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Das Rheingold
''Das Rheingold'' (; ''The Rhinegold''), WWV 86A, is the first of the four music dramas that constitute Richard Wagner's '' Der Ring des Nibelungen'' (English: ''The Ring of the Nibelung''). It was performed, as a single opera, at the National Theatre Munich on 22 September 1869, and received its first performance as part of the ''Ring'' cycle at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, on 13 August 1876. Wagner wrote the ''Ring'' librettos in reverse order, so that ''Das Rheingold'' was the last of the texts to be written; it was, however, the first to be set to music. The score was completed in 1854, but Wagner was unwilling to sanction its performance until the whole cycle was complete; he worked intermittently on this music until 1874. The 1869 Munich premiere of ''Das Rheingold'' was staged, much against Wagner's wishes, on the orders of his patron, King Ludwig II of Bavaria. Following its 1876 Bayreuth premiere, the ''Ring'' cycle was introduced into the worldwide repertory, with per ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Music Drama
is a German word that means a unity of prose and music. Initially coined by Theodor Mundt in 1833, it was most notably used by Richard Wagner, along with Gesamtkunstwerk, to define his operas. Usage Mundt formulated his definition explicitly in contrast to intermezzo, or a piece that sits in between dramatic entities. To this day, is associated with the works of Richard Wagner where poetry, music and stage performances were not arbitrarily combined. Wagner himself composed the music and libretto and was a consultant on the stage design and choreography. This all-encompassing art, or , called on the diegesis of in order to further the immersive feel. Wagner himself resisted calling his works , which would imply a drama "meant for music," like a libretto. Instead he wanted to put music at the service of the drama, which indeed in its original ancient Greek form was inseparable from music. Nevertheless, the term music drama has become accepted. A major characteristic of Musik ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Die Walküre
(; ''The Valkyrie''), WWV 86B, is the second of the four music dramas that constitute Richard Wagner's ''Der Ring des Nibelungen'' (English: ''The Ring of the Nibelung''). It was performed, as a single opera, at the National Theatre Munich on 26 June 1870, and received its first performance as part of the ''Ring'' cycle at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus on 14 August 1876. As the ''Ring'' cycle was conceived by Wagner in reverse order of performance, ''Die Walküre'' was the third of the four texts to be written, although Wagner composed the music in performance sequence. The text was completed by July 1852, and the music by March 1856. Wagner largely followed the principles related to the form of musical drama, which he had set out in his 1851 essay '' Opera and Drama'' under which the music would interpret the text emotionally, reflecting the feelings and moods behind the work, using a system of recurring leitmotifs to represent people, ideas, and situations rather than the con ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Franz Betz
Franz Betz (19 March 1835 – 11 August 1900) was a German bass-baritone opera singer who sang at the Berlin State Opera from 1859 to 1897. He was particularly known for his performances in operas by Richard Wagner and created the role of Hans Sachs in ''Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg''. Biography Franz Betz was born in Mainz and trained as a singer in Karlsruhe. He made his debut in 1856 at the Court Theater of Hanover as The Herald in Wagner's ''Lohengrin'', after which he sang as a guest performer in various other German opera houses. His 1859 success at the Berlin State Opera in the role of Don Carlo in Verdi's ''Ernani'', led to a permanent contract with the company. He became one of Wagner's most trusted singers, and sang the role of Hans Sachs in the world premiere of his ''Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg'' (National Theatre Munich, 1868). Betz sang the role more than a hundred times and was closely identified with the character. He also sang Wotan in ''Das Rheingold'' a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
August Kindermann
August Kindermann (6 February 1817 – 6 March 1891) was a German bass-baritone singer and regisseur, particularly noted for his performances in the operas of Richard Wagner. He was born in Potsdam. He began his career singing in the chorus of the Berlin State Opera in 1836 and made his solo debut there in 1837 in a small role in Spontini's ''Agnes von Hohenstaufen''. He went on to sing bass and baritone roles with Leipzig Opera from 1839 to 1846. While at Leipzig, he became a friend of Albert Lortzing and sang in the premieres of two of his operas: the title role in ''Hans Sachs'' (1840) and Count von Eberbach in ''Der Wildschütz'' (1842). He also sang Gazna in the premiere of Robert Schumann's secular oratorio '' Das Paradies und die Peri'' (1843). In 1846, Kinderman moved to the Bavarian State Opera in Munich where he was a Kammersänger and stage director who enjoyed great popularity. In 1855, he directed the company's production of Wagner's ''Tannhäuser'' as well as sing ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bass-baritone
A bass-baritone is a high-lying bass or low-lying "classical" baritone voice type which shares certain qualities with the true baritone voice. The term arose in the late 19th century to describe the particular type of voice required to sing three Wagnerian roles: the title role in '' Der fliegende Holländer'', Wotan/Der Wanderer in the '' Ring Cycle'' and Hans Sachs in '' Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg''. Wagner labelled these roles as ''Hoher Bass'' ("high bass")—see fach for more details. The bass-baritone voice is distinguished by two attributes. First, it must be capable of singing comfortably in a baritonal tessitura. Secondly, however, it needs to have the ripely resonant lower range typically associated with the bass voice. For example, the role of Wotan in ''Die Walküre'' covers the range from F2 (the F at the bottom of the bass clef) to F4 (the F above middle C), but only infrequently descends beyond C3 (the C below middle C). Bass-baritones are typically divided ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hans Richter (conductor)
