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Frances Alda
Frances Davis Alda (31 May 1879 – 18 September 1952) was a New Zealand-born, Australian-raised operatic lyric soprano. She achieved fame during the first three decades of the 20th century due to her outstanding singing voice, fine technique and colourful personality, as well as her frequent onstage partnerships at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, with Enrico Caruso. Career Alda was born Fanny Jane Davis in Christchurch, New Zealand, on 31 May 1879 to David Davis and Leonore Simonsen.Alda amended her birth year to 1883 to make herself more appealing to operatic managers. This incorrect year is often recorded as her actual year of birth. Leonore, a promising singer from a musical family, in September 1880 divorced David and resumed her singing career. Fanny spent her early years traveling with her mother on her operatic tours. After false starts in Australasia, she took Fanny and her younger brother to San Francisco, California in 1883. Leonore Davis remarried but died of per ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Christchurch
Christchurch ( ; mi, Ōtautahi) is the largest city in the South Island of New Zealand and the seat of the Canterbury Region. Christchurch lies on the South Island's east coast, just north of Banks Peninsula on Pegasus Bay. The Avon River / Ōtākaro flows through the centre of the city, with an urban park along its banks. The city's territorial authority population is people, and includes a number of smaller urban areas as well as rural areas. The population of the urban area is people. Christchurch is the second-largest city by urban area population in New Zealand, after Auckland. It is the major urban area of an emerging sub-region known informally as Greater Christchurch. Notable smaller urban areas within this sub-region include Rangiora and Kaiapoi in Waimakariri District, north of the Waimakariri River, and Rolleston and Lincoln in Selwyn District to the south. The first inhabitants migrated to the area sometime between 1000 and 1250 AD. They hunted moa, which led ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Victoria (Australia)
Victoria is a state in southeastern Australia. It is the second-smallest state with a land area of , the second most populated state (after New South Wales) with a population of over 6.5 million, and the most densely populated state in Australia (28 per km2). Victoria is bordered by New South Wales to the north and South Australia to the west, and is bounded by the Bass Strait to the south (with the exception of a small land border with Tasmania located along Boundary Islet), the Great Australian Bight portion of the Southern Ocean to the southwest, and the Tasman Sea (a marginal sea of the South Pacific Ocean) to the southeast. The state encompasses a range of climates and geographical features from its temperate coastal and central regions to the Victorian Alps in the northeast and the semi-arid north-west. The majority of the Victorian population is concentrated in the central-south area surrounding Port Phillip Bay, and in particular within the metropolit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Martha (opera)
''Martha, oder Der Markt zu Richmond'' (''Martha, or The Market at Richmond'') is a ''romantic comic'' opera in four acts by Friedrich von Flotow set to a German libretto by and based on a story by Jules-Henri Vernoy de Saint-Georges. Flotow had composed the first act of a ballet, ''Harriette, ou la servante de Greenwiche'', derived from a text by Saint-Georges, for the ballerina Adèle Dumilâtre. This was first performed by the Paris Opera Ballet at the Salle Le Peletier on 21 February 1844. The time available for the composition was short, so the second and third acts were assigned, respectively, to Friedrich Burgmüller and Édouard Deldevez. The opera ''Martha'' was an adaptation of this ballet. Critical appreciation According to Gustav Kobbé, ''Martha'', though written by a native of Mecklenburg and first performed in Vienna, is French in character and elegance. Flotow was French in his musical training, as were the origins of both the plot and the score of this work, ef ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Adolfo Müller-Ury
Adolfo Müller-Ury, KSG (March 29, 1862 – July 6, 1947) was a Swiss-born American portrait painter and impressionistic painter of roses and still life. Heritage and early life in Switzerland He was born Felice Adolfo Müller on 29 March 1862 at Airolo, Switzerland, to a prominent patrician family that by the 18th and 19th centuries included mercenaries, lawyers, hoteliers and businessmen. Adolfo was the sixth of nineteen children, most of whom survived infancy, born to Roman Catholic parents: Carl Alois Müller (1825–1887), a lawyer, was Gerichtspräsident (Presiding Judge) of the Cantonal Courts, and Genovefa (née Lombardi; 1836–1920), daughter of Felice Lombardi, Director of the Hospice on the St Gotthard Pass, which he took over from the Capuchin monks who had run it for centuries. The family spoke Airolese mainly, a local dialect of Ticinese Italian, as well as Swiss-German. Training in Switzerland, Munich, Rome and Paris After attending the municipal drawing ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
La Scala
