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Lyric Coloratura Soprano
A coloratura soprano () is a type of operatic soprano voice that specializes in music that is distinguished by agile runs, leaps and trills. The term ''coloratura'' refers to the elaborate ornamentation of a melody, which is a typical component of the music written for this voice. Within the coloratura category, there are roles written specifically for lighter voices known as lyric coloraturas and others for larger voices known as dramatic coloraturas. Categories within a certain vocal range are determined by the size, weight and color of the voice. Coloratura is particularly found in vocal music and especially in operatic singing of the 18th and 19th centuries. Lyric coloratura soprano A very agile light voice with a high upper extension, capable of fast vocal coloratura. Lyric coloraturas have a range of approximately middle C ( C4) to "high F" (F6). Such a soprano is sometimes referred to as a soprano leggero if her vocal timbre has a slightly warmer quality. The soprano legge ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Opera
Opera is a form of History of theatre#European theatre, Western theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by Singing, singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a libretto, librettist and incorporates a number of the performing arts, such as acting, Theatrical scenery, scenery, costume, and sometimes dance or ballet. The performance is typically given in an opera house, accompanied by an orchestra or smaller musical ensemble, which since the early 19th century has been led by a conducting, conductor. Although musical theatre is closely related to opera, the two are considered to be distinct from one another. Opera is a key part of Western culture#Music, Western classical music, and Italian tradition in particular. Originally understood as an sung-through, entirely sung piece, in contrast to a play with songs, opera has come to include :Opera genres, numerous ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alcina
''Alcina'' (Händel-Werke-Verzeichnis, HWV 34) is a 1735 opera by George Frideric Handel. Handel used the libretto of ''L'isola di Alcina'', a work set to music in 1728 in Rome by Riccardo Broschi, which he had acquired a year later during his travels in Italy. Partly altered for better conformity, the story was originally taken from Ludovico Ariosto's ''Orlando furioso'' (like those of the Handel operas ''Orlando (opera), Orlando'' and ''Ariodante''), an epic poem. The opera contains several musical sequences with opportunity for dance: these were composed for dancer Marie Sallé. Performance history ''Alcina'' was composed for Handel's first season at the Royal Opera House#First theatre, Theatre Royal, Covent Garden in London. It premiered on 16 April 1735. Like the composer's other works in the opera seria genre, ''Alcina'' fell into obscurity; after a revival in Braunschweig, Brunswick in 1738 it was not performed again until a production in Leipzig in 1928. The Australian s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bianca E Fernando
''Bianca e Fernando'' (''Bianca and Fernando'') is an opera in two acts by Vincenzo Bellini. The original version of this opera was presented as ''Bianca e Gernando'' and was set to a libretto by Domenico Gilardoni, based on ''Bianca e Fernando alla tomba di Carlo IV, duca di Agrigento'' (''Bianca and Ferdinand at the Tomb of Charles IV, Duke of Agrigento''), a play by Carlo Roti which is set in Sicily. In 1826, use of the name ''Fernando'' in the title was forbidden because Ferdinando was the name of the heir to the throne, and no form of it could be used on a royal stage. The 1826 work—Bellini's first professionally staged opera—had its first performance at the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples on 30 May 1826. Its success resulted in the offer to the young composer from Domenico Barbaia, the intendente at the San Carlo and also part of the management of La Scala opera house in Milan, of a commission to write a new opera for La Scala. The revival of ''Bianca e Gernando'', wi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791) was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period (music), Classical period. Despite his short life, his rapid pace of composition and proficiency from an early age resulted in List of compositions by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, more than 800 works representing virtually every Western classical genre of his time. Many of these compositions are acknowledged as pinnacles of the symphony, symphonic, concerto, concertante, chamber music, chamber, operatic, and choir, choral repertoires. Mozart is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers in the history of Classical music, Western music, with his music admired for its "melodic beauty, its formal elegance and its richness of harmony and texture". Born in Salzburg, Mozart showed Child prodigy, prodigious ability from his earliest childhood. At age five, he was already competent on keyboard and violin, had begun to compose, and performed before European r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mitridate, Re Di Ponto
''Mitridate, re di Ponto'' (''Mithridates, King of Pontus''), K. 87 (74a), is an opera seria in three acts by the young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The libretto is by , after Giuseppe Parini's Italian translation of Jean Racine's play '' Mithridate''. Mozart wrote ''Mitridate'' while touring Italy in 1770. The musicologist Daniel E. Freeman has demonstrated that it was composed with close reference to the opera '' La Nitteti'' by Josef Mysliveček. The latter was the opera being prepared for production in Bologna when Mozart met Mysliveček for the first time with his father in March 1770. Mysliveček visited the Mozarts frequently in Bologna during the summer of 1770 while Wolfgang was working on ''Mitridate''. Mozart gained expertise in composition from his older friend and also incorporated some of his musical motifs into his own operatic setting. The opera was first performed at the Teatro Regio Ducale, Milan, on 26 December 1770 (at the Milan Carnival). It was a success, perf ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Adès
Thomas Joseph Edmund Adès (born 1 March 1971) is a British composer, pianist and conductor. Five compositions by Adès received votes in the 2017 Classic Voice poll of the greatest works of art music since 2000: ''The Tempest (opera), The Tempest'' (2004), Violin Concerto (Adès), Violin Concerto (2005), ''Tevot'' (2007), ''In Seven Days'' (2008), and ''Polaris (composition), Polaris'' (2010). Biography Adès was born in London to art historian Dawn Adès and poet Timothy Adès. His surname is of Syrian Jews, Syrian Jewish origin. Adès is gay and identified his sexuality closely with the Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in his youth. Adès studied piano with Paul Berkowitz and later musical composition, composition with Robert Saxton at Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London. After attending University College School, he achieved a First-Class Honours, double starred first in 1992 at King's College, Cambridge, studying with Alexander Goehr and Robin Holloway. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Tempest (opera)
