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Émile Belcourt
Émile Belcourt (27 June 1926 – 3 August 2017) was a Canadian operatic tenor. He appeared in operas at English National Opera and elsewhere, and also appeared in musicals. Early life Belcourt was born in Lafleche, Saskatchewan, in 1926, son of Adrien Belcourt and Jeanne ''née'' Rivard. His mother, a church organist and pianist for silent films, encouraged his musical talents.Émile Belcourt, operatic tenor – obituary. '''', 24 August 2017. Retrieved 14 October 2017. He served in the Canadian navy towards the end of the Second World War. In 1949 he obtained a degree in pharmacy; while studying he continu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English National Opera
English National Opera (ENO) is a British opera company based in London, resident at the London Coliseum in St Martin's Lane. It is one of the two principal opera companies in London, along with The Royal Opera. ENO's productions are sung in English. The company's origins were in the late 19th century, when the philanthropist Emma Cons, later assisted by her niece Lilian Baylis, presented theatrical and operatic performances at the Old Vic, for the benefit of local people. Baylis subsequently built up both the opera and the theatre companies, and later added a ballet company; these evolved into the ENO, the Royal National Theatre and The Royal Ballet, respectively. Baylis acquired and rebuilt the Sadler's Wells theatre in north London, a larger house, better suited to opera than the Old Vic. The opera company grew there into a permanent ensemble in the 1930s. During the Second World War, the theatre was closed and the company toured British towns and cities. After the war, the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
BBC Television
BBC Television is a service of the BBC. The corporation has operated a Public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom, public broadcast television service in the United Kingdom, under the terms of a royal charter, since 1 January 1927. It produced television programmes from its own studios from 1932, although the start of its regular service of television broadcasts is dated to 2 November 1936. The BBC's domestic television channels have no commercial advertising and collectively they accounted for more than 30% of all UK viewing in 2013. The services are funded by a television licence. As a result of the 2016 Licence Fee settlement, the BBC Television division was split, with in-house television production being separated into a new division called BBC Studios and the remaining parts of television (channels and genre commissioning, BBC Sport and BBC iPlayer) being renamed BBC Content. History of BBC Television The BBC operates several television networks, television stati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michael Nyman
Michael Laurence Nyman, Order of the British Empire, CBE (born 23 March 1944) is an English composer, pianist, libretto, librettist, musicologist, and filmmaker. He is known for numerous film soundtrack, scores (many written during his lengthy collaboration with the film director, filmmaker Peter Greenaway), and his multi-platinum The Piano (soundtrack), soundtrack album to Jane Campion's ''The Piano''. He has written a number of operas, including ''The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (opera), The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat''; ''Letters, Riddles and Writs''; ''Noises, Sounds & Sweet Airs''; ''Facing Goya''; ''Man and Boy: Dada''; ''Love Counts''; and ''Sparkie: Cage and Beyond''. He has written six concerti, five string quartets, and many other chamber music, chamber works, many for his Michael Nyman Band. He is also a performing pianist. Nyman prefers to write opera over other forms of music. Early life and education Nyman was born in Stratford, London, to a famil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat (opera)
''The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat'' is a one-act chamber opera by Michael Nyman to an English-language libretto by Christopher Rawlence, adapted from the case study of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, the same name by Oliver Sacks by Nyman, Rawlence, and Artangel, Michael Morris. It was first performed at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, on 27 October 1986. The minimalism, minimalist score makes use of songs by Robert Schumann, in particular, "Ich grolle nicht" from ''Dichterliebe'', in which Dr. S. accompanies Dr. P., singing the ossia as a descant. Mrs. P. plays the piano, the actor actually playing if possible. Roles Synopsis The plot concerns the investigation by a neurologist of the condition of a singer who suffers from visual agnosia. According to the liner notes, Morris, Rawlence, and Nyman had to spend much time convincing the real Mrs. P. (whose husband is implied to have been a known name) that they were not proposing a musical play, musical ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Prince Of Wales Theatre
The Prince of Wales Theatre is a West End theatre in Coventry Street, near Leicester Square in London. It was established in 1884 and rebuilt in 1937, and extensively refurbished in 2004 by Sir Cameron Mackintosh, its current owner. The theatre should not be confused with the former Scala Theatre in London that was known as the ''Prince of Wales Royal Theatre'' or ''Prince of Wales's Theatre'' from 1865 until its demolition in 1903. History Phipps' theatre The first theatre on the site opened in January 1884 when Charles J. Phipps, C.J. Phipps built the Prince's Theatre for actor-manager Edgar Bruce. It was a traditional three-tier theatre, seating just over 1,000 people. The theatre was renamed the Prince of Wales Theatre in 1886 after the future Edward VII of the United Kingdom, Edward VII. Located between Piccadilly Circus and Leicester Square, the theatre was favourably situated to attract theatregoers. The first production in the theatre was an 1884 revival of W. S. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
South Pacific (musical)
