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Elena Guseva
Elena Guseva is a Russian operatic soprano who has performed at major opera houses in Europe. Besides standard repertoire such as Verdi's Aida and Puccini's La bohème, Mimi, she has focused on roles by Russian composers, such as Tchaikovsky's Pique Dame (opera), Lisa and Prokofiev's Polina, a role she performed when ''The Gambler (Prokofiev), Der Spieler'' (''The Gambler'') was first performed at the Vienna State Opera. Career Guseva was born in Kurgan, Kurgan Oblast, Kurgan, southwest Siberia. She was exposed to music when her mother took her along to choir rehearsals at age three. She first studied choral conducting at the Kurgan Conservatory until 2006, and then voice at the Moscow Conservatory with Galina Pisarenko, where she graduated with excellence in 2011. Beginning in 2009, she has performed regularly at the Stanislavski and Nemirovich-Danchenko Theatre in Moscow, in roles such as Puccini's Mimì in ''La bohème'' and the title role of ''Madama Butterfly'', Tatjana i ... [...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] |
Khovanshchina
''Khovanshchina'' ( rus, Хованщина, , xɐˈvanʲɕːɪnə, Ru-Khovanshchina_version.ogg, sometimes rendered ''The Khovansky Affair'') is an opera (subtitled a 'national music drama') in five acts by Modest Mussorgsky. The work was written between 1872 and 1880 in St. Petersburg, Russia. The composer wrote the libretto based on historical sources. The opera was almost finished in piano score when the composer died in 1881, but the orchestration was almost entirely lacking. Like Mussorgsky's earlier ''Boris Godunov'', ''Khovanshchina'' deals with an episode in Russian history, first brought to the composer's attention by his friend the critic Vladimir Stasov. It concerns the rebellion of Prince Ivan Khovansky, the Old Believers, and the Muscovite Streltsy against the regent Sofia Alekseyevna and the two young Tsars Peter the Great and Ivan V, who were attempting to institute Westernizing reforms in Russia. Khovansky had helped to foment the Moscow Uprising of 1682, which ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Gambler (novel)
''The Gambler'' (russian: Игрокъ, translit=Igrok; modern spelling: ) is a short novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky about a young tutor in the employment of a formerly wealthy Russian general. The novel reflects Dostoevsky's own addiction to roulette, which was in more ways than one the inspiration for the book: Dostoevsky completed the novel in 1866 under a strict deadline to pay off gambling debts. Inspiration ''The Gambler'' treated a subject Fyodor Dostoevsky himself was familiar with: gambling. Fyodor Dostoevsky gambled for the first time at the tables at Wiesbaden in 1863. From that time till 1871, when his passion for gambling subsided, he played at Baden-Baden, Homburg, and Saxon-les-Bains frequently, often beginning by winning a small amount of money and losing far more in the end. He first mentions his interest in gambling in a letter he sent to his first wife's sister on 1 September 1863 describing his initial success: Within a week he lost his winnings and was f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Die Zauberin (opera)
''The Enchantress'' (or ''The Sorceress'', rus, Чародейка, Charodéyka ) is an opera in four acts by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky based on the libretto by Ippolit Shpazhinsky, using his drama with the same title. The opera was composed between September 1885 and May 1887 in Maidanovo (a village in the Klin district of Moscow) and was first performed in Saint Petersburg in 1887. Composition history Ippolit Shpazhinsky's play ''The Enchantress'' was first produced in 1884 at the Maly Theatre in Moscow, and soon it had seen more performances than any other play being staged in Moscow or Saint Petersburg. The actresses Maria Yermolova and Maria Savina were prominent in the title role of Nastasya ("Kuma"). Modest Ilyich Tchaikovsky admired ''The Enchantress'' and one scene in particular. He pointed it out to his brother the composer, who proceeded to write a duet based on that scene. Pyotr saw the play himself in January 1885, after which he wrote to Shpazhinsky, askin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Savonlinna Opera Festival
Savonlinna Opera Festival ( fi, Savonlinnan oopperajuhlat) is held annually in the city of Savonlinna in Finland. The Festival takes place at the medieval Olavinlinna (St. Olaf's Castle), built in 1475. The castle is located amid spectacular lake scenery. Origin The birth of the Savonlinna Opera Festival ties in closely with the emerging Finnish identity and striving for independence at the beginning of the 20th century. Attending a nationalist meeting in Olavinlinna Castle in 1907, the Finnish soprano Aino Ackté, already famous at opera houses the world over and an ardent patriot, immediately spotted the potential of the castle as the venue for an opera festival. The first opera festival was held in 1912. Aino Ackté directed the festival for five summers, staging four Finnish operas. The only opera by a non-Finnish composer was Charles Gounod’s ''Faust'', with Ackté herself in the leading female role of Marguerite. In 1917 the festival ran into difficulties because of Fir ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tosca
