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Pierre Audi
Pierre Audi (9 November 1957 – 3 May 2025) was an English-Lebanese theatre director and artistic director. Early life Audi was born on 9 November 1957, the eldest of three children born to Lebanese banker Raymond Audi and Andrée Michel Fattal.Pierre Audi |
Beirut
Beirut ( ; ) is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Lebanon. , Greater Beirut has a population of 2.5 million, just under half of Lebanon's population, which makes it the List of largest cities in the Levant region by population, fourth-largest city in the Levant region and the List of largest cities in the Arab world, sixteenth-largest in the Arab world. The city is situated on a peninsula at the midpoint of Lebanon's Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean coast. Beirut has been inhabited for more than 5,000 years, making it one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world. Beirut is Lebanon's seat of government and plays a central role in the Economy of Lebanon, Lebanese economy, with many banks and corporations based in the city. Beirut is an important Port of Beirut, seaport for the country and region, and rated a Global City, Beta- World City by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. Beirut was severely damaged by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Islington
Islington ( ) is an inner-city area of north London, England, within the wider London Borough of Islington. It is a mainly residential district of Inner London, extending from Islington's #Islington High Street, High Street to Highbury Fields and Regent's Canal, encompassing the area around the busy High Street, Upper Street, Essex Road, and Southgate Road to the east. History Etymology The manor of Islington was named by the Saxons ''Giseldone'' (1005), then ''Gislandune'' (1062). The name means "GÄ«sla's hill" from the Old English personal name ''GÄ«sla'' and ''dun (fortification), dun'' ("hill", "Downland, down"). The name later mutated to ''Isledon'', which remained in use well into the 17th century when the modern form arose. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alexander Knaifel
Alexander Aronovich Knaifel (; also ''Knayfel'', ''Knayfel'', or ''Kneifel''; 28 November 1943 – 27 June 2024) was a Soviet composer from Tashkent, Uzbekistan, known for his operas '' The Ghost of Canterville'' and ''Alice in Wonderland'' as well as for his music for cinema. Background Knaifel was born on 28 November 1943. He studied cello with Mstislav Rostropovich at Moscow Conservatory from 1961 to 1963, then composition with Boris Arapov in Leningrad from 1964 until 1967. Knaifel died on 27 June 2024, at the age of 80. Music From the very beginning of his composing career he associated himself with the group of so-called "avant-garde" Soviet composers that include Andrey Volkonsky, Edison Denisov, Alfred Schnittke, Sofia Gubaidulina, Valentin Silvestrov, Leonid Hrabovsky, Arvo Pärt, Tigran Mansuryan, and others. The works of the 1990s and 2000s were strongly influenced by religious themes and showed dramatic changes in his musical language. He wrote more than 80 com ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Writing To Vermeer
''Writing to Vermeer'' is an opera in six scenes composed by Louis Andriessen with incidental electronic music by Michel van der Aa. The English-language libretto, inspired by the paintings of Johannes Vermeer, was written by Peter Greenaway. Saskia Boddeke directed the premiere production at the Dutch National Opera on 1 December 1999. Background and performance history ''Writing to Vermeer'' was Andriessen's third collaboration with British film director and screenwriter Peter Greenaway. Set in the Delft household of the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer in May 1672, ''Writing to Vermeer'' is composed for three women singers (two sopranos and a mezzo-soprano) each of whom writes six letters to Vermeer in his absence. Several of Vermeer's paintings portray women writing or reading letters, including '' Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid'', '' The Love Letter'', and ''A Lady Writing a Letter''. Andriessen said of his decision to accept Greenaway's proposal for the libretto: "I fee ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rosa – A Horse Drama
''Rosa, A Horse Drama'' also called ''Rosa – The Death of a Composer'' is an opera in 12 scenes by Dutch composer, Louis Andriessen with a libretto by English film maker Peter Greenaway. The libretto was the sixth in Greenaway's '' Death of a Composer'' series which explores the deaths of ten 20th-century composers, two real (Anton Webern and John Lennon), and the remaining eight fictional. It premiered at the Dutch National Opera on 2 November 1994 in a production co-directed by Greenaway and Saskia Boddeke. A recording of the opera was released on the Nonesuch label in 1998; Asko/Schönberg, conductor Reinbert de Leeuw. . Background Andriessen had worked previously with Greenaway in 1991 on a BBC commission "M is for Man, Music, Mozart". They had discussed the idea of collaborating on a film or opera with Greenaway initially suggesting The Baby of Mâcon which Andriessen rejected. "Rosa" was finally decided upon with Andriessen noting "..it's not about Rosa, but about film, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Louis Andriessen
