances include those in Hamburg on 16 January 1892 with Gustav Mahler conducting; in London on 23 May 1892 at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden;Eric Irvi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rigoletto
''Rigoletto'' is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi. The Italian libretto was written by Francesco Maria Piave based on the 1832 play '' Le roi s'amuse'' by Victor Hugo. Despite serious initial problems with the Austrian censors who had control over northern Italian theatres at the time, the opera had a triumphant premiere at La Fenice in Venice on 11 March 1851. The work, Verdi's sixteenth in the genre, is widely considered to be the first of the operatic masterpieces of Verdi's middle-to-late career. Its tragic story revolves around the licentious Duke of Mantua, his hunch-backed court jester Rigoletto, and Rigoletto's daughter Gilda. The opera's original title, ''La maledizione'' (The Curse), refers to a curse placed on both the Duke and Rigoletto by the Count Monterone, whose daughter the Duke has seduced with Rigoletto's encouragement. The curse comes to fruition when Gilda falls in love with the Duke and sacrifices her life to save him from the assassin hired by he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Semiramide
''Semiramide'' () is an opera in two acts by Gioachino Rossini. The libretto by Gaetano Rossi is based on Voltaire's tragedy ''Sémiramis (tragedy), Semiramis'', which in turn was based on the legend of Semiramis of Assyria. The opera was first performed at La Fenice in Venice on 3 February 1823. ''Semiramide'' was Rossini's final Italian opera and according to Richard Osborne, "could well be dubbed ''Tancredi Revisited''". As in ''Tancredi'', Rossi's libretto was based on a Voltaire tragedy. The music took the form of a return to vocal traditions of Rossini's youth, and was a melodrama in which he "recreated the baroque tradition of decorative singing with unparalleled skill". The ensemble-scenes (particularly the duos between Arsace and Semiramide) and choruses are of a high order, as is the orchestral writing, which makes full use of a large pit. After this splendid work, one of his finest in the genre, Rossini turned his back on Italy and moved to Paris. Apart from ''Il viag ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
La Bohème
''La bohème'' ( , ) is an opera in four acts,Puccini called the divisions '':wikt:quadro, quadri'', ''wikt:tableau, tableaux'' or "images", rather than ''atti'' (acts). composed by Giacomo Puccini between 1893 and 1895 to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, based on ''La Vie de Bohème, Scènes de la vie de bohème'' (1851) by Henri Murger. The story is set in Paris around 1830 and shows the Bohemianism, Bohemian lifestyle (known in French as "") of a poor seamstress and her artist friends. The world premiere of ''La bohème'' was in Turin on 1 February 1896 at the Teatro Regio (Turin), Teatro Regio, conducted by the 28-year-old Arturo Toscanini. Since then, ''La bohème'' has become part of the standard Italian opera repertory and is one of the most frequently performed operas worldwide. In 1946, 50 years after the opera's premiere, Toscanini conducted a commemorative performance of it on radio with the NBC Symphony Orchestra. A recording of the performa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
