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Alfred Muff
Alfred Muff (born 31 May 1949) is a Swiss operatic bass-baritone. Life and career Born in Lucerne, Muff studied at the Lucerne conservatory until he was introduced by its director Rudolf Baumgartner to the opera singer and teacher Elisabeth Grümmer, who took him to the Berlin University of the Arts. There he studied for five semesters, at the end with Irmgard Hartmann. In 1973, he began his artistic career at the in the role of the Minister in ''Fidelio''. After seven instructive years, his path led him via Linz, Mannheim back to Switzerland to Zurich, where he has been a permanent member of the Zürich Opera House since 1984. As an internationally sought-after singer, he gives guest performances at all the world's important opera houses and concert halls, such as the Vienna State Opera, Musikverein and Konzerthaus in Vienna, Salzburg Festival, Bavarian State Opera, Hamburg, Berlin, Dresden, La Scala in Milan, Opéra Bastille de Paris. Various performances in opera and concer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bass-baritone
A bass-baritone is a high-lying bass or low-lying "classical" baritone voice type which shares certain qualities with the true baritone voice. The term arose in the late 19th century to describe the particular type of voice required to sing three Wagnerian roles: the title role in ''Der fliegende Holländer'', Wotan/Der Wanderer in the ''Ring Cycle'' and Hans Sachs in '' Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg''. Wagner labelled these roles as ''Hoher Bass'' ("high bass")—see fach for more details. The bass-baritone voice is distinguished by two attributes. First, it must be capable of singing comfortably in a baritonal tessitura. Secondly, however, it needs to have the ripely resonant lower range typically associated with the bass voice. For example, the role of Wotan in ''Die Walküre'' covers the range from F2 (the F at the bottom of the bass clef) to F4 (the F above middle C), but only infrequently descends beyond C3 (the C below middle C). Bass-baritones are typically divide ... [...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] |
Peter Grimes
''Peter Grimes'', Op. 33, is an opera in three acts by Benjamin Britten, with a libretto by Montagu Slater based on the section "Peter Grimes", in George Crabbe's long narrative poem '' The Borough''. The "borough" of the opera is a fictional small town that bears some resemblance to Crabbe's – and later Britten's – home of Aldeburgh, Suffolk, on England's east coast. The work was conceived while Britten was living in the US in the early years of the Second World War and completed when he returned to Britain in 1943. It was first performed at Sadler's Wells in London on 7 June 1945, conducted by Reginald Goodall, and was a critical and popular success. It is still widely performed, both in Britain and internationally, and has become part of the standard repertoire. Among the tenors who have performed the title role in the opera house, or on record, or both are Britten's partner Peter Pears, who sang the part at the premiere, and Allan Clayton, Ben Heppner, Jonas Kaufmann, P ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elektra (opera)
''Elektra'', Opus number, Op. 58, is a one-act opera by Richard Strauss, to a German-language libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, which he adapted from his 1903 drama ''Elektra''. The opera was the first of many collaborations between Strauss and Hofmannsthal. It was first performed at the Semperoper, Königliches Opernhaus in Dresden on 25 January 1909. It was dedicated to his friends Natalie and Willy Levin. History While based on ancient Greek mythology and Sophocles' tragedy ''Electra (Sophocles play), Electra'', the opera is highly Modernism, modernist and Expressionist music, expressionist in style. Hofmannsthal's and Strauss's adaptation of the story focuses tightly on Electra, Elektra, thoroughly developing her character by single-mindedly expressing her emotions and psychology as she meets with other characters, mostly one at a time. (The order of these conversations closely follows Sophocles' play.) The other characters are Clytemnestra, Klytaemnestra, her mother and o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Die Entführung Aus Dem Serail
' () ( K. 384; ''The Abduction from the Seraglio''; also known as ') is a singspiel in three acts by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The German libretto is by Gottlieb Stephanie, based on Christoph Friedrich Bretzner's ''Belmont und Constanze, oder Die Entführung aus dem Serail''. The plot concerns the attempt of the hero Belmonte, assisted by his servant Pedrillo, to rescue his beloved Constanze from the seraglio of Pasha Selim. The work premiered on 16 July 1782 at the Vienna Burgtheater, with the composer conducting. Origins The company that first sponsored the opera was the ''Nationalsingspiel'' ("national Singspiel"), a pet project (1778–1783) of the Austrian emperor Joseph II. The Emperor had set up the company to perform works in the German language (as opposed to the Italian opera style widely popular in Vienna). This project was ultimately given up as a failure, but along the way it produced a number of successes, mostly a series of translated works. Mozart's opera emerged ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lulu (opera)
''Lulu'' (composed from 1929 to 1935, premièred incomplete in 1937 and complete in 1979) is an opera in three acts by Alban Berg. Berg adapted the libretto from Frank Wedekind's two ''Lulu'' plays, ''Erdgeist'' ('' Earth Spirit'', 1895) and ''Die Büchse der Pandora'' (''Pandora's Box'', 1904). The opera tells the story of a mysterious young woman known as Lulu, who follows a downward spiral from a well-kept mistress in Vienna to a street prostitute in London, while being both a victim and a purveyor of destruction. It explores the idea of the '' femme fatale'' and the duality between her feminine and masculine qualities. Berg died before completing the third and final act, and in the following decades the opera was typically performed incomplete. Since the 1979 publication of the version including Friedrich Cerha's orchestration of the act 3 sketches, it has become standard. ''Lulu'' is especially notable for using serialism at a time that was particularly inhospitable to it. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hansel And Gretel (opera)
