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Chérubin
''Chérubin'' is an opera (''comédie chantée'') in three acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Francis de Croisset and Henri Cain after de Croisset's play of the same name. It was first performed at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo on 14 February 1905, with Mary Garden in the title role. The story is a light-hearted addition to Beaumarchais' Figaro plays, the action taking place soon after that of ''The Marriage of Figaro'', and imagines festivities in celebration of Chérubin's first military commission and seventeenth birthday. A farcical romp ensues, brought on by Chérubin lusting after each of the female characters and inspiring general confusion. Performance history The piece contains some of Massenet's most shimmering, charming music and has spawned a few contemporary revivals plus several recordings since 1980. The Royal Opera House in London premiered it on 14 February 1994 in a production starring Susan Graham in the title role. The performance was broadcast. Role ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chérubin Monte-Carlo
''Chérubin'' is an opera (''comédie chantée'') in three acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Francis de Croisset and Henri Cain after de Croisset's play of the same name. It was first performed at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo on 14 February 1905, with Mary Garden in the title role. The story is a light-hearted addition to Beaumarchais' Figaro plays, the action taking place soon after that of '' The Marriage of Figaro'', and imagines festivities in celebration of Chérubin's first military commission and seventeenth birthday. A farcical romp ensues, brought on by Chérubin lusting after each of the female characters and inspiring general confusion. Performance history The piece contains some of Massenet's most shimmering, charming music and has spawned a few contemporary revivals plus several recordings since 1980. The Royal Opera House in London premiered it on 14 February 1994 in a production starring Susan Graham in the title role. The performance was broadcast. R ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chérubin (Pinchas Steinberg Recording)
''Chérubin'' is a 115-minute studio album of Jules Massenet's comic opera, performed by a cast headed by June Anderson, Samuel Ramey, Frederica von Stade and Dawn Upshaw with the Chorus of the Bavarian State Opera and the Munich Radio Orchestra under the direction of Pinchas Steinberg. It was released in 1992. Background Von Stade, who sings the opera's title role, participated in this recording having already sung the part in concert in Carnegie Hall in 1984 and on stage with Santa Fe Opera in 1989. Recording The album was digitally recorded on 8-16 April 1991 in Studio 1, Bavarian Radio, Munich, Germany.Massenet, Jules: ''Chérubin'', cond. Pinchas Steinberg, RCA Victor Red Seal CD, 09026 60593 2, 1992 The album was co-produced by Bavarian Radio and BMG Classics. Cover art The cover of the album, designed under the art direction of J. J. Stelmach, features a photograph by Murrae Haynes of von Stade performing in ''Chérubin'' at Santa Fe in 1989. Critical reception Reviews ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frederica Von Stade
Frederica von Stade OAL (born June 1, 1945) is a semi-retired American opera singer. Since her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1970, she has performed in operas, musicals, concerts and recitals in venues throughout the world, including La Scala, the Paris Opera, the Vienna State Opera, the Salzburger Festspielhaus, Covent Garden, Glyndebourne and Carnegie Hall. Conductors with whom she has worked include Abbado, Bernstein, Boulez, Giulini, Karajan, Levine, Muti, Ozawa, Sinopoli, Solti and Tilson Thomas. She has also been a prolific and eclectic recording artist, attracting nine Grammy nominations for best classical vocalist, and she has made many appearances on television. A mezzo-soprano equally at home in lyric music and in coloratura, she has assumed fifty-seven operatic roles on stage and eight more in concert or on disc, progressing from minor parts to romantic leadsboth male and femaleand, latterly, character parts. She is especially associated with the Mozart, Rossini and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Francis De Croisset
