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Nathaniel Merrill
Nathaniel Merrill (February 8, 1927 – September 9, 2008) was a celebrated American stage director and opera director. He was the resident stage director at the Metropolitan Opera from 1956-1985. During his 28 seasons at the Met he staged a total of 14 new productions in addition to directing several revivals. He also served as the Artistic Director of Central City Opera from 1959-1966. In 1981 he and his wife, conductor Louise Sherman, founded Opera Colorado. Merrill served as the company's artistic director and stage director and his wife worked as the company's musical director. Upon his wife's death from cancer in 1998, Merrill retired and thereafter lived in Denver until his death of complications related to Alzheimer's disease a decade later. Career Born in Newton, Massachusetts, Merrill earned degrees from Dartmouth College, the New England Conservatory of Music, and Boston University. After working with the Hamburg State Opera, the Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden, th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Salzburg Festival
The Salzburg Festival (german: Salzburger Festspiele) is a prominent festival of music and drama established in 1920. It is held each summer (for five weeks starting in late July) in the Austrian town of Salzburg, the birthplace of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. One highlight is the annual performance of the play '' Jedermann'' (''Everyman'') by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Since 1967, an annual Salzburg Easter Festival has also been held, organized by a separate organization. History Music festivals had been held in Salzburg at irregular intervals since 1877 held by the International Mozarteum Foundation but were discontinued in 1910. Although a festival was planned for 1914, it was cancelled at the outbreak of World War I. In 1917, Friedrich Gehmacher and Heinrich Damisch formed an organization known as the ''Salzburger Festspielhaus-Gemeinde'' to establish an annual festival of drama and music, emphasizing especially the works of Mozart. At the close of the war in 1918, the festival' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gaetano Donizetti
Domenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti (29 November 1797 – 8 April 1848) was an Italian composer, best known for his almost 70 operas. Along with Gioachino Rossini and Vincenzo Bellini, he was a leading composer of the ''bel canto'' opera style during the first half of the nineteenth century and a probable influence on other composers such as Giuseppe Verdi. Donizetti was born in Bergamo in Lombardy. At an early age he was taken up by Simon Mayr who enrolled him with a full scholarship in a school which he had set up. There he received detailed musical training. Mayr was instrumental in obtaining a place for Donizetti at the Bologna Academy, where, at the age of 19, he wrote his first one-act opera, the comedy '' Il Pigmalione'', which may never have been performed during his lifetime. An offer in 1822 from Domenico Barbaja, the impresario of the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, which followed the composer's ninth opera, led to his move to Naples and his residency there until pro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Porgy And Bess
''Porgy and Bess'' () is an English-language opera by American composer George Gershwin, with a libretto written by author DuBose Heyward and lyricist Ira Gershwin. It was adapted from Dorothy Heyward and DuBose Heyward's play ''Porgy'', itself an adaptation of DuBose Heyward's 1925 novel of the same name. ''Porgy and Bess'' was first performed in Boston on September 30, 1935, before it moved to Broadway in New York City. It featured a cast of classically trained African-American singers—a daring artistic choice at the time. A 1976 Houston Grand Opera production gained it a renewed popularity after languishing in the doldrums of the 1960s and early 1970s, and it is now one of the best known and most frequently performed operas. The libretto of ''Porgy and Bess'' tells the story of Porgy, a disabled black street beggar living in the slums of Charleston. It deals with his attempts to rescue Bess from the clutches of Crown, her violent and possessive lover, and Sportin' Li ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Gershwin
George Gershwin (; born Jacob Gershwine; September 26, 1898 – July 11, 1937) was an American composer and pianist whose compositions spanned popular, jazz and classical genres. Among his best-known works are the orchestral compositions ''Rhapsody in Blue'' (1924) and ''An American in Paris'' (1928), the songs "Swanee (song), Swanee" (1919) and "Fascinating Rhythm" (1924), the jazz standards "Embraceable You" (1928) and "I Got Rhythm" (1930), and the opera ''Porgy and Bess'' (1935), which included the hit "Summertime (George Gershwin song), Summertime". Gershwin studied piano under Charles Hambitzer and composition with Rubin Goldmark, Henry Cowell, and Joseph Brody (composer), Joseph Brody. He began his career as a song plugger but soon started composing Broadway theater works with his brother Ira Gershwin and with Buddy DeSylva. He moved to Paris, intending to study with Nadia Boulanger, but she refused him, afraid that rigorous classical study would ruin his jazz-influe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Les Troyens
''Les Troyens'' (; in English: ''The Trojans'') is a French grand opera in five acts by Hector Berlioz. The libretto was written by Berlioz himself from Virgil's epic poem the ''Aeneid''; the score was composed between 1856 and 1858. ''Les Troyens'' is Berlioz's most ambitious work, the summation of his entire artistic career, but he did not live to see it performed in its entirety. Under the title ''Les Troyens à Carthage'', the last three acts were premièred with many cuts by Léon Carvalho's company, the Théâtre Lyrique, at their theatre (now the Théâtre de la Ville) on the Place du Châtelet in Paris on 4 November 1863, with 21 repeat performances. After decades of neglect, today the opera is considered by some music critics as one of the finest ever written. Composition history Berlioz began the libretto on 5 May 1856 and completed it toward the end of June 1856. He finished the full score on 12 April 1858. Berlioz had a keen affection for literature, and he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hector Berlioz
