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Hector Dupeyron
Hector Dupeyron (1861–1911) was a French operatic tenor who had a prolific opera career in Europe from 1887 through 1906. Possessing a powerful and dramatic voice, he particularly excelled in the works of Richard Wagner and Giacomo Meyerbeer. Biography Hector Dupeyron was born in Bordeaux on 10 November 1861. He studied at the Conservatoire de Paris under Ernest Boulanger and Louis-Henri Obin. He made his professional opera debut in 1887 at the opera house in Nîmes as Eleazar in Halévy's ''La Juive''. He sang at that same house for the next two years, after which he toured with a Parisian opera company in 1889 throughout Europe. From 1890 to 1892 he sang at the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels. After leaving Brussels he sang the role of Don José in Bizet's ''Carmen'' at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo. In 1893 Dupeyron joined the Opéra de Paris, making his first appearance there as Matho in Ernest Reyer's'' Salammbô''. He appeared there several more times throu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Sketch
''The Sketch'' was a British illustrated weekly journal. It ran for 2,989 issues between 1 February 1893 and 17 June 1959. It was published by the Illustrated London News Company and was primarily a society magazine with regular features on royalty, aristocracy and high society, as well as theatre, cinema and the arts. It had a high photographic content with many studies of society ladies and their children as well as regular layouts of point to point racing meetings and similar events. Clement Shorter and William Ingram started ''The Sketch'' in 1893. Shorter was the first editor, from 1893 to 1900, succeeded by John Latey (until his death in 1902) and then Keble Howard.Philip Waller, ''Writers, Readers, and Reputations: Literary Life in Britain 1870–1918'', pp. 351–2 Bruce Ingram was editor from 1905 to 1946. The magazine is remembered for first publishing the illustrations of Bonzo the dog by George E. Studdy (from 1921). It featured series of short stories within ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bizet
Georges Bizet (; 25 October 18383 June 1875) was a French composer of the Romantic era. Best known for his operas in a career cut short by his early death, Bizet achieved few successes before his final work, ''Carmen'', which has become one of the most popular and frequently performed works in the entire opera repertoire. During a brilliant student career at the Conservatoire de Paris, Bizet won many prizes, including the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1857. He was recognised as an outstanding pianist, though he chose not to capitalise on this skill and rarely performed in public. Returning to Paris after almost three years in Italy, he found that the main Parisian opera theatres preferred the established classical repertoire to the works of newcomers. His keyboard and orchestral compositions were likewise largely ignored; as a result, his career stalled, and he earned his living mainly by arranging and transcribing the music of others. Restless for success, he began many thea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Camille Saint-Saëns
Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns (; 9 October 183516 December 1921) was a French composer, organist, conductor and pianist of the Romantic music, Romantic era. His best-known works include Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso (1863), the Piano Concerto No. 2 (Saint-Saëns), Second Piano Concerto (1868), the Cello Concerto No. 1 (Saint-Saëns), First Cello Concerto (1872), ''Danse macabre (Saint-Saëns), Danse macabre'' (1874), the opera ''Samson and Delilah (opera), Samson and Delilah'' (1877), the Violin Concerto No. 3 (Saint-Saëns), Third Violin Concerto (1880), the Symphony No. 3 (Saint-Saëns), Third ("Organ") Symphony (1886) and ''The Carnival of the Animals'' (1886). Saint-Saëns was a musical prodigy; he made his concert debut at the age of ten. After studying at the Paris Conservatoire he followed a conventional career as a church organist, first at Saint-Merri, Paris and, from 1858, La Madeleine, Paris, La Madeleine, the official church of the Second French Empire, Fren ... [...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] |
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] |
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] |
Charles 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] |
Les Huguenots
