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Antonio Giuglini
Antonio Giuglini (16 or 17 January 1825 – 12 October 1865) was an Italian operatic tenor. During the last eight years of his life, before he developed signs of mental instability, he earned renown as one of the leading stars of the operatic scene in London. He created several major roles for British audiences, appearing in the first London performances of Gounod's ''Faust (opera), Faust'' and Verdi's ''Un ballo in maschera''. In London, he was the usual stage partner of the great dramatic soprano Thérèse Tietjens. Early career in Italy Guiglini was born at Fano in Italy's middle/north-east. He studied in his home country with Francesco Cellini, and made his debut in opera at Fermo. According to the impresario Benjamin Lumley, Giuglini had been destined for the priesthood. He began in the choir of the metropolitan church of Fermo, where his excellence as a treble, and then as a tenor, attracted attention. He firmly resisted many inducements to appear on the stage, unt ...
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Fano
Fano is a town and ''comune'' of the province of Pesaro and Urbino in the Marche region of Italy. It is a beach resort southeast of Pesaro, located where the ''Via Flaminia'' reaches the Adriatic Sea. It is the third city in the region by population after Ancona and Pesaro. History An ancient town of Marche, it was known as Fanum Fortunae after a temple of Fortuna located there. Its first mention in history dates from 49 BC, when Julius Caesar held it, along with Pisaurum and Ancona. Caesar Augustus established a '' colonia'', and built a wall, some parts of which remain. In 2 AD Augustus also built an arch (which is still standing) at the entrance to the town. In January 271, the Roman Army defeated the Alamanni in the Battle of Fano that took place on the banks of the Metauro river just inland of Fano. Fano was destroyed by Vitiges' Ostrogoths in AD 538. It was rebuilt by the Byzantines, becoming the capital of the maritime Pentapolis ("Five Cities") that included also ...
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Charles Santley
Sir Charles Santley (28 February 1834 – 22 September 1922) was an English opera and oratorio singer with a ''bravura''From the Italian verb ''bravare'', to show off. A florid, ostentatious style or a passage of music requiring technical skill technique who became the most eminent English baritone and male concert singer of the Victorian era. His has been called 'the longest, most distinguished and most versatile vocal career which history records.' Santley appeared in many major opera and oratorio productions in Great Britain and North America, giving numerous recitals as well. Having made his debut in Italy in 1857 after undertaking vocal studies in that country, he elected to base himself in England for the remainder of his life, apart from occasional trips overseas. One of the highlights of his stage career occurred in 1870 when he led the cast in the first Wagner opera to be performed in London, ''The Flying Dutchman'', at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. Santley retired fro ...
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Michael Costa (conductor)
Sir Michael Andrew Angus Costa (14 February 180829 April 1884) was an Italian-born conductor and composer who achieved success in England. Biography He was born in Naples as Michele Andrea Agniello Costa. He studied in Naples with his father, at the Real Collegio di Musica, and later with Niccolò Antonio Zingarelli. In his youth, as throughout his life, he wrote a great quantity of music, including operas, symphonies and cantatas, all of which has long since passed into oblivion. In 1829 he visited the Birmingham Music Festival to conduct Zingarelli's ''Cantata Sacra'', a setting of some verses from Isaiah ch. xii. This was the occasion of his memorably inauspicious début. The intention was that Costa should rehearse and conduct the work; but J. B Cramer and Thomas Greatorex elbowed him out and was instead engaged as a tenor soloist in another concert. Unfortunately both the work and Costa's singing met with ferocious criticism: " his cantatais one of the most tame, insipid ...
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Giovanni Matteo Mario
Giovanni Matteo De Candia, also known as Mario (17 October 1810 – 11 December 1883), was an Italian opera singer. The most celebrated tenor of his era, he was lionized by audiences in Paris and London. He was the partner of the opera singer Giulia Grisi. Early life Mario was born in Cagliari, Sardinia on 17 October 1810 as Giovanni Matteo de Candia; his inherited titles were ''Cavaliere'' (Knight), ''Nobile'' (Nobleman) and ''Don'' (Sir) in the Kingdom of Sardinia and subsequently the Kingdom of Italy. His family belonged to the Savoyard- Sardinian nobility and aristocracy, within the Kingdom of Sardinia ruled by the House of Savoy. His relatives and parents were members of the Royal Court of Turin, while his father don Stefano, Marquess de Candia, held the ranks of military general, and Royal Governor General of Nice under the Kingdom of Sardinia, and was aide-de-camp to King Charles Felix of Sardinia (house of Savoy).De Candia, "The Romance of a Great Singer" 1910: Italian ed ...
