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Jean-Étienne-Auguste Massol
Jean-Étienne-Auguste Massol (also known as Eugène Massol) (23 August 1802 – 30 October 1887) was a French operatic tenor and later baritone who sang in the world premieres of many French operas. Massol was born in Lodève and trained at the Paris Conservatory under Charles-Henri Plantade. He won the conservatory's first prize in singing in 1825 and that same year made his stage debut as Licinius in Spontini's ''La vestale'' at the Paris Opera. He sang primarily secondary tenor roles until the late 1830s when he increasingly gravitated to baritone roles. In 1845 he went to Brussels where he sang leading baritone roles including the title role of ''Nabucco'' in its first performance at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie and went on to serve as the theatre's director from 1848 to 1849. During that period he also sang in London with the Royal Italian Opera at Covent Garden. In 1850 he returned to the Paris Opera and remained there as a principal baritone until his retirement from ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eugène Massol
Eugene is a common male given name that comes from the Greek εὐγενής (''eugenēs''), "noble", literally "well-born", from εὖ (''eu''), "well" and γένος (''genos''), "race, stock, kin". Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, ''A Greek-English Lexicon'', on Perseus Gene is a common shortened form. The feminine variant is or Eugenie. Other male foreign-language variants include: People Notable people with the given name Eugene or Eugène include:Christianity *Eugene or |
Gustave III (Auber)
''Gustave III, ou Le bal masqué'' (''Gustavus III, or The Masked Ball'') is an ''opéra historique'' or grand opera in five acts by Daniel Auber, with a libretto by Eugène Scribe. History Auber wrote ''Gustave III, ou Le bal masqué'' as a grand opera in five acts to a libretto by Eugène Scribe, about some aspects of the real-life assassination of Gustav III, King of Sweden. The major aspects of the plot can be found first in Giuseppe Verdi's planned opera, '' Gustavo III'', which was never performed as written, but whose major elements were incorporated into a revised version of the story in the opera which eventually became '' Un ballo in maschera''. Performance history The opera received its first performance at the Salle Le Peletier of the Paris Opéra on 27 February 1833, with costumes designed by Eugène Lami and Paul Lormier, and sets by Léon Feuchère (act 1 and act 5, scene 2), Jules Diéterle (act 2), Alfred (act 3), Pierre-Luc-Charles Ciceri (act 4), René ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dom Sébastien
''Dom Sébastien, Roi de Portugal'' (''Don Sebastian, King of Portugal'') is a French grand opera in five acts by Gaetano Donizetti. The libretto was written by Eugène Scribe, based on Paul Foucher's play ''Don Sébastien de Portugal'' which premiered at the Théâtre de la Porte-Saint-Martin on 9 November 1838. It is a historic-fiction about King Sebastian of Portugal (1554–1578) and his ill-fated 1578 expedition to Morocco. The opera premiered on 13 November 1843 at the Salle Le Peletier of the Paris Opéra. This was the last opera that Donizetti completed before going insane as a result of syphilis. At the time, Donizetti was attempting to compose an opera competitive with similar historical operas by Daniel Auber, Fromental Halévy and Giacomo Meyerbeer. One critical description of the nature of ''Dom Sébastien'' is "a funeral in five acts". By contrast, Winton Dean has described the main characteristic of the opera as "uncompromising dramatic honesty" in his commen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles VI (opera)
''Charles VI'' is an 1843 French grand opera in five acts with music composed by Fromental Halevy and a libretto by Casimir Delavigne and his brother Germain Delavigne. The number "Guerre aux tyrans!" ("War on the tyrants!") achieved separate fame as a song of political protest. Performance history The opera was first presented on 15 March 1843 by the Paris Opera at the Salle Le Peletier. It continued to be performed there, and in a revised form beginning on 4 October 1847, up to 1848, and was revived again in 1850, receiving a total of 61 performances. Lajarte 1878p. 172Chouquet 1873pp. 404–405 Beginning on 5 April 1870 it was produced at the Théâtre Lyrique with Rosine Bloch in the role of Odette and was given there a total of 22 times. ''Charles VI'' was also performed in French in Brussels (beginning on 2 October 1845), The Hague (25 April 1846), New Orleans (22 April 1847), Buenos Aires (4 May 1854), Batavia (27 April 1866), Barcelona (29 April 1871), Mexico (19 Jan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Théodore Anne
