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The Makropoulos Case
''The Makropulos Affair'' (also ''The Makropoulos Case'', ''The Makropulos Secret'', or in ) is a Czech opera in 3 acts, with music and libretto by Leoš Janáček. Janáček based his opera on the play '' Věc Makropulos'' by Karel Čapek. Composed between 1923 and 1925, ''The Makropulos Affair'' was his penultimate opera and, like much of his later work, was inspired by his infatuation with Kamila Stösslová, a married woman much younger than himself. The opera received its world premiere at the National Theatre in Brno on 18 December 1926, conducted by František Neumann. Composition history Janáček had seen the play early in its run in Prague on 10 December 1922 and immediately saw its potential as an opera. He entered into a correspondence with Čapek, who was accommodating towards the idea, but legal problems in securing the rights to the play delayed work. When these problems resolved on 10 September 1923, Janáček began work on the opera. By December 1924, he had co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leoš Janáček
Leoš Janáček (, 3 July 1854 – 12 August 1928) was a Czech composer, Music theory, music theorist, Folkloristics, folklorist, publicist, and teacher. He was inspired by Moravian folk music, Moravian and other Slavs, Slavic music, including Eastern European folk music, to create an original, modern musical style. Born in Hukvaldy, Janáček demonstrated musical talent at an early age and was educated in Brno, Prague, Leipzig, and Vienna. He then returned to live in Brno, where he married his pupil Zdenka Schulzová and devoted himself mainly to folkloristic research. His earlier musical output was influenced by contemporaries such as Antonín Dvořák, but around the turn of the century he began to incorporate his earlier studies of national folk music, as well as his transcriptions of "speech melodies" of spoken language, to create a modern, highly original synthesis. The death of his daughter Olga in 1903 had a profound effect on his musical output; these notable transfor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
San Francisco Opera
The San Francisco Opera (SFO) is an American opera company founded in 1923 by Gaetano Merola (1881–1953) based in San Francisco, California. History Gaetano Merola (1923–1953) Merola's road to prominence in the Bay Area began in 1906 when he first visited the city. In 1909, he returned as the conductor of the International Opera Company of Montreal, one of the many visiting troupes that frequented the bustling city. Continued visits over the next decade convinced him that an opera company in San Francisco was viable. Merola moved back into the city in 1921 while living with Mrs. Oliver Stine's support Oliver Stine. He drafted plans for a new, locally-owned opera company that would not rely on visiting troupes, a common practice for some opera companies since the Gold Rush. By the next year, Merola organized a trial season at Stanford University. The first performance occurred in the Stanford Cardinal's football stadium on June 3, 1922, with operatic tenor Giovanni Mart ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Karita Mattila
Karita Marjatta Mattila (born 5 September 1960) is a Finnish operatic soprano. Mattila appears regularly in the major opera houses worldwide, including the Metropolitan Opera, the Royal Opera House in London, Théâtre du Châtelet, Opéra Bastille, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, San Francisco Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Vienna State Opera, Toronto Roy Thomson Hall, and Großes Festspielhaus in Salzburg. Career Born in Somero, Finland, Mattila graduated 1983 from the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, where she studied singing with Liisa Linko-Malmio. She then continued her studies with Vera Rózsa in London. Also in 1983, Mattila won the first Cardiff Singer of the World Competition. In 1985, she made her Royal Opera House, Covent Garden debut as Fiordiligi in Mozart's ''Così fan tutte''. She was seen as Emma in the first ever televised production of Schubert's ''Fierrabras'' at the Vienna State Opera in 1988. In 1990 she made her Metropolitan Opera debut as Donna Elvira in Mozar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
BBC Symphony Orchestra
The BBC Symphony Orchestra (BBC SO) is a British orchestra based in London. Founded in 1930, it was the first permanent salaried orchestra in London, and is the only one of the city's five major symphony orchestras not to be self-governing. The BBC SO is the principal broadcast orchestra of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). The orchestra was originally conceived in 1928 as a joint enterprise by the BBC and the conductor Sir Thomas Beecham, but the latter withdrew the next year and the task of assembling and training the orchestra fell to the BBC's director of music, Adrian Boult. Among its guest conductors in its first years was Arturo Toscanini, who judged it the finest orchestra he had ever conducted. During and after the Second World War, Boult strove to maintain standards, but the senior management of the post-war BBC did not allocate the orchestra the resources to meet competition from new and well-funded rivals. After Boult's retirement from the BBC in 1950, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Albert Hall
The Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall on the northern edge of South Kensington, London, England. It has a seating capacity of 5,272. Since the hall's opening by Queen Victoria in 1871, the world's leading artists from many performance genres have appeared on its stage. It is the venue for the BBC Proms concerts, which have been held there every summer since 1941. It is host to more than 390 shows in the main auditorium annually, including classical, rock and pop concerts, ballet, opera, film screenings with live orchestral accompaniment, sports, awards ceremonies, school and community events, and charity performances and banquets. A further 400 events are held each year in the non-auditorium spaces. Over its 153-year history, the hall has hosted people from various fields, including meetings held by suffragettes, speeches from Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle, and Albert Einstein, fights by Lennox Lewis, exhibition bouts by Muhammad Ali, and concerts from regular performer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Glyndebourne Festival Opera
