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Shirley Love
Shirley Love (born January 6, 1940Hamilton, David and Andris-Michalaros, Aliki (eds.)"Love, Shirley" ''Metropolitan Opera Encyclopedia'', Simon and Schuster, 1987, p. 198. ) is an American operatic mezzo-soprano. Born in Detroit, Michigan, she studied singing in her home city with Avery Crew before pursuing further voice training with Marinka Gurevich and Margaret Harshaw in New York City. She made her professional opera début at the Metropolitan Opera on November 30, 1963, as the Second Lady in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's ''The Magic Flute'' with Anna Moffo as Pamina, Nicolai Gedda as Tamino, Gianna D'Angelo as The Queen of the Night, Cesare Siepi as Sarastro, Theodor Uppman as Papageno, and Silvio Varviso conducting. Love remained at the Met for the next 20 consecutive seasons, notably portraying The Priestess in ''Aida'', Annina in ''Der Rosenkavalier'', Emilia in ''Otello'', Rossweisse in ''The Ring Cycle'', Gertrud in ''Hänsel und Gretel (opera), Hänsel und Gretel'', Maddal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 librettist and incorporates a number of the performing arts, such as acting, 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 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 the Western classical music tradition. Originally understood as an entirely sung piece, in contrast to a play with songs, opera has come to include numerous genres, including some that include spoken dialogue such as ''Singspiel'' and ''Opéra comique''. In traditional number opera, singers employ two styles o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aida
''Aida'' (or ''Aïda'', ) is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni. Set in the Old Kingdom of Egypt, it was commissioned by Cairo's Khedivial Opera House and had its première there on 24 December 1871, in a performance conducted by Giovanni Bottesini. Today the work holds a central place in the operatic canon, receiving performances every year around the world; at New York's Metropolitan Opera alone, ''Aida'' has been sung more than 1,100 times since 1886. Ghislanzoni's scheme follows a scenario often attributed to the French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette, but Verdi biographer Mary Jane Phillips-Matz argues that the source is actually Temistocle Solera. Elements of the opera's genesis and sources Isma'il Pasha, Khedive of Egypt, commissioned Verdi to write an opera to celebrate the opening of the Suez Canal, but Verdi declined. However, Auguste Mariette, a French Egyptologist, proposed to Khedive Pasha a plot for a celebrato ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Trouble In Tahiti
''Trouble in Tahiti'' is a one-act opera in seven scenes composed by Leonard Bernstein with an English libretto by the composer. It is the darkest among Bernstein's "musicals", and one of only two for which he wrote the words and the music. (He also wrote the lyrics for the 1950 production of '' Peter Pan''.) ''Trouble in Tahiti'' received its first performance on 12 June 1952 at Bernstein's Festival of the Creative Arts on the campus of Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, to an audience of nearly 3,000 people. The NBC Opera Theatre subsequently presented the opera on television in November 1952, a production which marked mezzo-soprano Beverly Wolff's professional debut in the role of Dinah. Wolff later reprised the role in the New York City Opera's first staging of the work in 1958. The original work is about 40 minutes long. Background Bernstein was working on the opera during his honeymoon with Felicia Montealegre. The story is based on the relationship of Berns ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein ( ; August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, pianist, music educator, author, and humanitarian. Considered to be one of the most important conductors of his time, he was the first American conductor to receive international acclaim. According to music critic Donal Henahan, he was "one of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history". Bernstein was the recipient of many honors, including seven Emmy Awards, two Tony Awards, sixteen Grammy Awards including the Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Kennedy Center Honor. As a composer he wrote in many genres, including symphonic and orchestral music, ballet, film and theatre music, choral works, opera, chamber music and works for the piano. His best-known work is the Broadway musical '' West Side Story'', which continues to be regularly performed worldwide, and has been adapted into two ( 1961 and 2021) feature films. His works include three ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sergius Kagen
Sergius Kagen (August 22, 1909 – March 1, 1964) was an American pianist, composer, music editor and voice teacher.Lott, ''Grove online'' Life and musical career He was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, the third son of wealthy, intellectual Jewish parents, his father Isaiah Kagen, a newspaperman, and his mother Vera Lipshitz, a writer and educator.Villamil, p. 247 His older brother was studying to be a pianist, but he died in the Russian Revolution. Sergius then began his own piano study at the age of nine and soon entered the St. Petersburg Conservatory. But in 1920 his family fled the Revolution, moving to Berlin, and a year later he studied with Leonid Kreutzer and Paul Juon at the Hochschule für Musik. He and his family moved again, to the United States in 1925, and in 1930 he entered the Juilliard School in New York city, studying piano with Carl Friedberg, composition with Rubin Goldmark and singing with Marcella Sembrich, and earned his diploma in 1934. After Sembri ... [...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] |