() is an opera by Giacomo Meyerbeer and is one of the most popular and spectacular examples of grand opera. In five acts, to a libretto A libretto (Italian for "booklet") is the text used in, or intended for, an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata or Musical theatre, musical. The term ''libretto'' is also sometimes used to refer to the t ... by Eugène Scribe and Émile Deschamps, it premiered in Paris on 29 February 1836. Composition history ''Les Huguenots'' was some five years in creation. Meyerbeer prepared carefully for this opera after the sensational success of ''Robert le diable'', recognising the need to continue to present lavish staging, a highly dramatic storyline, impressive orchestration and virtuoso parts for the soloists – the essential elements of the new genre of Grand Opera. Meyerbeer and his librettist for ''Robert le Diable'', Eugène Scribe, had agreed to collaborate on an epic work concerning the French War ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Le Diable (opera)
''Robert le diable'' (''Robert the Devil'') is an opera in five acts composed by Giacomo Meyerbeer between 1827 and 1831, to a libretto written by Eugène Scribe and Germain Delavigne. ''Robert le diable'' is regarded as one of the first grand operas at the Paris Opéra. It has only a superficial connection to the medieval legend of ''Robert the Devil''. The opera was immediately successful from its first night on 21 November 1831 at the Opéra; the dramatic music, harmony and orchestration, its melodramatic plot, its star singers and its sensational stage effects compelled Frédéric Chopin, who was in the audience, to say, "If ever magnificence was seen in the theatre, I doubt that it reached the level of splendour shown in ''Robert''...It is a masterpiece...Meyerbeer has made himself immortal".Brown, ''Robert le diable'', p. 572 ''Robert'' initiated the European fame of its composer, consolidated the fame of its librettist, Scribe, and launched the reputation of the new direct ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sigurd (opera)
''Sigurd'' is an opera in four acts and nine scenes by the French composer Ernest Reyer on a libretto by Camille du Locle and Alfred Blau. Like Wagner's ''Ring of the Nibelung'', the story is based on the ''Nibelungenlied'' and the Eddas, with some crucial differences from the better known Wagnerian version (the role of the supernatural is limited and replaced in large part by fate; the initial version of the libretto with a prologue set in heaven was later cut out). The whole opera can best be described as an epic with techniques of the grand opera. Initially sketched out in 1862 (and virtually completed in draft by 1867), the work waited many years before it was performed in full. Orchestration of various fragments progressed much more slowly, and as they were completed, they were sometimes performed at various concerts. Initial attempts at staging the work at the Paris Opéra failed, therefore the opera had its world premiere in the Théatre de la Monnaie in Brussels on 7 Januar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Salammbô (opera)
''Salammbô'' (1862) is a historical novel by Gustave Flaubert. It is set in Carthage immediately before and during the Mercenary Revolt (241–237 BCE). Flaubert's principal source was Book I of the ''Histories'', written by the Greek historian Polybius. The novel was enormously popular when first published and jumpstarted a renewed interest in the history of the Roman Republic's conflict with the North African Phoenician outpost of Carthage. Genesis After the legal troubles that followed the publication of '' Madame Bovary'', when he was tried and acquitted on charges of "immorality", Flaubert sought a less controversial subject for his next novel. In 1857, Flaubert decided to conduct research in Carthage, writing in March to Félicien de Saulcy, a French archeologist about his plans. In a letter to Madame de Chantepie dated 23 January 1858, he described his anticipation: "I absolutely have to go to Africa. This is why, around the end of March, I will go back to th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ernest Reyer
Louis Étienne Ernest Reyer (1 December 1823 – 15 January 1909) was a French opera composer and music critic. Biography Ernest Reyer was born in Marseille. His father, a notary, did not want his son to take up a career in music. However, he did not actively block his son's ambitions and allowed him to attend classes at the Conservatoire from age six to sixteen. In 1839, when he was 16 years old, Ernest traveled to north Africa to work under his brother-in-law, head of accounting for the Treasury Department in Algeria. The job was not a good fit with Reyer's nonchalant and undisciplined temperament. From administrative documents, it is apparent that Reyer wrote innumerable youthful essays and stories, and original dance pieces. Some of his early compositions achieved local notoriety and received favorable comments in the Algerian press, including a Mass performed at the cathedral that was performed for the arrival of the Duke of Aumale in 1847. Reyer returned to Paris during th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
