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Garnet Brooks
Garnet Brooks (September 4, 1936 – July 21, 2009) was a Canadian tenor and vocal pedagogue who performed with opera companies and orchestras across North America and Europe. Birth Garnet Brooks was born on September 4, 1937, in London, Ontario, to parents James (an auto mechanic) and Sylvia Brooks. Education As a teenager, while working at his father's gas station, Brooks began to study music privately. After two years he received a scholarship to attend The Royal Conservatory of Music (RCM) in Toronto from 1960-1964, where his teachers included Mary Raze, Dorothy Allan Park, John Coveart, and Douglas Bodle. In 1965 Brooks furthered his voice studies under the tutelage of Robert Weede at the Merola Opera Program in San Francisco. Professional career Performing While still a student at the RCM, Brooks began singing professionally. Early performances included roles with the Stratford Festival (in Mozart's ''The Marriage of Figaro''), and the Canadian Opera Company ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
London, Ontario
London (pronounced ) is a city in southwestern Ontario, Canada, along the Quebec City–Windsor Corridor. The city had a population of 422,324 according to the 2021 Canadian census. London is at the confluence of the Thames River, approximately from both Toronto and Detroit; and about from Buffalo, New York. The city of London is politically separate from Middlesex County, though it remains the county seat. London and the Thames were named in 1793 by John Graves Simcoe, who proposed the site for the capital city of Upper Canada. The first European settlement was between 1801 and 1804 by Peter Hagerman. The village was founded in 1826 and incorporated in 1855. Since then, London has grown to be the largest southwestern Ontario municipality and Canada's 11th largest metropolitan area, having annexed many of the smaller communities that surround it. London is a regional centre of healthcare and education, being home to the University of Western Ontario (which brands it ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Merola Opera Program
The San Francisco Opera Center (SFOC) is the San Francisco Opera's professional training center for opera singers. Based in San Francisco, it encompasses two different professional tracks for training: a summer training program known as the Merola Opera Program and a two year long term resident artist program known as the Adler Fellowship. For twenty years the SFOC also operated a touring opera company, the Western Opera Theatre, but for financial reasons this touring company was disbanded in 2003. In addition to providing training for opera singers, the Merola Opera Program also provides training for vocal coaches and stage directors. Four singers each year from the summer Merola Opera Program are offered Adler Fellowships with the San Francisco Opera. Soprano Sheri Greenawald served as director of the San Francisco Opera Center from 2002 through 2020. History The San Francisco Opera Center was founded in 1982 by San Francisco Opera director Terence A. McEwen with the intent of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
San Francisco Opera
San Francisco Opera (SFO) is an American opera company founded in 1923 by Gaetano Merola (1881–1953) based in San Francisco, California. History Gaetano Merola (1923–1953) Merola's road to prominence in the Bay Area began in 1906 when he first visited the city. In 1909, he returned as the conductor of the International Opera Company of Montreal, one of the many visiting troupes that frequented the bustling city. Continued visits for the next decade convinced him that a San Francisco company was viable. In 1921, Merola returned to live in the city under the patronage of Mrs. Oliver Stine. During this time, Merola conceived of branching away from the area's reliance on visiting troupes for entertainment that had been common place since the Gold Rush era. By the fall, he was planning his first season, and the very next year, Merola organized a trial season at Stanford University. The first performance occurred in the Stanford Cardinal's football stadium on June 3rd, 1922 wi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Glyndebourne
Glyndebourne () is an English country house, the site of an opera house that, since 1934, has been the venue for the annual Glyndebourne Festival Opera. The house, located near Lewes in East Sussex, England, is thought to be about six hundred years old and listed at grade II.Kennedy, p. 5 History of the house "There had been a manor house at Glynde Bourne (as it was often spelt) since the fifteenth century", but the exact age of the house is unknown. Some surviving timber framing and pre-Elizabethan panelling makes an early sixteenth-century date the most likely. In 1618, it came into the possession of the Hay family, passing to James Hay Langham in 1824. He inherited his father's baronetcy and estate in Northamptonshire in 1833 which under the terms of his inheritance should have led to him relinquishing Glyndebourne, but as a certified lunatic he was unable to do so. After litigation the estate passed to a relative, Mr Langham Christie, but he later had to pay £50,000 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Opera House
An opera house is a theatre building used for performances of opera. It usually includes a stage, an orchestra pit, audience seating, and backstage facilities for costumes and building sets. While some venues are constructed specifically for operas, other opera houses are part of larger performing arts centers. Indeed, the term ''opera house'' is often used as a term of prestige for any large performing-arts center. History Italy is a country where opera has been popular through the centuries among ordinary people as well as wealthy patrons and it continues to have many working opera houses such as Teatro Massimo in Palermo (the biggest in Italy), Teatro di San Carlo in Naples (the world's oldest working opera house) and Teatro La Scala in Milan. In contrast, there was no opera house in London when Henry Purcell was composing and the first opera house in Germany, the Oper am Gänsemarkt, was built in Hamburg in 1678, followed by the Oper am Brühl in Leipzig in 1693, and t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Canada Council
The Canada Council for the Arts (french: Conseil des arts du Canada), commonly called the Canada Council, is a Crown corporation established in 1957 as an arts council of the Government of Canada. It acts as the federal government's principal instrument for funding public arts, as well as for fostering and promoting the study and enjoyment of, and the production of works in, the arts. The Canada Council fulfills its mandate primarily through providing grants and services to professional Canadian artists and arts organizations in dance, interdisciplinary art, media arts, music, opera, theatre, writing, publishing, and the visual arts. In addition, the Canada Council administers the Art Bank, which operates art rental programs and an exhibitions and outreach program. The Canada Council Art Bank holds the largest collection of contemporary Canadian art in the world. The Canada Council is also responsible for the secretariat for the Canadian Commission for UNESCO and the Public L ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jon Vickers
