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Arthur Davies (tenor)
Arthur Davies (11 April 1941 – 8 August 2018) was a Welsh tenor who had an active international performance career from the 1970s through the 1990s. He performed leading roles with The Royal Opera in London, the Welsh National Opera, the Scottish Opera, and the English National Opera. Life and career Born in Wrexham, Wales, Davies was a graduate of the Royal Northern College of Music where he was a pupil of tenor Joseph Ward. In 1972 he made his professional opera debut as Squeak in Benjamin Britten's ''Billy Budd'' at the Welsh National Opera (WNO). He subsequently performed numerous times for the WNO in parts like Count Almaviva in Rossini's ''The Barber of Seville'', Don José in Bizet's ''Carmen'', Ferrando in Mozart's ''Così fan tutte'', Nemorino in Donizetti's ''L'elisir d'amore'', Rodolfo in Puccini's ''La bohème'', and the title role in Britten's ''Albert Herring''. In 1976 Davies made his debut at The Royal Opera in London in the world premiere of Hans Werner Henz ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arthur Davies (tenor)
Arthur Davies (11 April 1941 – 8 August 2018) was a Welsh tenor who had an active international performance career from the 1970s through the 1990s. He performed leading roles with The Royal Opera in London, the Welsh National Opera, the Scottish Opera, and the English National Opera. Life and career Born in Wrexham, Wales, Davies was a graduate of the Royal Northern College of Music where he was a pupil of tenor Joseph Ward. In 1972 he made his professional opera debut as Squeak in Benjamin Britten's ''Billy Budd'' at the Welsh National Opera (WNO). He subsequently performed numerous times for the WNO in parts like Count Almaviva in Rossini's ''The Barber of Seville'', Don José in Bizet's ''Carmen'', Ferrando in Mozart's ''Così fan tutte'', Nemorino in Donizetti's ''L'elisir d'amore'', Rodolfo in Puccini's ''La bohème'', and the title role in Britten's ''Albert Herring''. In 1976 Davies made his debut at The Royal Opera in London in the world premiere of Hans Werner Henz ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
L'elisir D'amore
''L'elisir d'amore'' (''The Elixir of Love'', ) is a ' (opera buffa) in two acts by the Italian composer Gaetano Donizetti. Felice Romani wrote the Italian libretto, after Eugène Scribe's libretto for Daniel Auber's ' (1831). The opera premiered on 12 May 1832 at the Teatro della Canobbiana in Milan. Background Written in haste in a six-week period, ''L'elisir d'amore'' was the most often performed opera in Italy between 1838 and 1848 and has remained continually in the international opera repertory. Today it is one of the most frequently performed of all Donizetti's operas: it appears as number 13 on the Operabase list of the most-performed operas worldwide in the five seasons between 2008 and 2013. There are a large number of recordings. It contains the popular tenor aria "Una furtiva lagrima", a ''romanza'' that has a considerable performance history in the concert hall. Donizetti insisted on a number of changes from the original Scribe libretto. The best known of these ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eugene Onegin (opera)
''Eugene Onegin'' ( rus, Евгений Онегин, italic=yes, Yevgény Onégin, jɪvˈɡʲenʲɪj ɐˈnʲeɡʲɪn, Ru-Evgeny_Onegin.ogg), Opus number, Op. 24, is an opera ("lyrical scenes") in 3 acts (7 scenes), composed by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The libretto, organised by the composer himself, very closely follows certain passages in Alexander Pushkin's 1825-1832 Eugene Onegin, novel in verse, retaining much of his poetry. Tchaikovsky's friend Konstantin Shilovsky contributed M. Triquet's verses in Act 2, Scene 1, while Tchaikovsky himself arranged the text for Lensky's arioso in Act 1, Scene 1, and almost all of Prince Gremin's aria in Act 3, Scene 1. ''Eugene Onegin'' is a well-known example of lyric opera, to which Tchaikovsky added music of a dramatic nature. The story concerns a selfish hero who lives to regret his blasé rejection of a young woman's love and his careless incitement of a fatal duel with his best friend. The opera was first performed in Moscow in 1879. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Simon Boccanegra
''Simon Boccanegra'' () is an opera with a prologue and three acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, based on the play ''Simón Bocanegra'' (1843) by Antonio García Gutiérrez, whose play ''El trovador'' had been the basis for Verdi's 1853 opera, ''Il trovatore''. ''Simon Boccanegra'' was first performed at Teatro La Fenice in Venice on 12 March 1857. Given the complications of the original plot and the generally poor popular response – although the critical one was more encouraging – the opera dropped out of favour after 1866. Finally, 23 years later, Verdi's publisher persuaded the composer to revise the opera, with text changes to be prepared by Arrigo Boito, the librettist who aspired to work with the aging composer on a project which eventually became a new opera, ''Otello'', but to which Verdi had not totally committed at that time. The revised version of ''Simon Boccanegra'', with the now-famous Council Chamber scene, was first perfor ... [...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] |
Jonathan Miller
