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Eilene Hannan
Eilene Hannan Member of the Order of Australia, AM (24 July 194611 July 2014) was an Australian operatic soprano with an international reputation. She was particularly associated with opera sung in English, although she also sang in other languages. She was as well known as an actress as she was a singer. Her repertoire included Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Mozart's Pamina, Susanna, Cherubino, Dorabella and Zerlina; Mimì in Giacomo Puccini, Puccini's ''La bohème''; Natasha Rostova in Sergei Prokofiev, Prokofiev's ''War and Peace (opera), War and Peace''; Tatiana in Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Tchaikovsky's ''Eugene Onegin (opera), Eugene Onegin''; Marzelline in Ludwig van Beethoven, Beethoven's ''Fidelio''; Mélisande in Claude Debussy, Debussy's ''Pelléas et Mélisande (opera), Pelléas et Mélisande''; Blanche in Francis Poulenc, Poulenc's ''Dialogues of the Carmelites''; the title roles in Leoš Janáček, Janáček's ''Káťa Kabanová'', ''Jenůfa'' and ''The Cunning Little Vix ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Member Of The Order Of Australia
The Order of Australia is an honour that recognises Australian citizens and other persons for outstanding achievement and service. It was established on 14 February 1975 by Elizabeth II, Queen of Australia, on the advice of the Australian Government. Before the establishment of the order, Australian citizens received British honours. The Monarch of Australia is sovereign head of the order, while the Governor-General of Australia is the principal companion/dame/knight (as relevant at the time) and chancellor of the order. The governor-general's official secretary, Paul Singer (appointed August 2018), is secretary of the order. Appointments are made by the governor-general on behalf of the Monarch of Australia, based on recommendations made by the Council of the Order of Australia. Recent knighthoods and damehoods were recommended to the governor-general by the Prime Minister of Australia. Levels of membership The order is divided into a general and a military division. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Cunning Little Vixen
''The Cunning Little Vixen'' (original title ''Příhody lišky Bystroušky'' or ''Tales of Vixen Sharp-Ears'' in English), is a three-act Czech-language opera by Leoš Janáček completed in 1923 to a libretto the composer himself adapted from a novella by Rudolf Těsnohlídek. Name The opera's libretto was adapted by the composer from a 1920 serialized novella, ''Liška Bystrouška'', by Rudolf Těsnohlídek, which was first published in the newspaper ''Lidové noviny'' (with illustrations by Stanislav Lolek). For the title of the opera, ''Příhody'' means ''tales''; ''lišky'' is the genitive of ''vixen''. ''Bystroušky'', still genitive, is the pun ''sharp'', having the double meaning of ''pointed'', like fox ears, and ''clever''. The opera first became familiar outside Czechoslovakia in a 1927 German adaptation by Max Brod who provided the new name ''Das schlaue Füchslein'', by which Germans still know it and which in English means ''The Cunning Little Vixen''. Compositio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
L'incoronazione Di Poppea
''L'incoronazione di Poppea'' ( SV 308, ''The Coronation of Poppaea'') is an Italian opera by Claudio Monteverdi. It was Monteverdi's last opera, with a libretto by Giovanni Francesco Busenello, and was first performed at the Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice during the 1643 carnival season. One of the first operas to use historical events and people, it describes how Poppaea, mistress of the Roman emperor Nero, is able to achieve her ambition and be crowned empress. The opera was revived in Naples in 1651, but was then neglected until the rediscovery of the score in 1888, after which it became the subject of scholarly attention in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Since the 1960s, the opera has been performed and recorded many times. The original manuscript of the score does not exist; two surviving copies from the 1650s show significant differences from each other, and each differs to some extent from the libretto. How much of the music is actually Monteverdi's, and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Claudio Monteverdi
Claudio Giovanni Antonio Monteverdi (baptized 15 May 1567 – 29 November 1643) was an Italian composer, choirmaster and string player. A composer of both secular and sacred music, and a pioneer in the development of opera, he is considered a crucial transitional figure between the Renaissance and Baroque periods of music history. Born in Cremona, where he undertook his first musical studies and compositions, Monteverdi developed his career first at the court of Mantua () and then until his death in the Republic of Venice where he was ''maestro di cappella'' at the basilica of San Marco. His surviving letters give insight into the life of a professional musician in Italy of the period, including problems of income, patronage and politics. Much of Monteverdi's output, including many stage works, has been lost. His surviving music includes nine books of madrigals, large-scale religious works, such as his ''Vespro della Beata Vergine'' (''Vespers for the Blessed Virgin'') ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hérodiade
