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Helen Vanni
Helen Vanni ( Spaeth; January 30, 1924 – March 5, 2023) was an American opera singer who performed mezzo-soprano and soprano roles. Early life Helen Spaeth was born on January 30, 1924, to German parents, in Davenport, Iowa, where she studied piano and voice before attending college at St. Catherine University in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Career Vanni made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in 1956 in the role of the page in '' Rigoletto'', and she appeared in over 400 performances at the Met from 1956 to 1970. She shared the stage with notable singers such as Leontyne Price, Renata Tebaldi, Maria Callas, Jussi Björling, Richard Tucker, Victoria de los Ángeles, and Licia Albanese. In addition to supporting roles, she appeared in leading and featured roles at the Met including Suzuki in ''Madama Butterfly'', Rosina in '' Il Barbiere di Siviglia'', Dorabella in '' Cosi fan tutte'' (opposite Leontyne Price as Fiordiligi), Donna Elvira in ''Don Giovanni'', and as the Mar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Davenport, Iowa
Davenport is a city in and the county seat of Scott County, Iowa, United States. Located along the Mississippi River on the eastern border of the state, it is the largest of the Quad Cities, a metropolitan area with a population of 384,324 and a combined statistical area population of 474,019, ranking as the 147th-largest MSA and 91st-largest CSA in the nation. According to the 2020 census, the city had a population of 101,724, making it Iowa's third-largest city. Davenport was founded on May 14, 1836, by Antoine Le Claire and was named for his friend George Davenport, a former English sailor who served in the U.S. Army during the War of 1812, served as a supplier Fort Armstrong, worked as a fur trader with the American Fur Company, and was appointed a quartermaster with the rank of colonel during the Black Hawk War. The city is prone to frequent flooding due to its location on the Mississippi River. There are two main universities: St. Ambrose University and Palmer College of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cosi Fan Tutte
Cosi, COSI or CoSi may refer to: * ''Così'', a 1992 play by Louis Nowra ** ''Cosi'' (film), 1996, based on the play * Così (restaurant), an American fast-casual restaurant chain * Compton Spectrometer and Imager, or COSI, a NASA telescope to be launched in 2025 * COSI (Center of Science and Industry), a science museum and research center in Columbus, Ohio, U.S. * COSI Toledo, now Imagination Station, a science museum in Toledo, Ohio, U.S. *Cobalt monosilicide, a material with the chemical formula CoSi * Julián Cosi (born 1998), an Argentine footballer * Valerio Cosi (born 1985), an Italian musician See also * * Così fan tutte (other) '' Così fan tutte'' is a 1790 Italian-language comic opera by Mozart. Così fan tutte or variations may also refer to: * ''Così fan tutte'' (film), or ''All Ladies Do It'', a 1992 Italian sex-comedy * ''Così fan tutte'' (TV series), an Italia ... * Così è (se vi pare) (other) {{disambiguation, surname ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ariadne Auf Naxos
(''Ariadne on Naxos''), Op. 60, is a 1912 opera by Richard Strauss with a German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. The opera's unusual combination of elements of low commedia dell'arte with those of high opera seria points up one of the work's principal themes: the competition between high and low art for the public's attention. First version (1912) The opera was originally conceived as a 30-minute divertissement to be performed at the end of Hofmannsthal's adaptation of Molière's play ''Le Bourgeois gentilhomme.'' Besides the opera, Strauss provided incidental music to be performed during the play. In the end, the opera occupied ninety minutes, and the performance of play plus opera occupied over six hours. It was first performed at the Hoftheater Stuttgart on 25 October 1912, directed by Max Reinhardt. The combination of the play and opera proved to be unsatisfactory to the audience: those who had come to hear the opera resented having to wait until the play finished. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ambroise Thomas
Charles Louis Ambroise Thomas (; 5 August 1811 – 12 February 1896) was a French composer and teacher, best known for his operas ''Mignon'' (1866) and ''Hamlet'' (1868). Born into a musical family, Thomas was a student at the Conservatoire de Paris, winning France's top music prize, the Prix de Rome. He pursued a career as a composer of operas, completing his first opera, ''La double échelle'', in 1837. He wrote twenty further operas over the next decades, mostly comic, but he also treated more serious subjects, finding considerable success with audiences in France and abroad. Thomas was appointed as a professor at the Conservatoire in 1856, and in 1871 he succeeded Daniel Auber as director. Between then and his death at his home in Paris twenty-five years later, he modernised the Conservatoire's organisation while imposing a rigidly conservative curriculum, hostile to modern music, and attempting to prevent composers such as César Franck and Gabriel Fauré from influencing t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mignon
