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Christine Johnson Smith
Christine Johnson Smith (September 8, 1911 – June 9, 2010), usually credited as Christine Johnson, was an American contralto opera singer and actress who sang at the Metropolitan Opera and other opera houses. She is best known, however, for creating the role of Nettie Fowler in the original Broadway production of ''Carousel''. Life and career Johnson was born in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, and moved to Owensboro, Kentucky after her freshman year of high school, graduating from Owensboro High School in 1929. She showed early promise, starring in school plays and singing in churches.1998 Kentucky Governor's Awards in the Arts nomination, on file in the Kentucky governor's office. After high school, she studied voice at the Nashville Conservatory of Music and sang for radio station WSM in Nashville, Tennessee. Johnson moved to New York City in 1937 and began to work with NBC's Radio City Music Hall and Lyn Murray and the Columbia Symphony Orchestra at CBS, sometimes touring in concerts ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Opera News
''Opera News'' is an American classical music magazine. It has been published since 1936 by the Metropolitan Opera Guild, a non-profit organization located at Lincoln Center which was founded to engender the appreciation of opera and also support the Metropolitan Opera of New York City. ''Opera News'' was initially focused primarily on the Met, particularly providing information for listeners of the Saturday afternoon live Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts. Over the years, the magazine has broadened its scope to include the larger American and international opera scenes. Currently published monthly, ''Opera News'' offers opera related feature articles; artist interviews; production profiles; musicological pieces; music-business reportage; reviews of performances in the United States and Europe; reviews of recordings, videos, books and audio equipment; and listings of opera performances in the U.S. The Editor-in-Chief is currently F. Paul Driscoll. Regular contributors to the mag ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tanglewood
Tanglewood is a music venue in the towns of Lenox and Stockbridge in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts. It has been the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra since 1937. Tanglewood is also home to three music schools: the Tanglewood Music Center, Days in the Arts and the Boston University Tanglewood Institute. Besides classical music, Tanglewood hosts the Festival of Contemporary Music, jazz and popular artists, concerts, and frequent appearances by James Taylor, John Williams, and the Boston Pops. First seasons, 1934 and 1935 The history of Tanglewood begins with a series of concerts held on August 23, 25 and 26, 1934 at the Interlaken estate of Daniel Hanna, about a mile from today’s festival site. A few months earlier, composer and conductor Henry Kimball Hadley had scouted the Berkshires for a site and support for his dream of establishing a seasonal classical music festival. He found an enthusiastic and capable patron in Gertrude Robinson Smith. ... [...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] |
Roberta
''Roberta'' is a musical from 1933 with music by Jerome Kern, and lyrics and book by Otto Harbach. The musical is based on the novel ''Gowns by Roberta'' by Alice Duer Miller. It features the songs " Yesterdays", "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes", "Let's Begin", "You're Devastating", "Something Had To Happen", "The Touch of Your Hand" and "I'll Be Hard to Handle". Productions The original Broadway production opened at the New Amsterdam Theatre on November 18, 1933, and ran for 295 performances closing on 21 July 1934. It starred Tamara Drasin (billed as Tamara), Bob Hope, George Murphy, Lyda Roberti, Fred MacMurray, Fay Templeton, Ray Middleton (billed as Raymond E. Middleton), Allan Jones, and Sydney Greenstreet. Hope, Murphy, MacMurray and Greenstreet were not yet the Hollywood stars they would soon be, and Middleton was not the Broadway leading man he would become after '' Annie Get Your Gun''. An Australian production opened at His Majesty's Theatre in Melbourne on December 22, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
La Fanciulla Del West
''La fanciulla del West'' (''The Girl of the West'') is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by and , based on the 1905 play '' The Girl of the Golden West'' by the American author David Belasco. ''Fanciulla'' followed ''Madama Butterfly'', which was also based on a Belasco play. The opera has fewer of the show-stopping highlights that characterize Puccini's other works, but is admired for its impressive orchestration and for a score that is more melodically integrated than is typical of his previous work. ''Fanciulla'' displays influences from composers Claude Debussy and Richard Strauss, without being in any way imitative. Similarities between the libretto and the work of Richard Wagner have also been found, though some attribute this more to the original plot of the play, and have asserted that the opera remains quintessentially Italian. The opera had a successful and highly publicised premiere at the Metropolitan Opera, New York City, in 1910. Neve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
La Forza Del Destino
' (; ''The Power of Fate'', often translated ''The Force of Destiny'') is an Italian opera by Giuseppe Verdi. The libretto was written by Francesco Maria Piave based on a Spanish drama, ' (1835), by Ángel de Saavedra, 3rd Duke of Rivas, with a scene adapted from Friedrich Schiller's '' Wallensteins Lager'' (''Wallenstein's Camp''). It was first performed in the Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre of Saint Petersburg, Russia, on 29 November 1862 O.S. (N.S. 10 November). ' is frequently performed, and there have been a number of complete recordings. In addition, the overture (to the revised version of the opera) is part of the standard repertoire for orchestras, often played as the opening piece at concerts. Performance history Revisions After its premiere in Russia, ''La forza'' underwent some revisions and made its debut abroad with performances in Rome in 1863 under the title ''Don Alvaro''. Performances followed in Madrid (with the Duke of Rivas, the play's author, in attend ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carmen