''Hérodiade'' is an opera in four acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Paul Milliet and Henri Grémont, based on the novella ''Hérodias'' (1877) by Gustave Flaubert. It was first performed at the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels on 19 December 1881. The libretto is a retelling of the story of John the Baptist, Salome, Herod Antipas and Herodias, but is strikingly less psychological and bloody than Richard Strauss's '' Salome'', which is based on a text by Oscar Wilde. The opera premiered in Brussels because Auguste Vaucorbeil, Manager of the Paris Opera house refused to stage the work; "I do like your music," he had said to Massenet, "but as for the libretto, you badly need an author who knows how to build the skeleton of a play." Performance history The opera reached Paris at the Théâtre des Nations on 1 February 1884, and the final performance of the run on 13 March featured the three De Reszkes; Jean (Jean), Édouard (Phanuel), and Josephine (Salomé). It ... [...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] |
Tannhäuser
Tannhäuser (; gmh, Tanhûser), often stylized, "The Tannhäuser," was a German Minnesinger and traveling poet. Historically, his biography, including the dates he lived, is obscure beyond the poetry, which suggests he lived between 1245 and 1265. His name becomes associated with a "fairy queen"-type folk ballad in German folklore of the 16th century. Historical Tannhäuser The most common tradition has him as a descent from the ''Tanhusen'' family of Imperial ''ministeriales'', documented in various 13th century sources, with their residence in the area of Neumarkt in the Bavarian Nordgau. These sources identify him as being descended of an Old Styrian noble family. The illustrated ''Codex Manesse'' manuscript (about 1300–1340) depicts him clad in the Teutonic Order habit, suggesting he might have fought in the Sixth Crusade led by Emperor Frederick II in 1228/29. For a while, Tannhäuser was an active courtier at the court of the Austrian duke Frederick the Warlike, wh ... [...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 conv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most opera composers, Wagner wrote both the libretto and the music for each of his stage works. Initially establishing his reputation as a composer of works in the romantic vein of Carl Maria von Weber and Giacomo Meyerbeer, Wagner revolutionised opera through his concept of the ''Gesamtkunstwerk'' ("total work of art"), by which he sought to synthesise the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, with music subsidiary to drama. He described this vision in a series of essays published between 1849 and 1852. Wagner realised these ideas most fully in the first half of the four-opera cycle ''Der Ring des Nibelungen'' (''The Ring of the Nibelung''). His compositions, particularly those of his later period, are notable for their complex textures, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nixon In China
''Nixon in China'' is an opera in three acts by John Adams with a libretto by Alice Goodman. Adams's first opera, it was inspired by U.S. president Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to the People's Republic of China. The work premiered at the Houston Grand Opera on October 22, 1987, in a production by Peter Sellars with choreography by Mark Morris. When Sellars approached Adams with the idea for the opera in 1983, Adams was initially reluctant, but eventually decided that the work could be a study in how myths come to be, and accepted the project. Goodman's libretto was the result of considerable research into Nixon's visit, though she disregarded most sources published after the 1972 trip. To create the sounds he sought, Adams augmented the orchestra with a large saxophone section, additional percussion, and electronic synthesizer. Although sometimes described as minimalist, the score displays a variety of musical styles, embracing minimalism after the manner of Philip Glass alongside ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Adams (composer)
John Coolidge Adams (born February 15, 1947) is an American composer and conductor whose music is rooted in minimalism. Among the most regularly performed composers of contemporary classical music, he is particularly noted for his operas, which are often centered around recent historical events. Apart from opera, his ''oeuvre'' includes orchestral, concertante, vocal, choral, chamber, electroacoustic and piano music. Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, Adams grew up in a musical family, being regularly exposed to classical music, jazz, musical theatre and rock music. He attended Harvard University, studying with Kirchner, Sessions and Del Tredici among others. Though his earliest work was aligned with modernist music, he began to disagree with its tenets upon reading John Cage's '' Silence: Lectures and Writings''. Teaching at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Adams developed his own minimalist aesthetic, which was first fully realized in ''Phrygian Gates'' (1977) a ... [...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] |
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