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Giulia Grisi
Giulia Grisi (22 May 1811 – 29 November 1869) was an Italian opera singer. She performed widely in Europe, the United States and South America and was among the leading sopranos of the 19th century.Chisholm 1911, p. ? Her second husband was Giovanni Matteo Mario de Candia (also known as "Mario the Tenor"), scion of a noble family of the Kingdom of Sardinia. She is buried at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. Her grave is marked "Juliette de Candia", styled in her married last name; usually better known by the courtesy title the Marquesse of Candia. Early life Born in Milan, Giulia Grisi was the daughter of Gaetano Grisi, one of Napoleon's Italian officers, and Giovanna née Grassini. She came from a musically gifted family, her maternal aunt Giuseppina Grassini (1773–1850) being a favourite opera singer both on the continent and in London. Her older sister, Giuditta and her cousin Carlotta were both artistes, the former as a singer and the latter as a ballet dancer. Giuditta ...
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Marietta Alboni
Maria Anna Marzia (called Marietta) Alboni (6 March 1826 – 23 June 1894) was a renowned Italian contralto opera singer. She is considered "one of the greatest contraltos in operatic history". Biography Alboni was born at Città di Castello, in Umbria. She became a pupil of of Cesena, Emilia–Romagna, and later of the composer Gioachino Rossini, when he was 'perpetual honorary adviser' in (and then the principal of) the Liceo Musicale, now Conservatorio Giovanni Battista Martini, in Bologna. Rossini tested the humble thirteen-year-old girl himself, had her admitted to the school with special treatment, and even procured her an early engagement to tour his ''Stabat Mater'' around Northern Italy, so that she could pay for her studies. After she achieved her diploma and made a modest debut in Bologna, in 1842, as "Climene" in Pacini's '' Saffo'', she obtained a triennial engagement thanks to Rossini's influence on the impresario Bartolomeo Merelli, Intendant at both Milan's Te ...
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Maria Piccolomini
Marietta Piccolomini (; 5 March 1834 – 11 December 1899)The birthdate given in this article is stated by the Register of baptisms — year 1834 — number 215 — of the former Parish of Saints Quiricus and Julitta in Sienna, while the death date given is engraved upon the singer's tombstone in the Florence Cimitero delle Porte Sante (Giampaolo Bianchi, ''op. cit.''). Therefore, the different conflicting dates reported by various sources (birthdates include 15 March 1834; death dates include 11 February, and 20 or 23 December 1899) are to be held unfounded. was an Italian soprano. She was most famous for the role of Violetta in ''La Traviata'' by Giuseppe Verdi, which she performed in England, France, and the United States, as well as her native Italy. After her marriage in 1863, she retired from performing, making only rare charity or courtesy appearances thereafter. Biography Marietta Piccolomini was born Maria Teresa Violante Piccolomini Clementini in Siena, Italy on 5 Marc ...
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La Favorita
''La favorite'' (''The Favourite'', sometimes referred to by its Italian title: ''La favorita'') is a grand opera in four acts by Gaetano Donizetti to a French-language libretto by Alphonse Royer and Gustave Vaëz, based on the play ''Le comte de Comminges'' by Baculard d'Arnaud with additions by Eugène Scribe based on the story of Leonora de Guzman. The opera concerns the romantic struggles of the King of Castile, Alfonso XI, and his mistress, the "favourite" Leonora, against the backdrop of the political wiles of receding Moorish Spain and the life of the Catholic Church. It premiered on 2 December 1840 at the Académie Royale de Musique (Salle Le Peletier) in Paris. Background Originally, Donizetti had been composing an opera by the name of ''Le Duc d'Albe'' as his second work for the Opéra in Paris. However, the director, Léon Pillet, objected to an opera without a prominent role for his mistress, mezzo-soprano Rosine Stoltz. Donizetti therefore abandoned ''Le Duc d' ...
