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Leopoldo Mugnone
Leopoldo Mugnone (29 September 1858 in Naples – 22 December 1941 in Capodichino, Naples) was an Italian conductor, especially of opera, whose most famous work was done in the period 1890–1920, both in Europe and South America. He conducted various operatic premieres, and was also a composer of operas. Training The son of Antonio Mugnone, principal double-bass in the orchestra of the San Carlo Theatre in Naples, Mugnone studied from an early age at the Royal Conservatorio of San Pietro a Maiella under Paolo Serrao and Beniamino Cesi. He composed his first theatre work, a little opera buffa ''Il Dottor Bartolo Salsapariglia'', at the age of 12, in which he wished to take part in the basso comico role, though he had then only an alto voice. At 16 he began conducting. A year later he was recruited as a chorus director for an operetta troupe at the Teatro Nuovo, run by F. Sadowsky. From there he went on to the Garibaldi Theatre, first as chorus master and later as ''concertatore ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (; or ; 15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher, prose poet, cultural critic, philologist, and composer whose work has exerted a profound influence on contemporary philosophy. He began his career as a classical philologist before turning to philosophy. He became the youngest person ever to hold the Chair of Classical Philology at the University of Basel in 1869 at the age of 24. Nietzsche resigned in 1879 due to health problems that plagued him most of his life; he completed much of his core writing in the following decade. In 1889, at age 45, he suffered a collapse and afterward a complete loss of his mental faculties, with paralysis and probably vascular dementia. He lived his remaining years in the care of his mother until her death in 1897 and then with his sister Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche. Nietzsche died in 1900, after experiencing pneumonia and multiple strokes. Nietzsche's writing spans philosophical polemic ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gemma Bellincioni
Gemma Bellincioni (born Matilda Cesira Bellincioni) (; 18 August 1864 – 23 April 1950) was an Italian soprano and one of the best-known opera singers of the late 19th century. She had a particular affinity with the verismo repertoire and was renowned more for her charismatic acting than for the quality of her voice. Her career Matilda Cesira Bellincioni was Bellincioni's real name. She was born in Monza, Italy, in 1864. Both her parents were singers, and after receiving training from them, she made her operatic debut in Naples in 1880. She went on to sing extensively in Europe and South America during the next two decades, although she would appear only once in London—at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden—in 1895. Despite her fame, she never performed at America's foremost operatic venue, the New York Metropolitan Opera. Italy's leading composer, Giuseppe Verdi, admired Bellincioni's acting ability. Verdi had encountered her in 1886 when she performed Violetta ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cavalleria Rusticana
''Cavalleria rusticana'' (; Italian for "rustic chivalry") is an opera in one act by Pietro Mascagni to an Italian libretto by Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti and Guido Menasci, adapted from an 1880 Cavalleria rusticana (short story), short story of the same name and subsequent play by Giovanni Verga. Considered one of the classic ''verismo'' operas, it premiered on 17 May 1890 at the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, Teatro Costanzi in Rome. Since 1893 in music, 1893, it has often been performed in a so-called ''Cav/Pag'' double-bill with ''Pagliacci'' by Ruggero Leoncavallo. Composition history In July 1888 the Milanese music publisher Edoardo Sonzogno announced a competition open to all young Italian composers who had not yet had an opera performed on stage. They were invited to submit a one-act opera which would be judged by a jury of five prominent Italian critics and composers. The best three would be staged in Rome at Sonzogno's expense. Mascagni heard about the competition only two ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pietro Mascagni
Pietro Mascagni (7 December 1863 – 2 August 1945) was an Italian composer primarily known for his operas. His 1890 masterpiece ''Cavalleria rusticana'' caused one of the greatest sensations in opera history and single-handedly ushered in the ''Verismo'' movement in Italian dramatic music. While it was often held that Mascagni, like Ruggero Leoncavallo, was a "one-opera man" who could never repeat his first success, ''L'amico Fritz'' and ''Iris (opera), Iris'' have remained in the repertoire in Europe (especially Italy) since their premieres. Mascagni wrote fifteen operas, an operetta, several orchestral and vocal works, and also songs and piano music. He enjoyed immense success during his lifetime, both as a composer and Conductor (music), conductor of his own and other people's music and created a variety of styles in his operas. Biography Early life and education Mascagni was born on 7 December 1863 in Livorno, Tuscany, the second son of Domenico and Emilia Mascagni. His fa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Verismo
In opera, ''verismo'' (, from , meaning "true") was a post-Romantic operatic tradition associated with Italian composers such as Pietro Mascagni, Ruggero Leoncavallo, Umberto Giordano, Francesco Cilea and Giacomo Puccini. ''Verismo'' as an operatic genre had its origins in an Italian literary movement of the same name. This was in turn related to the international literary movement of naturalism as practised by Émile Zola and others. Like naturalism, the ''verismo'' literary movement sought to portray the world with greater realism. In so doing, Italian ''verismo'' authors such as Giovanni Verga wrote about subject matter, such as the lives of the poor, that had not generally been seen as a fit subject for literature. History A short story by Verga called ' (), then developed into a play by the same author, became the source for what is usually considered to be the first ''verismo'' opera: ''Cavalleria rusticana'' by Mascagni, which premiered on 17 May 1890 at the Tea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nabucco
