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Alexandrina Pendachanska
Alexandrina Pendatchanska (sometimes written as Alexandrina Pendachanska) ( bg, Александрина Пендачанска) (born 24 September 1970) is a Bulgarian operatic soprano. Increasingly, she is known professionally as Alex Penda. Career Pendatchanska was born in Sofia, Bulgaria into a family of renowned Bulgarian musicians. Her grandfather Sasha Popov was a violinist and conductor and the founder of the Sofia Philharmonic Orchestra. Her mother Valerie Popova was an internationally acclaimed soprano who sung regularly at La Scala in Milan from 1983 to 1986. She studied piano from early childhood and graduated from Bulgaria's National School of Music, where her subjects were piano and singing. Her vocal teacher was her mother, Valerie Popova. Making her stage debut at age 17 in the role of Violetta in ''La traviata'', she soon won the Antonín Dvořák Competition in Karlovy Vary, was placed second in the International Vocal Competition in Bilbao in 1988, and won UNISA ... [...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 of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Turin
Turin ( , Piedmontese language, Piedmontese: ; it, Torino ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in Northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital from 1861 to 1865. The city is mainly on the western bank of the Po (river), Po River, below its Susa Valley, and is surrounded by the western Alps, Alpine arch and Superga Hill. The population of the city proper is 847,287 (31 January 2022) while the population of the urban area is estimated by Larger Urban Zones, Eurostat to be 1.7 million inhabitants. The Turin metropolitan area is estimated by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, OECD to have a population of 2.2 million. The city used to be a major European political centre. From 1563, it was the capital of the Duchy of Savoy, then of the Kingdom of Sardinia ruled by the House of Savoy, and the first capital of the Kingdom of Italy from 1861 to 1865. T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Norma (opera)
''Norma'' () is a ''tragedia lirica'' or opera in two acts by Vincenzo Bellini with libretto by Felice Romani after the play ''Norma, ou L'infanticide'' (''Norma, or The Infanticide'') by Alexandre Soumet. It was first produced at La Scala in Milan on 26 December 1831. The opera is regarded as a leading example of the bel canto genre, and the soprano prayer "Casta diva" in act 1 is a famous piece. Among the well known singers of Norma of the first half of the 20th century was Rosa Ponselle who played the role in New York and London. Notable exponents of the title role in the post-war period have been Maria Callas, Leyla Gencer, Joan Sutherland, and Montserrat Caballé. Composition history Crivelli and Company were managing both La Scala and La Fenice in Venice, and as a result, in April–May 1830 Bellini was able to negotiate a contract with them for two operas, one at each theatre. The opera for December 1831 at La Scala became ''Norma'', while the one for the 1832 Carnival ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Welsh National Opera
Welsh National Opera (WNO) ( cy, Opera Cenedlaethol Cymru) is an opera company based in Cardiff, Wales; it gave its first performances in 1946. It began as a mainly amateur body and transformed into an all-professional ensemble by 1973. In its early days the company gave a single week's annual season in Cardiff, gradually extending its schedule to become an all-year-round operation, with its own salaried chorus and orchestra. It has been described by ''The New York Times'' as "one of the finest operatic ensembles in Europe". For most of its existence the company lacked a permanent base in Cardiff, but in 2004 it moved into the new Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff Bay. The company tours nationally and internationally, giving more than 120 performances annually, with a repertoire of eight operas each year, to a combined audience of more than 150,000 people. Its most frequent venues other than Cardiff are Llandudno in Wales and Bristol, Birmingham, Liverpool, Milton Keynes, Oxfo ... [...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 Duchy of Mantua, 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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hamlet (opera)
''Hamlet'' is a grand opera in five acts of 1868 by the French composer Ambroise Thomas, with a libretto by Michel Carré and Jules Barbier based on a French adaptation by Alexandre Dumas, père, and Paul Meurice of William Shakespeare's play ''Hamlet''.Fauser, Annegret. "Hamlet. Ophélie: Shakespeare in Paris" in ''Hamlet'' CD Booklet (1993), pp. 33–41. Background Ophelia mania in Paris The Parisian public's fascination with Ophelia, prototype of the ''femme fragile'', began in the fall of 1827, when an English company directed by William Abbot came to Paris to give a season of Shakespeare in English at the Odéon. On 11 September 1827 the Irish actress Harriet Smithson played the part of Ophelia in ''Hamlet''. Cairns, David (1969), p. 70. Her mad scene appeared to owe little to tradition and seemed almost like an improvisation, with several contemporary accounts remarking on her astonishing capacity for mime. Her performances produced an extraordinary reaction: men ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 17565 December 1791), baptised as Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period (music), Classical period. Despite his short life, his rapid pace of composition resulted in more than List of compositions by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, 800 works of virtually every 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 repertoire. Mozart is widely regarded as among the greatest composers in the history of Western music, with his music admired for its "melodic beauty, its formal elegance and its richness of harmony and texture". Born in Prince-Archbishopric of Salzburg, Salzburg, in the Holy Roman Empire, Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood. Already competent on Keyboard instrument, keyboard and violin, he composed from the age of fi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Magic Flute
