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Café Del Mar Aria
''Café del Mar Aria'' is a CD compilation series that combines chill-out music with opera arias, thereby expanding the existing ''Café del Mar'' series. The ''Café del Mar'' concept originated from the "sunset bar" with the same name in Sant Antoni de Portmany on the Mediterranean island of Ibiza. ''Café del Mar Aria'' is produced by Paul Schwartz. Aria Volume 1, 1997 # "Willow" (from Verdi's ''Otello'') # "Un Bel Di" (from Puccini's ''Madama Butterfly'') # " Secret Tear" (from Donizetti's ''L'elisir d'amore'') # "Dido" (from Purcell's ''Dido and Aeneas'') # "Pace Pace" (from Verdi's '' La forza del destino'') # "Pamina Blue" (from Mozart's ''The Magic Flute'') # " Habanera" (from Bizet's ''Carmen'') # "Home" (from Verdi's ''Nabucco'') Aria Volume 2, 1999 – ''New Horizon'' # "Arianna" (from Monteverdi's ''L'Arianna'') # "Ebben" (from Catalani's ''La Wally'') # "Addio" (from Verdi's '' La traviata'') # "Horizon" (Paul Schwartz) # "Barcarolle" (from Offenbach's '' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ambient Music
Ambient music is a genre of music that emphasizes Musical tone, tone and atmosphere over traditional Musical form, musical structure or rhythm. Often "peaceful" sounding and lacking Musical composition, composition, beat, and/or structured melody,The Ambient Century by Mark Prendergast, Bloomsbury, London, 2003. ambient music uses textural layers of sound that can reward both passive and active listening, and encourage a sense of calm or contemplation. The genre evokes an "atmospheric", "visual",Prendergast, M. ''The Ambient Century''. 2001. Bloomsbury, USA or "unobtrusive" quality. Nature soundscapes may be included, and some works use sustained or repetition (music), repeated notes, as in drone music. Bearing elements with new-age music, acoustic music, instruments such as the piano, string section, strings and flute may be emulated through a synthesizer. The genre originated in the 1960s and 1970s, when new musical instruments were being introduced to a wider market, such as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henry Purcell
Henry Purcell (, rare: ; September 1659 – 21 November 1695) was an English composer of Baroque music, most remembered for his more than 100 songs; a tragic opera, Dido and Aeneas, ''Dido and Aeneas''; and his incidental music to a version of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'' called The Fairy-Queen, ''The Fairy Queen''. Purcell's musical style was uniquely English, although it incorporated Music of Italy#Baroque and Classical, Italian and Music of France#Baroque, French elements. Generally considered among the greatest English opera composers, Purcell has been ranked alongside John Dunstaple and William Byrd in the pantheon of English early music. Life and work Early life Purcell was born in St Ann's Lane, Old Pye Street, Westminster, in 1659. Henry Purcell Senior, whose older brother Thomas Purcell was a musician, was a gentleman of the Chapel Royal and sang at the coronation of King Charles II of England. Henry the elder had three ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach (; 20 June 18195 October 1880) was a German-born French composer, cellist and impresario. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s to the 1870s, and his uncompleted opera ''The Tales of Hoffmann''. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Franz von Suppé, Johann Strauss II and Arthur Sullivan. His best-known works were continually revived during the 20th century, and many of his operettas continue to be staged in the 21st. ''The Tales of Hoffmann'' remains part of the standard opera repertory. Born in Cologne, Kingdom of Prussia, the son of a synagogue hazzan, cantor, Offenbach showed early musical talent. At the age of 14, he was accepted as a student at the Paris Conservatoire; he found academic study unfulfilling and left after a year, but remained in Paris. From 1835 to 1855 he earned his living as a cellist, achieving international fame, and as a conductor. His ambition, however, was to compose c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
La Wally
''La Wally'' is an opera in four acts by composer Alfredo Catalani, to a libretto by Luigi Illica, first performed at La Scala, Milan, on 20 January 1892. It was Catalani's last opera. The libretto is based on a hugely successful ' by Wilhelmine von Hillern (1836–1916), '' The Vulture Maiden'' (''Die Geier-Wally''). Wally, short for Walburga, is a girl with some heroic attributes. The story is based on an episode in the life of Tyrolean painter Anna Stainer-Knittel, whom von Hillern met. She got her epithet "Geier" (vulture, the local name for eagle) from having gutted a bearded vulture's nest going down a rope; this dangerous task, aimed at protecting the sheep in the Alpine village, was typically performed by a man. Hillern's piece was originally serialized in '' Deutsche Rundschau'' and was reproduced in English as "A German Peasant Romance" [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alfredo Catalani
Alfredo Catalani (19 June 1854 – 7 August 1893) was an Italian operatic composer. He is best remembered for his operas '' Loreley'' (1890) and '' La Wally'' (1892). ''La Wally'' was composed to a libretto by Luigi Illica, and features Catalani's most famous aria "Ebben? Ne andrò lontana." This aria, sung by American soprano Wilhelmenia Fernandez, was at the heart of Jean-Jacques Beineix's 1981 film '' Diva''. Catalani's other operas were much less successful. Life and career Born in Lucca, Catalani came from a musical family. He was trained at the Milan Conservatory, where his teachers included Antonio Bazzini. Despite the growing influence of the '' verismo'' style of opera during the 1880s and early 1890s, Catalani chose to compose in a more traditional manner, which had traces of Wagner in it. As a result, his operas (''La Wally'' excepted) have largely lost their place in the modern repertoire, even compared to those of Massenet and Puccini, whose style his own peri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Claudio Monteverdi
Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi (baptized 15 May 1567 – 29 November 1643) was an Italian composer, choirmaster and string instrument, string player. A composer of both Secular music, secular and Church music, sacred music, and a pioneer in the Origins of opera, development of opera, he is considered a crucial Transition from Renaissance to Baroque in instrumental music, transitional figure between the Renaissance music, Renaissance and Baroque music, Baroque periods of music history. Born in Cremona, where he undertook his first musical studies and compositions, Monteverdi developed his career first at the court of Mantua () and then until his death in the Republic of Venice where he was ''maestro di cappella'' at the basilica of St Mark's Basilica, San Marco. His surviving letters give insight into the life of a professional musician in Italy of the period, including problems of income, patronage and politics. Much of List of compositions by Claudio Monteverdi, Monteve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nabucco
''Nabucco'' (; short for ''Nabucodonosor'' , i.e. "Nebuchadnezzar II, Nebuchadnezzar") is an Italian-language opera in four acts composed in 1841 by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Temistocle Solera. The libretto is based on the biblical books of Books of Kings, 2 Kings, Book of Jeremiah, Jeremiah, Book of Lamentations, Lamentations, and Book of Daniel, Daniel, and on the 1836 play by Auguste Anicet-Bourgeois and Francis Cornu. However, Antonio Cortese's ballet adaptation of the play (with its necessary simplifications), given at La Scala in 1836, was a more important source for Solera than the play itself. Under its original name of ''Nabucodonosor'', the opera was first performed at La Scala in Milan on 9 March 1842. ''Nabucco'' is the opera that is considered to have permanently established Verdi's reputation as a composer. He commented that "this is the opera with which my artistic career really begins. And though I had many difficulties to fight against, it is cert ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carmen
''Carmen'' () is an opera in four acts by the French composer Georges Bizet. The libretto was written by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée. The opera was first performed by the Opéra-Comique in Paris on 3 March 1875, where its breaking of conventions shocked and scandalised its first audiences. Bizet died suddenly after the 33rd performance, unaware that the work would achieve international acclaim within the following ten years. ''Carmen'' has since become one of the most popular and frequently performed operas in the classical canon; the " Habanera" and "Seguidilla" from act 1 and the " Toreador Song" from act 2 are among the best known of all operatic arias. The opera is written in the genre of ''opéra comique'' with musical numbers separated by dialogue. It is set in southern Spain and tells the story of the downfall of Don José, a naïve soldier who is seduced by the wiles of the fiery gypsy Carmen. Jos� ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet (; 25 October 18383 June 1875) was a French composer of the Romantic music, Romantic era. Best known for his operas in a career cut short by his early death, Bizet achieved few successes before his final work, ''Carmen'', which has become one of the most popular and frequently performed works in the entire opera repertoire. During a brilliant student career at the Conservatoire de Paris, Bizet won many prizes, including the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1857. He was recognised as an outstanding pianist, though he chose not to capitalise on this skill and rarely performed in public. Returning to Paris after almost three years in Italy, he found that the main Parisian opera theatres preferred the established classical repertoire to the works of newcomers. His keyboard and orchestral compositions were likewise largely ignored; as a result, his career stalled, and he earned his living mainly by arranging and transcribing the music of others. Restless for success, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Habanera (aria)
Habanera ("music or dance of Havana") is the popular name for "" (; "Love is a rebellious bird"), an aria from Georges Bizet's 1875 opéra comique ''Carmen''. It is the entrance aria of the title character, a mezzo-soprano role, in scene 5 of the first act. Background The score of the aria was adapted from the habanera "El Arreglito ou la Promesse de mariage", by the Spanish musician Sebastián Iradier, first published in 1863, which Bizet believed to be a folk song. When others told him he had used something written by a composer who had died ten years earlier,'' Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians'', 5th ed. 1954 he added a note about its derivation in the first edition of the vocal score which he himself prepared. Although the French libretto of the complete opéra comique was written by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, the words of the habanera originated from Bizet. The Habanera was first performed by Galli-Marié at the Opéra-Comique on 3 March 1875. Bizet, h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Magic Flute
''The Magic Flute'' (, ), K. 620, is an opera in two acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to a German libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder. It is a ''Singspiel'', a popular form that included both singing and spoken dialogue. The work premiered on 30 September 1791 at Schikaneder's theatre, the Freihaus-Theater auf der Wieden in Vienna, just two months before Mozart's death. It was Mozart's last opera. It was an outstanding success from its first performances, and remains a staple of the opera repertory. In the opera the Queen of the Night persuades Prince Tamino to rescue her daughter Pamina from captivity under the high priest Sarastro; instead, he learns the high ideals of Sarastro's community and seeks to join it. Separately, then together, Tamino and Pamina undergo severe trials of initiation, which end in triumph, with the Queen and her cohorts vanquished. The earthy Papageno, who accompanies Tamino on his quest, fails the trials completely but is rewarded anyway with the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