''Tosca'' is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. It premiered at the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, Teatro Costanzi in Rome on 14 January 1900. The work, based on Victorien Sardou's 1887 French-language dramatic play, ''La Tosca'', is a melodramatic piece set in Rome in June 1800, with the Kingdom of Naples's control of Rome threatened by Napoleon's Campaigns of 1800 in the French Revolutionary Wars#Italy, invasion of Italy. It contains depictions of torture, murder, and suicide, as well as some of Puccini's best-known lyrical arias. Puccini saw Sardou's play when it was touring Italy in 1889 and, after some vacillation, obtained the rights to turn the work into an opera in 1895. Turning the wordy French play into a succinct Italian opera took four years, during which the composer repeatedly argued with his librettists and publisher. ''Tosca'' premiered at a time of unrest in Rome, and its first performance was delayed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Otello
''Otello'' () is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Arrigo Boito, based on Shakespeare's play ''Othello''. It was Verdi's penultimate opera, first performed at the Teatro alla Scala, Milan, on 5 February 1887. The composer was reluctant to write anything new after the success of ''Aida'' in 1871, and he retreated into retirement. It took his Milan publisher Giulio Ricordi the next ten years, first to encourage the revision of Verdi's 1857 ''Simon Boccanegra'' by introducing Boito as librettist and then to begin the arduous process of persuading and cajoling Verdi to see Boito's completed libretto for ''Otello'' in July/August 1881. However, the process of writing the first drafts of the libretto and the years of their revision, with Verdi all along not promising anything, dragged on. It wasn't until 1884, five years after the first drafts of the libretto, that composition began, with most of the work finishing in late 1885. When it finally premiere ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Opéra National De Lyon
The Opéra National de Lyon, marketed as Opéra de Lyon during the last decade, is an opera company in Lyon, based and performing mostly at the Opéra Nouvel, an 1831 theater that was modernized and architecturally transformed in 1993. The inaugural performance of François-Adrien Boïeldieu's ''La Dame blanche'' was given on 1 July 1831. The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries saw some significant French premieres of major operas including Richard Wagner's ''Die Meistersinger'' in 1896, Giordano's '' Andrea Chénier'' in the following year, and Moussorgsky's ''Boris Godunov'' in 1913. In addition, many world premieres such as Arnold Schoenberg's ''Erwartung'' (1967) have been presented. In the years after the 1969 appointment of Louis Erlo as general director, many innovative productions and premieres of both French operas and Twentieth Century operas have been staged. Two significant French artists who have been associated with the Opéra in recent years are the stage director ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hamburg State Opera
The Hamburg State Opera (in German: Staatsoper Hamburg) is a German opera company based in Hamburg. Its theatre is near the square of Gänsemarkt. Since 2015, the current ''Intendant'' of the company is Georges Delnon, and the current ''Generalmusikdirektor'' of the company is Kent Nagano. History Opera in Hamburg dates to 2 January 1678 when the Oper am Gänsemarkt was inaugurated with a performance of a biblical Singspiel by Johann Theile. It was not a court theatre but the first public opera house in Germany established by the art-loving citizens of Hamburg, a prosperous member of the Hanseatic League. The Hamburg ''Bürgeroper'' resisted the dominance of the Italianate style and rapidly became the leading musical center of the German Baroque. In 1703, George Friedrich Handel was engaged as violinist and harpsichordist and performances of his operas were not long in appearing. In 1705, Hamburg gave the world première of his opera ''Nero''. In 1721, Georg Philipp Telem ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theater Basel
Theater Basel is the municipal theatre of the city of Basel, Switzerland, which is home to the city's opera and ballet companies. The theatre also presents plays and musicals in addition to operas and operettas. Because the theatre does not have its own orchestra, the Basel Symphony Orchestra is usually contracted to perform for opera and ballet productions as needed. For baroque-opera productions, La Cetra, the baroque orchestra of the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, is engaged. History Theater Basel was founded in 1834 under the name Basler Stadttheater. The first theatre was designed by Swiss architect Melchior Berri. In 1873 work on a new theatre began which was designed by Johann Jakob Stehlin Jr.. This second theatre opened in 1875 and was used until it was destroyed by fire on 7 October 1904. Plans for a third theatre were soon made, but it was five years before the theatre finally opened in 1909. The fourth theatre opened in 1975. In October 2018, the company announ ... [...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] |
Théâtre Du Capitole
The Théâtre du Capitole de Toulouse is an opera house within the main administration buildings, the Capitole, of the city of Toulouse in south-west France. It houses an opera company, ballet company and symphony orchestra, Orchestre national du Capitole de Toulouse. The first performance space, a ''salle du jeu de spectacle'', was created in the building in 1736 by Guillaume Cammas. Following a period of neglect, the current space was created during the rebuild of 1818. The theatre suffered fire damage in 1917 but was restored in 1923. The front of house areas were modernised in 1996. The current capacity is 1156 seats. Michel Plasson was responsible for the artistic direction of the company from 1973. He was followed by Jacques Doucet in 1981, by Nicolas Joel in 1991, and by Frédéric Chambert in 2009, after Joel's move to the Opéra national de Paris. Chambert's first season was marked by the use of alternate spaces while the theatre was renovated, and the theat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
