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Bertrand De Billy
Bertrand de Billy (born Paris, 11 January 1965) is a French conductor. He attended a Jesuit school, but only started serious musical studies when he was around 14–15; he studied piano and violin.Bertrand de Billy, chef d’orchestre, interview with Valéry Fleurquin, 3 January 2007, in French accessed 7 February 2014. After his career as an instrumental musician, de Billy began his conducting career in . He later moved to and built up his career as an opera conductor. His professional operatic conducting debu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Conducting
Conducting is the art of directing a musical performance, such as an orchestral or choral concert. It has been defined as "the art of directing the simultaneous performance of several players or singers by the use of gesture." The primary duties of the conductor are to interpret the score in a way which reflects the specific indications in that score, set the tempo, ensure correct entries by ensemble members, and "shape" the phrasing where appropriate. Conductors communicate with their musicians primarily through hand gestures, usually with the aid of a baton, and may use other gestures or signals such as eye contact. A conductor usually supplements their direction with verbal instructions to their musicians in rehearsal. The conductor typically stands on a raised podium with a large music stand for the full score, which contains the musical notation for all the instruments or voices. Since the mid-19th century, most conductors have not played an instrument when conducting, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cornelius Meister
Cornelius Meister (born 23 February 1980 in Hannover, is a German conductor and pianist. Biography Meister's father, Konrad Meister, was a pianist and professor of piano at the Musikhochschule Hannover. His mother is also a piano teacher. His half-brother, Rudolf Meister, is also a pianist and is Rector of the ''Musikhochschule Mannheim''. Meister studied piano and conducting at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hannover. Besides his father, his teachers in Hannover included Martin Brauss and Eiji Oue. Meister also studied music at the Salzburg Mozarteum, with such teachers as Dennis Russell Davies and Karl Kamper. He was a prize winner at the 1996 Southwest German Chamber Music Competition, a winner of the Radeberger Award and the Audience Award at the 1998 Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, and a recipient in 2000 of a prize of the Deutscher Musikwettbewerb. From 2001 to 2002, Meister was an assistant conductor at the Theater Erfurt. He has also worked as a ''Kapell ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Uwe Mund (conductor)
Uwe Mund (March 20, 1941) is an Austrian conductor. At the age of fourteen he gave his first concert as solo pianist and with sixteen he began his studies as a conductor and composer. Born in Vienna, he became at the age of twenty conductor of the Vienna Boys' Choir, with which he toured Europe and America. He also conducted the Viennese Hofmusikkapelle, a court orchestra dating back to the Middle Ages. He became solo répétiteur for the Vienna State Opera and assistant conductor of the Wiener Singverein in 1963. He was music director at Musiktheater im Revier in Gelsenkirchen from 1977 until 1988, where his work and passion are considered to have defined an era. He was music director at Gran Teatre del Liceu The Gran Teatre del Liceu (, English: Great Theatre of the Lyceum), known as ''El Liceu'', is an opera house in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. Located in La Rambla, it is the oldest running theatre in Barcelona. Founded in 1837 at another ..., Barcelona, from 198 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Liceu
The Gran Teatre del Liceu (, English: Great Theatre of the Lyceum), known as ''El Liceu'', is an opera house in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. Located in La Rambla, it is the oldest running theatre in Barcelona. Founded in 1837 at another location, El Liceu opened at its current location on 4 April 1847. The theatre was rebuilt after two fires in 1861 and 1994 and reopened on 20 April 1862 and 7 October 1999, respectively. On 7 November 1893, on the opening night of the season, an anarchist threw two bombs into the stalls, and some twenty people were killed and many more were injured. Between 1847 and 1989, the Liceu was the largest opera house in Europe by capacity, with its 2,338 seats at the time. Since 1994, the Liceu has been owned and managed by a public foundation, whose Board of Trustees comprises members representing the Ministry of Culture of the Government of Spain, the Generalitat de Catalunya, the Provincial Deputation of Barcelona and the City Council of Ba ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hamlet (opera)
''Hamlet'' is a grand opera in five acts of 1868 by the French composer Ambroise Thomas, with a libretto by Michel Carré and Jules Barbier based on a French adaptation by Alexandre Dumas, père, and Paul Meurice of William Shakespeare's play ''Hamlet''.Fauser, Annegret. "Hamlet. Ophélie: Shakespeare in Paris" in ''Hamlet'' CD Booklet (1993), pp. 33–41. Background Ophelia mania in Paris The Parisian public's fascination with Ophelia, prototype of the ''femme fragile'', began in the fall of 1827, when an English company directed by William Abbot came to Paris to give a season of Shakespeare in English at the Odéon. On 11 September 1827 the Irish actress Harriet Smithson played the part of Ophelia in ''Hamlet''. Cairns, David (1969), p. 70. Her mad scene appeared to owe little to tradition and seemed almost like an improvisation, with several contemporary accounts remarking on her astonishing capacity for mime. Her performances produced an extraordinary reaction: ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
La Bohème