Jonathan Stewart Vickers, (October 29, 1926 – July 10, 2015), known professionally as Jon Vickers, was a Canadian heldentenor. Born in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, he was the sixth in a family of eight children. In 1950, he was awarded a scholarship to study opera at The Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. In 1957 Vickers joined London’s Royal Opera House, Covent Garden company. In 1960 he joined the Metropolitan Opera. He became world-famous for a wide range of German, French, and Italian roles. Vickers' huge, powerful voice and solid technique met the demands of many French, German, and Italian roles. He was also highly regarded for his powerful stage presence and thoughtful characterizations. (Conversely, he was sometimes criticized for "scooping"—beginning a note below pitch and then sliding up to the correct pitch—and for "crooning".) In 1968 he was made a Companion of the Order of Canada. Vickers received the Governor General's Performing Arts Award for Life ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Toronto Symphony Orchestra
The Toronto Symphony Orchestra (TSO) is a Canadian orchestra based in Toronto, Ontario. Founded in 1906, the TSO gave regular concerts at Massey Hall until 1982, and since then has performed at Roy Thomson Hall. The TSO also manages the Toronto Symphony Youth Orchestra (TSYO). The TSO's most recent music director was Peter Oundjian, from 2004 to 2018. Sir Andrew Davis, conductor laureate of the TSO, has most recently served as the orchestra's interim artistic director. Gustavo Gimeno is music director of the TSO, since the 2020–2021 season. History The TSO was founded in 1922 as the New Symphony Orchestra, and gave its first concert at Massey Hall in April 1923 with 58 musicians. The first conductor was Luigi von Kunits, and that season there were twenty concerts, as well as a performance at a spring festival.Vyhnak, Carola. "Birth of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra". ''Toronto Star'', 14 June 2015, page A12. In the summer of 1924, the symphony performed at the Canadian Nati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Der Rosenkavalier
(''The Knight of the Rose'' or ''The Rose-Bearer''), Op. 59, is a comic opera in three acts by Richard Strauss to an original German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. It is loosely adapted from the novel ''Les amours du chevalier de Faublas'' by Louvet de Couvrai and Molière's comedy ''Monsieur de Pourceaugnac''. It was first performed at the Königliches Opernhaus in Dresden on 26 January 1911 under the direction of Max Reinhardt, Ernst von Schuch conducting. Until the premiere, the working title was ''Ochs auf Lerchenau''. (The choice of the name Ochs is not accidental, for in German "Ochs" means "ox", which describes the character of the Baron throughout the opera.) The opera has four main characters: the aristocratic Marschallin; her very young lover, Count Octavian Rofrano; her brutish cousin Baron Ochs; and Ochs' prospective fiancée, Sophie von Faninal, the daughter of a rich bourgeois. At the Marschallin's suggestion, Octavian acts as Ochs' ''Rosenkavalier'' by pre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss (; 11 June 1864 – 8 September 1949) was a German composer, conductor, pianist, and violinist. Considered a leading composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras, he has been described as a successor of Richard Wagner and Franz Liszt. Along with Gustav Mahler, he represents the late flowering of German Romanticism, in which pioneering subtleties of orchestration are combined with an advanced harmonic style. Strauss's compositional output began in 1870 when he was just six years old and lasted until his death nearly eighty years later. While his output of works encompasses nearly every type of classical compositional form, Strauss achieved his greatest success with tone poems and operas. His first tone poem to achieve wide acclaim was ''Don Juan'', and this was followed by other lauded works of this kind, including ''Death and Transfiguration'', ''Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks'', ''Also sprach Zarathustra'', ''Don Quixote'', ''Ein Heldenleben' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Canadian Opera Company
The Canadian Opera Company (COC) is an opera company in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It is the largest opera company in Canada and one of the largest producers of opera in North America. The COC performs in its own opera house, the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts. For forty years until April 2006, the COC had performed at the O'Keefe Centre (now known as Meridian Hall). History Nicholas Goldschmidt and Herman Geiger-Torel founded the organization in 1950 as the Royal Conservatory Opera Company. Geiger-Torel became the COC's artistic director in 1956 and its general director in 1960. The company was renamed the Canadian Opera Association in 1960, and the Canadian Opera Company in 1977. Geiger-Torel retired from the general directorship in 1976. Lotfi Mansouri was the COC's general director from 1976 to 1988. In 1983, the COC introduced surtitles (supertitles) to their productions, the first company to use them in an opera house. Productions included Joan Sutherland's ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Marriage Of Figaro
''The Marriage of Figaro'' ( it, Le nozze di Figaro, links=no, ), K. 492, is a ''commedia per musica'' (opera buffa) in four acts composed in 1786 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with an Italian libretto written by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It premiered at the Burgtheater in Vienna on 1 May 1786. The opera's libretto is based on the 1784 stage comedy by Pierre Beaumarchais, '' La folle journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro'' ("The Mad Day, or The Marriage of Figaro"). It tells how the servants Figaro and Susanna succeed in getting married, foiling the efforts of their philandering employer Count Almaviva to seduce Susanna and teaching him a lesson in fidelity. Considered one of the greatest operas ever written, it is a cornerstone of the repertoire and appears consistently among the top ten in the Operabase list of most frequently performed operas. In 2017, BBC News Magazine asked 172 opera singers to vote for the best operas ever written. ''The Marriage of Figaro'' came in first out of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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