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Erki Pehk
Erki Pehk (born 23 March 1968) is an Estonian conductor and artistic director of opera music festival PromFest. Childhood Erki Pehk was born in Võru, Estonia in the family of Heino Pehk, an established music teacher and choir conductor. Erki started learning music (piano) at age six at the Võru Music school. Education In 1982 he moved to Tallinn for the piano and choir conducting studies at the Tallinn Music High School. After graduating in 1986 he started to study choir conducting with Prof. Ants Üleoja and orchestra conducting with Peeter Lilje at the Tallinn Conservatoire (now Estonian Academy of Music). At the same time before his graduation in 1993 he studied orchestra conducting at the Jāzeps Vītols Latvian Academy of Music with Paul Mägi (years 1992–1994). Erki Pehk has improved his musical skills in Kirill Kondrashin Conductors Masterclass in 1990 in Hilversum (teacher Hiroyuki Iwaki), then at the Interpretation Course in Stuttgart led by John Eliot Gardi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Võru
Võru (; ; ) is a town and a municipality in south-eastern Estonia. It is the capital of Võru County and the centre of Võru Parish. History Võru was founded on 21 August 1784, at the request of the Empress Catherine II of Russia, by the order of Riga Governor general count George Browne, on the site of the former Võru estate as the center of the new county. From 1797 until today, Võru has been the administrative center of the surrounding region. In 1827, the Võru Town Hospital was opened and Friedrich Reinhold Kreutzwald, who lived and worked as a doctor in Võru from 1833 to 1877, also wrote the Estonian national epic " Kalevipoeg" in Võru. The development of the town was facilitated by the Pskov-Riga railway completed in 1889, which enabled Võru to have a direct connection with Riga and St. Petersburg. As a result, trade was developed, a flour mill, a sawmill and a distillery were built. Võru became the center of the surrounding rural area. Geography and cli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Estonian National Opera
Estonian National Opera (''Rahvusooper Estonia'') is the national opera company of Estonia. The company is based at the Estonia Theatre in Tallinn. The theatre has had several names throughout its existence. The latest one being "The Estonian National Opera", which was adopted in 1998. The company produces a lively and varied season which includes operas, ballets and operettas/musicals with over 500 people currently working at the Estonian National Opera. History The song and drama society "Estonia" was founded in 1870. This was the beginning of what has become the current-day Estonian National Opera (). Play-acting was taken up in 1871, although theatre as a tradition did not really come into being until 1895, when the society began to direct song plays, folk plays and comedies, usually with singing and dancing. By the start of the 20th century more serious drama was being staged. In 1906, the society became the basis for the professional theatre called "Estonia" founded by t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Max Emanuel Cenčić
Max Emanuel Cenčić (born 21 September 1976) is a Croatian countertenor and stage director. He was a member of the Vienna Boys' Choir. Life and career Early years Max Emanuel Cenčić was born in Zagreb. He started singing at a very early age, earning fame in his native Croatia at the age of six after singing the Queen of the Night's coloratura aria "Der Hölle Rache" from Mozart's ''Die Zauberflöte'' on Zagreb television. From circa 1987 to 1992, Cenčić was a member of the Wiener Sängerknaben, touring and recording with them. Recorded performances, in which Cenčić was either treble soloist of the Sängerknaben or an independent male soprano, include Handel's ''Messiah'', Haydn's ''Die Schöpfung'', and Mozart's Requiem, alongside countertenor Derek Lee Ragin). Cenčić can also be heard as the leading treble soloist with the Wiener Sängerknaben in numerous recordings of liturgical and secular music on the Philips label. A particular highlight from his recordings ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hello, Dolly! (musical)