Glyndebourne Festival Opera is an annual opera festival held at Glyndebourne, an English country house near Lewes, in East Sussex, England. History Under the supervision of the Christie family, the festival has been held annually since 1934, except in 1941–45 during World War II and 1993 when the theatre was being rebuilt, for a 1994 reopening. Gus Christie, son of Sir George Christie and grandson of festival founder John Christie, became festival chairman in 2000. Since the company's inception, Glyndebourne has been particularly celebrated for its productions of Mozart operas. Recordings of Glyndebourne's past historic Mozart productions have been reissued. Other notable productions included their 1980s production of George Gershwin's ''Porgy and Bess'', directed by Trevor Nunn, and later expanded from the Glyndebourne stage and videotaped in 1993 for television, with Nunn again directing. While Mozart operas have continued to be the mainstay of its repertory, the comp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Proms
The BBC Proms is an eight-week summer season of daily orchestral classical music concerts and other events held annually, predominantly in the Royal Albert Hall in central London. Robert Newman founded The Proms in 1895. Since 1927, the BBC has organised and broadcast The Proms. Each season consists of concerts in the Royal Albert Hall, chamber music concerts at Cadogan Hall (or occasionally other venues), additional Proms in the Park events across the UK on the Last Night of the Proms, and associated educational and children's events. Recently, concerts have been held in additional cities across different nations of the UK, as part of Proms Around the UK. The season is a significant event in British culture and in classical music. Czech conductor Jiří Bělohlávek described the Proms as "the world's largest and most democratic musical festival". ''Prom'' is short for '' promenade concert'', a term which originally referred to outdoor concerts in London's pleasure ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oliver Von Dohnányi
Oliver von Dohnányi (born 2 March) is a Slovak conductor based in Prague, Czech Republic. Dohnányi was born in Trenčín, Czechoslovakia (now in Slovakia) and studied violin, composition and conducting at the Prague Academy for Music under Václav Neumann and the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna under Otmar Suitner. He made his conducting debut in 1979 with the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra in Bratislava. Slovak National TheatreOliver Dohnányi/ref> Previously, Dohnányi served as the music director of the Czech National Theatre in Prague, Intendent/Artistic Director of the Opera of the Slovak National Theatre in Bratislava, Intendent/Artistic Director of the Opera of the Moravian-Silesian National Theatre in Ostrava Ostrava (; ; ) is a city in the north-east of the Czech Republic and the capital of the Moravian-Silesian Region. It has about 283,000 inhabitants. It lies from the border with Poland, at the confluences of four rivers: Oder, Opava (ri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
National Theatre (Brno)
The National Theatre Brno () is an opera, ballet and drama company in the Czech Republic, that nation's second busiest. It was established in 1884 on the model of the National Theatre (Prague), National Theatre company in Prague. Today it runs the biennial Janáček Festival, in November, and has three venues: * Janáček Theatre, the largest, completed in 1965 * Mahen Theatre, originally the German-language Theatre on the Walls, with some 700 seats; finished in 1882; first theatre on the Continental Europe, Continent with electric lighting (designed by Thomas Alva Edison himself); site of the premieres of Janáček's greatest operas * Reduta Theatre, the oldest theatre house in Central Europe, recently reconstructed; in December 1767 the twelve-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart gave a concert there References External links * Opera houses in the Czech Republic National theatres, Brno, National Theatre (Brno) Theatres in Brno Theatres completed in 1884 Music venue ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roman Sadnik
Roman Sadnik (born 26 February 1963) is an Austrian operatic tenor. Life Born in Vienna,Roman Sadnik 2015 Sadnik first trained as an actor before deciding to become a singer. He studied voice at the with Walter Berry. He then took private lessons from [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gabriela Beňačková
Gabriela Beňačková also Gabriela Beňačková-Čápová (born 25 March 1944 or 1947) is a Slovak lyric soprano. Life and career Beňačková was born in Bratislava on 25 March in either 1944 or 1947. Her father Antonín was a lawyer, and her mother Elena was a housewife. She is the younger sister of television presenter Nora Beňačková. In her young age she had been involved in ballet lessons, children's choir of Czechoslovakian Radio, and learned singing and piano at school. Beňačková specializes in the music of her Slovak compatriots, particularly Eugen Suchoň, as well as Czech composers, notably Bedřich Smetana, Antonín Dvořák and Leoš Janáček. She is considered to be one of the greatest 'Jenůfa's' in Janáček's opera of the same name. Her Carnegie Hall performance, and subsequent Metropolitan Opera run with Leonie Rysanek, are considered to be legendary. In 1981, Czechoslovakian television starred Ms Beňačková in a definitive version of ''Prodaná n ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Versalle
Richard Lee Versalle (3 December 1932 – 5 January 1996) was an American operatic tenor. Life and career Richard Versalle was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan on 3 December 1932. After serving in the submarine branch of the US Navy, he worked in business while studying singing. He was initially known as a concert and oratorio singer and did not make his operatic stage debut until the age of 45 when he sang Augustin Moser in ''Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg'' at Chicago Lyric Opera. He specialized in the heroic tenor roles such as the title role in ''Otello'', Florestan in ''Fidelio'', Tristan in ''Tristan und Isolde'', and most notably the title role in '' Tannhäuser'', which made him a sought after Tenor, who performed regularly at the Bayreuth Festspiele in 1985, 1986, 1987, and 1989, as well as in Genoa, Tokyo, Vienna, Bonn, Sydney, Pittsburg, Chicago, and the Met. Versalle made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera on 8 December 1978, when he sang the minor role of the Messenger ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
