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Giacinto Prandelli
Giacinto Prandelli (8 February 1914 – 14 June 2010) was an Italian operatic tenor, particularly associated with the Italian and French repertoires. Life and career Born in Lumezzane, Italy, Prandelli sang as a boy in a church choir. He studied in Rome with Fornarini, and in Brescia with Grandini, and made his stage debut at the Teatro Donizetti in Bergamo, as Rodolfo, in 1942. He made his debut at the Rome Opera in 1943, as Alfredo, he then appeared in Bologna, Genoa, Florence, Cagliari, Palermo, Catania, and made his debut in Milan, at the Teatro Lirico, as Rinuccio, in 1944. He sang the solo tenor part in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, under Arturo Toscanini in 1946. In the early 1950s, he began an international career, appearing in Monte Carlo, Barcelona, Lisbon, Buenos Aires. He made his Metropolitan Opera debut in 1951, his San Francisco Opera debut in 1954, and his Lyric Opera of Chicago in 1956. He excelled in Italian and French lyric roles, such as; Edgardo, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Giacinto Prandelli
Giacinto Prandelli (8 February 1914 – 14 June 2010) was an Italian operatic tenor, particularly associated with the Italian and French repertoires. Life and career Born in Lumezzane, Italy, Prandelli sang as a boy in a church choir. He studied in Rome with Fornarini, and in Brescia with Grandini, and made his stage debut at the Teatro Donizetti in Bergamo, as Rodolfo, in 1942. He made his debut at the Rome Opera in 1943, as Alfredo, he then appeared in Bologna, Genoa, Florence, Cagliari, Palermo, Catania, and made his debut in Milan, at the Teatro Lirico, as Rinuccio, in 1944. He sang the solo tenor part in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, under Arturo Toscanini in 1946. In the early 1950s, he began an international career, appearing in Monte Carlo, Barcelona, Lisbon, Buenos Aires. He made his Metropolitan Opera debut in 1951, his San Francisco Opera debut in 1954, and his Lyric Opera of Chicago in 1956. He excelled in Italian and French lyric roles, such as; Edgardo, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lucia Di Lammermoor
''Lucia di Lammermoor'' () is a (tragic opera) in three acts by Italian composer Gaetano Donizetti. Salvadore Cammarano wrote the Italian-language libretto loosely based upon Sir Walter Scott's 1819 historical novel ''The Bride of Lammermoor''. Donizetti wrote ''Lucia di Lammermoor'' in 1835, when he was reaching the peak of his reputation as an opera composer. Gioachino Rossini had recently retired and Vincenzo Bellini had died shortly before the premiere of ''Lucia'' leaving Donizetti as "the sole reigning genius of Italian opera".Mackerras, p. 29 Not only were conditions ripe for Donizetti's success as a composer, but there was also a widespread interest in the history and culture of Scotland. The perceived romance of its violent wars and feuds, as well as its folklore and mythology, intrigued 19th century readers and audiences. Sir Walter Scott dramatized these elements in his novel ''The Bride of Lammermoor'', which inspired several musical works including ''Lucia''.Mackerra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ottorino Respighi
Ottorino Respighi ( , , ; 9 July 187918 April 1936) was an Italian composer, violinist, teacher, and musicologist and one of the leading Italian composers of the early 20th century. List of compositions by Ottorino Respighi, His compositions range over List of operas by Ottorino Respighi, operas, ballets, orchestral suites, choral songs, chamber music, and transcriptions of Italian compositions of the 16th–18th centuries, but his best known and most performed works are his three orchestral tone poems which brought him international fame: ''Fountains of Rome (poem), Fountains of Rome'' (1916), ''Pines of Rome'' (1924), and ''Feste romane, Roman Festivals'' (1928). Respighi was born in Bologna to a musical and artistic family. He was encouraged by his father to pursue music at a young age, and took formal tuition in the violin and piano. In 1891, he enrolled at the Conservatorio Giovanni Battista Martini, Liceo Musicale di Bologna, where he studied the violin, viola, and compos ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gian Carlo Menotti
Gian Carlo Menotti (, ; July 7, 1911 – February 1, 2007) was an Italian composer, librettist, director, and playwright who is primarily known for his output of 25 operas. Although he often referred to himself as an American composer, he kept his Italian citizenship. One of the most frequently performed opera composers of the 20th century, his most successful works were written in the 1940s and 1950s. Highly influenced by Giacomo Puccini and Modest Mussorgsky, Menotti further developed the verismo tradition of opera in the post-World War II era. Rejecting atonality and the aesthetic of the Second Viennese School, Menotti's music is characterized by expressive lyricism which carefully sets language to natural rhythms in ways that highlight textual meaning and underscore dramatic intent. Like Wagner, Menotti wrote the libretti of all his operas. He wrote the classic Christmas opera '' Amahl and the Night Visitors'' (1951), along with over two dozen other operas intended to appe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari
Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari (born Ermanno Wolf) (January 12, 1876 – January 21, 1948) was an Italian composer and teacher. He is best known for his comic operas such as '' Il segreto di Susanna'' (1909). A number of his works were based on plays by Carlo Goldoni, including ''Le donne curiose'' (1903), ''I quatro rusteghi'' (1906) and ''Il campiello'' (1936). Life Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari was born in Venice in 1876, the son of German painter August Wolf and Emilia Ferrari, from Venice. He added his mother's maiden-name, Ferrari, to his surname in 1895. Although he studied piano from an early age, music was not the primary passion of his young life. As a teenager Wolf-Ferrari wanted to be a painter like his father; he studied intensively in Venice and Rome and traveled abroad to study in Munich. It was there that he decided to concentrate instead on music, taking lessons from Josef Rheinberger. He enrolled at the Munich conservatory and began taking counterpoint and composition classes. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Franco Alfano
