The Rake's Progress
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The Rake's Progress
''The Rake's Progress'' is an English-language opera from 1951 in three acts and an epilogue by Igor Stravinsky. The libretto, written by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman, is based loosely on the eight paintings and engravings ''A Rake's Progress'' (1733–1735) of William Hogarth, which Stravinsky had seen on 2 May 1947, in a Chicago exhibition. The story concerns the decline and fall of one Tom Rakewell, who deserts Anne Trulove for the delights of London in the company of Nick Shadow, who turns out to be the Devil. After several misadventures, all initiated by the devious Shadow, Tom ends up in Bedlam, a hospital for the insane at that time situated in the City of London. The moral of the tale is: "For idle hearts and hands and minds the Devil finds work to do." Performance history It was first performed at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice on 11 September 1951, with Robert Rounseville as Tom Rakewell, Elisabeth Schwarzkopf as Anne Trulove, and Otakar Kraus as Nick Shadow. It w ...
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Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ( – 6 April 1971) was a Russian composer and conductor with French citizenship (from 1934) and American citizenship (from 1945). He is widely considered one of the most important and influential 20th-century classical music, composers of the 20th century and a pivotal figure in modernism (music), modernist music. Born to a musical family in Saint Petersburg, Russia, Stravinsky grew up taking piano and music theory lessons. While studying law at the Saint Petersburg State University, University of Saint Petersburg, he met Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and studied music under him until the latter's death in 1908. Stravinsky met the impresario Sergei Diaghilev soon after, who commissioned the composer to write three ballets for the Ballets Russes's Paris seasons: ''The Firebird'' (1910), ''Petrushka (ballet), Petrushka'' (1911), and ''The Rite of Spring'' (1913), the last of which caused a List of classical music concerts with an unruly audience respons ...
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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 ...
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Portland Opera
Portland Opera is an American opera company based in Portland, Oregon. Its performances take place in the Keller Auditorium and Newmark Theatre, both part of the Portland Center for the Performing Arts. Portland Opera also produces a separate subscription series of touring Broadway musicals, which also take place at the Keller Auditorium. History Portland Opera was founded as the Portland Opera Association in 1964 by the conductor Henry Holt, and the first recreation director of Portland Parks & Recreation, Dorothea Marie Lensch, was a founding member. Its first performance was Strauss' '' Die Fledermaus'', the only opera presented that season. Holt served as the company's General Director for the first two years of existence. The next General Director post was the Austrian conductor Herbert Weiskopf, who died of a heart attack in March 1970 after conducting a performance of '' Lucia di Lammermoor''. The conductor Stefan Minde then took over as General Director and served unt ...
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Opera News
''Opera News'' was an American classical music magazine. It was published from 1936 to 2023 by the Metropolitan Opera Guild—a non-profit organization, located at Lincoln Center, that was founded to promote opera and support the Metropolitan Opera ("the Met") of New York City. ''Opera News'' was initially focused almost exclusively on the Met and its activities, providing information for listeners of the Saturday afternoon live Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts. Over the years, the magazine broadened its scope to include the larger American and international opera scenes. Published monthly, ''Opera News'' offered opera-related feature articles; artist interviews; production profiles; musicological pieces; music-business reportage; reviews of performances in the U.S. and Europe; reviews of recordings, videos, books and audio equipment; and listings of opera performances and recitals in the U.S. The final Editor-in-Chief was F. Paul Driscoll. Regular contributors to the mag ...
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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 ...
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Utah Opera
The Utah Opera is an American opera company that has been merged with Utah Symphony since July 2002, with a combined audience of more than 150,000 annually. History In 1978, the Utah Opera company presented its first production of Puccini's ''La bohème''. The founding General Director was tenor Glade Peterson. After Peterson's death in 1990, Anne Ewers was appointed General Director in 1991, with a tenure marked by the casting of younger artists. In 1996–97, the company increased their number of annual productions from three to four. The expanding popularity of the company's performances inspired the growth from a three-production season, to a four-production season beginning in 1996–97. In 2002, the company merged with the Utah Symphony, and Ewers was named as president and CEO. Utah Opera's current artistic director is Christopher McBeth. Education In the fall of 1977, Glade Peterson began education and outreach programs. By the 1980–81 season, the Opera in the School ...
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Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol (;''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''"Warhol" born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director and producer. A leading figure in the pop art movement, Warhol is considered one of the most important American artists of the second half of the 20th century. His works explore the relationship between artistic expression, advertising, and celebrity culture that flourished by the 1960s, and span a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, photography, and filmmaking. Some of his best-known works include the silkscreen paintings ''Campbell's Soup Cans'' (1962) and '' Marilyn Diptych'' (1962), the experimental film '' Chelsea Girls'' (1966), the multimedia events known as the '' Exploding Plastic Inevitable'' (1966–67), and the erotic film '' Blue Movie'' (1969) that started the " Golden Age of Porn". Born and raised in Pittsburgh in a family of Rusyn immigrants, Warhol initially pursued ...
