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Antonio Magini-Coletti
Antonio Magini-Coletti (17 February 1855 – 21 July 1912) was a leading Italian baritone who had a prolific career in Europe and the United States during the late 19th century and the early part of the 20th century. A versatile artist, he appeared in several opera world premieres but was particularly associated with the works of Giuseppe Verdi, Richard Wagner and the verismo composers. He was also an accomplished exponent of the bel canto repertoire. Biography Magini-Coletti was born in 1855 in the medieval town of Iesi (written Jesi in Italian), which is situated inland from Ancona on central Italy's east coast. Published details of his early life are scant but sources agree that he studied singing during the 1870s with the distinguished pedagogue Venceslao Persichini at Rome's Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia. (Persichini's other students included the lyric tenor Francesco Marconi and Magini-Coletti's fellow baritones Mattia Battistini, Giuseppe De Luca and Titta Ruffo.) In 1880, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Baritone
A baritone is a type of classical male singing voice whose vocal range lies between the bass and the tenor voice-types. The term originates from the Greek (), meaning "heavy sounding". Composers typically write music for this voice in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C (i.e. F2–F4) in choral music, and from the second A below middle C to the A above middle C (A2 to A4) in operatic music, but the range can extend at either end. Subtypes of baritone include the baryton-Martin baritone (light baritone), lyric baritone, ''Kavalierbariton'', Verdi baritone, dramatic baritone, ''baryton-noble'' baritone, and the bass-baritone. History The first use of the term "baritone" emerged as ''baritonans'', late in the 15th century, usually in French sacred polyphonic music. At this early stage it was frequently used as the lowest of the voices (including the bass), but in 17th-century Italy the term was all-encompassing and used to describe the averag ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Naples
Naples (; it, Napoli ; nap, Napule ), from grc, Νεάπολις, Neápolis, lit=new city. is the regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 909,048 within the city's administrative limits as of 2022. Its province-level municipality is the third-most populous metropolitan city in Italy with a population of 3,115,320 residents, and its metropolitan area stretches beyond the boundaries of the city wall for approximately 20 miles. Founded by Greeks in the first millennium BC, Naples is one of the oldest continuously inhabited urban areas in the world. In the eighth century BC, a colony known as Parthenope ( grc, Παρθενόπη) was established on the Pizzofalcone hill. In the sixth century BC, it was refounded as Neápolis. The city was an important part of Magna Graecia, played a major role in the merging of Greek and Roman society, and was a significant cultural centre under the Romans. Naples served a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lilli Lehmann
Lilli Lehmann, born Elisabeth Maria Lehmann, later Elisabeth Maria Lehmann-Kalisch (24 November 1848 – 17 May 1929) was a German operatic soprano. She was also a voice teacher. Biography The future opera star's father, Karl-August Lehmann, was a singer (Heldentenor) while her mother, Maria Theresia Löw (1809–1885), was a soprano. Her younger sister, Marie, also went on to become an operatic soprano. Her first lessons were from her mother, who had been a prima donna under Spohr at the Cassel opera. After singing small parts on the stage, for example in Mozart's ''Magic Flute'' at Prague in 1866, and studies under Heinrich Laube in Leipzig, Lehmann made her proper debut in 1870 in Berlin as a light soprano in Meyerbeer's ''Das Feldlager in Schlesien''. She subsequently became so successful that she was appointed an Imperial Chamber Singer for life in 1876. Lehmann sang in the first Bayreuth Festival in 1876, singing in the first complete performances of The Ring Cycle as Wog ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aida
''Aida'' (or ''Aïda'', ) is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni. Set in the Old Kingdom of Egypt, it was commissioned by Cairo's Khedivial Opera House and had its première there on 24 December 1871, in a performance conducted by Giovanni Bottesini. Today the work holds a central place in the operatic canon, receiving performances every year around the world; at New York's Metropolitan Opera alone, ''Aida'' has been sung more than 1,100 times since 1886. Ghislanzoni's scheme follows a scenario often attributed to the French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette, but Verdi biographer Mary Jane Phillips-Matz argues that the source is actually Temistocle Solera. Elements of the opera's genesis and sources Isma'il Pasha, Khedive of Egypt, commissioned Verdi to write an opera to celebrate the opening of the Suez Canal, but Verdi declined. However, Auguste Mariette, a French Egyptologist, proposed to Khedive Pasha a plot for a celebratory ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Les Huguenots
() is an opera by Giacomo Meyerbeer and is one of the most popular and spectacular examples of grand opera. In five acts, to a libretto A libretto (Italian for "booklet") is the text used in, or intended for, an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata or Musical theatre, musical. The term ''libretto'' is also sometimes used to refer to the t ... by Eugène Scribe and Émile Deschamps, it premiered in Paris on 29 February 1836. Composition history ''Les Huguenots'' was some five years in creation. Meyerbeer prepared carefully for this opera after the sensational success of ''Robert le diable'', recognising the need to continue to present lavish staging, a highly dramatic storyline, impressive orchestration and virtuoso parts for the soloists – the essential elements of the new genre of Grand Opera. Meyerbeer and his librettist for ''Robert le Diable'', Eugène Scribe, had agreed to collaborate on an epic work concerning the French War ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dinorah