''Hansel and Gretel'' (German: ') is an opera by nineteenth-century composer Engelbert Humperdinck, who described it as a ' (fairy-tale opera). The libretto was written by Humperdinck's sister, Adelheid Wette, based on the Grimm brothers' fairy tale "Hansel and Gretel". It is much admired for its folk music-inspired themes, one of the most famous being the "" ("Evening Benediction") from act 2. The idea for the opera was proposed to Humperdinck by his sister, who approached him about writing music for songs that she had written for her children for Christmas based on "Hansel and Gretel". After several revisions, the musical sketches and the songs were turned into a full-scale opera. Humperdinck composed ''Hansel and Gretel'' in Frankfurt in 1891 and 1892. The opera was first performed in the Hoftheater in Weimar on 23 December 1893, conducted by Richard Strauss. It has been associated with Christmas since its earliest performances and today it is still most often performed a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mass No
Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different elementary particles, theoretically with the same amount of matter, have nonetheless different masses. Mass in modern physics has multiple definitions which are conceptually distinct, but physically equivalent. Mass can be experimentally defined as a measure of the body's inertia, meaning the resistance to acceleration (change of velocity) when a net force is applied. The object's mass also determines the strength of its gravitational attraction to other bodies. The SI base unit of mass is the kilogram (kg). In physics, mass is not the same as weight, even though mass is often determined by measuring the object's weight using a spring scale, rather than balance scale comparing it directly with known masses. An object on the Moon would weigh less t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Te Deum (Bruckner)
The Te Deum in C major, WAB 45, is a setting of the Te Deum hymn, composed by Anton Bruckner for choir and soloists, orchestra, and organ ''ad libitum''. History Bruckner started work on his Te Deum from 3 to 17 May 1881,U. Harten, pp. 439–441 when he was finalising his Symphony No. 6.C. van Zwol, pp. 694–695 After finishing his next Symphony No. 7, Bruckner resumed work on his Te Deum on 28 September 1883. The vocal and orchestral score was completed on 7 March 1884. The ''ad lib.'' organ part was added on a separate score on 16 March 1884. The composer dedicated the piece A.M.D.G. "in gratitude for having safely brought me through so much anguish in Vienna."L. Nowak, pp. iii–iv The Te Deum was premiered in the Kleiner Musikvereinssaal in Vienna on 2 May 1885, with soloists Frau Ulrich-Linde, Emilie Zips, Richard Exleben, and Heinrich Gassner, with the choir of the Wiener Akademischer Richard Wagner Verein, and Robert Erben and Joseph Schalk substituting for t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paul Dessau
Paul Dessau (19 December 189428 June 1979) was a German composer and conductor. He collaborated with Bertolt Brecht and composed incidental music for his plays, and several operas based on them. Biography Dessau was born in Hamburg into a musical family. His grandfather, Moses Berend Dessau, was a cantor in the Hamburg synagogue. From 1909, Dessau majored in violin, studying with Florian Zajic at the Klindworth-Scharwenka Conservatory in Berlin. In 1912 he became répétiteur at the Stadttheater Hamburg, the municipal theatre. He studied the work of the conductors Felix Weingartner and Arthur Nikisch and took classes in composition from . He was second Kapellmeister at the Tivoli Theatre in Bremen in 1914 before being drafted for military service in 1915 . After World War I he became conductor at the Kammerspiele Hamburg, and was répétiteur and later Kapellmeister at the Cologne Opera under Otto Klemperer between 1919 and 1923. In 1923 he became Kapellmeister at the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Die Gezeichneten
' (''The Branded'' or ''The Stigmatized'') is an opera in three acts by Franz Schreker with a German-language libretto by the composer. Composition history Schreker wrote the libretto in 1911 at the request of composer Alexander Zemlinsky based on the 1904 play ''Hidalla'' by German playwright Frank Wedekind. However, Schreker decided to set the text himself, and completed the opera in 1915. The score was first published by Universal Edition Vienna. Performance history An expanded concert version of the overture to the opera, entitled "", was performed at the Vienna Musikverein on 8 February 1914 by the Vienna Philharmonic, conducted by Felix Weingartner. The complete opera was first performed on 25 April 1918 by the Oper Frankfurt, conducted by Ludwig Rottenberg. It established Schreker as the pre-eminent opera composer of his generation and won him the support of Germany's foremost music critic Paul Bekker. Before the composer's music was banned in 1933, due to his Jewi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Die Walküre
(; ''The Valkyrie''), WWV 86B, is the second of the four music dramas that constitute Richard Wagner's ''Der Ring des Nibelungen'' (English: ''The Ring of the Nibelung''). It was performed, as a single opera, at the National Theatre Munich on 26 June 1870, and received its first performance as part of the ''Ring'' cycle at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus on 14 August 1876. As the ''Ring'' cycle was conceived by Wagner in reverse order of performance, ''Die Walküre'' was the third of the four texts to be written, although Wagner composed the music in performance sequence. The text was completed by July 1852, and the music by March 1856. Wagner largely followed the principles related to the form of musical drama, which he had set out in his 1851 essay ''Opera and Drama'' under which the music would interpret the text emotionally, reflecting the feelings and moods behind the work, using a system of recurring leitmotifs to represent people, ideas, and situations rather than the conv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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