''Carmen'' () is an opera in four acts by the French composer Georges Bizet. The libretto was written by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the Carmen (novella), novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée. The opera was first performed by the Opéra-Comique in Paris on 3 March 1875, where its breaking of conventions shocked and scandalised its first audiences. Bizet died suddenly after the 33rd performance, unaware that the work would achieve international acclaim within the following ten years. ''Carmen'' has since become one of the most popular and frequently performed operas in the classical Western canon, canon; the "Habanera (aria), Habanera" from act 1 and the "Toreador Song" from act 2 are among the best known of all operatic arias. The opera is written in the genre of ''opéra comique'' with musical numbers separated by dialogue. It is set in southern Spain and tells the story of the downfall of Don José, a naïve soldier who is seduced by the wiles of th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cavalleria Rusticana
''Cavalleria rusticana'' (; Italian for "rustic chivalry") is an opera in one act by Pietro Mascagni to an Italian libretto by Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti and Guido Menasci, adapted from an 1880 short story of the same name and subsequent play by Giovanni Verga. Considered one of the classic ''verismo'' operas, it premiered on 17 May 1890 at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome. Since 1893, it has often been performed in a so-called ''Cav/Pag'' double-bill with ''Pagliacci'' by Ruggero Leoncavallo. Composition history In July 1888 the Milanese music publisher Edoardo Sonzogno announced a competition open to all young Italian composers who had not yet had an opera performed on stage. They were invited to submit a one-act opera which would be judged by a jury of five prominent Italian critics and composers. The best three would be staged in Rome at Sonzogno's expense. Mascagni heard about the competition only two months before the closing date and asked his friend Giovanni Targioni-Tozze ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Queen Of Spades (opera)
''The Queen of Spades'' or ''Pique Dame'', Op. 68 (russian: Пиковая дама, ''Pikovaya dama'' , french: La Dame de Pique) is an opera in three acts (seven scenes) by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky to a Russian libretto by the composer's brother Modest Tchaikovsky, based on the 1834 novella of the same name by Alexander Pushkin, but with a dramatically altered plot. The premiere took place in 1890 at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Composition history The Imperial Theatre offered Tchaikovsky a commission to write an opera based on the plot sketch by Ivan Vsevolozhsky in 1887/88. After first turning it down, Tchaikovsky accepted it in 1889. Toward the end of that year, he met with the theatre's managers to discuss the material and sketch out some of the scenes. He completed the full score in Florence in only 44 days. Later, working with the tenor who was to perform the lead character, he created two versions of Herman's aria in the seventh scene, using diff ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Fair At Sorochyntsi
''The Fair at Sorochyntsi'' (russian: Сорочинская ярмарка, ''Sorochinskaya yarmarka'', '' Sorochyntsi Fair'') is a comic opera in three acts by Modest Mussorgsky, composed between 1874 and 1880 in St. Petersburg, Russia. The composer wrote the libretto, which is based on Nikolai Gogol's short story of the same name, from his early (1832) collection of Ukrainian stories ''Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka''. The opera remained unfinished and unperformed at Mussorgsky's death in 1881. Today, the completion by Vissarion Shebalin has become the standard. Composition history Mussorgsky worked on the opera between 1874 and 1880, in competition with his work on ''Khovanshchina'' (1872–1880); both were incomplete at the time of his death in 1881. He reused some music that he had written previously (such as the "Market Scene" from Act II of the ill-fated ''Mlada'' of 1872, used for the opening scene of ''Fair''). Incorporation of the music of ''Night on Bald Mountain ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Macbeth (opera)
''Macbeth'' () is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi, with an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave and additions by Andrea Maffei, based on William Shakespeare's play of the same name. Written for the Teatro della Pergola in Florence, it was Verdi's tenth opera and premiered on 14 March 1847. ''Macbeth'' was the first Shakespeare play that Verdi adapted for the operatic stage. Almost twenty years later, ''Macbeth'' was revised and expanded in a French version and given in Paris on 19 April 1865. After the success of ''Attila'' in 1846, by which time the composer had become well established, ''Macbeth'' came before the great successes of 1851 to 1853 (''Rigoletto'', ''Il trovatore'' and '' La traviata'') which propelled him into universal fame. As sources, Shakespeare's plays provided Verdi with lifelong inspiration: some, such as an adaption of ''King Lear'' (as ''Re Lear'') were never realized, but he wrote his two final operas using ''Othello'' as the basis for ' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
San Francisco Opera
San Francisco Opera (SFO) is an American opera company founded in 1923 by Gaetano Merola (1881–1953) based in San Francisco, California. History Gaetano Merola (1923–1953) Merola's road to prominence in the Bay Area began in 1906 when he first visited the city. In 1909, he returned as the conductor of the International Opera Company of Montreal, one of the many visiting troupes that frequented the bustling city. Continued visits for the next decade convinced him that a San Francisco company was viable. In 1921, Merola returned to live in the city under the patronage of Mrs. Oliver Stine. During this time, Merola conceived of branching away from the area's reliance on visiting troupes for entertainment that had been common place since the Gold Rush era. By the fall, he was planning his first season, and the very next year, Merola organized a trial season at Stanford University. The first performance occurred in the Stanford Cardinal's football stadium on June 3rd, 1922 wi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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