Louis Joseph Andriessen (; 6 June 1939 – 1 July 2021) was a Dutch composer, pianist and academic teacher. Considered the most influential Dutch composer of his generation, he was a central proponent of The Hague school of composition. Although his music was initially dominated by neoclassicism and serialism, his style gradually shifted to a synthesis of American minimalism, big band jazz and the expressionism of Igor Stravinsky. Born in Utrecht into a musical family, Andriessen studied with his father, the composer Hendrik Andriessen as well as composers Kees van Baaren and Luciano Berio. Andriessen taught at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague from 1974 to 2012, influencing notable composers. His opera ''La Commedia'', based on Dante's ''Divine Comedy'', won the 2011 Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition and was selected in 2019 by critics at ''The Guardian'' as one of the most outstanding compositions of the 21st century. Life and career Andriessen was born in Utrecht on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peter Greenaway
Peter Greenaway, (born 5 April 1942) is a British film director, screenwriter and artist. His films are noted for the distinct influence of Renaissance and Baroque painting, and Mannerist painting in particular. Common traits in his films are the scenic composition and illumination and the contrasts of costume and nudity, nature and architecture, furniture and people, sexual pleasure and painful death. Early life Greenaway was born in Newport, Monmouthshire, Wales, to a teacher mother and a builder's merchant father. Greenaway's family had relocated to Wales prior to his birth to escape the Blitz. They returned to the London area at the end of World War II and settled in Woodford, then part of Essex. He attended Churchfields Junior School and later Forest School in nearby Walthamstow. At an early age Greenaway decided on becoming a painter. He became interested in European cinema, focusing first on the films of Ingmar Bergman, and then on the French '' nouvelle vague'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dialogues Des Carmélites
' (, ''Dialogues of the Carmelites''), FP 159, is an opera in three acts, divided into twelve scenes with linking orchestral interludes, with music and libretto by Francis Poulenc, completed in 1956. Poulenc wrote the libretto for his second opera after the work of the same name by Georges Bernanos, itself based on '' The Song at the Scaffold'' by Gertrud von Le Fort. This is a fictionalized version of the story of the Martyrs of Compiègne, Carmelite nuns who, in 1794 during the closing days of the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution, were guillotined in Paris for refusing to renounce their vocation. The world première of the opera occurred (in Italian translation) on 26 January 1957 at La Scala in Milan. The première of the French-language version took place in Paris on 21 June 1957. The United States première, in English, followed in San Francisco in September 1957. Development Bernanos had been hired in 1947 to write the dialogue for a film screenplay, throu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Francis Poulenc
Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc (; 7 January 189930 January 1963) was a French composer and pianist. His compositions include mélodie, songs, solo piano works, chamber music, choral pieces, operas, ballets, and orchestral concert music. Among the best-known are the piano suite ''Trois mouvements perpétuels'' (1919), the ballet ''Les biches'' (1923), the ''Concert champêtre'' (1928) for harpsichord and orchestra, the Organ Concerto (Poulenc), Organ Concerto (1938), the opera ''Dialogues des Carmélites'' (1957), and the ''Gloria (Poulenc), Gloria'' (1959) for soprano, choir, and orchestra. As the only son of a prosperous manufacturer, Poulenc was expected to follow his father into the family firm, and he was not allowed to enrol at a music college. He studied with the pianist Ricardo Viñes, who became his mentor after the composer's parents died. Poulenc also made the acquaintance of Erik Satie, under whose tutelage he became one of a group of young composers known collectively ... [...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] |
Lorenzo Da Ponte
Lorenzo Da Ponte (; 10 March 174917 August 1838) was an Italians, Italian, later American, opera libretto, librettist, poet and Catholic Church, Roman Catholic priest. He wrote the libretti for 28 operas by 11 composers, including three of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Mozart's most celebrated operas: ''The Marriage of Figaro'' (1786), ''Don Giovanni'' (1787), and ''Così fan tutte'' (1790). He was the first professor of Italian literature at Columbia University, and with Manuel GarcÃa (tenor), Manuel Garcia, the first to introduce Italian opera#Gluck's reforms and Mozart, Italian opera to America.Music View, Did Casanova Lend a Helping Hand? The New York Times, Donald Henahan, Nov. 10, 1985Smith, Howard Jay (2022) [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ring Cycle
(''The Ring of the Nibelung''), WWV 86, is a cycle of four German-language epic music dramas composed by Richard Wagner. The works are based loosely on characters from Germanic heroic legend, namely Norse legendary sagas and the . The composer termed the cycle a "" (stage festival play), structured in three days preceded by a ("preliminary evening"). It is often referred to as the ''Ring'' cycle, Wagner's ''Ring'', or simply ''The Ring''. Wagner wrote the libretto and music over the course of about twenty-six years, from 1848 to 1874. The four parts that constitute the ''Ring'' cycle are, in sequence: * ''Das Rheingold'' (''The Rhinegold'') * ''Die Walküre'' (''The Valkyrie'') * ''Siegfried'' * ''Götterdämmerung'' (''Twilight of the Gods'') Individual works of the sequence are often performed separately, and indeed the operas contain dialogues that mention events in the previous operas, so that a viewer could watch any of them without having watched the previous parts and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