Théodore Anne (7 April 1797 – 12 August 1869) was a French playwright, librettist, and novelist. Engaged in the army in 1814, until the July Revolution of 1830 he was a member of the compagnie de Noailles then, still faithful to the Bourbons, he resigned. An editor at the journal '' La France'', a drama critic for the ''L'Union'' journal and a collaborator with ''Revue et gazette des théâtres'', he authored numerous plays which were presented on the most significant Parisian stages of the 19th century: Théâtre du Vaudeville, Théâtre de la Gaité, Théâtre de l'Ambigu-Comique, Académie royale de musique, Théâtre des Nouveautés etc. Works *1818: ''Le Fureteur, ou l'Anti-Minerve'' *1820: ''Éloge historique du duc de Berri'' *1822: ''Le Coq de village'', tableau-vaudeville in 1 act, by Charles-Simon Favart, given to the theatre with modifications, with Eugène Hyacinthe Laffillard *1824: ''Alfred, ou la Bonne Tête ! !'', vaudeville in 1 act, with Achille d'Art ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
La Reine De Chypre
''La reine de Chypre'' (, ''The Queen of Cyprus'') is an 1841 grand opera in five acts composed by Fromental Halévy to a libretto by Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges. Performance history ''La reine de Chypre'', first performed at the Salle Le Peletier of the Paris Opéra on 22 December 1841 with Rosine Stoltz in the title role and Gilbert Duprez as Gérard, was regarded in its time as one of the composer's greatest achievements. Joseph Mazilier was the choreographer, and the ballet starred Adèle Dumilâtre, Adéle Dumilâtre, Natalie Fitzjames, and Pauline Leroux with Marius Petipa and Auguste Mabile.Pitou, pp. 1088–1090. The publisher Maurice Schlesinger was reputed to have paid the enormous sum of 30,000 francs for the rights to the opera. The opera prompted an extended eulogy from Richard Wagner, who was present at the first night, in the ''Dresden Abend-Zeitung'', for which he was a correspondent. However, since the 19th century it has been rarely revived. The lib ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eugène Scribe
Augustin Eugène Scribe (; 24 December 179120 February 1861) was a French dramatist and librettist. He is known for writing "well-made plays" ("pièces bien faites"), a mainstay of popular theatre for over 100 years, and as the librettist of many of the most successful grand operas and opéras-comiques. Born to a middle-class Parisian family, Scribe was intended for a legal career, but was drawn to the theatre, and began writing plays while still in his teens. His early years as a playwright were unsuccessful, but from 1815 onwards he prospered. Writing, usually with one or more collaborators, he produced several hundred stage works. He wrote to entertain the public rather than educate it. Many of his plays were written in a formulaic manner which aimed at neatness of plot and focus on dramatic incident rather than naturalism, depth of characterisation or intellectual substance. For this he was much criticised by intellectuals, but the "well-made play" remained established in the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ambroise Thomas
Charles Louis Ambroise Thomas (; 5 August 1811 – 12 February 1896) was a French composer and teacher, best known for his operas ''Mignon'' (1866) and ''Hamlet (opera), Hamlet'' (1868). Born into a musical family, Thomas was a student at the Conservatoire de Paris, winning France's top music prize, the Prix de Rome. He pursued a career as a composer of operas, completing his first opera, ''La double échelle'', in 1837. He wrote twenty further operas over the next decades, mostly comic, but he also treated more serious subjects, finding considerable success with audiences in France and abroad. Thomas was appointed as a professor at the Conservatoire in 1856, and in 1871 he succeeded Daniel Auber as director. Between then and his death at his home in Paris twenty-five years later, he modernised the Conservatoire's organisation while imposing a rigidly conservative curriculum, hostile to modern music, and attempting to prevent composers such as César Franck and Gabriel Fauré fr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Poliuto