''The Magic Flute'' (German: , ), K. 620, is an opera in two acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to a German libretto by Emanuel Schikaneder. The work is in the form of a ''Singspiel'', a popular form during the time it was written that included both singing and spoken dialogue. The work premiered on 30 September 1791 at Schikaneder's theatre, the Freihaus-Theater auf der Wieden in Vienna, just two months before the composer's premature death. Still a staple of the opera repertory, its popularity was reflected by two immediate sequels, Peter Winter's ''Das Labyrinth oder Der Kampf mit den Elementen. Der Zauberflöte zweyter Theil'' (1798) and a fragmentary libretto by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe titled ''The Magic Flute Part Two''. The allegorical plot was influenced by Schikaneder and Mozart's interest in Freemasonry and concerns the initiation of Prince Tamino. Enlisted by the Queen of the Night to rescue her daughter Pamina from the high priest Sarastro, Tamino comes to a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ermione
''Ermione'' (1819) is a tragic opera (azione tragica) in two acts by Gioachino Rossini to an Italian libretto by Andrea Leone Tottola, based on the play ''Andromaque'' by Jean Racine. Performance history 19th century ''Ermione'' was first performed at the Teatro di San Carlo, Naples, on 27 March 1819. For reasons that are as yet unclear, the opera was withdrawn on 19 April after only seven performances, and was not seen again until over a hundred years after Rossini's death. One possible explanation for its failure might be Rossini's choice to renounce the use of ''secco'' recitative in favour of accompanied declamation and to connect each closed number to the next in a manner reminiscent of Gluck's French operas and of Spontini (the latter was also to have a huge influence on Weber's ''Euryanthe'', four years later) Despite the opera's failure, Rossini seemed to be quite fond of this work and kept its manuscript, along with a few other from his Neapolitan years, until his d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Luisa Miller
''Luisa Miller'' is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Salvadore Cammarano, based on the play ''Kabale und Liebe'' (''Intrigue and Love'') by the German dramatist Friedrich von Schiller. Verdi's initial idea for a new opera – for which he had a contract going back over several years – was rejected by the Teatro San Carlo in Naples. He attempted to negotiate his way out of this obligation and, when that failed, Cammarano came up with the idea of adapting the Schiller play, with which Verdi was familiar. The process was set in motion, with Verdi still living and working on initial ideas from Paris, where he had been living for almost two years before moving back to his home town of Busseto in the summer of 1849. It was from there that he wrote the music and traveled to Naples for rehearsals. The first performance was given on 8 December 1849. This was Verdi's 15th opera and it is regarded as the beginning of the composer's "middle period".Parke ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lucca
Lucca ( , ) is a city and ''comune'' in Tuscany, Central Italy, on the Serchio River, in a fertile plain near the Ligurian Sea. The city has a population of about 89,000, while its province has a population of 383,957. Lucca is known as one of the Italian's "Città d'arte" (Arts town), thanks to its intact Renaissance-era city walls and its very well preserved historic center, where, among other buildings and monuments, are located the Piazza dell'Anfiteatro, which has its origins in the second half of the 1st century A.D. and the Guinigi Tower, a tower that dates from the 1300s. The city is also the birthplace of numerous world-class composers, including Giacomo Puccini, Alfredo Catalani, and Luigi Boccherini. Toponymy By the Romans, Lucca was known as ''Luca''. From more recent and concrete toponymic studies, the name Lucca has references that lead to "sacred wood" (Latin: ''lucus''), "to cut" (Latin: ''lucare'') and "luminous space" (''leuk'', a term used by the firs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Suor Angelica
''Suor Angelica'' (''Sister Angelica'') is an opera in one act by Giacomo Puccini to an original Italian libretto by Giovacchino Forzano. It is the second opera of the trio of operas known as ''Il trittico'' (''The Triptych''). It received its world premiere at the Metropolitan Opera on December 14, 1918. Roles Synopsis :Place: A convent in Italy :Time: The latter part of the 17th century The opera opens with scenes showing typical aspects of life in the convent – all the sisters sing hymns, the Monitor scolds two lay-sisters, everyone gathers for recreation in the courtyard. The sisters rejoice because, as the mistress of novices explains, this is the first of three evenings that occur each year when the setting sun strikes the fountain so as to turn its water golden. This event causes the sisters to remember Bianca Rosa, a sister who has died. Sister Genevieve suggests they pour some of the "golden" water onto her tomb. The nuns discuss their desires. While the Moni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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