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Fanny Moran-Olden
Fanny Moran-Olden (28 September 1855 – 12 February 1905) was a German soprano who appeared in leading roles both in her native Germany and in other European opera houses as well as the Metropolitan Opera in New York. She appeared in wide variety of roles but was particularly prominent in the Wagnerian repertoire. Her voice had an unusually wide range which allowed her to sing soprano, mezzo-soprano and contralto roles. She was born in Cloppenburg and died hopelessly insane at the age of 49 in a sanatorium on the outskirts of Berlin. She was married twice, first to the tenor Carl Moran and secondly to the Wagnerian bass-baritone, Theodor Bertram. Life and career The daughter of a medical officer in the Grand Duchy of Oldenburg civil service, Moran-Olden's surname at birth was Tappehorn but she later changed it to Olden because of her family's opposition to a stage career. She began her musical training in Hannover and then studied singing with Auguste Götze in Dresden. S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cloppenburg
Cloppenburg (; nds, Cloppenborg; stq, Kloppenbuurich) is a town in Lower Saxony, Germany, capital of Cloppenburg District and part of Oldenburg Münsterland. It lies 38 km south-south-west of Oldenburg in the Weser-Ems region between Bremen and the Dutch border. Cloppenburg is not far from the A1, the major motorway connecting the Ruhr area to Bremen and Hamburg. Another major road is the federal highway B213 being the shortest link from the Netherlands to the A1 and thus to Bremen and Hamburg. The town had strong cultural links with St Munchins Parish in Limerick, Ireland from the 1970s to the 1990s. During this period many groups of teens/young adults from both areas visited and were hosted by families from the other area. Economy The town is a centre for the largely agricultural region of southern Oldenburg. It is the administrative centre of the district and there are many schools. However, there is also some industry in town: e.g. Lumberg, (connector systems) and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fidelio
''Fidelio'' (; ), originally titled ' (''Leonore, or The Triumph of Marital Love''), Op. 72, is Ludwig van Beethoven's only opera. The German libretto was originally prepared by Joseph Sonnleithner from the French of Jean-Nicolas Bouilly, with the work premiering at Vienna's Theater an der Wien on 20 November 1805. The following year, Stephan von Breuning helped shorten the work from three acts to two. After further work on the libretto by Georg Friedrich Treitschke, a final version was performed at the Kärntnertortheater on 23 May 1814. By convention, both of the first two versions are referred to as ''Leonore''. The libretto, with some spoken dialogue, tells how Leonore, disguised as a prison guard named "Fidelio", rescues her husband Florestan from death in a political prison. Bouilly's scenario fits Beethoven's aesthetic and political outlook: a story of personal sacrifice, heroism, and eventual triumph. With its underlying struggle for liberty and justice mirroring con ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cavalleria Rusticana
''Cavalleria rusticana'' (; Italian for "rustic chivalry") is an opera in one act by Pietro Mascagni to an Italian libretto by Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti and Guido Menasci, adapted from an 1880 short story of the same name and subsequent play by Giovanni Verga. Considered one of the classic ''verismo'' operas, it premiered on 17 May 1890 at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome. Since 1893, it has often been performed in a so-called ''Cav/Pag'' double-bill with ''Pagliacci'' by Ruggero Leoncavallo. Composition history In July 1888 the Milanese music publisher Edoardo Sonzogno announced a competition open to all young Italian composers who had not yet had an opera performed on stage. They were invited to submit a one-act opera which would be judged by a jury of five prominent Italian critics and composers. The best three would be staged in Rome at Sonzogno's expense. Mascagni heard about the competition only two months before the closing date and asked his friend Giovanni Targioni-Tozze ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Merry Wives Of Windsor (opera)
''The Merry Wives of Windsor'' (German: ''Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor'') is an opera in three acts by Otto Nicolai to a German libretto by Salomon Hermann Mosenthal based on the play ''The Merry Wives of Windsor'' by William Shakespeare. The opera is a ''Singspiel'', containing much spoken dialogue between distinct musical numbers. The opera remains popular in Germany, and the overture is sometimes heard in concert in other countries. Composition history Otto Nicolai composed the music from 1845 to 1849. He had previously achieved great success with a few Italian operas, but this opera was to become his masterpiece in the German language. The composer himself made some changes to the libretto. Performance history It was difficult at first to find a stage that was willing to mount the opera. Following the premiere at the Königliches Opernhaus (Royal Opera House, now Berlin State Opera) in Berlin on 9 March 1849 under the baton of the composer, it proved unsuccessful at first, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Euryanthe
''Euryanthe'' ( J. 291, Op. 81) is a German grand heroic-romantic opera by Carl Maria von Weber, first performed at the Theater am Kärntnertor in Vienna on 25 October 1823.Brown, p. 88 Though acknowledged as one of Weber's most important operas, the work is rarely staged because of the weak libretto by Helmina von Chézy (who, incidentally, was also the author of the failed play ''Rosamunde'', for which Franz Schubert wrote music). ''Euryanthe'' is based on the 13th-century French romance ''L'Histoire du très-noble et chevalereux prince Gérard, comte de Nevers et la très-virtueuse et très chaste princesse Euriant de Savoye, sa mye''. Only the overture, an outstanding example of the early German Romantic style (heralding Richard Wagner), is regularly played today. Like Schubert's lesser-known ''Alfonso und Estrella'', of the same time and place (Vienna, 1822), ''Euryanthe'' parts with the German Singspiel tradition, adopting a musical approach without the interruption of spok ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lohengrin (opera)