''Nabucco'' (, short for Nabucodonosor ; en, " Nebuchadnezzar") is an Italian-language opera Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a libre ... 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 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 tha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Toscanini
Arturo Toscanini (; ; March 25, 1867January 16, 1957) was an Italian conductor. He was one of the most acclaimed and influential musicians of the late 19th and early 20th century, renowned for his intensity, his perfectionism, his ear for orchestral detail and sonority, and his eidetic memory. He was at various times the music director of La Scala in Milan and the New York Philharmonic. Later in his career he was appointed the first music director of the NBC Symphony Orchestra (1937–54), and this led to his becoming a household name (especially in the United States) through his radio and television broadcasts and many recordings of the operatic and symphonic repertoire. Biography Early years Toscanini was born in Parma, Emilia-Romagna, and won a scholarship to the local music conservatory, where he studied the cello. Living conditions at the conservatory were harsh and strict. For example, the menu at the conservatory consisted almost entirely of fish; in his later years, To ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Palermo
Palermo ( , ; scn, Palermu , locally also or ) is a city in southern Italy, the capital of both the autonomous region of Sicily and the Metropolitan City of Palermo, the city's surrounding metropolitan province. The city is noted for its history, culture, architecture and gastronomy, playing an important role throughout much of its existence; it is over 2,700 years old. Palermo is in the northwest of the island of Sicily, by the Gulf of Palermo in the Tyrrhenian Sea. The city was founded in 734 BC by the Phoenicians as ("flower"). Palermo then became a possession of Carthage. Two Greek colonies were established, known collectively as ; the Carthaginians used this name on their coins after the 5th centuryBC. As , the town became part of the Roman Republic and Roman Empire, Empire for over a thousand years. From 831 to 1072 the city was under History of Islam in southern Italy, Arab rule in the Emirate of Sicily when the city became the capital of Sicily for t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Teatro Massimo
The Teatro Massimo Vittorio Emanuele is an opera house and opera company located on the Piazza Verdi in Palermo, Sicily. It was dedicated to King Victor Emanuel II. It is the biggest in Italy, and one of the largest of Europe (at the time of its inauguration, it was - with its area of 7730 m² - the third largest opera house in Europe after the Palais Garnier in Paris, and the K. K. Hof-Opernhaus in Vienna), renowned for its perfect acoustics. Construction and opening An international competition for the creation of the opera house was announced by the Palermo Council in 1864 at the instigation of the mayor, Antonio Starrabba di Rudinì. For many years there had been talk of building a large new theatre in Palermo, worthy of the second biggest city in southern Italy (after Naples) and designed to promote the image of the city following the unification of Italy in 1861. The opera house was designed, and overseen by the Italian architect Giovan Battista Filippo Basile, who was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Boito
Arrigo Boito (; 24 February 1842 10 June 1918) (whose original name was Enrico Giuseppe Giovanni Boito and who wrote essays under the anagrammatic pseudonym of Tobia Gorrio) was an Italian poet, journalist, novelist, librettist and composer, best known today for his libretti, especially those for Giuseppe Verdi's last two monumental operas ''Otello'' and ''Falstaff'' (not to mention Amilcare Ponchielli's operatic masterpiece ''La Gioconda'') and his own opera ''Mefistofele''. Along with Emilio Praga and his own brother Camillo Boito, he is regarded as one of the prominent representatives of the Scapigliatura artistic movement. Biography Birthplace in Padua Born in Padua, the son of Silvestro Boito (1802–1856), an Italian painter of miniatures, who was not of noble birth but passed himself off as a nobleman, and his wife, a Polish countess, Józefina Radolińska, Boito studied music at the Milan Conservatory with Alberto Mazzucato until 1861, where a friend, Albert Visetti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Falstaff (opera)
''Falstaff'' () is a comic opera in three acts by the Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi. The Italian-language libretto was adapted by Arrigo Boito from the play ''The Merry Wives of Windsor'' and scenes from ''Henry IV, Part 1'' and ''Henry IV, Part 2, Part 2'', by William Shakespeare. The work premiered on 9 February 1893 at La Scala, Milan. Verdi wrote ''Falstaff'', the last of his 28 operas, as he approached the age of 80. It was his second comedy, and his third work based on a Shakespeare play, following ''Macbeth (opera), Macbeth'' and ''Otello''. The plot revolves around the thwarted, sometimes farcical, efforts of the fat knight Sir John Falstaff to seduce two married women to gain access to their husbands' wealth. Verdi was concerned about working on a new opera at his advanced age, but he yearned to write a comic work and was pleased with Boito's draft libretto. It took the collaborators three years from mid-1889 to complete. Although the prospect of a new ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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