''Hello, Dolly!'' is a 1964 musical with lyrics and music by Jerry Herman and a book by Michael Stewart, based on Thornton Wilder's 1938 farce '' The Merchant of Yonkers'', which Wilder revised and retitled '' The Matchmaker'' in 1954. The musical follows the story of Dolly Gallagher Levi, a strong-willed matchmaker, as she travels to Yonkers, New York, to find a match for the miserly "well-known unmarried half-a-millionaire" Horace Vandergelder. ''Hello, Dolly!'' debuted at the Fisher Theater in Detroit on November 18, 1963, directed and choreographed by Gower Champion and produced by David Merrick. It starred stage performer Carol Channing as Dolly Gallagher Levi, a role theatrical audiences of the world would forever associate with her. The show moved to Broadway in 1964, winning 10 Tony Awards, including Best Musical and Best Actress in a Musical for Channing. The awards earned set a record which the play held for 37 years. The show album ''Hello, Dolly! An Original Cast ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wiener Blut (operetta)
''Wiener Blut (Viennese Blood)'' is an 1899 operetta named after Johann Strauss II's Wiener Blut (waltz), eponymous 1873 waltz. It was made with Strauss' approval, but without his participation. Its score reuses music he wrote for other works along with some music by his brother Josef Strauss; the job of compilation went to Adolf Müller Jr., Adolf Müller Jr. Its libretto is by Victor Léon and Leo Stein (writer), Leo Stein. The setting is the Congress of Vienna. Strauss may have seen a draft of the work, but he died a few months before its 26 October premiere at Vienna's Carltheater. Performance history Franz Jauner produced the costly premiere anticipating great commercial success. But ''Wiener Blut'' ran for only thirty performances before making way for Sidney Jones (composer), Sidney Jones' critically acclaimed ''The Geisha''; in February of the following year Jauner shot himself at his desk in the Carltheater, facing bankruptcy. Five years later, however, when the Theater ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Die Lustige Witwe
''The Merry Widow'' ( ) is an operetta by the Austro-Hungarian composer Franz Lehár. The librettists, Viktor Léon and Leo Stein, based the story – concerning a rich widow, and her countrymen's attempt to keep her money in the principality by finding her the right husband – on an 1861 comedy play, (''The Embassy Attaché'') by Henri Meilhac. The operetta has enjoyed extraordinary international success since its 1905 premiere in Vienna and continues to be frequently revived and recorded. Film and other adaptations have also been made. Well-known music from the score includes the " Vilja Song", "" ("You'll Find Me at Maxim's"), and the "Merry Widow Waltz". Background In 1861, Henri Meilhac premiered a comic play in Paris, (''The Embassy Attaché''), in which the Parisian ambassador of a poor German grand duchy, Baron Scharpf, schemes to arrange a marriage between his country's richest widow (a French woman) and a Count to keep her money at home, thus preventing econom ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Die Fledermaus
' (, ''The Bat'', sometimes called ''The Revenge of the Bat'') is an operetta composed by Johann Strauss II to a German libretto by Karl Haffner and Richard Genée, which premiered in 1874. Background The original literary source for ' was ' (''The Prison''), a farce by German playwright Julius Roderich Benedix that premiered in Berlin in 1851. On 10 September 1872, a three-act French vaudeville play by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, ', loosely based on the Benedix farce, opened at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal. Meilhac and Halévy had provided several successful libretti for Offenbach. ''Le Réveillon'' later was adapted as the 1926 silent film '' So This Is Paris'', directed by Ernst Lubitsch. Meilhac and Halévy's play was soon translated into German by Karl Haffner (1804–1876), at the instigation of Max Steiner, as a non-musical play for production in Vienna. The French custom of a New Year's Eve '' réveillon'', or supper party, was not considered to provi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Giselle
''Giselle'' ( , ), originally titled ''Giselle, ou les Wilis'' (; ''Giselle, or The Wilis''), is a romantic ballet () in two acts with music by Adolphe Adam. Considered a masterwork in the classical ballet performance canon, it was first performed by the Ballet du Théâtre de l'Académie Royale de Musique at the Salle Le Peletier in Paris on 28 June 1841, with Italian ballerina Carlotta Grisi as Giselle. It was an unqualified triumph. It became hugely popular and was staged at once across Europe, Russia, and the United States. The ghost-filled ballet tells the tragic, romantic story of a beautiful young peasant girl named Giselle and a disguised nobleman named Albrecht, who fall in love, but when his true identity is revealed by his rival, Hilarion, Giselle goes mad and dies of heartbreak. After her death, she is summoned from her grave into the vengeful, deadly sisterhood of the Vila (fairy), Wilis, the ghosts of unmarried women who died after being betrayed by their lovers an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Sleeping Beauty (ballet)