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Her Majesty's Theatre
Her Majesty's Theatre is a West End theatre situated on Haymarket, London, Haymarket in the City of Westminster, London. The present building was designed by Charles J. Phipps and was constructed in 1897 for actor-manager Herbert Beerbohm Tree, who established the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art at the theatre. In the early decades of the 20th century, Tree produced spectacular productions of William Shakespeare, Shakespeare and other classical works, and the theatre hosted premieres by major playwrights such as George Bernard Shaw, J. M. Synge, Noël Coward and J. B. Priestley. Since the First World War, the wide stage has made the theatre suitable for large-scale musical productions, and the theatre has accordingly specialised in hosting musical theatre, musicals. The theatre has been home to record-setting musical theatre runs, notably the First World War sensation ''Chu Chin Chow''Larkin, Colin (ed). ''Guinness Who's Who of Stage Musicals'' (Guinness Publishing, 1994) and the ...
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Les Vêpres Siciliennes
''Les vêpres siciliennes'' (''The Sicilian Vespers'') is a grand opera in five acts by the Italian romantic composer Giuseppe Verdi set to a French libretto by Eugène Scribe and Charles Duveyrier from their work ''Le duc d'Albe'' of 1838. ''Les vêpres'' followed immediately after Verdi's three great mid-career masterpieces, ''Rigoletto'', ''Il trovatore'' and '' La traviata'' of 1850 to 1853 and was first performed at the Paris Opéra on 13 June 1855. Today the opera is performed both in the original French and (rather more frequently) in its post-1861 Italian version as ''I vespri siciliani''. The story is based on a historical event, the Sicilian Vespers of 1282, using material drawn from the medieval Sicilian tract '' Lu rebellamentu di Sichilia''. Composition history After Verdi's first grand opera for the Paris Opéra—that being his adaptation of ''I Lombardi'' in 1847 given under the title of ''Jérusalem'' - the composer had wanted to write a completely new gran ...
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Teatro Regio Di Parma
Teatro Regio di Parma, originally constructed as the Nuovo Teatro Ducale (New Ducal Theatre),Martini, "Before the Teatro Regio", pp. 56 is an opera house and opera company in Parma, Italy. Replacing an obsolete house, the new Ducale achieved prominence in the years after 1829, and especially so after the composer Giuseppe Verdi, who was born near Busseto, some thirty kilometres away, had achieved fame. Also well known in Parma was the conductor Arturo Toscanini, born there in 1867. As has been noted by Lee Marshall, "while not as well known as La Scala in Milan or La Fenice in Venice, the city’s Teatro Regio....is considered by opera buffs to be one of the true homes of the great Italian tradition, and the well-informed audience is famous for giving voice to its approval or disapproval – not just from the gallery." The 1,400-seat auditorium, with four tiers of boxes topped by a gallery, was inaugurated on 16 May 1829 when it presented the premiere of Vincenzo Bellini's ' ...
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Ignazio Marini
Ignazio Marini (28 November 1811 – 29 April 1873) was a celebrated Italian operatic bass. He sang in the world premieres of several operas by Gaetano Donizetti, Saverio Mercadante, and Giuseppe Verdi and appeared as a guest artist in major opera houses throughout Europe and in New York City, Mexico City and Cairo. Biography Ignazio Marini was born in Tagliuno near Bergamo and made his stage debut in Brescia in 1832. In 1834 he became a principal singer at La Scala where he sang for the next thirteen years and created, amongst other roles, Guido in Donizetti's ''Gemma di Vergy'' (1834), Talbot in Donizetti's ''Maria Stuarda'' (1835), Enrico Gray in Vaccai's ''Giovanna Gray ''Giovanna Gray'' is a tragic opera () in three acts composed by Nicola Vaccai. The libretto by Carlo Pepoli is based on the last days of the English noblewoman Lady Jane Grey who was executed for treason in 1554. The opera premiered on 23 February ...'', and the title role in Verdi's '' Oberto'' (1839 ...
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