Ash Lawn Opera
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Ash Lawn Opera
Charlottesville Opera, before 2017 known as Ash Lawn Opera, is an opera company, founded in 1978 in Charlottesville, Virginia. For the company's first thirty years, performances were held in the boxwood garden at Ash Lawn-Highland, the home of President James Monroe. Since 2009 performances have been held at the renovated Paramount Theater in downtown Charlottesville. Charlottesville Opera currently produces four original productions each season: a semi-staged concert opera in the spring; a full-length opera and a musical in the summer; and a holiday opera in December. In addition to the standard operatic repertoire, Charlottesville Opera's productions have included American musicals and 20th century American operas such as Carlisle Floyd's ''Susannah'', as well as such pieces as Leonard Bernstein's ''Candide ( , ) is a French satire written by Voltaire, a philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment, first published in 1759. The novella has been widely translated, with Englis ...
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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 o ...
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Charlottesville, Virginia
Charlottesville, colloquially known as C'ville, is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia. It is the county seat of Albemarle County, which surrounds the city, though the two are separate legal entities. It is named after Queen Charlotte. At the 2020 census, the population was 46,553. The Bureau of Economic Analysis combines the City of Charlottesville with Albemarle County for statistical purposes, bringing its population to approximately 150,000. Charlottesville is the heart of the Charlottesville metropolitan area, which includes Albemarle, Buckingham, Fluvanna, Greene, and Nelson counties. Charlottesville was the home of two presidents, Thomas Jefferson and James Monroe. During their terms as Governor of Virginia, they lived in Charlottesville, and traveled to and from Richmond, along the historic Three Notch'd Road. Orange, located northeast of the city, was the hometown of President James Madison. The University of Virginia, founded by Jeffe ...
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Ash Lawn-Highland
Highland, formerly Ash Lawn–Highland, located near Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, and adjacent to Thomas Jefferson's Monticello, was the estate of James Monroe, a Founding Father and fifth president of the United States. Purchased in 1793, Monroe and his family permanently settled on the property in 1799 and lived at Highland for twenty-five years. Personal debt forced Monroe to sell the plantation in 1825. Before and after selling Highland, Monroe spent much of his time living at the plantation house at his large Oak Hill estate near Leesburg, Virginia. Monroe named his Charlottesville home "Highland". For many years after Monroe's death until 2016, the house was known as Ash Lawn-Highland or merely Ash Lawn. The estate is now owned, operated and maintained by Monroe's ''alma mater'', the College of William & Mary. History Monroe establishes Highland Encouraged by his close friend, Thomas Jefferson, Monroe purchased a deed for one thousand acres (4 km2) ...
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James Monroe
James Monroe ( ; April 28, 1758July 4, 1831) was an American statesman, lawyer, diplomat, and Founding Father who served as the fifth president of the United States from 1817 to 1825. A member of the Democratic-Republican Party, Monroe was the last president of the Virginia dynasty and the Republican Generation; his presidency coincided with the Era of Good Feelings, concluding the First Party System era of American politics. He is perhaps best known for issuing the Monroe Doctrine, a policy of opposing European colonialism in the Americas while effectively asserting U.S. dominance, empire, and hegemony in the hemisphere. He also served as governor of Virginia, a member of the United States Senate, U.S. ambassador to France and Britain, the seventh Secretary of State, and the eighth Secretary of War. Born into a slave-owning planter family in Westmoreland County, Virginia, Monroe served in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. After studyi ...
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Paramount Theater (Charlottesville, Virginia)
The Paramount Theater in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States was designed by Rapp and Rapp and opened in 1931 as a movie theater. The Paramount continued showing movies until it closed in 1974. In 1990 a group of community members purchased the theater, formed a nonprofit corporation and began raising funds for its restoration and expansion. In late 2004 the Paramount re-opened after an $18 million renovation. It is operated by a non-profit organization A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ... and is a performing arts venue for the community. Beginning in 2009 the theater has played host to performances by Charlottesville Opera.Blackwell & Causey 2005"Close Up: Ashlawn Festival" pp. 341–342 References External links * Paramount Theater history Buildings ...
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Musicals
Musical theatre is a form of theatrical performance that combines songs, spoken dialogue, acting and dance. The story and emotional content of a musical – humor, pathos, love, anger – are communicated through words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an integrated whole. Although musical theatre overlaps with other theatrical forms like opera and dance, it may be distinguished by the equal importance given to the music as compared with the dialogue, movement and other elements. Since the early 20th century, musical theatre stage works have generally been called, simply, musicals. Although music has been a part of dramatic presentations since ancient times, modern Western musical theatre emerged during the 19th century, with many structural elements established by the works of Gilbert and Sullivan in Britain and those of Harrigan and Hart in America. These were followed by the numerous Edwardian musical comedies and the musical theatre ...