''Mignon'' is an 1866 ''opéra comique'' (or opera in its second version) in three acts by Ambroise Thomas. The original French libretto was by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré, based on Goethe's 1795-96 novel '' Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre''. The Italian version was translated by Giuseppe Zaffira. The opera is mentioned in James Joyce's " The Dead" (''Dubliners'') and Willa Cather's '' The Professor's House''. Thomas's goddaughter Mignon Nevada was named after the main character. Performance history The first performance was at the Opéra-Comique in Paris on 17 November 1866. The piece proved popular: more than 100 performances took place by the following July, the 1,000th was given there on 13 May 1894, and the 1,500th on 25 May 1919. The opera was also adapted and translated into German for performance in Berlin with Madame Lucca as Mignon. Lucca was well received, but the German critics were unhappy with the opera's alterations to the Goethe original, so Thomas composed a shor ... [...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] |
Falstaff (opera)
''Falstaff'' () is a comic opera in three acts by the Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi. The Italian-language libretto was adapted by Arrigo Boito from the play '' The Merry Wives of Windsor'' and scenes from '' Henry IV, Part 1'' and '' Part 2'', by William Shakespeare. The work premiered on 9 February 1893 at La Scala, Milan. Verdi wrote ''Falstaff'', the last of his 28 operas, as he approached the age of 80. It was his second comedy, and his third work based on a Shakespeare play, following '' Macbeth'' and '' Otello''. The plot revolves around the thwarted, sometimes farcical, efforts of the fat knight Sir John Falstaff to seduce two married women to gain access to their husbands' wealth. Verdi was concerned about working on a new opera at his advanced age, but he yearned to write a comic work and was pleased with Boito's draft libretto. It took the collaborators three years from mid-1889 to complete. Although the prospect of a new opera from Verdi aroused im ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Gondoliers
''The Gondoliers; or, The King of Barataria'' is a Savoy Opera, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It premiered at the Savoy Theatre on 7 December 1889 and ran for a very successful 554 performances (at that time the fifth longest-running piece of musical theatre in history), closing on 30 June 1891. This was the twelfth comic opera collaboration of fourteen between Gilbert and Sullivan. The story of the opera concerns the young bride of the heir to the throne of the fictional kingdom of Barataria who arrives in Venice to join her husband. It turns out, however, that he cannot be identified, since he was entrusted to the care of a drunken gondolier who mixed up the prince with his own son. To complicate matters, the King of Barataria has just been killed. The two young gondoliers must now jointly rule the kingdom until the nurse of the prince can be brought in to determine which of them is the rightful king. Moreover, when the young queen arrives ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
La Cenerentola
' (''Cinderella, or Goodness Triumphant'') is an operatic ''dramma giocoso'' in two acts by Gioachino Rossini. The libretto was written by Jacopo Ferretti, based on the libretti written by Charles-Guillaume Étienne for the opera '' Cendrillon'' with music by Nicolas Isouard (first performed Paris, 1810) and by Francesco Fiorini for ' with music by Stefano Pavesi (first performed Milan, 1814). All these operas are versions of the fairy tale '' Cendrillon'' by Charles Perrault. Rossini's opera was first performed in Rome's Teatro Valle on 25 January 1817. Rossini composed ''La Cenerentola'' when he was 25 years old, following the success of ''The Barber of Seville'' the year before. ''La Cenerentola'', which he completed in a period of three weeks, is considered to have some of his finest writing for solo voice and ensembles. Rossini saved some time by reusing an overture from '' La gazzetta'' and part of an aria from ''The Barber of Seville'' and by enlisting a collaborator, Luca ... [...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] |
Santa Fe Opera
Santa Fe Opera (SFO) is an American opera company, located north of Santa Fe, New Mexico. After creating the ''Opera Association of New Mexico'' in 1956, its founding director, John Crosby (conductor), John Crosby, oversaw the building of the first opera house on a newly acquired former guest ranch of . The company has presented operas each summer festival season since July 1957, and is internationally known for introducing new operas as well as for its productions of the List of important operas, standard operatic repertoire. Since its inception, Santa Fe Opera has staged 43 American premieres and 15 world premieres, as of 2017. General history John Crosby, who was a New York-based conductor, founded the company in 1956, initially with the financial support of his parents, who helped in the acquisition of the land and the building of the first opera house. One goal was to give American singers the opportunity to learn and perform new roles while having ample time for rehearsa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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