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Didier Henry
Didier Henry (born 1953) is a French baritone. He studied at the Conservatoire de Paris before joining the Opéra National de Lyon. He is well known for his French opera roles, including those by Massenet, Gounod, Debussy, and Ravel. He also starred in the notable recordings of Prokofiev's '' The Love for Three Oranges'' in French, under conductor Kent Nagano and Chabrier's '' Gwendoline'', under conductor Jean-Paul Penin. The baritone is regularly invited on international stages, as often for lyrical productions than for concerts or recitals. His career was marked by the part of the male protagonist in Debussy's '' Pelléas et Mélisande''. He participated at the opera’s first performance in Moscow in 1987 under the baton of Manuel Rosenthal (recording for Decca with Charles Dutoit, awarded Grammy Awards and Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik in Germany). He performs the role in France as well as abroad (Buenos-Aires with Frederica von Stade and Armin Jordan, Tokyo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Baritone
A baritone is a type of classical male singing voice whose vocal range lies between the bass and the tenor voice-types. The term originates from the Greek (), meaning "heavy sounding". Composers typically write music for this voice in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C (i.e. F2–F4) in choral music, and from the second A below middle C to the A above middle C (A2 to A4) in operatic music, but the range can extend at either end. Subtypes of baritone include the baryton-Martin baritone (light baritone), lyric baritone, ''Kavalierbariton'', Verdi baritone, dramatic baritone, ''baryton-noble'' baritone, and the bass-baritone. History The first use of the term "baritone" emerged as ''baritonans'', late in the 15th century, usually in French sacred polyphonic music. At this early stage it was frequently used as the lowest of the voices (including the bass), but in 17th-century Italy the term was all-encompassing and used to describe the averag ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Iphigénie En Tauride
''Iphigénie en Tauride'' (, ''Iphigenia in Tauris'') is a 1779 opera by Christoph Willibald Gluck in four acts. It was his fifth opera for the French stage. The libretto was written by Nicolas-François Guillard. With ''Iphigénie,'' Gluck took his operatic reform to its logical conclusion. The recitatives are shorter and they are ''récitatif accompagné'' (i.e. the strings and perhaps other instruments are playing, not just continuo accompaniment). The normal dance movements that one finds in the French ''tragédie en musique'' are almost entirely absent. The drama is ultimately based on the play ''Iphigenia in Tauris'' by the ancient Greek dramatist Euripides which deals with stories concerning the family of Agamemnon in the aftermath of the Trojan War. Performance history ''Iphigénie en Tauride'' was first performed on 18 May 1779 by the Paris Opéra at the second Salle du Palais-Royal and was a great success. Some think that the head of the Paris Opéra, Devismes, had at ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
André Messager
André Charles Prosper Messager (; 30 December 1853 – 24 February 1929) was a French composer, organist, pianist and conductor. His compositions include eight ballets and thirty opéra comique, opéras comiques, opérettes and other stage works, among which his ballet ''Les Deux Pigeons (ballet), Les Deux Pigeons'' (1886) and opéra comique ''Véronique (operetta), Véronique'' (1898) have had lasting success; ''Les p'tites Michu, Les P'tites Michu'' (1897) and ''Monsieur Beaucaire (opera), Monsieur Beaucaire'' (1919) were also popular internationally. Messager took up the piano as a small child and later studied composition with, among others, Camille Saint-Saëns and Gabriel Fauré. He became a major figure in the musical life of Paris and later London, both as a conductor and a composer. Many of his Parisian works were also produced in the West End theatre, West End and some on Broadway theatre, Broadway; the most successful had long runs and numerous international revival ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michel Plasson
Michel Plasson (born 2 October 1933, Paris, France) is a French conductor. Plasson was a student of Lazare Lévy at the Conservatoire de Paris. In 1962, he was a prize-winner at the International Besançon Competition for Young Conductors. He studied briefly in the United States, including time with Charles Münch. He became the music director of the city of Metz for 3 years. In 1968, Plasson became principal conductor of the Orchestre et Chœurs du Capitole de Toulouse. His recordings with the orchestra include orchestral works, and operettas of Jacques Offenbach, including ''Orphée aux enfers'', '' La Vie parisienne'', ''La Périchole'' and ''La belle Hélène'', and Bizet's ''Carmen''. Plasson resigned as principal conductor in 2003 and now has the title of "Honorary Conductor", or conductor emeritus. From 1994 to 2001, he was principal conductor of the Dresden Philharmonic. Guest appearances include Grand Théâtre de Genève, De Nederlandse Opera (Amsterdam) and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Riccardo Muti