Johann Baptist Isidor Richter, or János Richter (4 April 1843 – 5 December 1916) was an Austrian– Hungarian orchestral and operatic conductor. Biography Richter was born in Raab ( Hungarian: Győr), Kingdom of Hungary, Austrian Empire. His father was a local composer, conductor and ''regens chori'' Anton Richter. His mother was opera-singer Jozefa Csazenszky. He studied at the Vienna Conservatory. He had a particular interest in the horn, and developed his conducting career at several different opera houses in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He became associated with Richard Wagner in the 1860s, and played the solo trumpet part in the 1870 private premiere of the '' Siegfried Idyll''. In 1876, he was chosen to conduct the first complete performance of Wagner's ''Der Ring des Nibelungen'' at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus. In 1877, he assisted the ailing composer as conductor of a major series of Wagner concerts in London, and from then onwards he became a familiar feature o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Franz Wüllner
Franz Wüllner (28 January 1832 – 7 September 1902) was a German composer and conductor. He led the premieres of Wagner's ''Das Rheingold'' and ''Die Walküre'', but was much criticized by Wagner himself, who greatly preferred the more celebrated conductors Hans von Bülow and Hermann Levi. Biography Wüllner was born in Münster and studied in his native place, and at Frankfurt, Berlin, Brussels, and Munich. Among his teachers was Anton Schindler, who styled himself Beethoven's amanuensis carrying on the true traditions of the master's style, a claim disputed by Beethoven's pupil Carl Czerny. In 1856 Wüllner became instructor in piano at the Munich Conservatory. He held the position of town musical director at Aix-la-Chapelle from 1858 to 1864. In 1867 he became director of the choral classes in the reorganized School of Music at Munich and wrote for them ''Chorübungen der Münchener Musikschule'', text of score reading and singing ('' Solfege'').New International Encyclope ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Voice Type
A voice type is a group of voices with similar vocal ranges, capable of singing in a similar tessitura, and with similar vocal transition points ('' passaggi''). Voice classification is most strongly associated with European classical music, though it, and the terms it utilizes, are used in other styles of music as well. A singer will choose a repertoire that suits their voice. Some singers such as Enrico Caruso, Rosa Ponselle, Joan Sutherland, Maria Callas, Jessye Norman, Ewa Podleś, and Plácido Domingo have voices that allow them to sing roles from a wide variety of types; some singers such as Shirley Verrett and Grace Bumbry change type and even voice part over their careers; and some singers such as Leonie Rysanek have voices that lower with age, causing them to cycle through types over their careers. Some roles are hard to classify, having very unusual vocal requirements; Mozart wrote many of his roles for specific singers who often had remarkable voices, and so ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A Communication To My Friends
"Eine Mitteilung an meine Freunde", usually referred to in English by its translated title (from German language, German) of "A Communication to My Friends", is an extensive autobiography, autobiographical work by Richard Wagner, published in 1851, in which he sought to justify his innovative concepts on the future of opera in general, and his own proposed works in particular. Background "A Communication to my Friends" was written at a period which was turbulent even in the context of Wagner's very eventful life. Having been forced to flee Dresden, where he had been ''Kapellmeister'' at the Opera House, following his involvement with the May Uprising in Dresden, May Uprising of 1849, he lived in exile, based in Zürich. He had no regular income and, although he had completed the score of his opera ''Lohengrin (opera), Lohengrin'', he had at first little prospect of getting it performed, or of furthering his career as a composer. During the period 1849–51 he in fact wrote hardly any ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dresden
Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label= Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth largest by area (after Berlin, Hamburg and Cologne), and the third most populous city in the area of former East Germany, after Berlin and Leipzig. Dresden's urban area comprises the towns of Freital, Pirna, Radebeul, Meissen, Coswig, Radeberg and Heidenau and has around 790,000 inhabitants. The Dresden metropolitan area has approximately 1.34 million inhabitants. Dresden is the second largest city on the River Elbe after Hamburg. Most of the city's population lives in the Elbe Valley, but a large, albeit very sparsely populated area of the city east of the Elbe lies in the West Lusatian Hill Country and Uplands (the westernmost part of the Sudetes) and thus in Lusatia. Many boroughs west of the Elbe lie in the foreland of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Germanic Mythology
Germanic mythology consists of the body of myths native to the Germanic peoples, including Norse mythology, Anglo-Saxon mythology, and Continental Germanic mythology. It was a key element of Germanic paganism. Origins As the Germanic languages developed from Proto-Indo-European language, Germanic mythology is ultimately a development of Proto-Indo-European mythology. Archaeological remains, such as petroglyphs in Scandinavia, suggest continuity in Germanic mythology since at least the Nordic Bronze Age. Sources The earliest written sources on Germanic mythology include literature by Roman writers. This includes ''Commentaries on the Gallic War'' by Julius Caesar, '' Geographica'' by Strabo, and '' Germania'' by Tacitus. Later Latin-language sources on Germanic mythology include '' Getica'' by Jordanes, '' History of the Lombards'' by Paul the Deacon, '' Ecclesiastical History of the English People'' by Bede, '' Vita Ansgari'' by Rimbert, ''Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sigurd
Sigurd ( non, Sigurðr ) or Siegfried (Middle High German: ''Sîvrit'') is a legendary hero of Germanic heroic legend, who killed a dragon and was later murdered. It is possible he was inspired by one or more figures from the Frankish Merovingian dynasty, with Sigebert I being the most popular contender. Older scholarship sometimes connected him with Arminius, victor of the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. He may also have a purely mythological origin. Sigurd's story is first attested on a series of carvings, including runestones from Sweden and stone crosses from the British Isles, dating from the eleventh century. In both the Norse and continental Germanic tradition, Sigurd is portrayed as dying as the result of a quarrel between his wife ( Gudrun/Kriemhild) and another woman, Brunhild, whom he has tricked into marrying the Burgundian king Gunnar/Gunther. His slaying of a dragon and possession of the hoard of the Nibelungen is also common to both traditions. In other r ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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