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The Hamburg Ballet
The Hamburg Ballet is a ballet company based in Hamburg, Germany. Since 1973, it has been directed by the American dancer and choreographer John Neumeier. In addition there is a ballet school, , established in 1978. The performances of the Hamburg Ballet are usually held at the Hamburg State Opera, while the training and education facility is the Ballettzentrum Hamburg – John Neumeier. History On August 16, 1973, John Neumeier took over as ballet Director and Chief Choreographer of the ballet department of the Hamburg State Opera. At that time the dancers worked at the opera the whole time, as the opera house included the stage and the ballet studios. The first performance of the company under the new leadership was a Ballet Workshop ("Ballett-Werkstatt") titled "Classical Technique in Modern Choreographies" on September 9, 1973. Later the Ballet Workshops developed into a hallmark of The Hamburg Ballet. On September 30, 1973, the dancers presented their first program with '' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Neumeier
John Neumeier (born February 24, 1939) is an American ballet dancer, choreographer, and director. He was the director and principal choreographer of Hamburg Ballet from 1973 to 2024 and the artistic director of the ballet at the Hamburg State Opera from 1996-2024. In 1978 he founded The School of the Hamburg Ballet, which includes a boarding school for 34 students. He has been the general director and artistic supervisor of the German National Youth Ballet since it was founded in 2011. Life and career Neumeier was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he received his first ballet training. He continued his dance training in Chicago at the Stone-Camyrn School of Ballet and performed with Sybil Shearer and Ruth Page. After completing a BA in English Literature and Theater Studies at Marquette University in 1961, he continued his training in Copenhagen with Vera Volkova and at the Royal Ballet School in London. In 1963 he joined the Stuttgart Ballet under John Cranko, rising ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Swan Lake
''Swan Lake'' ( rus, Лебеди́ное о́зеро, r=Lebedínoje ózero, p=lʲɪbʲɪˈdʲinəjə ˈozʲɪrə, links=no ), Op. 20, is a ballet composed by Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in 1875–76. Despite its initial failure, it is now one of the most popular ballets of all time. The scenario, initially in two acts, was fashioned from Russian and German folk tales and tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse. The choreographer of the original production was Julius Reisinger (Václav Reisinger). The ballet was premiered by the Bolshoi Ballet on at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. Although it is presented in many different versions, most ballet companies base their stagings both choreographically and musically on the 1895 revival of Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov, first staged for the Imperial Ballet on 15 January 1895, at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg. For this revival, Tchaikovsky's score was revise ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Peer Gynt
''Peer Gynt'' (, ) is a five-Act (drama), act play in verse written in 1867 by the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen. It is one of Ibsen's best known and most widely performed plays. ''Peer Gynt'' chronicles the journey of its title character from the Norwegian mountains to the North African desert and back. According to Klaus Van Den Berg, "its origins are Romanticism, Romantic, but the play also anticipates the fragmentations of emerging modernism" and the "cinematic script blends poetry with social satire and realistic scenes with Surrealism, surreal ones."Klaus Van Den Berg, "Peer Gynt" (review), ''Theatre Journal'' 58.4 (2006) 684–687 ''Peer Gynt'' has also been described as the story of a life based on procrastination and avoidance. Ibsen wrote ''Peer Gynt'' in deliberate disregard of the limitations that the conventional stagecraft of the Nineteenth-century theatre, 19th century imposed on drama. Its forty scenes move uninhibitedly in time and space and between conscious ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alfred Schnittke
Alfred Garrievich Schnittke (24 November 1934 – 3 August 1998) was a Russian composer. Among the most performed and recorded composers of late 20th-century classical music, he is described by musicologist Ivan Moody (composer), Ivan Moody as a "composer who was concerned in his music to depict the moral and spiritual struggles of contemporary man in [...] depth and detail." Schnittke's early music shows the strong influence of Dmitri Shostakovich. He developed a polystylism, polystylistic technique in works such as the epic Symphony No. 1 (Schnittke), Symphony No. 1 (1969–1972) and his Concerto Grosso No. 1 (Schnittke), first concerto grosso (1977). In the 1980s, Schnittke's music began to become more widely known abroad with the publication of his second (1980) and third (1983) string quartets and the String Trio (1985); the ballet ''Peer Gynt'' (1985–1987); the Symphony No. 3 (Schnittke), third (1981), Symphony No. 4 (Schnittke), fourth (1984), and Symphony No. 5 (Schnittk ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Messiah (Handel)
''Messiah'' (HWV 56) is an English-language oratorio composed in 1741 by George Frideric Handel. The text was compiled from the King James Bible and the Coverdale Bible, Coverdale Psalter by Charles Jennens. It was first performed in Dublin on 13 April 1742 and received its London premiere a year later. After an initially modest public reception, the oratorio gained in popularity, eventually becoming one of the best-known and most frequently performed choral works in Western culture#Music, Western music. Handel's reputation in England, where he had lived since 1712, had been established through his compositions of Italian opera. He turned to English oratorio in the 1730s in response to changes in public taste; ''Messiah'' was his sixth work in this genre. Although its Structure of Handel's Messiah, structure resembles that of Opera#The Baroque era, opera, it is not in dramatic form; there are no impersonations of characters and no direct speech. Instead, Jennens's text is an ex ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Frideric Handel