''The Sleeping Beauty'' ( ) is a ballet in a prologue and three acts to music by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, his Opus 66, completed in 1889. It is the second of his three ballets and, at 160 minutes, his second-longest work in any genre. The original scenario was by Ivan Vsevolozhsky after Perrault's '' La belle au bois dormant'', or ''The Beauty Sleeping in the Forest''; the first choreographer was Marius Petipa. The premiere took place at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg on January 15, 1890, and from that year forward ''The Sleeping Beauty'' has remained one of the most famous ballets of all time. History Tchaikovsky was approached by the Director of the Imperial Theatres in St. Petersburg, Ivan Vsevolozhsky on 25 May 1888 about a possible ballet adaptation on the subject of the story of '' Undine''. It was later decided that Charles Perrault's '' La Belle au bois dormant'' would be the story for which Tchaikovsky would compose the music for the ballet. Tchaiko ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Swan Lake
''Swan Lake'' ( rus, Лебеди́ное о́зеро, r=Lebedínoje ózero, p=lʲɪbʲɪˈdʲinəjə ˈozʲɪrə, links=no ), Op. 20, is a ballet composed by Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in 1875–76. Despite its initial failure, it is now one of the most popular ballets of all time. The scenario, initially in two acts, was fashioned from Russian and German folk tales and tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse. The choreographer of the original production was Julius Reisinger (Václav Reisinger). The ballet was premiered by the Bolshoi Ballet on at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. Although it is presented in many different versions, most ballet companies base their stagings both choreographically and musically on the 1895 revival of Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov, first staged for the Imperial Ballet on 15 January 1895, at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg. For this revival, Tchaikovsky's score was revise ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Firebird
''The Firebird'' (; ) is a ballet and orchestral concert work by the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. It was written for the 1910 Paris season of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes company; the original choreography was by Michel Fokine, who collaborated with Alexandre Benois and others on a scenario based on the Russian fairy tales of the Firebird (Slavic folklore), Firebird and the blessing and curse it possesses for its owner. It was first performed at the Palais Garnier, Opéra de Paris on 25 June 1910 and was an immediate success, catapulting Stravinsky to international fame and leading to future Diaghilev–Stravinsky collaborations including ''Petrushka (ballet), Petrushka'' (1911) and ''The Rite of Spring'' (1913). ''The Firebird'' mortal and supernatural elements are distinguished with a system of leitmotifs placed in the harmony dubbed "leit-harmony". Stravinsky intentionally used many specialist techniques in the orchestra, including ''ponticello'', ''col legno'', '' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
La Belle Hélène
''La belle Hélène'' (, ''The Beautiful Helen'') is an opéra bouffe in three acts, with music by Jacques Offenbach and words by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy. The piece parodies the story of Helen of Troy's elopement with Paris (mythology), Paris, which set off the Trojan War. The premiere was at the Théâtre des Variétés in Paris, on 17 December 1864. The work ran well, and productions followed in three continents. ''La belle Hélene'' continued to be revived throughout the 20th century and has remained a repertoire piece in the 21st. Background and first performance By 1864, Offenbach was well established as the leading French composer of operetta. After successes with his early works – short pieces for modest forces – he was granted a licence in 1858 to stage full-length operas with larger casts and chorus. The first of these to be produced, ''Orpheus in the Underworld, Orphée aux enfers'', achieved notoriety and box-office success for its risqué satire of G ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