''Dinorah'', originally ''Le pardon de Ploërmel'' (''The Pardon of Ploërmel''), is an 1859 French opéra comique in three acts with music by Giacomo Meyerbeer and a libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré. The story takes place near the rural town of Ploërmel and is based on two Breton tales by Émile Souvestre, "La Chasse aux trésors" and "Le Kacouss de l'Armor", both published separately in 1850 in the ''Revue des deux mondes''. Roles Synopsis :Time: Nineteenth century :Place: Brittany Act 1 ''In the Breton village of Ploërmel, a rugged and wild site illuminated by the last rays of the setting sun with, in the foreground, Corentin's cottage'' During the annual pilgrimage to the chapel of the Virgin, Dinorah has gone mad because her bridegroom Hoël disappeared following a storm that interrupted their wedding on the same day the previous year. Dinorah has lost her pet goat Bellah but, believing she has found it, she sings a lullaby to the goat and then walks ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Meyerbeer
Giacomo Meyerbeer (born Jakob Liebmann Beer; 5 September 1791 – 2 May 1864) was a German opera composer, "the most frequently performed opera composer during the nineteenth century, linking Mozart and Wagner". With his 1831 opera ''Robert le diable'' and its successors, he gave the genre of grand opera 'decisive character'. Meyerbeer's grand opera style was achieved by his merging of German orchestra style with Italian vocal tradition. These were employed in the context of sensational and melodramatic libretti created by Eugène Scribe and were enhanced by the up-to-date theatre technology of the Paris Opéra. They set a standard which helped to maintain Paris as the opera capital of the nineteenth century. Born to a rich Jewish family, Meyerbeer began his musical career as a pianist but soon decided to devote himself to opera, spending several years in Italy studying and composing. His 1824 opera '' Il crociato in Egitto'' was the first to bring him Europe-wide reputation, but ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lohengrin (opera)
''Lohengrin'', WWV 75, is a Romantic opera in three acts composed and written by Richard Wagner, first performed in 1850. The story of the eponymous character is taken from medieval German romance, notably the ''Parzival'' of Wolfram von Eschenbach, and its sequel ''Lohengrin'', itself inspired by the epic of ''Garin le Loherain''. It is part of the Knight of the Swan legend. The opera has inspired other works of art. King Ludwig II of Bavaria named his castle Neuschwanstein Castle after the Swan Knight. It was King Ludwig's patronage that later gave Wagner the means and opportunity to complete, build a theatre for, and stage his epic cycle ''Der Ring des Nibelungen''. He had discontinued composing it at the end of Act II of ''Siegfried'', the third of the ''Ring'' tetralogy, to create his radical chromatic masterpiece of the late 1850s, ''Tristan und Isolde'', and his lyrical comic opera of the mid-1860s, '' Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg''. The most popular and recognizabl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most opera composers, Wagner wrote both the libretto and the music for each of his stage works. Initially establishing his reputation as a composer of works in the romantic vein of Carl Maria von Weber and Giacomo Meyerbeer, Wagner revolutionised opera through his concept of the ''Gesamtkunstwerk'' ("total work of art"), by which he sought to synthesise the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, with music subsidiary to drama. He described this vision in a series of essays published between 1849 and 1852. Wagner realised these ideas most fully in the first half of the four-opera cycle ''Der Ring des Nibelungen'' (''The Ring of the Nibelung''). His compositions, particularly those of his later period, are notable for their complex textures, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Metropolitan Opera
The Metropolitan Opera (commonly known as the Met) is an American opera company based in New York City, resident at the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center, currently situated on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager. As of 2018, the company's current music director is Yannick Nézet-Séguin. The Met was founded in 1883 as an alternative to the previously established Academy of Music opera house, and debuted the same year in a new building on 39th and Broadway (now known as the "Old Met"). It moved to the new Lincoln Center location in 1966. The Metropolitan Opera is the largest classical music organization in North America. Until 2019, it presented about 27 different operas each year from late September through May. The operas are presented in a rotating repertory schedule, with up to seven performances of four different works staged each week. Performances are ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Il Trovatore
''Il trovatore'' ('The Troubadour') is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto largely written by Salvadore Cammarano, based on the play ''El trovador'' (1836) by Antonio García Gutiérrez. It was García Gutiérrez's most successful play, one which Verdi scholar Julian Budden describes as "a high flown, sprawling melodrama flamboyantly defiant of the Aristotelian unities, packed with all manner of fantastic and bizarre incident." The premiere took place at the Teatro Apollo in Rome on 19 January 1853, where it "began a victorious march throughout the operatic world," a success due to Verdi's work over the previous three years. It began with his January 1850 approach to Cammarano with the idea of ''Il trovatore''. There followed, slowly and with interruptions, the preparation of the libretto, first by Cammarano until his death in mid-1852 and then with the young librettist Leone Emanuele Bardare, which gave the composer the opportunity to propose signifi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Verdi
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi (; 9 or 10 October 1813 – 27 January 1901) was an Italian composer best known for his operas. He was born near Busseto to a provincial family of moderate means, receiving a musical education with the help of a local patron. Verdi came to dominate the Italian opera scene after the era of Gioachino Rossini, Gaetano Donizetti, and Vincenzo Bellini, whose works significantly influenced him. In his early operas, Verdi demonstrated a sympathy with the Risorgimento movement which sought the unification of Italy. He also participated briefly as an elected politician. The chorus "Va, pensiero" from his early opera ''Nabucco'' (1842), and similar choruses in later operas, were much in the spirit of the unification movement, and the composer himself became esteemed as a representative of these ideals. An intensely private person, Verdi did not seek to ingratiate himself with popular movements. As he became professionally successful, he was able ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