''Poliuto'' is a three-act ''tragedia lirica'' (or tragic opera) by Gaetano Donizetti from the Italian language, Italian libretto by Salvadore Cammarano, which was based on Pierre Corneille's play ''Polyeucte'' written in 1641–42. It reflected the life of the early Christian martyr Saint Polyeuctus. Regarded by one author as Donizetti's "most personal opera" with the music being "some of the finest Donizetti was to compose",Allitt 1991, pp. 177—187 ''Poliuto'' was written in 1838 for performances planned at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples later that year. However, close to the time for rehearsals to begin, Ferdinand II of the Two Sicilies, King Ferdinand II refused to allow the martyrdom of a Christian saint to be seen on stage and forbade the production.Ashbrook and Hibberd 2001, p. 224 Angry at the decision and with a commission for the Paris Opéra due from the composer, Donizetti paid the penalty to the San Carlo for not producing an original work as a substitute, and left ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Benvenuto Cellini (opera)
''Benvenuto Cellini '' is an ''opera semiseria'' in four ''tableaux'' (spread across two or three acts) by Hector Berlioz, his first full-length work for the stage. Premiered at the Académie Royale de Musique (Salle Le Peletier) on 10 September 1838, it is a setting of a libretto by Léon de Wailly and Henri Auguste Barbier, who invented most of the plot inspired by the memoirs of the Florentine sculptor Benvenuto Cellini. The opera is technically challenging and was until the 21st century rarely performed. However, the overture occasionally features in orchestral concerts, as does the concert overture '' Le carnaval romain'' which Berlioz composed from material in the opera. Composition history Berlioz wrote this in his ''Mémoires'' about the background to the opera: I had been greatly struck by certain episodes in the life of ''Benvenuto Cellini''. I had the misfortune to believe they would make an interesting and dramatic subject for an opera, and I asked Léon de Wailly ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guido Et Ginevra
''Guido et Ginevra, ou La Peste de Florence'' (French: ''Guido and Ginevra, or the Plague at Florence'') is a grand opera in five acts by Fromental Halévy to a libretto by Eugène Scribe. It was premiered on 5 March 1838 by the Paris Opera at the Salle Le Peletier. Performance history ''Guido et Ginevra'' was only a moderate success for Halévy, not nearly as applauded as his previous grand opera ''La Juive'' (1835) or as ''La reine de Chypre'' which followed it (1841). However, after its premiere it was soon played in all the major European centres. When the opera was revived in Paris in 1840 it was cut to four acts. It was translated into Italian and performed in three acts by the Théâtre-Italien at the Salle Ventadour beginning on 17 February 1870. It was performed in German in Mannheim beginning on 3 April 1879, and Hamburg, on 20 March 1882.Loewenberg 1978, column795. No recent productions are known. The opera contains touches of the composer's innovative orchestration ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stradella (opera)
''Stradella'' is a Grand Opera in five acts by Louis Niedermeyer to a libretto by Emile Deschamps and Émilien Pacini. Based on a highly romanticized version of the life of the composer Alessandro Stradella (1639–1682), it was premiered at the Paris Opera on 3 March 1837. Background The storyline of the opera is fashioned from the fanciful legend told by Pierre Bourdelot in his 1715 ''Histoire de la musique''. Interest in Stradella in Paris had been growing in 1830s Paris, after the musician François-Joseph Fétis had included an aria, (supposedly by Stradella but actually by Fétis himself), in an 1833 concert; the melody soon became extremely popular. In July 1836 the , run by Maurice Schlesinger, had serialised a work by Jules Janin, ''Stradella, or the Poet and the Musician'', as 'advance publicity' (Schlesinger was to publish Niedermeyer's score in 1837). Moreover, a vaudeville with music by Flotow on the same subject opened in Paris a month before Niedermeyer's opera. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