''La bohème'' (; ) is an opera in four acts,Puccini called the divisions '' quadri'', '' tableaux'' or "images", rather than ''atti'' (acts). composed by Giacomo Puccini between 1893 and 1895 to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, based on ''Scènes de la vie de bohème'' (1851) by Henri Murger. The story is set in Paris around 1830 and shows the Bohemian lifestyle (known in French as "") of a poor seamstress and her artist friends. The world premiere of ''La bohème'' was in Turin on 1 February 1896 at the Teatro Regio, conducted by the 28-year-old Arturo Toscanini. Since then, ''La bohème'' has become part of the standard Italian opera repertory and is one of the most frequently performed operas worldwide. In 1946, fifty years after the opera's premiere, Toscanini conducted a commemorative performance of it on radio with the NBC Symphony Orchestra. A recording of the performance was later released by RCA Victor on vinyl record, tape and compact d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cendrillon
''Cendrillon'' (''Cinderella'') is an opera—described as a "fairy tale"—in four acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Henri Caïn based on Perrault's 1698 version of the Cinderella fairy tale. It had its premiere performance on 24 May 1899 in Paris. The ''New Grove Dictionary of Opera'' notes that Massenet's sense of humor and wit is more evident in this work, and the use of recurrent motifs is more discreet, while the love music "reminds us how well Massenet knew his Wagner". Albert Carré (director of the Opéra-Comique and producer of the first staging) persuaded the composer to drop a prologue introducing the characters, but a brief epilogue survives. Another writer comments that Massenet's perfectly proportioned score moves from a scene worthy of Jean-Baptiste Lully's '' Armide'' (in Cendrillon's monologue), through Rossinian vocalises and archaic orchestrations to ballet movements on a par with Tchaikovsky. Composition history The scenario was conceived by M ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pelléas Et Mélisande (opera)
''Pelléas et Mélisande'' (''Pelléas and Mélisande'') is an opera in five acts with music by Claude Debussy. The French libretto was adapted from Maurice Maeterlinck's symbolist play of the same name. It premiered at the Salle Favart in Paris by the Opéra-Comique on 30 April 1902; Jean Périer was Pelléas and Mary Garden was Mélisande, conducted by André Messager, who was instrumental in getting the Opéra-Comique to stage the work. The only opera Debussy ever completed, it is considered a landmark in 20th-century music. The plot concerns a love triangle. Prince Golaud finds Mélisande, a mysterious young woman, lost in a forest. He marries her and brings her back to the castle of his grandfather, King Arkel of Allemonde. Here Mélisande becomes increasingly attached to Golaud's younger half-brother Pelléas, arousing Golaud's jealousy. Golaud goes to excessive lengths to find out the truth about Pelléas and Mélisande's relationship, even forcing his own child, Yniold, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Don Carlos (opera)
''Don Carlos'' is a five-act grand opera composed by Giuseppe Verdi to a French-language libretto by Joseph Méry and Camille du Locle, based on the dramatic play '' Don Carlos, Infant von Spanien'' (''Don Carlos, Infante of Spain'') by Friedrich Schiller. In addition, several incidents, of which the Forest of Fontainebleau scene and ''auto-da-fé'' were the most substantial, were borrowed from Eugène Cormon's 1846 play ''Philippe II, Roi d'Espagne''. The opera is most often performed in Italian translation, usually under the title ''Don Carlo''. The opera's story is based on conflicts in the life of Carlos, Prince of Asturias (1545–1568). Though he was betrothed to Elisabeth of Valois, part of the peace treaty ending the Italian War of 1551–59 between the Houses of Habsburg and Valois demanded that she be married instead to his father Philip II of Spain. It was commissioned and produced by the Théâtre Impérial de l'Opéra ( Paris Opera) and given its premiere at t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Faust (opera)
''Faust'' is an opera in five acts by Charles Gounod to a French libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré from Carré's play ''Faust et Marguerite'', in turn loosely based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's ''Faust, Part One''. It debuted at the Théâtre Lyrique on the Boulevard du Temple in Paris on 19 March 1859, with influential sets designed by Charles-Antoine Cambon and Joseph Thierry, Jean Émile Daran, Édouard Desplechin, and Philippe Chaperon. Performance history The original version of Faust employed spoken dialogue, and it was in this form that the work was first performed. The manager of the Théâtre Lyrique, Léon Carvalho cast his wife Caroline Miolan-Carvalho as Marguerite and there were various changes during production, including the removal and contraction of several numbers. The tenor Hector Gruyer was originally cast as Faust but was found to be inadequate during rehearsals, being eventually replaced by a principal of the Opéra-Comique, Joseph-Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antonín Dvořák
Antonín Leopold Dvořák ( ; ; 8 September 1841 – 1 May 1904) was a Czech composer. Dvořák frequently employed rhythms and other aspects of the folk music of Moravia and his native Bohemia, following the Romantic-era nationalist example of his predecessor Bedřich Smetana. Dvořák's style has been described as "the fullest recreation of a national idiom with that of the symphonic tradition, absorbing folk influences and finding effective ways of using them". Dvořák displayed his musical gifts at an early age, being an apt violin student from age six. The first public performances of his works were in Prague in 1872 and, with special success, in 1873, when he was 31 years old. Seeking recognition beyond the Prague area, he submitted a score of his First Symphony to a prize competition in Germany, but did not win, and the unreturned manuscript was lost until it was rediscovered many decades later. In 1874, he made a submission to the Austrian State Prize for Compositi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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