Francis de Croisset (; born Franz Wiener, 28 January 1877 – 8 November 1937) was a Belgian-born French playwright and opera librettist. Early life Born as Franz Wiener, he was educated in Brussels on 28 January 1877 into a prominent Jewish-Belgian family that was distinguished in diplomacy and the army. His parents were Alexandre Jacques Wiener and Eugenie Bertha ( née Straus) Wiener. After moving to France, where he spent most of his life, he had his name changed by Presidential decree. At age 17, he rebelled against his parents' wishes that he take up a military career, and ran away to Paris. In 1901, his play ''Chérubin'' was produced at the Comédie-Française where Cécile Sorel (later the Comtesse de Ségur) made her debut in it. Jules Massenet set ''Chérubin'' to music and, in 1905, Mary Garden sang its première at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo. Career He was a lawyer by profession, but de Croisset gradually devoted more and more time to the theatre, "until play writ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jules Massenet
Jules Émile Frédéric Massenet (; 12 May 1842 – 13 August 1912) was a French composer of the Romantic era best known for his operas, of which he wrote more than thirty. The two most frequently staged are '' Manon'' (1884) and ''Werther'' (1892). He also composed oratorios, ballets, orchestral works, incidental music, piano pieces, songs and other music. While still a schoolboy, Massenet was admitted to France's principal music college, the Paris Conservatoire. There he studied under Ambroise Thomas, whom he greatly admired. After winning the country's top musical prize, the Prix de Rome, in 1863, he composed prolifically in many genres, but quickly became best known for his operas. Between 1867 and his death forty-five years later he wrote more than forty stage works in a wide variety of styles, from opéra-comique to grand-scale depictions of classical myths, romantic comedies, lyric dramas, as well as oratorios, cantatas and ballets. Massenet had a good sense of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Samuel Ramey
Samuel Edward Ramey (born March 28, 1942) is an American operatic bass. At the height of his career, he was greatly admired for his range and versatility, having possessed a sufficiently accomplished bel canto technique to enable him to sing the music of Handel, Mozart and Rossini, yet with power enough to handle the more overtly dramatic roles in Verdi and Puccini. Early life Ramey graduated from Colby High School in Colby, Kansas in 1960. He studied music in high school and in college at Kansas State University, as well as at Wichita State with Arthur Newman. In college at Kansas State, he was a member of the Kappa Sigma Fraternity. After further study in Central City (where he was in the chorus of ''Don Giovanni'' in 1963, with Norman Treigle in the title role) and as an apprentice with the Santa Fe Opera, he went to New York City where he worked for an academic publisher before he had his first breakthrough at the New York City Opera, debuting on March 11, 1973, as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dawn Upshaw
Dawn Upshaw (born July 17, 1960) is an American soprano. She is the recipient of several Grammy Awards and has released a number of Edison Award-winning discs; she performs both opera and art song, and her repertoire spans Baroque to contemporary. Many composers, including Henri Dutilleux, Osvaldo Golijov, John Harbison, Esa-Pekka Salonen, John Adams, and Kaija Saariaho, have written for her. In 2007, she was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship. Early life Dawn Upshaw was born in Nashville, Tennessee. She began singing while attending Rich East High School in Park Forest, Illinois and was the only female ever promoted to the top choir (the Singing Rockets) as a sophomore, according to choir director Douglas Ulreich. She received a B.A. in 1982 from Illinois Wesleyan University, where she studied voice with Dr. David Nott. She went on to study voice with Ellen Faull at the Manhattan School of Music in New York City, earning her M.M. in 1984. She also attended courses given by Jan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Beaumarchais
Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais (; 24 January 1732 – 18 May 1799) was a French polymath. At various times in his life, he was a watchmaker, inventor, playwright, musician, diplomat, spy, publisher, horticulturist, arms dealer, satirist, financier and revolutionary (both French and American). Born a Parisian watchmaker's son, Beaumarchais rose in French society and became influential in the court of Louis XV as an inventor and music teacher. He made a number of important business and social contacts, played various roles as a diplomat and spy, and had earned a considerable fortune before a series of costly court battles jeopardized his reputation. An early French supporter of American independence, Beaumarchais lobbied the French government on behalf of the American rebels during the American War of Independence. Beaumarchais oversaw covert aid from the French and Spanish governments to supply arms and financial assistance to the rebels in the years before France's forma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Susan Graham