''The Tempest'' is an opera by English composer Thomas Adès with a libretto in English by Meredith Oakes based on the play ''The Tempest'' by William Shakespeare. Background and premiere performances Following the success of '' Powder Her Face'', The Royal Opera, Covent Garden, commissioned a new opera from Adès in the late 1990s. Working with a librettist, a poetic version of the Jonestown Massacre of 1978 was prepared, but the composer found it impossible to set it to music. Finally, the libretto he needed emerged from a collaboration with Meredith Oakes. The new opera became a co-production with the Copenhagen Opera House and the Opéra national du Rhin in Strasbourg. ''The Tempest'' received its world premiere to critical acclaim at the Royal Opera House in London on 10 February 2004. Other productions followed in Strasbourg and Copenhagen later in 2005 and the opera was given its US premiere staging by the Santa Fe Opera on 29 July 2006. Performance history Covent Ga ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Orlando (opera)
''Orlando'' (HWV 31) is an opera seria in three acts by George Frideric Handel written for the Her Majesty's Theatre, King's Theatre in London in 1733. The Italian libretto was adapted from Carlo Sigismondo Capece's ''L'Orlando'' after Ludovico Ariosto's ''Orlando Furioso'', which was also the source of Handel's operas ''Alcina'' and ''Ariodante''. More an artistic than a popular success at its first performances, ''Orlando'' is today recognised as a masterpiece. Performance history The opera was first given at the King's Theatre in London on 27 January 1733. There were 10 further performances and it was not revived. The first production since Handel's lifetime was given at Halle (Saale), Halle, Handel's birthplace, in 1922. A production staged by the Barber Institute of Fine Arts in Birmingham, England, in 1966, conducted by Anthony Lewis, with Janet Baker in the title role, brought the opera back to London for the first time in over two centuries with performances later the same ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vincenzo Bellini
Vincenzo Salvatore Carmelo Francesco Bellini (; ; 3 November 1801 – 23 September 1835) was an Italian opera composer famed for his long, graceful melodies and evocative musical settings. A central figure of the era, he was admired not only by the public, but also by many composers who were influenced by his work. His songs balanced florid Ornament (music), embellishment with a deceptively simple approach to lyric setting. Born to a musical family in Sicily, he distinguished himself early and earned a scholarship to study under several noted musicians at Music conservatories of Naples#Conservatorio di San Sebastiano, Naples' Real Collegio di Musica. There he absorbed elements of the Neapolitan School's style and was inspired by performances of Donizetti's and Rossini's operas, among others, in more modern idioms. He wrote his first opera, ''Adelson e Salvini'' (1825), for the conservatory, and his next, ''Bianca e Fernando'' (1826), on a Teatro di San Carlo-affiliated commiss ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
La Sonnambula
''La sonnambula'' (; ''The Sleepwalker'') is an opera semiseria in two acts, with music in the ''bel canto'' tradition by Vincenzo Bellini set to an Italian libretto by Felice Romani, based on a scenario for a ''ballet-pantomime'' written by Eugène Scribe and choreographed by Jean-Pierre Aumer called ''La somnambule, ou L'arrivée d'un nouveau seigneur''. The ballet had premiered in Paris in September 1827 at the height of a fashion for stage works incorporating somnambulism. The role of Amina was originally written for the soprano sfogato Giuditta Pasta and the tenor Giovanni Battista Rubini, but during Bellini's lifetime another soprano sfogato, Maria Malibran, was a notable exponent of the role. The first performance took place at the Teatro Carcano in Milan on 6 March 1831. The majority of twentieth-century recordings have been made with a soprano cast as Amina, usually with added top-notes and other changes according to tradition, although it was released in soprano ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gioachino Rossini
Gioachino Antonio Rossini (29 February 1792 – 13 November 1868) was an Italian composer of the late Classical period (music), Classical and early Romantic music, Romantic eras. He gained fame for his 39 operas, although he also wrote many songs, some chamber music and piano pieces and some Church music, sacred music. He set new standards for both comic and serious opera before retiring from large-scale composition while still in his thirties, at the height of his popularity. Born in Pesaro to parents who were both musicians (his father a trumpeter, his mother a singer), Rossini began to compose by the age of twelve and was educated at music school in Bologna. His first opera was performed in Venice in 1810 when he was 18 years old. In 1815 he was engaged to write operas and manage theatres in Naples. In the period 1810–1823, he wrote 34 operas for the Italian stage that were performed in Venice, Milan, Ferrara, Naples and elsewhere; this productivity necessitated an alm ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tancredi
''Tancredi'' is a ''melodramma eroico'' (''opera seria'' or heroic opera) in two acts by composer Gioachino Rossini and librettist Gaetano Rossi (who was also to write ''Semiramide'' ten years later), based on Voltaire's play ''Tancrède (tragedy), Tancrède'' (1760). The opera made its first appearance at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice on 6 February 1813, less than a month after the premiere of his previous opera ''Il signor Bruschino''. The overture, borrowed from ''La pietra del paragone'', is a popular example of Rossini's characteristic style and is regularly performed in concert and recorded. Considered by Stendhal, Rossini's earliest biographer, to be "high amongst the composer's masterworks", and describing it as "a genuine thunderbolt out of a clear, blue sky for the Italian lyric theatre," his librettist Gaetano Rossi notes that, with it, "Rossini rose to glory".Rossi, in Osborne, Richard 2007, p. 199 Richard Osborne proclaims it to be "his fully fledged ''opera seria'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