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Carlisle Floyd
Carlisle Sessions Floyd (June 11, 1926September 30, 2021) was an American composer primarily known for his operas. These stage works, for which he wrote the librettos, typically engage with themes from the American South, particularly the Post-civil war South, the Great Depression and rural life. His best known opera, ''Susannah'', is based on a story from the Biblical Apocrypha, transferred to contemporary rural Tennessee, and written for a Southern dialect. It was premiered at Florida State University in 1955, with Phyllis Curtin in the title role. When it was staged at the New York City Opera the following year, the reception was initially mixed; some considered it a masterpiece, while others degraded it as a 'folk opera'. Subsequent performances led to an increase in ''Susannah'''s reputation and the opera quickly became among the most performed of American operas. In 1976, he became M. D. Anderson professor at the University of Houston. He co-founded the Houston Oper ...
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Susannah
''Susannah'' is an opera in two acts by the American composer Carlisle Floyd, who wrote the libretto and music while a member of the piano faculty at Florida State University. Floyd adapted the story from the Apocryphal tale of Susannah and the Elders, though the latter story has a more positive ending. The story focuses on 18-year-old Susannah Polk, an innocent girl who is targeted as a sinner in the small mountain town of New Hope Valley, in the Southern American state of Tennessee. The opera was awarded the New York Music Critics Circle Award for Best New Opera in 1956 and was chosen to represent American music and culture at the World's Fair at Brussels in 1958, with a production (by Frank Corsaro) that featured Phyllis Curtin and Norman Treigle. It received its Metropolitan Opera premiere in 1999, with Renée Fleming singing the title role, Jerry Hadley singing Sam and Samuel Ramey singing Blitch. Ramey also recorded the complete opera with Cheryl Studer as Susannah and Je ...
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Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein ( ; August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, pianist, music educator, author, and humanitarian. Considered to be one of the most important conductors of his time, he was the first American conductor to receive international acclaim. According to music critic Donal Henahan, he was "one of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history". Bernstein was the recipient of many honors, including seven Emmy Awards, two Tony Awards, sixteen Grammy Awards including the Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Kennedy Center Honor. As a composer he wrote in many genres, including symphonic and orchestral music, ballet, film and theatre music, choral works, opera, chamber music and works for the piano. His best-known work is the Broadway musical '' West Side Story'', which continues to be regularly performed worldwide, and has been adapted into two ( 1961 and 2021) feature films. His works include three ...
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Candide (operetta)
''Candide'' is an operetta with music composed by Leonard Bernstein, based on the 1759 novella of the same name by Voltaire. The operetta was first performed in 1956 with a libretto by Lillian Hellman; but since 1974 it has been generally performed with a book by Hugh Wheeler which is more faithful to Voltaire's novel. The primary lyricist was the poet Richard Wilbur. Other contributors to the text were John Latouche, Dorothy Parker, Lillian Hellman, Stephen Sondheim, John Mauceri, John Wells, and Bernstein himself. Maurice Peress and Hershy Kay contributed orchestrations. Although unsuccessful at its premiere, ''Candide'' has now overcome the unenthusiastic reaction of early audiences and critics and achieved more popularity. Origins ''Candide'' was originally conceived by Lillian Hellman as a play with incidental music in the style of her previous work, '' The Lark''. Bernstein, however, was so excited about this idea that he convinced Hellman to do it as a "comic oper ...
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American Opera Companies
American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, people who self-identify their ancestry as "American" ** American English, the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States ** Native Americans in the United States, indigenous peoples of the United States * American, something of, from, or related to the Americas, also known as "America" ** Indigenous peoples of the Americas * American (word), for analysis and history of the meanings in various contexts Organizations * American Airlines, U.S.-based airline headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas * American Athletic Conference, an American college athletic conference * American Recordings (record label), a record label previously known as Def American * American University, in Washington, D.C. Sports teams Soccer * B ...
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Music Of Virginia
Virginia's musical contribution to American culture has been diverse, and includes Piedmont blues, jazz, folk, brass, hip-hop, and rock and roll bands, as well as the founding origins of country music in the Bristol sessions by Appalachian Virginians. The origin of music from within the state is very diverse, including cities such as Richmond, college towns such as Charlottesville and Fredericksburg, and the rural areas of Southwestern Virginia along "The Crooked Road”. State song "Carry Me Back to Old Virginny" by James A. Bland was Virginia's state song from 1940 until 1997; it now has emeritus status. "Oh Shenandoah" was the interim state song from January 2006, and its melody was used for "Our Great Virginia," with lyrics by Mike Greenly, which became the official state song in 2015. The same year, " Sweet Virginia Breeze," written in 1978 by Steve Bassett and Robbin Thompson became the official popular state song; the runner-up was "Virginia, the Home of My Heart" ...
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