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Catherine Foster (soprano)
Catherine Foster (born 1975) is an English operatic soprano, who has appeared internationally, mostly in European opera houses. Her repertoire has focused on dramatic soprano roles in stage works by Richard Strauss and Richard Wagner, such as the title role of '' Elektra'', and Brünnhilde in ''Der Ring des Nibelungen'', a role which she performed at the Bayreuth Festival in 2013 for Wagner's bicentenary. Career Born in Nottingham, Foster played several musical instruments as a girl, and was a lead chorister in the choir of the village church from age 15. She worked first as a nurse and midwife for 15 years. Beginning in 1993 she studied voice with Pamela Cook, who trained her until her death in 2013. Foster studied at the Birmingham Conservatoire from 1995. As a recipient of the Dame Eva Turner Awards, she studied on a scholarship at the Royal Northern College of Music and completed her studies at the National Opera Studio in London in 1999. During her studies, she perform ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nottingham
Nottingham ( , locally ) is a city and unitary authority area in Nottinghamshire, East Midlands, England. It is located north-west of London, south-east of Sheffield and north-east of Birmingham. Nottingham has links to the legend of Robin Hood and to the lace-making, bicycle and tobacco industries. The city is also the county town of Nottinghamshire and the settlement was granted its city charter in 1897, as part of Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee celebrations. Nottingham is a tourist destination; in 2018, the city received the second-highest number of overnight visitors in the Midlands and the highest number in the East Midlands. In 2020, Nottingham had an estimated population of 330,000. The wider conurbation, which includes many of the city's suburbs, has a population of 768,638. It is the largest urban area in the East Midlands and the second-largest in the Midlands. Its Functional Urban Area, the largest in the East Midlands, has a population of 919,484. The popula ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English National Opera
English National Opera (ENO) is an opera company based in London, resident at the London Coliseum in St Martin's Lane. It is one of the two principal opera companies in London, along with The Royal Opera. ENO's productions are sung in English. The company's origins were in the late 19th century, when the philanthropist Emma Cons, later assisted by her niece Lilian Baylis, presented theatrical and operatic performances at the Old Vic, for the benefit of local people. Baylis subsequently built up both the opera and the theatre companies, and later added a ballet company; these evolved into the ENO, the Royal National Theatre and The Royal Ballet, respectively. Baylis acquired and rebuilt the Sadler's Wells theatre in north London, a larger house, better suited to opera than the Old Vic. The opera company grew there into a permanent ensemble in the 1930s. During the Second World War, the theatre was closed and the company toured British towns and cities. After the war, the c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marek Janowski
Marek Janowski (born 18 February 1939 in Warsaw) is a Polish-born German conductor. He is currently chief conductor of the Dresden Philharmonic. Childhood Janowski grew up in Wuppertal, near Cologne, after his mother traveled there at the start of World War II to be with her parents. His father disappeared in Poland during the war. Career Janowski served as music director in Freiburg and at the Dortmund Opera conducting the Dortmunder Philharmoniker, the latter from 1973 to 1979. From 1983 to 1987 he was principal conductor of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. He served as ''Kapellmeister'' of the Gürzenich Orchestra in Cologne from 1986 to 1990. He developed an important profile in France as well, becoming music director of the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France (then called the Nouvel Orchestre Philharmonique) in Paris in 1984 and retaining that post until 2000. He then was principal conductor of the Monte-Carlo Philharmonic Orchestra from 2000 to 2 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kirill Petrenko
Kirill Garrievich Petrenko (russian: Кирилл Гарриевич Петренко, Latin script: ; born 11 February 1972) is a Russian-Austrian conductor. He is chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic. Early life Petrenko was born in Omsk, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union, to a violinist father and musicologist mother. He is of Jewish descent. His father was born in Lviv (now in Ukraine). Petrenko studied piano as a youth, and made his public debut as a pianist at age 11. At age 18, he and his family emigrated to Austria, where his father played in the Symphony Orchestra Vorarlberg. Petrenko studied music at the Vorarlberger Landeskonservatorium in Feldkirch, Vorarlberg, graduating with honours in piano studies. He continued his musical studies in Vienna at the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna, where his teachers included Uroš Lajovic. His other conducting teachers and mentors have included Myung-Whun Chung, Edward Downes, Péter Eötvös, Ferdinand Leitner, Ro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frank Castorf
Frank Castorf (born 17 July 1951 in East Berlin) is a German theater director and was the artistic director of the ''Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz'' from 1992 to 2015. His work is often associated with postdramatic theatre. Biography Early Years Castorf's father was an ironmonger. Frank Castorf successfully completed his schooling in 1969/70, entering training for railway work. Between 1970 and 1972 he undertook military service with the army's National Border Force. Then, between 1971 and 1976, he attended the Humboldt University of Berlin, studying theatrology. His teachers included Ernst Schumacher, Rudolf Münz and Joachim Fiebach. His diploma dissertation, which was formally commended, was entitled "Ground Rules for the 'Development' of Ionesco's Global Ideological Perspective and Artistic-Aesthetic Position". He made numerous culturally focused visits to Poland during this period. In 1989, Klaus Pierwoß brought Castorf with a production of ''Ha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Turandot