Franco Alfano (8 March 1875 – 27 October 1954) was an Italian composer and pianist, best known today for his opera ''Risurrezione'' (1904) and for having completed Puccini's opera ''Turandot'' in 1926. He had considerable success with several of his own works during his lifetime. Career Alfano was born in Posillipo, Naples. He attended piano lessons given privately by Alessandro Longo, and harmony and composition respectively under Camillo de Nardis (1857–1951) and Paolo Serrao at the Conservatory San Pietro a Majella in Naples. Later, after graduating, in 1895 he pursued further composition studies with Hans Sitt and Salomon Jadassohn in Leipzig. While working there he met his idol, Edvard Grieg, and wrote numerous piano and orchestral pieces. From 1918 he was Director of the Conservatory of Bologna, from 1923 Director of the Turin Conservatory, and from 1947 to 1950 Director of the Rossini Conservatory in Pesaro. Alfano died in San Remo. Operas Alfano completed his ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Faust (opera)
''Faust'' is an opera in five acts by Charles Gounod to a French libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré from Carré's play ''Faust et Marguerite'', in turn loosely based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's ''Faust, Part One''. It debuted at the Théâtre Lyrique on the Boulevard du Temple in Paris on 19 March 1859, with influential sets designed by Charles-Antoine Cambon and Joseph Thierry, Jean Émile Daran, Édouard Desplechin, and Philippe Chaperon. Performance history The original version of Faust employed spoken dialogue, and it was in this form that the work was first performed. The manager of the Théâtre Lyrique, Léon Carvalho cast his wife Caroline Miolan-Carvalho as Marguerite and there were various changes during production, including the removal and contraction of several numbers. The tenor Hector Gruyer was originally cast as Faust but was found to be inadequate during rehearsals, being eventually replaced by a principal of the Opéra-Comique, Joseph-Théodore ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Boito
Arrigo Boito (; 24 February 1842 10 June 1918) (whose original name was Enrico Giuseppe Giovanni Boito and who wrote essays under the anagrammatic pseudonym of Tobia Gorrio) was an Italian poet, journalist, novelist, librettist and composer, best known today for his libretti, especially those for Giuseppe Verdi's last two monumental operas '' Otello'' and ''Falstaff'' (not to mention Amilcare Ponchielli's operatic masterpiece '' La Gioconda'') and his own opera ''Mefistofele''. Along with Emilio Praga and his own brother Camillo Boito, he is regarded as one of the prominent representatives of the Scapigliatura artistic movement. Biography Birthplace in Padua Born in Padua, the son of Silvestro Boito (1802–1856), an Italian painter of miniatures, who was not of noble birth but passed himself off as a nobleman, and his wife, a Polish countess, Józefina Radolińska, Boito studied music at the Milan Conservatory with Alberto Mazzucato until 1861, where a friend, Albert Visett ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gounod
Charles-François Gounod (; ; 17 June 181818 October 1893), usually known as Charles Gounod, was a French composer. He wrote twelve operas, of which the most popular has always been ''Faust (opera), Faust'' (1859); his ''Roméo et Juliette'' (1867) also remains in the international repertory. He composed a large amount of church music, many songs, and popular short pieces including his Ave Maria (Bach/Gounod), Ave Maria (an elaboration of a Johann Sebastian Bach, Bach piece), and ''Funeral March of a Marionette''. Born in Paris into an artistic and musical family Gounod was a student at the Conservatoire de Paris and won France's most prestigious musical prize, the Prix de Rome. His studies took him to Italy, Austria and then Prussia, where he met Felix Mendelssohn, whose advocacy of the music of Bach was an early influence on him. He was deeply religious, and after his return to Paris, he briefly considered becoming a priest. He composed prolifically, writing church music, songs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Werther
''Werther'' is an opera (''drame lyrique'') in four acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Édouard Blau, Paul Milliet and Georges Hartmann (who used the pseudonym Henri Grémont). It is loosely based on Goethe's epistolary novel ''The Sorrows of Young Werther'', which was based both on fact and on Goethe's own early life. Earlier examples of operas using the story were made by Kreutzer (1792) and Pucitta (1802). Milnes R. Werther. In: ''The New Grove Dictionary of Opera''. Macmillan, London and New York, 1997. Performance history Massenet started composing ''Werther'' in 1885, completing it in 1887. He submitted it to Léon Carvalho, the director of the Paris Opéra-Comique, that year, but Carvalho declined to accept it on the grounds that the scenario was too serious. With the disruption of the fire at the Opéra-Comique and Massenet's work on other operatic projects (especially ''Esclarmonde''), it was put to one side, until the Vienna Opera, pleased with the succes ... [...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] |
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] |
_-_Archivio_Storico_Ricordi_ICON012449.jpg "Click for more on -> Lucia Di Lammermoor")