''Lohengrin'', WWV 75, is a Romantic opera in three acts composed and written by Richard Wagner, first performed in 1850. The story of the eponymous character is taken from medieval German romance, notably the ''Parzival'' of Wolfram von Eschenbach, and its sequel ''Lohengrin'', itself inspired by the epic of ''Garin le Loherain''. It is part of the Knight of the Swan legend. The opera has inspired other works of art. King Ludwig II of Bavaria named his castle Neuschwanstein Castle after the Swan Knight. It was King Ludwig's patronage that later gave Wagner the means and opportunity to complete, build a theatre for, and stage his epic cycle ''Der Ring des Nibelungen''. He had discontinued composing it at the end of Act II of ''Siegfried'', the third of the ''Ring'' tetralogy, to create his radical chromatic masterpiece of the late 1850s, ''Tristan und Isolde'', and his lyrical comic opera of the mid-1860s, '' Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg''. The most popular and recognizabl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tristan Und Isolde
''Tristan und Isolde'' (''Tristan and Isolde''), WWV 90, is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner to a German libretto by the composer, based largely on the 12th-century romance Tristan and Iseult by Gottfried von Strassburg. It was composed between 1857 and 1859 and premiered at the Königliches Hoftheater und Nationaltheater in Munich on 10 June 1865 with Hans von Bülow conducting. Wagner referred to the work not as an opera, but called it "" (literally ''a drama'', ''a plot'', or ''an action''). Wagner's composition of ''Tristan und Isolde'' was inspired by the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer (particularly ''The World as Will and Representation''), as well as by Wagner's affair with Mathilde Wesendonck. Widely acknowledged as a pinnacle of the operatic repertoire, ''Tristan'' was notable for Wagner's unprecedented use of chromaticism, tonal ambiguity, orchestral colour, and harmonic suspension. The opera was enormously influential among Western classical com ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Der Fliegende Holländer
' (''The Flying Dutchman''), WWV 63, is a German-language opera, with libretto and music by Richard Wagner. The central theme is redemption through love. Wagner conducted the premiere at the Königliches Hoftheater Dresden in 1843. Wagner claimed in his 1870 autobiography '' Mein Leben'' that he had been inspired to write the opera following a stormy sea crossing he made from Riga to London in July and August 1839. In his 1843 '' Autobiographic Sketch'', Wagner acknowledged he had taken the story from Heinrich Heine's retelling of the legend in his 1833 satirical novel ''The Memoirs of Mister von Schnabelewopski'' (''Aus den Memoiren des Herrn von Schnabelewopski''). This work shows early attempts at operatic styles that would characterise his later music dramas. In ''Der fliegende Holländer'' Wagner uses a number of leitmotifs (literally, "leading motifs") associated with the characters and themes. The leitmotifs are all introduced in the overture, which begins with a well- ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aida
''Aida'' (or ''Aïda'', ) is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni. Set in the Old Kingdom of Egypt, it was commissioned by Cairo's Khedivial Opera House and had its première there on 24 December 1871, in a performance conducted by Giovanni Bottesini. Today the work holds a central place in the operatic canon, receiving performances every year around the world; at New York's Metropolitan Opera alone, ''Aida'' has been sung more than 1,100 times since 1886. Ghislanzoni's scheme follows a scenario often attributed to the French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette, but Verdi biographer Mary Jane Phillips-Matz argues that the source is actually Temistocle Solera. Elements of the opera's genesis and sources Isma'il Pasha, Khedive of Egypt, commissioned Verdi to write an opera to celebrate the opening of the Suez Canal, but Verdi declined. However, Auguste Mariette, a French Egyptologist, proposed to Khedive Pasha a plot for a celebratory ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Il Trovatore
''Il trovatore'' ('The Troubadour') is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto largely written by Salvadore Cammarano, based on the play ''El trovador'' (1836) by Antonio García Gutiérrez. It was García Gutiérrez's most successful play, one which Verdi scholar Julian Budden describes as "a high flown, sprawling melodrama flamboyantly defiant of the Aristotelian unities, packed with all manner of fantastic and bizarre incident." The premiere took place at the Teatro Apollo in Rome on 19 January 1853, where it "began a victorious march throughout the operatic world," a success due to Verdi's work over the previous three years. It began with his January 1850 approach to Cammarano with the idea of ''Il trovatore''. There followed, slowly and with interruptions, the preparation of the libretto, first by Cammarano until his death in mid-1852 and then with the young librettist Leone Emanuele Bardare, which gave the composer the opportunity to propose signifi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Le Prophète
''Le prophète'' (''The Prophet'') is a grand opera in five acts by Giacomo Meyerbeer, which was premiered in Paris on 16 April 1849. The French-language libretto was by Eugène Scribe and Émile Deschamps, after passages from the ''Essay on the Manners and Spirit of Nations'' by Voltaire. The plot is based on the life of John of Leiden, Anabaptist leader and self-proclaimed "King of Münster" in the 16th century. Performance history After the brilliant success of their grand opera ''Les Huguenots'' (1836), Meyerbeer and his librettist Scribe decided to collaborate again on a piece based on a historical religious conflict. Meyerbeer's great personal wealth and his duties as official court composer to King Frederick William IV of Prussia meant that there was no hurry to complete the opera, and it was more than a decade in the composition and planning. ''Le prophète'' was first performed by the Paris Opera at the Salle Le Peletier on 16 April 1849 in music#Opera, 1849. In the audie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 perf ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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