Madama Butterfly
''Madama Butterfly'' (; ''Madame Butterfly'') is an opera in three acts (originally two) by Giacomo Puccini, with an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. It is based on the short story " Madame Butterfly" (1898) by John Luther Long, which in turn was based on stories told to Long by his sister Jennie Correll and on the semi-autobiographical 1887 French novel '' Madame Chrysanthème'' by Pierre Loti.Chadwick Jenna"The Original Story: John Luther Long and David Belasco" on columbia.edu Long's version was dramatized by David Belasco as the one-act play '' Madame Butterfly: A Tragedy of Japan'', which, after premiering in New York in 1900, moved to London, where Puccini saw it in the summer of that year. The original version of the opera, in two acts, had its premiere on 17 February 1904 at La Scala in Milan. It was poorly received, despite having such notable singers as soprano Rosina Storchio, tenor Giovanni Zenatello and baritone Giuseppe De Luca in l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Barber Of Seville
''The Barber of Seville, or The Useless Precaution'' ( it, Il barbiere di Siviglia, ossia L'inutile precauzione ) is an '' opera buffa'' in two acts composed by Gioachino Rossini with an Italian libretto by Cesare Sterbini. The libretto was based on Pierre Beaumarchais's French comedy '' The Barber of Seville'' (1775). The première of Rossini's opera (under the title ''Almaviva, o sia L'inutile precauzione'') took place on 20 February 1816 at the Teatro Argentina, Rome, with designs by Angelo Toselli. Rossini's ''Barber of Seville'' has proven to be one of the greatest masterpieces of comedy within music, and has been described as the opera buffa of all "opere buffe". After two hundred years, it remains a popular work. Composition history Rossini's opera recounts the events of the first of the three plays by French playwright Pierre Beaumarchais that revolve around the clever and enterprising character named Figaro, the barber of the title. Mozart's opera ''The Marriage of ... [...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. The composer's second opera, Poulenc wrote the libretto after the work of the same name by Georges Bernanos. The opera tells a fictionalised 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, through Raymond-Léopold Bruckberger and the scenario writer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Boris Godunov (opera)
''Boris Godunov'' ( rus, Борис Годунов, links=no, Borís Godunóv ) is an opera by Modest Mussorgsky (1839–1881). The work was composed between 1868 and 1873 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It is Mussorgsky's only completed opera and is considered his masterpiece. Its subjects are the Russian ruler Boris Godunov, who reigned as Tsar (1598 to 1605) during the Time of Troubles, and his nemesis, the False Dmitriy (reigned 1605 to 1606). The Russian-language libretto was written by the composer, and is based on the 1825 drama ''Boris Godunov'' by Aleksandr Pushkin, and, in the Revised Version of 1872, on Nikolay Karamzin's ''History of the Russian State''. Among major operas, ''Boris Godunov'' shares with Giuseppe Verdi's '' Don Carlos'' (1867) the distinction of having an extremely complex creative history, as well as a great wealth of alternative material. The composer created two versions—the Original Version of 1869, which was rejected for production by the Imper ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rigoletto
''Rigoletto'' is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi. The Italian libretto was written by Francesco Maria Piave based on the 1832 play ''Le roi s'amuse'' by Victor Hugo. Despite serious initial problems with the Austrian censors who had control over northern Italian theatres at the time, the opera had a triumphant premiere at La Fenice in Venice on 11 March 1851. The work, Verdi's sixteenth in the genre, is widely considered to be the first of the operatic masterpieces of Verdi's middle-to-late career. Its tragic story revolves around the licentious Duke of Mantua, his hunch-backed court jester Rigoletto, and Rigoletto's daughter Gilda. The opera's original title, ''La maledizione'' (The Curse), refers to a curse placed on both the Duke and Rigoletto by a courtier whose daughter the Duke has seduced with Rigoletto's encouragement. The curse comes to fruition when Gilda falls in love with the Duke and sacrifices her life to save him from the assassin hired by her father. Comp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hänsel Und Gretel (opera)
''Hansel and Gretel'' (German: ') is an opera by nineteenth-century composer Engelbert Humperdinck, who described it as a ' (fairy-tale opera). The libretto was written by Humperdinck's sister, Adelheid Wette, based on the Grimm brothers' fairy tale "Hansel and Gretel". It is much admired for its folk music-inspired themes, one of the most famous being the "" ("Evening Benediction") from act 2. The idea for the opera was proposed to Humperdinck by his sister, who approached him about writing music for songs that she had written for her children for Christmas based on "Hansel and Gretel". After several revisions, the musical sketches and the songs were turned into a full-scale opera. Humperdinck composed ''Hansel and Gretel'' in Frankfurt in 1891 and 1892. The opera was first performed in the Hoftheater in Weimar on 23 December 1893, conducted by Richard Strauss. It has been associated with Christmas since its earliest performances and today it is still most often performed at ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
