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Juan Pons
Joan Pons Álvarez ( Ciutadella, Spain, 8 August 1946) is a Spanish operatic baritone, known internationally as Juan Pons. He is most famous for his Verdi roles.Salazar, David. ''Artist Profile: Spanish baritone Juan Pons, Verdi specialist''. Opera Wire, Aug 8th 2018. Available at: https://operawire.com/artist-profile-spanish-baritone-juan-pons-verdi-specialist/ (Retrieved: January 27th 2023). Career Pons made his international début in 1980 at the Teatro alla Scala of Milan with ''Falstaff'', staged by Giorgio Strehler and conducted by Lorin Maazel. Since then, he has been a guest of the most important theatres all over the world, including the Metropolitan Opera House of New York, the Vienna Staatsoper, Covent Garden in London, the Opéra of Paris, Zürich, the Liceo in Barcelona and the Arena of Verona. His repertoire includes all the main baritone roles. Besides Falstaff, a role he played in 1993 at the La Scala under Riccardo Muti on the occasion of the centennial annive ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Barcelona
Barcelona ( ; ; ) is a city on the northeastern coast of Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second-most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within city limits,Barcelona: Población por municipios y sexo – Instituto Nacional de Estadística. (National Statistics Institute) its urban area extends to numerous neighbouring municipalities within the province of Barcelona and is home to around 5.3 million people, making it the fifth most populous ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Macbeth (Verdi)
''Macbeth'' () is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi, with an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave and additions by Andrea Maffei, based on William Shakespeare's play of the same name. Written for the Teatro della Pergola in Florence, ''Macbeth'' was Verdi's tenth opera and premiered on 14 March 1847. It was the first Shakespeare play that Verdi adapted for the operatic stage. Almost twenty years later, ''Macbeth'' was revised and expanded into a French version and given in Paris on 21 April 1865. After the success of ''Attila'' in 1846, by which time the composer had become well-established, ''Macbeth'' came before the great successes of 1851 to 1853 (''Rigoletto'', '' Il trovatore'' and '' La traviata'') which propelled him into universal fame. As sources, Shakespeare's plays provided Verdi with lifelong inspiration: some, such as an adaption of ''King Lear'' (as '' Re Lear'') were never realized, but he wrote his two final operas using ''Othello'' as the basis fo ... [...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] |
Simon Boccanegra
''Simon Boccanegra'' () is an opera with a prologue and three acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, based on the play ''Simón Bocanegra'' (1843) by Antonio García Gutiérrez, whose play ''El trovador'' had been the basis for Verdi's 1853 opera, '' Il trovatore''. ''Simon Boccanegra'' was first performed at Teatro La Fenice in Venice on 12 March 1857. Given the complications of the original plot and the generally poor popular response – although the critical one was more encouraging – the opera dropped out of favour after 1866. Finally, 23 years later, Verdi's publisher persuaded the composer to revise the opera, with text changes to be prepared by Arrigo Boito, the librettist who aspired to work with the aging composer on a project which eventually became a new opera, ''Otello'', but to whom Verdi had not totally committed at that time. The revised version of ''Simon Boccanegra'', with the now-famous Council Chamber scene, was first perfo ... [...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] |
Ernani
''Ernani'' is an operatic ''dramma lirico'' in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, based on the 1830 play ''Hernani (drama), Hernani'' by Victor Hugo. Verdi was commissioned by the Teatro La Fenice in Venice to write an opera, but finding the right subject took some time, and the composer worked with the inexperienced Piave in shaping first one and then another drama by Hugo into an acceptable libretto. As musicologist Roger Parker notes, the composer "intervened on several important points, insisting for example that the role of Ernani be sung by a tenor (rather than by a contralto as had originally been planned)".Parker, p. 71 ''Ernani'' was first performed on 9 March 1844, and it was "immensely popular, and was revived countless times during its early years". It became Verdi's most popular opera until it was superseded by ''Il trovatore'' after 1853. In 1903, it became Ernani (1903 La voce del padrone recording), the first opera to be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aida
''Aida'' (or ''Aïda'', ) is a tragic opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni. Set in the Old Kingdom of Egypt, it was commissioned by Cairo's Khedivial Opera House and had its première there on 24 December 1871, in a performance conducted by Giovanni Bottesini. Today the work holds a central place in the operatic canon, receiving performances every year around the world. At New York's Metropolitan Opera alone, ''Aida'' has been sung more than 1,100 times since 1886. Ghislanzoni's scheme follows a scenario often attributed to the French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette, but Verdi biographer Mary Jane Phillips-Matz argues that the source is actually Temistocle Solera. Elements of the opera's genesis and sources Isma'il Pasha, Khedive of Egypt, commissioned Verdi to write an opera to celebrate the opening of the Suez Canal, but Verdi declined. However, Auguste Mariette, a French Egyptologist, proposed to Khedive Pasha a plot for a cele ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