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Krzysztof Warlikowski
Krzysztof Warlikowski (Polish pronunciation: ; born 26 May 1962) is a Polish theatre director. He is the creator and artistic director of Nowy Teatr (New Theatre) in Warsaw. Biography He studied history, philosophy and Romance languages at the Jagiellonian University and also philosophy, French language and literature at École Pratique Des Hautes Études at the Sorbonne. He graduated in directing from Ludwik Solski Academy for the Dramatic Arts in 1993. Among his teachers was director Krystian Lupa. In the early 1990s Warlikowski worked for some time as Lupa's assistant. He met and learned also from Peter Brook and Giorgio Strehler. Warlikowski directed his first plays at Stary Teatr in Kraków, where he staged Heinrich von Kleist's ''The Marquis of O.'' in 1993. His later dramas were performed at various theatres in Poland and Europe, including Teatr Nowy (The New Theatre) in Poznań, Warsaw's Teatr Studio (Studio Theatre), Teatr im. W. Horzycy (W. Horzyca Theatre) in Toru ...
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Leo Goeke
Leo Goeke (November 6, 1937, Kirksville, Missouri — September 18, 2012, Pittsfield, Massachusetts) was an American operatic tenor who had an active international career from the 1960s through the 1980s. He was particularly admired for his portrayal of Tom Rakewell in '' The Rake’s Progress'' at the Glyndebourne Festival in 1975 and its subsequent revivals there in 1977, 1978 and 1980. He was also lauded for his portrayal of Gandhi I in Philip Glass’ ''Satyagraha'' which he performed in a production staged by Achim Freyer at the Stuttgart Opera in 1983. Other opera companies which he sang leading roles with included the Metropolitan Opera, the New York City Opera, the Royal Opera, London, the Santa Fe Opera, and the Portland Opera among others. Goeke was an alumnus of Missouri Teachers College, Louisiana State University, and Iowa State University. He also studied voice at the Metropolitan Opera Studio. From 1994-2004 he was a professor of voice and director of the opera thea ...
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David Hockney
David Hockney (born 9 July 1937) is an English Painting, painter, Drawing, draughtsman, Printmaking, printmaker, Scenic design, stage designer, and photographer. As an important contributor to the pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considered one of the most influential British artists of the 20th and 21st centuries. Hockney has owned residences and studios in Bridlington and London as well as two residences in California, where he has lived intermittently since 1964: one in the Hollywood Hills, one in Malibu, California, Malibu. He has an office and stores his archives on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood, California. On 15 November 2018, Hockney's 1972 work ''Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)'' sold at Christie's auction house in New York City for $90 million (£70 million), becoming the List of most expensive artworks by living artists, most expensive artwork by a living artist sold at auction. It broke the previous record which was set by the 2013 sale ...
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John Cox (director)
John Cox (born 12 March 1935) is an English opera director. Born in Bristol, he was educated at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, and trained at Glyndebourne as assistant to Carl Ebert, and then at the York Theatre Royal and BBC television, made his directing debut with Ravel's ''L'enfant et les sortilèges'' for the Sadler's Wells company in 1965. In 1971 he was appointed as the first director of production at Glyndebourne, to oversee existing productions and create new ones. During his tenure he worked with designers including David Hockney, Sir Hugh Casson, Michael Annals and William Dudley. The critic Rodney Milnes singles out for mention Cox's Glyndbourne productions of Richard Strauss operas: ''Ariadne auf Naxos'' (1971), '' Capriccio'' (1973), ''Intermezzo'' (1974), '' Die schweigsame Frau'' (1977), ''Der Rosenkavalier'' (1980) and ''Arabella'' (1984). His most successful production there, however, was of Stravinsky's "The Rake's Progress" (1975) which had designs by Hockney (hi ...
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Royal Swedish Opera
Royal Swedish Opera () is an opera and ballet company based in Stockholm, Sweden. Location and environment The building is located in the centre of Sweden's capital, Stockholm, in the borough of Norrmalm (borough), Norrmalm, on the eastern side of Gustav Adolfs torg, Stockholm, Gustav Adolfs torg across from the former Arvfurstens Palats, now the Ministry for Foreign Affairs (Sweden), Ministry for Foreign Affairs. It lies on the north side of the Norrström River and is connected to the Stockholm Palace, Royal Palace through the Norrbro Bridge. Other historically and architecturally important buildings in the close neighbourhood are the Sager House, the official residence of the Prime Minister of Sweden, and the Riksdag building. History The opera company was founded with the Royal Swedish Academy of Music by King Gustav III of Sweden, Gustav III, and its first performance, ''Thetis and Phelée'' with Carl Stenborg and Elisabeth Olin, was given on 18 January 1773; this was th ...
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