A Dinner Engagement
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A Dinner Engagement
''A Dinner Engagement'' is a one-act comic opera by Lennox Berkeley, (his Op. 45) to a libretto by Paul Dehn. The opera was written for Benjamin Britten's English Opera Group. It premiered at the Jubilee Hall, Aldeburgh Festival, in 1954; the first London performance was at Sadler's Wells Theatre on 7 October 1954, with the same cast. The first performance in the USA was at the University of Washington in 1958. Berkeley's 1967 one-act opera, ''Castaway'' (also to a libretto by Dehn) was written as a companion piece to ''A Dinner Engagement''.Anon (n.d.)"Berkeley, L ''(A) Dinner Engagement''" ''Gramophone'' magazine, accessed 11 June 2018. Roles Synopsis The impoverished Earl and Countess of Dunmow are preparing a dinner at their flat in Chelsea for the wealthy Grand Duchess of Monteblanco (where the Earl was once ambassador) and her son Prince Phillipe. They are hoping that they can encourage the Prince into marrying their recalcitrant daughter Susan. Despite food burning i ...
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Comic Opera
Comic opera, sometimes known as light opera, is a sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature, usually with a happy ending and often including spoken dialogue. Forms of comic opera first developed in late 17th-century Italy. By the 1730s, a new operatic genre, ''opera buffa'', emerged as an alternative to '' opera seria''. It quickly made its way to France, where it became ''opéra comique'', and eventually, in the following century, French operetta, with Jacques Offenbach as its most accomplished practitioner. The influence of the Italian and French forms spread to other parts of Europe. Many countries developed their own genres of comic opera, incorporating the Italian and French models along with their own musical traditions. Examples include German ''singspiel'', Viennese operetta, Spanish '' zarzuela'', Russian comic opera, English ballad and Savoy opera, North American operetta and musical comedy. Italian ''opera buffa'' In late 17th-century Italy, light-hearted m ...
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April Cantelo
April Rosemary Cantelo (born 2 April 1928) is an English soprano. Life and career Cantelo was born in Purbrook, Hampshire in 1928. She attended Chelmsford County High School for Girls. She studied in London under Vilém Tauský, Joan Cross, Imogen Holst and others. She sang in the Glyndebourne Chorus and then made her debut in Edinburgh in 1950 as Barbarina and Echo. Blyth, A. April Cantelo. In: ''The New Grove Dictionary of Opera''. Macmillan, London and New York, 1997. She played Rosetta in '' Love in a Village'', the pasticcio by Arne, at Aldeburgh in June 1952. In the first half of the 1950s she sang Barbarina, Countess Ceprano and Poussette at Covent Garden. Cantelo sang in the British premieres of Hans Werner Henze's ''Boulevard Solitude'' (Manon Lescaut) and Kurt Weill's ''Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny'' (Jenny). She appeared in the world premiere of Malcolm Williamson's '' English Eccentrics''. Among the roles she created are: * Lady in ''The Grace of Todd'' ...
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Operas Set In London
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 of singing: ...
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Operas By Lennox Berkeley
Opera is a form of theatre in which music Music is generally defined as the art of arranging sound to create some combination of form, harmony, melody, rhythm or otherwise expressive content. Exact definitions of music vary considerably around the world, though it is an aspect ... is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by Singing, singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a libretto, librettist and incorporates a number of the performing arts, such as acting, Theatrical scenery, 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 conducting, 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 cultur ...
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English-language Operas
English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the island of Great Britain. Existing on a dialect continuum with Scots, and then closest related to the Low Saxon and Frisian languages, English is genealogically West Germanic. However, its vocabulary is also distinctively influenced by dialects of France (about 29% of Modern English words) and Latin (also about 29%), plus some grammar and a small amount of core vocabulary influenced by Old Norse (a North Germanic language). Speakers of English are called Anglophones. The earliest forms of English, collectively known as Old English, evolved from a group of West Germanic (Ingvaeonic) dialects brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the 5th century and further mutated by Norse-speaking Viking settlers starting in the 8th and 9th ...
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1954 Operas
Events January * January 1 – The Soviet Union ceases to demand war reparations from West Germany. * January 3 – The Italian broadcaster RAI officially begins transmitting. * January 7 – Georgetown-IBM experiment: The first public demonstration of a machine translation system is held in New York, at the head office of IBM. * January 10 – BOAC Flight 781, a de Havilland Comet jet plane, disintegrates in mid-air due to metal fatigue, and crashes in the Mediterranean near Elba; all 35 people on board are killed. * January 12 – Avalanches in Austria kill more than 200. * January 15 – Mau Mau leader Waruhiu Itote is captured in Kenya. * January 17 – In Yugoslavia, Milovan Đilas, one of the leading members of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, is relieved of his duties. * January 20 – The US-based National Negro Network is established, with 46 member radio stations. * January 21 – The first nuclear-po ...