George Frideric (or Frederick) Handel ( ; baptised , ; 23 February 1685 – 14 April 1759) was a German-British Baroque composer well-known for his operas, oratorios, anthems, concerti grossi, and organ concerti. Born in Halle, Germany, Handel spent his early life in Hamburg and Italy before settling in London in 1712, where he spent the bulk of his career and became a naturalised British subject in 1727. He was strongly influenced both by the middle-German polyphonic choral tradition and by composers of the Italian Baroque. In turn, Handel's music forms one of the peaks of the "high baroque" style, bringing Italian opera to its highest development, creating the genres of English oratorio and organ concerto, and introducing a new style into English church music. He is consistently recognized as one of the greatest composers of his age. Handel started three commercial opera companies to supply the English nobility with Italian opera. In 1737, he had a physical breakdown, c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wolfgang Amadeus 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] |
Christmas Oratorio
The ''Christmas Oratorio'' (German: ''Weihnachtsoratorium''), , is an oratorio by Johann Sebastian Bach intended for performance in church during the Christmas season. It is in six parts, each part a cantata intended for performance in a church service on a feast day of the Christmas period. It was written for the Christmas season of 1734 and incorporates music from earlier compositions, including three secular cantatas written during 1733 and 1734 and a largely lost church cantata, BWV 248a. The date is confirmed in Bach's autograph manuscript. The next complete public performance was not until 17 December 1857 by the Sing-Akademie zu Berlin under Eduard Grell. The ''Christmas Oratorio'' is a particularly sophisticated example of parody music. The author of the text is unknown, although a likely collaborator was Christian Friedrich Henrici ( Picander). The work belongs to a group of three oratorios written in 1734 and 1735 for major feasts, the other two works being th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
St Matthew Passion
The ''St Matthew Passion'' (), BWV 244, is a '' Passion'', a sacred oratorio written by Johann Sebastian Bach in 1727 for solo voices, double choir and double orchestra, with libretto by Picander. It sets the 26th and 27th chapters of the Gospel of Matthew (in the Luther Bible) to music, with interspersed chorales and arias. It is widely regarded as one of the masterpieces of Baroque sacred music. The original Latin title translates to "The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ according to the Evangelist Matthew". Markus Rathey. 2016. ''Bach's Major Vocal Works. Music, Drama, Liturgy'', Yale University Press History The ''St Matthew Passion'' is the second of two Passion settings by Bach that have survived in their entirety, the first being the '' St John Passion'', first performed in 1724. Versions and contemporaneous performances Little is known with certainty about the creation process of the ''St Matthew Passion''. The available information derives from extant early ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach (German: Help:IPA/Standard German, [ˈjoːhan zeˈbasti̯an baχ]) ( – 28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque music, Baroque period. He is known for his prolific output across a variety of instruments and forms, including the orchestral ''Brandenburg Concertos''; solo instrumental works such as the Cello Suites (Bach), cello suites and Sonatas and Partitas for Solo Violin (Bach), sonatas and partitas for solo violin; keyboard works such as the ''Goldberg Variations'' and ''The Well-Tempered Clavier''; organ works such as the ' and the Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565, Toccata and Fugue in D minor; and choral works such as the ''St Matthew Passion'' and the Mass in B minor. Since the 19th-century Reception of Johann Sebastian Bach's music, Bach Revival, he has been widely regarded as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music. The Bach family had already produced several composers when Joh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler (; 7 July 1860 – 18 May 1911) was an Austro-Bohemian Romantic music, Romantic composer, and one of the leading conductors of his generation. As a composer he acted as a bridge between the 19th-century Austro-German tradition and the Modernism (music), modernism of the early 20th century. While in his lifetime his status as a conductor was established beyond question, his own music gained wide popularity only after periods of relative neglect, which included a ban on its performance in much of Europe during the Nazi Germany, Nazi era. After 1945 his compositions were rediscovered by a new generation of listeners; Mahler then became one of the most frequently performed and recorded of all composers, a position he has sustained into the 21st century. Born in Kingdom of Bohemia, Bohemia (then part of the Austrian Empire) to Jewish parents of humble origins, the German-speaking Mahler displayed his musical gifts at an early age. After graduating from the University of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Giselle
''Giselle'' ( , ), originally titled ''Giselle, ou les Wilis'' (; ''Giselle, or The Wilis''), is a romantic ballet () in two acts with music by Adolphe Adam. Considered a masterwork in the classical ballet performance canon, it was first performed by the Ballet du Théâtre de l'Académie Royale de Musique at the Salle Le Peletier in Paris on 28 June 1841, with Italian ballerina Carlotta Grisi as Giselle. It was an unqualified triumph. It became hugely popular and was staged at once across Europe, Russia, and the United States. The ghost-filled ballet tells the tragic, romantic story of a beautiful young peasant girl named Giselle and a disguised nobleman named Albrecht, who fall in love, but when his true identity is revealed by his rival, Hilarion, Giselle goes mad and dies of heartbreak. After her death, she is summoned from her grave into the vengeful, deadly sisterhood of the Vila (fairy), Wilis, the ghosts of unmarried women who died after being betrayed by their lovers an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