In Greek mythology, Hector (; grc, Ἕκτωρ, Hektōr, label=none, ) is a character in Homer's Iliad. He was a Trojan prince and the greatest warrior for Troy during the Trojan War. Hector led the Trojans and their allies in the defense of Troy, killing countless Greek warriors. He was ultimately killed in single combat by Achilles, who later dragged his dead body around the city of Troy behind his chariot. Etymology In Greek, is a derivative of the verb ἔχειν ''ékhein'', archaic form * grc, ἕχειν, hékhein, label=none ('to have' or 'to hold'), from Proto-Indo-European *'' seɡ́ʰ-'' ('to hold'). , or as found in Aeolic poetry, is also an epithet of Zeus in his capacity as 'he who holds verything together. Hector's name could thus be taken to mean 'holding fast'. Description Hector was described by the chronicler Malalas in his account of the ''Chronography'' as "dark-skinned, tall, very stoutly built, strong, good nose, wooly-haired, good beard, s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Die Frau Ohne Schatten
' (''The Woman without a Shadow''), Op. 65, is an opera in three acts by Richard Strauss with a libretto by his long-time collaborator, the poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal. It was written between 1911 and either 1915 or 1917. When it premiered at the Vienna State Opera on 10 October 1919, critics and audiences were unenthusiastic. Many cited problems with Hofmannsthal's complicated and heavily symbolic libretto. However, it is now a standard part of the operatic repertoire. Composition history Work on the opera began in 1911. Hofmannsthal's earliest sketches for the libretto are based on a piece by Goethe, ' (1795). Hofmannsthal handles Goethe's material freely, adding the idea of two couples, the emperor and empress who come from another realm, and the dyer and his wife who belong to the ordinary world. Hofmannsthal also drew on portions of ''The Arabian Nights'', ''Grimms' Fairy Tales'', and even quotes Goethe's ''Faust''. The opera is conceived as a fairy tale on the theme of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss (; 11 June 1864 – 8 September 1949) was a German composer, conductor, pianist, and violinist. Considered a leading composer of the late Romantic music, Romantic and early Modernism (music), modern eras, he has been described as a successor of Richard Wagner and Franz Liszt. Along with Gustav Mahler, he represents the late flowering of German Romanticism, in which pioneering subtleties of orchestration are combined with an advanced harmony, harmonic style. Strauss's compositional output began in 1870 when he was just six years old and lasted until his death nearly eighty years later. While his output of works encompasses nearly every type of classical compositional form, Strauss achieved his greatest success with tone poems and operas. His first tone poem to achieve wide acclaim was ''Don Juan (Strauss), Don Juan'', and this was followed by other lauded works of this kind, including ''Death and Transfiguration'', ''Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks'', ''Als ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cecil Beaton
Sir Cecil Walter Hardy Beaton, (14 January 1904 – 18 January 1980) was a British fashion, portrait and war photographer, diarist, painter, and interior designer, as well as an Academy Awards, Oscar–winning stage design, stage and costume designer for films and the theatre. Early life and education Beaton was born on 14 January 1904 in Hampstead, north London, the son of Ernest Walter Hardy Beaton (1867–1936), a prosperous timber merchant, and his wife, Esther "Etty" Sisson (1872–1962). His grandfather, Walter Hardy Beaton (1841–1904), had founded the family business of "Beaton Brothers Timber Merchants and Agents", and his father followed into the business. Ernest Beaton was an amateur actor and met his wife, Cecil's mother Esther ("Etty"), when playing the lead in a play. She was the daughter of a Cumbrian blacksmith named Joseph Sisson and had come to London to visit her married sister. Ernest and Etty Beaton had four children – Cecil; two daughters, Nancy Beato ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Turandot
''Turandot'' (; see below) is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, posthumously completed by Franco Alfano in 1926, and set to a libretto in Italian by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni. ''Turandot'' best-known aria is " Nessun dorma", which became globally popular in the 1990s following Luciano Pavarotti's performance of it for the 1990 FIFA World Cup. Though Puccini first became interested in the subject matter when reading Friedrich Schiller's 1801 adaptation,. ''Freely translated from Schiller by Sabilla Novello:'' . he based his work more closely on the earlier play ''Turandot'' (1762) by Count Carlo Gozzi. The original story is one of the seven stories in the epic '' Haft Peykar''—a work by twelfth-century Persian poet Nizami ( 1141–1209). Nizami aligned his seven stories with the seven days of the week, the seven colors, and the seven planets known in his era. This particular narrative is the story of Tuesday, as told to the king of Iran, Bahram V (), by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
L'elisir D'amore
''L'elisir d'amore'' (''The Elixir of Love'', ) is a ' ( opera buffa) in two acts by the Italian composer Gaetano Donizetti. Felice Romani wrote the Italian libretto, after Eugène Scribe's libretto for Daniel Auber's ' (1831). The opera premiered on 12 May 1832 at the Teatro della Canobbiana in Milan. Background Written in haste in a six-week period, ''L'elisir d'amore'' was the most often performed opera in Italy between 1838 and 1848 and has remained continually in the international opera repertory. Today it is one of the most frequently performed of all Donizetti's operas: it appears as number 13 on the Operabase list of the most-performed operas worldwide in the five seasons between 2008 and 2013. There are a large number of recordings. It contains the popular tenor aria " Una furtiva lagrima", a '' romanza'' that has a considerable performance history in the concert hall. Donizetti insisted on a number of changes from the original Scribe libretto. The best known ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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