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New Zealand Opera Company
The New Zealand Opera Company was New Zealand's first resident professional national company, formed by baritone Donald Munro in 1954. Its first full-scale work was Mozart's '' Marriage of Figaro'' in 1958, which toured 47 towns. From 1963 funding from the QE II Arts Council allowed national tours with a full orchestra, including a production of '' Porgy and Bess'' with a Māori cast including Īnia Te Wiata, and Ngaio Marsh's '' A Unicorn for Christmas'' with music by David Farquhar David Andross Farquhar (5 April 1928 – 8 May 2007) was a New Zealand composer and professor of music at Victoria University of Wellington. Biography Farquhar was born in Cambridge, New Zealand, in 1928 but spent most of his early years in F .... After Arts Council funding was withdrawn in 1971 the company folded. References Sources * * {{authority control New Zealand opera companies Musical groups from Auckland Musical groups established in 1954 Musical groups disestabli ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carmen
''Carmen'' () is an opera in four acts by the French composer Georges Bizet. The libretto was written by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée. The opera was first performed by the Opéra-Comique in Paris on 3 March 1875, where its breaking of conventions shocked and scandalised its first audiences. Bizet died suddenly after the 33rd performance, unaware that the work would achieve international acclaim within the following ten years. ''Carmen'' has since become one of the most popular and frequently performed operas in the classical canon; the " Habanera" from act 1 and the "Toreador Song" from act 2 are among the best known of all operatic arias. The opera is written in the genre of ''opéra comique'' with musical numbers separated by dialogue. It is set in southern Spain and tells the story of the downfall of Don José, a naïve soldier who is seduced by the wiles of the fiery gypsy Carmen. José abandons his childho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Auckland
Auckland (pronounced ) ( mi, Tāmaki Makaurau) is a large metropolitan city in the North Island of New Zealand. The most populous urban area in the country and the fifth largest city in Oceania, Auckland has an urban population of about It is located in the greater Auckland Region—the area governed by Auckland Council—which includes outlying rural areas and the islands of the Hauraki Gulf, and which has a total population of . While Europeans continue to make up the plurality of Auckland's population, the city became multicultural and cosmopolitan in the late-20th century, with Asians accounting for 31% of the city's population in 2018. Auckland has the fourth largest foreign-born population in the world, with 39% of its residents born overseas. With its large population of Pasifika New Zealanders, the city is also home to the biggest ethnic Polynesian population in the world. The Māori-language name for Auckland is ', meaning "Tāmaki desired by many", in ref ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Donald Munro (opera Singer)
Donald Munro may refer to: * Donald Munro of Foulis (died 1039), first traditional chief of the Clan Munro * Donald W. Munro (1916–1998), Progressive Conservative party member of the Canadian House of Commons * Donald B. Munro (died 1984), Ontario mayor * Donald L. Munro, American politician from Pennsylvania * Donald Munro (New Brunswick politician) (1885–?), member of the Legislative Assembly of New Brunswick and Mayor of Woodstock, New Brunswick * Donnie Munro (born 1953), Scottish musician * Don Munro (Australian footballer) (1891–1954), Australian rules footballer for Fitzroy * Donald Munro (moderator) (1860–1937), Moderator of the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland in 1918 See also *Donald Monro (other) *Donald Monroe Donald Keith was a pseudonym for authors Donald (1888–1972) and Keith Monroe (1915–2003). They are best known for their series of stories in the Time Machine series, which were originally published in ''Boys' Life'' maga ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 17565 December 1791), baptised as Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period. Despite his short life, his rapid pace of composition resulted in more than 800 works of virtually every genre of his time. Many of these compositions are acknowledged as pinnacles of the symphonic, concertante, chamber, operatic, and choral repertoire. Mozart is widely regarded as among the greatest composers in the history of Western music, with his music admired for its "melodic beauty, its formal elegance and its richness of harmony and texture". Born in Salzburg, in the Holy Roman Empire, Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood. Already competent on keyboard and violin, he composed from the age of five and performed before European royalty. His father took him on a grand tour of Europe and then three trips to Italy. At 17, he was a musician at the Salzburg court ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Marriage Of Figaro
''The Marriage of Figaro'' ( it, Le nozze di Figaro, links=no, ), K. 492, is a ''commedia per musica'' ( opera buffa) in four acts composed in 1786 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with an Italian libretto written by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It premiered at the Burgtheater in Vienna on 1 May 1786. The opera's libretto is based on the 1784 stage comedy by Pierre Beaumarchais, ''La folle journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro'' ("The Mad Day, or The Marriage of Figaro"). It tells how the servants Figaro and Susanna succeed in getting married, foiling the efforts of their philandering employer Count Almaviva to seduce Susanna and teaching him a lesson in fidelity. Considered one of the greatest operas ever written, it is a cornerstone of the repertoire and appears consistently among the top ten in the Operabase list of most frequently performed operas. In 2017, BBC News Magazine asked 172 opera singers to vote for the best operas ever written. ''The Marriage of Figaro'' came in first out ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
QEII Arts Council
The Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa (Creative New Zealand) is the national arts development agency of the New Zealand government, investing in artists and arts organisations, offering capability building programmes and developing markets and audiences for New Zealand arts domestically and internationally. Its funding consists of approximately 30% central government funding and the remaining amount from the Lotteries Commission. In 2014/15, the Arts Council invested a record $43.6 million in New Zealand arts and arts organisations. Funding is available for artists, community groups and arts organisations. Creative New Zealand funds projects and organisations across many art-forms, including theatre, dance, music, literature, visual art, craft object art, Māori arts, Pacific arts, Inter-arts and Multi-disciplinary. Funding Creative New Zealand funding is distributed under four broad funding programmes: * Investment programmes * Grants and special opportunities * Creat ... [...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] |
Māori People
The Māori (, ) are the indigenous Polynesian people of mainland New Zealand (). Māori originated with settlers from East Polynesia, who arrived in New Zealand in several waves of canoe voyages between roughly 1320 and 1350. Over several centuries in isolation, these settlers developed their own distinctive culture, whose language, mythology, crafts, and performing arts evolved independently from those of other eastern Polynesian cultures. Some early Māori moved to the Chatham Islands, where their descendants became New Zealand's other indigenous Polynesian ethnic group, the Moriori. Initial contact between Māori and Europeans, starting in the 18th century, ranged from beneficial trade to lethal violence; Māori actively adopted many technologies from the newcomers. With the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, the two cultures coexisted for a generation. Rising tensions over disputed land sales led to conflict in the 1860s, and massive land confiscations, to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Inia Te Wiata
Inia Morehu Tauhia Watene Iarahi Waihurihia Te Wiata (10 June 191526 June 1971) was a New Zealand Māori bass-baritone opera singer, film actor, whakairo (carver) and artist. Early life Inia Te Wiata was born in Ōtaki, New Zealand, into the Ngāti Raukawa ki te Tonga iwi. His father, Watene Te Wiata, died in the 1918 influenza epidemic. His mother Constance Helena Johnson remarried soon afterwards and Inia was brought up by Pairoroku and Rakate Rikihana, relatives of his father. He developed an interest in singing and first performed on stage at the age of 7. He attended the Otaki state school and was taught music by Miss Edith Miller. After primary school he attended Otaki Māori College. At the age of 13 his voice broke and settled into a bass-baritone. Afterwards he joined his cousin's quartet, which included Wi Nicholls, Henry Tahiwi and Dan Rikihana. Other family members encouraged Te Wiata in his singing – particularly Mrs Mihi Taylor, a member of the Rikihana family. Sh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ngaio Marsh
Dame Edith Ngaio Marsh (; 23 April 1895 – 18 February 1982) was a New Zealand mystery writer and theatre director. She was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1966. As a crime writer during the "Golden Age of Detective Fiction", Marsh is known as one of the "Queens of Crime", along with Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Margery Allingham. She is known primarily for her character Inspector Roderick Alleyn, a gentleman detective who works for the Metropolitan Police (London). The Ngaio Marsh Award is awarded annually for the best New Zealand mystery, crime and thriller fiction writing. Youth Marsh was born in the city of Christchurch, New Zealand, where she also died. In the Introduction to ''The Collected Short Fiction of Ngaio Marsh'', Douglas G. Greene writes: "Marsh explained to an interviewer... that in New Zealand European children often receive native names, and Ngaio... can mean either 'light on the water' or 'little tree bu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A Unicorn For Christmas
A, or a, is the first letter and the first vowel of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''a'' (pronounced ), plural ''aes''. It is similar in shape to the Ancient Greek letter alpha, from which it derives. The uppercase version consists of the two slanting sides of a triangle, crossed in the middle by a horizontal bar. The lowercase version can be written in two forms: the double-storey a and single-storey ɑ. The latter is commonly used in handwriting and fonts based on it, especially fonts intended to be read by children, and is also found in italic type. In English grammar, " a", and its variant " an", are indefinite articles. History The earliest certain ancestor of "A" is aleph (also written 'aleph), the first letter of the Phoenician alphabet, which consisted entirely of consonants (for that reason, it is also called an abjad to distinguish it fr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Farquhar
David Andross Farquhar (5 April 1928 – 8 May 2007) was a New Zealand composer and professor of music at Victoria University of Wellington. Biography Farquhar was born in Cambridge, New Zealand, in 1928 but spent most of his early years in Fiji. He was educated in New Zealand, and was a pupil at St Peter's School in Cambridge and Wanganui Collegiate School. He was an accomplished sportsman and academic at both schools, captaining the cricket team in summer and hockey team in winter. He also broke many of their short- and middle-distance running records. He began his university studies in Christchurch before completing his degree at Victoria University College where he studied with Jenny McLeod and Douglas Lilburn. He went to the United Kingdom where he completed a Master of Arts at the University of Cambridge, and also studied composition with Benjamin Frankel at the Guildhall School of Music in London. On his return to New Zealand in 1953, Farquhar joined the staff of the D ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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