Susan Graham (born July 23, 1960) is an American mezzo-soprano. Life and career Susan Graham was born in Roswell, New Mexico on July 23, 1960. Raised in Midland, Texas, Graham is a graduate of Texas Tech University and the Manhattan School of Music. Her teachers have included Cynthia Hoffmann and Marlena Malas. She studied the piano for 13 years. She was a winner in the Metropolitan Opera's National Council Auditions, and also a recipient of the Schwabacher Award from the Merola Program of San Francisco Opera. Graham made her international début at Covent Garden in 1994, playing Massenet's Chérubin. She has also premièred several roles in contemporary operas, including John Harbison's ''The Great Gatsby'' (Jordan Baker), Jake Heggie's '' Dead Man Walking'' (Sister Helen Prejean), and Tobias Picker's ''An American Tragedy'' (Sondra Finchley). Graham is a noted champion of the French song repertoire and of songs by contemporary American composers, including Ned Rorem an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maurice Renaud
Maurice Arnold Renaud (24 July 1861 – 16 October 1933) was a cultured French operatic baritone. He enjoyed an international reputation for the superlative quality of his singing and the brilliance of his acting. Early years Renaud was born in Bordeaux, as Arnaud Maurice Croneau.Bordeaux, Act No. 863, Son of Joseph Croneau, cooper and Adelaide Angèle Laubart. He studied for a year at the Paris Conservatoire, and then at the Brussels Conservatoire under Joseph Cornelis and Henri Warnots. He made his début at the Théâtre Royal de la Monnaie, Brussels, in 1883 and remained with that company until 1890, singing in the premières of Ernest Reyer's ''Sigurd'' in 1884 and in his ''Salammbô'' in 1890, opposite Rose Caron in both. He would re-appear at the Monnaie also in the period 1908-14. In October 1890 he joined the Opéra-Comique, making his debut as Karnak in Lalo's ''Le roi d'Ys'', and also singing title roles in '' Don Giovanni'' and ''Der fliegende Holländer'' a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Patrizia Ciofi
Patrizia Ciofi (born 7 June 1967) is an Italian operatic coloratura soprano. Career Born in Casole d'Elsa, Ciofi studied at the Istituto Musicale Pietro Mascagni in Livorno. She subsequently took part in master classes at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana, Siena, with Carlo Bergonzi and Shirley Verrett. She made her debut in Gino Negri's ''Giovanni Sebastiano'' at the Teatro Comunale, Florence in 1989. She began her collaboration with the Festival della Valle d'Itria, featuring in ''La sonnambula'' (1994), Cherubini's ''Médée'' (1995), Piccinni's '' L'americano'' (1996), French version of ''Lucia di Lammermoor'' (1997), Giordano's '' Mese mariano'' and ''Il re'' (1998), Traetta's ''Ippolito ed Aricia'' (1999), Rossini's ''Otello'' and Meyerbeer's ''Robert le diable'' (2000). She made her La Scala debut in 1997 with ''La traviata'', conducted by Riccardo Muti, and returned for ''L'elisir d'amore'' in 1998 and 2001. She has sung in most of the major Italian opera houses as well ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
June Anderson
June Anderson (born December 30, 1952) is a Grammy Award-winning American coloratura soprano. She is known for ''bel canto'' performances of Rossini, Donizetti, and Vincenzo Bellini. Subsequently, she has extended her repertoire to include a wide variety of other roles, including those from the Russian repertoire and works by Richard Strauss. In 2008, Anderson was elevated to Commandeur of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government and in 2007 received a "Victoire d'honneur" in the Victoires de la musique classique in Paris. Anderson has performed in noted opera houses including La Scala, Covent Garden, La Fenice, Metropolitan Opera, San Francisco Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago and Teatro Colón. She has collaborated with conductors Leonard Bernstein, James Levine, Charles Dutoit, Zubin Mehta, Riccardo Muti, Seiji Ozawa, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Kent Nagano and Michael Tilson Thomas. Early life June Anderson was born in Boston, Massachusetts and raised in Wallingford, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