''Turandot'' (; see below) is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, posthumously completed by Franco Alfano in 1926, and set to a libretto in Italian by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni. ''Turandot'' best-known aria is " Nessun dorma", which became globally popular in the 1990s following Luciano Pavarotti's performance of it for the 1990 FIFA World Cup. Though Puccini first became interested in the subject matter when reading Friedrich Schiller's 1801 adaptation,. ''Freely translated from Schiller by Sabilla Novello:'' . he based his work more closely on the earlier play ''Turandot'' (1762) by Count Carlo Gozzi. The original story is one of the seven stories in the epic ''Haft Peykar''—a work by twelfth-century Persian poet Nizami ( 1141–1209). Nizami aligned his seven stories with the seven days of the week, the seven colors, and the seven planets known in his era. This particular narrative is the story of Tuesday, as told to the king of Iran, Bahram V (), by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tristan Und Isolde
''Tristan und Isolde'' (''Tristan and Isolde''), WWV 90, is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner to a German libretto by the composer, based largely on the 12th-century romance Tristan and Iseult by Gottfried von Strassburg. It was composed between 1857 and 1859 and premiered at the Königliches Hoftheater und Nationaltheater in Munich on 10 June 1865 with Hans von Bülow conducting. Wagner referred to the work not as an opera, but called it "" (literally ''a drama'', ''a plot'', or ''an action''). Wagner's composition of ''Tristan und Isolde'' was inspired by the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer (particularly ''The World as Will and Representation''), as well as by Wagner's affair with Mathilde Wesendonck. Widely acknowledged as a pinnacle of the operatic repertoire, ''Tristan'' was notable for Wagner's unprecedented use of chromaticism, tonal ambiguity, orchestral colour, and harmonic suspension. The opera was enormously influential among Western classical c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dramatic Soprano
A dramatic soprano is a type of operatic soprano with a powerful, rich, emotive voice that can sing over, or cut through, a full orchestra. Thicker vocal folds in dramatic voices usually (but not always) mean less agility than lighter voices but a sustained, fuller sound. Usually this voice has a lower tessitura than other sopranos, and a darker timbre. They are often used for heroic, often long-suffering, tragic women of opera. Dramatic sopranos have a range from approximately low A ( A3) to "high C" (C6).Coffin (1960) Some dramatic sopranos, known as Wagnerian sopranos, have an exceptionally big voice that can assert itself over a large orchestra (of more than 80 or even 100 pieces). These voices are substantial, often denser in tone, extremely powerful and, ideally, evenly balanced throughout the vocal registers. Wagnerian sopranos usually play mythic heroines. Successful Wagnerian sopranos are rare and often Wagnerian roles are performed by Italianate dramatic sopranos. Dr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Idomeneo
' (Italian for '' Idomeneus, King of Crete, or, Ilia and Idamante''; usually referred to simply as ''Idomeneo'', K. 366) is an Italian language opera seria by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The libretto was adapted by Giambattista Varesco from a French text by Antoine Danchet, based on a 1705 play by Crébillion père, which had been set to music by André Campra as '' Idoménée'' in 1712. Mozart and Varesco were commissioned in 1780 by Karl Theodor, Elector of Bavaria for a court carnival. He probably chose the subject, though it may have been Mozart. The work premiered on 29 January 1781 at the Cuvilliés Theatre in Munich, Germany. Composition The libretto clearly draws inspiration from Metastasio in its overall layout, the type of character development, and the highly poetic language used in the various numbers and the ''secco'' and ''stromentato'' recitatives. The style of the choruses, marches, and ballets is very French, and the shipwreck scene towards the end of act I is a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nabucco
''Nabucco'' (, short for Nabucodonosor ; en, "Nebuchadnezzar") is an Italian-language opera in four acts composed in 1841 by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Temistocle Solera. The libretto is based on the biblical books of 2 Kings, Jeremiah, Lamentations and Daniel and the 1836 play by Auguste Anicet-Bourgeois and Francis Cornu. However, Antonio Cortese's ballet adaptation of the play (with its necessary simplifications), given at La Scala in 1836, was a more important source for Solera than the play itself. Under its original name of ''Nabucodonosor'', the opera was first performed at La Scala in Milan on 9 March 1842. ''Nabucco'' is the opera that is considered to have permanently established Verdi's reputation as a composer. He commented that "this is the opera with which my artistic career really begins. And though I had many difficulties to fight against, it is certain that ''Nabucco'' was born under a lucky star." The opera follows the plight of the Jews as t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Der Fliegende Holländer
' (''The Flying Dutchman''), WWV 63, is a German-language opera, with libretto and music by Richard Wagner. The central theme is redemption through love. Wagner conducted the premiere at the Königliches Hoftheater Dresden in 1843. Wagner claimed in his 1870 autobiography '' Mein Leben'' that he had been inspired to write the opera following a stormy sea crossing he made from Riga to London in July and August 1839. In his 1843 '' Autobiographic Sketch'', Wagner acknowledged he had taken the story from Heinrich Heine's retelling of the legend in his 1833 satirical novel ''The Memoirs of Mister von Schnabelewopski'' (''Aus den Memoiren des Herrn von Schnabelewopski''). This work shows early attempts at operatic styles that would characterise his later music dramas. In ''Der fliegende Holländer'' Wagner uses a number of leitmotifs (literally, "leading motifs") associated with the characters and themes. The leitmotifs are all introduced in the overture, which begins with a well- ... [...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] |