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Operas
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 of singing: ...
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Warrack, John
John Hamilton Warrack (born 1928, in London) is an English music critic, writer on music, and oboist. Warrack is the son of Scottish conductor and composer Guy Warrack. He was educated at Winchester College (1941-6) and then at the Royal College of Music (1949–52). In the early 1950s he was a freelance oboist, playing mostly with the Boyd Neel Orchestra and Sadler's Wells Orchestra. From 1954 until 1961 he was music critic for ''The Daily Telegraph'', and from 1961 until 1972 he was music critic for ''The Sunday Telegraph''. From 1978 until 1983 he served as the Artistic Director of the Leeds Festival. From 1984 until 1993 he taught on the music faculty at the University of Oxford. He is the author of ''Six Great Composers'' (1955); ''Carl Maria von Weber'' (Hamish Hamilton, 1968, 2nd ed. Cambridge UP, 1976), the standard study of Weber in English; ''German Opera: From the Beginnings to Wagner'' (2001) and the co-author of ''The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Opera'' (1964, with ...
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Rosenthal, Harold
Harold David Rosenthal OBE (30 September 1917 – 19 March 1987) was an English music critic, writer, lecturer, and broadcaster about opera. Originally a schoolmaster, he became drawn to music, particularly opera, and began working on musical publications. On the foundation of ''Opera'' magazine in London in 1950, Rosenthal was assistant editor, and became editor in 1953, retaining the post until 1986. He was a continual campaigner on behalf of opera, and was a strong opponent of its élitist image and inflated seat prices. In the early 1950s he was appointed archivist to the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, which led to his most substantial publication, ''Two Centuries of Opera at Covent Garden''. Life and career Rosenthal was born in West Norwood, London, the son of Israel Victor Rosenthal, a schoolmaster, and his wife, Leah ''née'' Samuel. He was educated at the City of London School and University College, London, where he took his BA in 1940, continuing with post-gradu ...
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Guildhall School Of Music And Drama
The Guildhall School of Music and Drama is a conservatoire and drama school located in the City of London, United Kingdom. Established in 1880, the school offers undergraduate and postgraduate training in all aspects of classical music and jazz along with drama and production arts. The school has students from over seventy countries. Widely regarded as one of the leading performing arts institutions in the world, it was ranked first in both the Guardian’s 2022 League Table for Music and the Complete University Guide's 2023 Arts, Drama and Music league table. It is also ranked the sixth university in the world for performing arts in the 2022 QS World University Rankings. Based within the Barbican Centre in the City of London, the school currently numbers just over 1,000 students, approximately 800 of whom are music students and 200 on the drama and technical theatre programmes. The school is a member of Conservatoires UK, the European Association of Conservatoires and the Fede ...
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The Long Christmas Dinner (opera)
''The Long Christmas Dinner'' (German: ''Das lange Weihnachtsmahl'') is an opera in one act by Paul Hindemith, with an English libretto by Thornton Wilder based on his 1931 play of the same name. Wilder collaborated with the composer in order to make the text work effectively with the music. It is set for a chamber orchestra and a harpsichord. Performance history The opera was first staged in Hindemith's own German translation and conducted by him at the Nationaltheater Mannheim on 17 December 1961. It was then performed in the original English on 13 March 1963 at the Juilliard School of Music, New York City, also conducted by the composer. A digital recording of the work on the WERGO label was performed in Hindemith's German translation. A commercial recording of the original English version was released by Bridge Records in 2015. Recorded in New York City's Alice Tully Hall in December 2014; see . Roles Synopsis The opera depicts 90 years in the history of the mid-west ...
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Chelsea, London
Chelsea is an affluent area in west London, England, due south-west of Charing Cross by approximately 2.5 miles. It lies on the north bank of the River Thames and for postal purposes is part of the south-western postal area. Chelsea historically formed a manor and parish in the Ossulstone hundred of Middlesex, which became the Metropolitan Borough of Chelsea in 1900. It merged with the Metropolitan Borough of Kensington, forming the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea upon the creation of Greater London in 1965. The exclusivity of Chelsea as a result of its high property prices historically resulted in the coining of the term "Sloane Ranger" in the 1970s to describe some of its residents, and some of those of nearby areas. Chelsea is home to one of the largest communities of Americans living outside the United States, with 6.53% of Chelsea residents having been born in the U.S. History Early history The word ''Chelsea'' (also formerly ''Chelceth'', ''Chelchith' ...
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