Sir Jonathan Wolfe Miller CBE (21 July 1934 – 27 November 2019) was an English theatre and opera director, actor, author, television presenter, humourist and physician. After training in medicine and specialising in neurology in the late 1950s, he came to prominence in the early 1960s in the comedy revue '' Beyond the Fringe'' with Peter Cook, Dudley Moore and Alan Bennett. Miller began directing operas in the 1970s. His 1982 production of a "Mafia"-styled ''Rigoletto'' was set in 1950s Little Italy, Manhattan. In its early days, he was an associate director at the National Theatre. He later ran the Old Vic Theatre. As a writer and presenter of more than a dozen BBC documentaries, Miller became a television personality and public intellectual in Britain and the United States. Life and career Early life Miller grew up in St John's Wood, London, in a well-connected Jewish family. His father Emanuel (1892–1970), who was of Lithuanian descent and suffered from severe rh ... [...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] |
Don Giovanni
''Don Giovanni'' (; K. 527; Vienna (1788) title: , literally ''The Rake Punished, or Don Giovanni'') is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. Its subject is a centuries-old Spanish legend about a libertine as told by playwright Tirso de Molina in his 1630 play '' El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra''. It is a ''dramma giocoso'' blending comedy, melodrama and supernatural elements (although the composer entered it into his catalogue simply as ''opera buffa''). It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the National Theater (of Bohemia), now called the Estates Theatre, on 29 October 1787. ''Don Giovanni'' is regarded as one of the greatest operas of all time and has proved a fruitful subject for commentary in its own right; critic Fiona Maddocks has described it as one of Mozart's "trio of masterpieces with librettos by Da Ponte". Composition and premiere The opera was commissioned after the succes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jenůfa
''Její pastorkyňa'' (''Her Stepdaughter''; commonly known as ''Jenůfa'' ) is an opera in three acts by Leoš Janáček to a Czech libretto by the composer, based on the play ''Její pastorkyňa'' by Gabriela Preissová. It was first performed at the National Theatre, Brno on 21 January 1904. Composed between 1896 and 1902, it is among the first operas written in prose. The first of Janáček's operas in which his distinctive voice can clearly be heard, it is a grim story of infanticide and redemption. Like the playwright's original work, it is known for its unsentimental realism. While today it is heard in the composer's original version, ''Jenůfas early popularity was due to a revised version by Karel Kovařovic, altering what was considered its eccentric style and orchestration. Thus altered, it was well-received, first in Prague, and particularly after its Vienna première also worldwide. More than 70 years passed before audiences again heard it in Janáček's original ve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Madama Butterfly
''Madama Butterfly'' (; ''Madame Butterfly'') is an opera in three acts (originally two) by Giacomo Puccini, with an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. It is based on the short story "Madame Butterfly" (1898) by John Luther Long, which in turn was based on stories told to Long by his sister Jennie Correll and on the semi-autobiographical 1887 French novel '' Madame Chrysanthème'' by Pierre Loti.Chadwick Jenna"The Original Story: John Luther Long and David Belasco" on columbia.edu Long's version was dramatized by David Belasco as the one-act play '' Madame Butterfly: A Tragedy of Japan'', which, after premiering in New York in 1900, moved to London, where Puccini saw it in the summer of that year. The original version of the opera, in two acts, had its premiere on 17 February 1904 at La Scala in Milan. It was poorly received, despite having such notable singers as soprano Rosina Storchio, tenor Giovanni Zenatello and baritone Giuseppe De Luca in lead roles ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Attila (opera)
''Attila'' is an opera in a prologue and three acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Temistocle Solera, based on the 1809 play ' (''Attila, King of the Huns'') by Zacharias Werner. The opera received its first performance at La Fenice in Venice on 17 March 1846. Ezio's act 2 aria of heroic resolution "" (My lot is cast, I am prepared for any warfare) is a fine example of a characteristic Verdian ''genre'', and it achieved fame in its own time with audiences in the context of the adoption of a liberal constitution by Ferdinand II.Stamatov, Peter, "Interpretive Activism and the Political Uses of Verdi's Operas in the 1840s" (June 2002). ''American Sociological Review'', 67 (3): pp. 345–366. Other contemporary comment praised the work as suitable for the "political education of the people", while, in contrast, others criticised the opera as "Teutonic" in nature. Composition history Verdi had read the ultra-Romantic play in April 1844, probably introduced to it by his fr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
La Traviata
''La traviata'' (; ''The Fallen Woman'') is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. It is based on ''La Dame aux camélias'' (1852), a play by Alexandre Dumas ''fils'' adapted from his own 1848 novel. The opera was originally titled ''Violetta'', after the main character. It was first performed on 6 March 1853 at La Fenice opera house in Venice. Piave and Verdi wanted to follow Dumas in giving the opera a contemporary setting, but the authorities at La Fenice insisted that it be set in the past, "c. 1700". It was not until the 1880s that the composer's and librettist's original wishes were carried out and " realistic" productions were staged. ''La traviata'' has become immensely popular and is among the most frequently performed of all operas. Composition history For Verdi, the years 1851 to 1853 were filled with operatic activity. First, he had agreed with the librettist Salvadore Cammarano on a subject for what would ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