''South Pacific'' is a musical theatre, musical composed by Richard Rodgers, with lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II and Book (musical theatre), book by Hammerstein and Joshua Logan. The work premiered in 1949 on Broadway theatre, Broadway and was an immediate hit, running for 1,925 performances. The plot is based on James A. Michener's Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, Pulitzer Prize–winning 1947 book ''Tales of the South Pacific'' and combines elements of several of those stories. Rodgers and Hammerstein believed they could write a musical based on Michener's work that would be financially successful and, at the same time, send a strong progressive message on racism. The plot centers on an American nurse stationed on a South Pacific island during World War II, who falls in love with a middle-aged expatriate French plantation owner but struggles to accept his mixed-race children. A secondary romance, between a U.S. Marine lieutenant and a young Tonkinese woman, explores his fears of t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kiss Me, Kate
''Kiss Me, Kate'' is a musical with music and lyrics by Cole Porter and a book by Bella and Samuel Spewack. The story involves the production of a musical version of William Shakespeare's ''The Taming of the Shrew'' and the conflict on and off-stage between Fred Graham, the show's director, producer, and star, and his leading lady, his ex-wife Lilli Vanessi. A secondary romance concerns Lois Lane, the actress playing Bianca, and her gambler boyfriend, Bill, who runs afoul of some gangsters. The original production starred Alfred Drake, Patricia Morison, Lisa Kirk and Harold Lang. ''Kiss Me, Kate'' was Porter's response to Rodgers and Hammerstein's ''Oklahoma!'' and other integrated musicals; it was the first show he wrote in which the music and lyrics were firmly connected to the script. The musical premiered in 1948 and proved to be Porter's only show to run for more than 1,000 performances on Broadway. In 1949, it won the first Tony Award for Best Musical. Conception P ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Man Of La Mancha
''Man of La Mancha'' is a 1965 musical with a book by Dale Wasserman, music by Mitch Leigh, and lyrics by Joe Darion. It is adapted from Wasserman's non-musical 1959 teleplay '' I, Don Quixote'', which was in turn inspired by Miguel de Cervantes and his 17th-century novel ''Don Quixote''. It tells the story of the "mad" knight Don Quixote as a play within a play, performed by Cervantes and his fellow prisoners as he awaits a hearing with the Spanish Inquisition. The work is not and does not pretend to be a faithful rendition of either Cervantes' life or ''Don Quixote''. Wasserman complained repeatedly about people taking the work as a musical version of ''Don Quixote''. The original 1965 Broadway production ran for 2,328 performances and won five Tony Awards, including Best Musical. The musical has been revived four times on Broadway, becoming one of the most enduring works of musical theatre. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Iain Hamilton (composer)
Iain Ellis Hamilton (6 June 1922 – 21 July 2000) was a prolific Scottish composer of ten operas, four symphonies, four string quartets and much more. He worked in the United States for twenty years. Career Hamilton was born in Glasgow and educated in London, where he became an apprentice engineer. He remained in that profession for the next seven years, studying music in his spare time. In 1947 he won a scholarship to attend the Royal Academy of Music for three years, studying composition with William Alwyn and piano with Harold Craxton. Simultaneously he earned a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of London (1950), and he was later awarded an honorary Doctorate of Music from the University of Glasgow (1970).Ruth C. Friedberg, revised by Francis J. Morris'Hamilton, Iain (Ellis)' in ''Grove Music Online'' In 1951 Hamilton became a lecturer at both Morley College and the University of London, posts he held until 1960, when he moved to New York. There he was appointed M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Blake (composer)
David Blake (born 2 September 1936) is an English composer and founder member of the Department of Music at the University of York. Early life and education Blake was born in London. Following national service, he learnt Mandarin Chinese and spent one year in Hong Kong. He went on to read music at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, where his teachers were Patrick Hadley, Peter Tranchell and Raymond Leppard. He was awarded the Mendelssohn Scholarship for Composition in 1960, and, uniquely for a British composer of his generation, he went to East Berlin to study with Arnold Schoenberg's pupil, the Marxist composer Hanns Eisler, as a Meisterschüler of the GDR Akademie der Künste (Academy of Arts, Berlin). During this time, he composed the first of his acknowledged compositions – the Variations for Piano and the String Quartet No. 1. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Violins Of Saint-Jacques
''The Violins of Saint-Jacques'' is an opera in three acts by Malcolm Williamson to an English libretto by William Chappell after the 1953 novel by Patrick Leigh Fermor.Covell, R. The Violins of Saint-Jacques. In: ''The New Grove Dictionary of Opera''. Macmillan, London & New York, 1997. It was first performed at Sadler's Wells Theatre in London on 29 November 1966 by Sadler's Wells Opera in a production by Chappell and was revived there and at the London Coliseum in the years immediately following.Webber, C. Guilty Pleasures? Christopher Webber makes the case for Malcolm Williamson. ''Opera'', August 2013, 988-991. Although the opera depicts spectacular scenes on the ocean, a creole carnival and an exploding volcano, the plot is essentially "an intimate romantic drama about young people in love, all the more poignant because of its pointlessness". Musical highlights include the Quartet 'I have another world to show you' and Berthe's aria 'Each afternoon when the swooning breezes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