La Scala (, , ; abbreviation in Italian of the official name ) is a famous opera house in Milan, Italy. The theatre was inaugurated on 3 August 1778 and was originally known as the ' (New Royal-Ducal Theatre alla Scala). The premiere performance was Antonio Salieri's ''Europa riconosciuta''. Most of Italy's greatest operatic artists, and many of the finest singers from around the world, have appeared at La Scala. The theatre is regarded as one of the leading opera and ballet theatres globally. It is home to the La Scala Theatre Chorus, La Scala Theatre Ballet, La Scala Theatre Orchestra, and the Filarmonica della Scala orchestra. The theatre also has an associate school, known as the La Scala Theatre Academy ( it, Accademia Teatro alla Scala, links=no), which offers professional training in music, dance, stagecraft, and stage management. Overview La Scala's season opens on 7 December, Saint Ambrose's Day, the feast day of Milan's patron saint. All performances must end befor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Covent Garden
Covent Garden is a district in London, on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit-and-vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist site, and with the Royal Opera House, itself known as "Covent Garden". The district is divided by the main thoroughfare of Long Acre, north of which is given over to independent shops centred on Neal's Yard and Seven Dials, while the south contains the central square with its street performers and most of the historical buildings, theatres and entertainment facilities, including the London Transport Museum and the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. The area was fields until briefly settled in the 7th century when it became the heart of the Anglo-Saxon trading town of Lundenwic, then abandoned at the end of the 9th century after which it returned to fields. By 1200 part of it had been walled off by the Abbot of Westminster Abbey for use as arable l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera House (ROH) is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is often referred to as simply Covent Garden, after a previous use of the site. It is the home of The Royal Opera, The Royal Ballet, and the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House. The first theatre on the site, the Theatre Royal (1732), served primarily as a playhouse for the first hundred years of its history. In 1734, the first ballet was presented. A year later, the first season of operas, by George Frideric Handel, began. Many of his operas and oratorios were specifically written for Covent Garden and had their premieres there. The current building is the third theatre on the site, following disastrous fires in 1808 and 1856 to previous buildings. The façade, foyer, and auditorium date from 1858, but almost every other element of the present complex dates from an extensive reconstruction in the 1990s. The main auditorium seats 2,256 people, mak ... [...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] |
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] |
Opéra-Comique
The Opéra-Comique is a Paris opera company which was founded around 1714 by some of the popular theatres of the Parisian fairs. In 1762 the company was merged with – and for a time took the name of – its chief rival, the Comédie-Italienne at the Hôtel de Bourgogne. It was also called the Théâtre-Italien up to about 1793, when it again became most commonly known as the Opéra-Comique. Today the company's official name is Théâtre national de l'Opéra-Comique, and its theatre, with a capacity of around 1,248 seats, sometimes referred to as the Salle Favart (the third on this site), is located at Place Boïeldieu in the 2nd arrondissement of Paris, not far from the Palais Garnier, one of the theatres of the Paris Opéra. The musicians and others associated with the Opéra-Comique have made important contributions to operatic history and tradition in France and to French opera. Its current mission is to reconnect with its history and discover its unique repertoire to ensu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mathilde Marchesi
Mathilde Marchesi (née Graumann; 24 March 1821 – 17 November 1913) was a German mezzo-soprano, a singing teacher, and a proponent of the bel canto vocal method. Biography Marchesi was born in Frankfurt. Her father's last name was Graumann; her aunt was the pianist and friend of Beethoven, Dorothea von Ertmann (née Graumann). In her adolescence her family fortunes failed, so she travelled at the age of 22 to Vienna to study voice. Thereafter she went to Paris and studied with Manuel García II, who was to have the foremost influence on her. She made her debut as a singer in 1844, and had a short career in opera and recital. Her voice, however, was only adequate, so she moved to teaching in 1849. In 1852, she married Italian baritone Salvatore Marchesi (pseudonym of Salvatore de Castrone della Rajata) (d. 1908). It was in this field that she would become famous. She taught at the conservatory in Cologne and, in the 1870s at the Vienna Conservatory, where she tutored Marie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nellie Melba
Dame Nellie Melba (born Helen Porter Mitchell; 19 May 186123 February 1931) was an Australian operatic dramatic coloratura soprano (three octaves). She became one of the most famous singers of the late Victorian era and the early 20th century, and was the first Australian to achieve international recognition as a classical musician. She took the pseudonym "Melba" from Melbourne, her home town. Melba studied singing in Melbourne and made a modest success in performances there. After a brief and unsuccessful marriage, she moved to Europe in search of a singing career. Failing to find engagements in London in 1886, she studied in Paris and soon made a great success there and in Brussels. Returning to London she quickly established herself as the leading lyric soprano at Royal Opera House, Covent Garden from 1888. She soon achieved further success in Paris and elsewhere in Europe, and later at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, debuting there in 1893. Her repertoire was small; in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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