Riccardo Muti, (; born 28 July 1941) is an Italian conductor. He currently holds two music directorships, at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and at the Orchestra Giovanile Luigi Cherubini. Muti has previously held posts at the Maggio Musicale in Florence, the Philharmonia Orchestra in London, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, and the Salzburg Whitsun Festival. A prolific recording artist, Muti has received numerous honours and awards, including two Grammy Awards. He is especially associated with the music of Giuseppe Verdi. Among the world's leading conductors, in a 2015 '' Bachtrack'' poll, he was ranked by music critics as the world's fifth best living conductor. Childhood and education Muti was born in Naples but he spent his early childhood in Molfetta, near Bari, in the long region of Apulia on Italy's southern Adriatic coast. His father, Domenico, was a pathologist in Molfetta, as well as an amateur singer and great music lover; his mother, G ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Die Fledermaus
' (, ''The Flittermouse'' or ''The Bat'', sometimes called ''The Revenge of the Bat'') is an operetta composed by Johann Strauss II to a German libretto by Karl Haffner and Richard Genée, which premiered in 1874. Background The original literary source for ' was ' (''The Prison''), a farce by German playwright Julius Roderich Benedix that premiered in Berlin in 1851. On 10 September 1872, a three-act French vaudeville play by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, ', loosely based on the Benedix farce, opened at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal. Meilhac and Halévy had provided several successful libretti for Offenbach and ''Le Réveillon'' later formed the basis for the 1926 silent film '' So This Is Paris'', directed by Ernst Lubitsch. Meilhac and Halévy's play was soon translated into German by Karl Haffner (1804–1876), at the instigation of Max Steiner, as a non-musical play for production in Vienna. The French custom of a New Year's Eve ''réveillon'', or supper party ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Don Carlos
''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 the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ambroise Thomas
Charles Louis Ambroise Thomas (; 5 August 1811 – 12 February 1896) was a French composer and teacher, best known for his operas ''Mignon'' (1866) and ''Hamlet'' (1868). Born into a musical family, Thomas was a student at the Conservatoire de Paris, winning France's top music prize, the Prix de Rome. He pursued a career as a composer of operas, completing his first opera, ''La double échelle'', in 1837. He wrote twenty further operas over the next decades, mostly comic, but he also treated more serious subjects, finding considerable success with audiences in France and abroad. Thomas was appointed as a professor at the Conservatoire in 1856, and in 1871 he succeeded Daniel Auber as director. Between then and his death at his home in Paris twenty-five years later, he modernised the Conservatoire's organisation while imposing a rigidly conservative curriculum, hostile to modern music, and attempting to prevent composers such as César Franck and Gabriel Fauré from influencing t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hamlet (Thomas)
''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: men w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Manon
''Manon'' () is an ''opéra comique'' in five acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Henri Meilhac and Philippe Gille, based on the 1731 novel '' L'histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut'' by the Abbé Prévost. It was first performed at the Opéra-Comique in Paris on 19 January 1884, with sets designed by Eugène Carpezat (act 1), Auguste Alfred Rubé and Philippe Chaperon (acts 2 and 3), and Jean-Baptiste Lavastre (act 4). Prior to Massenet's work, Halévy (''Manon Lescaut'', ballet, 1830) and Auber (''Manon Lescaut'', opéra comique, 1856) had used the subject for musical stage works. Massenet also wrote a one-act sequel to ''Manon'', ''Le portrait de Manon'' (1894), involving the Chevalier des Grieux as an older man. The composer worked at the score of ''Manon'' at his country home outside Paris and also at a house at The Hague once occupied by Prévost himself. ''Manon'' is Massenet's most popular and enduring opera and, having "quickly conquered th ... [...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 disc. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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