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Jess Thomas
Jess Thomas (August 4, 1927 – October 11, 1993) was an American operatic tenor, best known for singing Richard Wagner, Wagner compositions. Biography Jess Floyd Thomas was born in Hot Springs, South Dakota. As a child, he took part in various musical activities and studied psychology at the University of Nebraska. For several years, he worked as a high school guidance counselor, before enrolling at Stanford University for an MA. Learning that the operatic department was producing Verdi's ''Falstaff (opera), Falstaff'', he auditioned for Otto Schulmann, the vocal professor, and obtained the role of Fenton. Although by now 27 years old, Thomas decided to change careers and to become a singer. He studied with Schulmann for three years before his operatic debut in 1957. In 1958, he joined the Badisches Staatstheater Karlsruhe, Badisches Staatstheater in Karlsruhe, Germany. He was awarded the Wagner Medal at Bayreuth Festspielhaus, Bayreuth in 1963. His many appearances in Nort ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brackets
A bracket is either of two tall fore- or back-facing punctuation marks commonly used to isolate a segment of text or data from its surroundings. Typically deployed in symmetric pairs, an individual bracket may be identified as a 'left' or 'right' bracket or, alternatively, an "opening bracket" or "closing bracket", respectively, depending on the directionality of the context. Specific forms of the mark include parentheses (also called "rounded brackets"), square brackets, curly brackets (also called 'braces'), and angle brackets (also called 'chevrons'), as well as various less common pairs of symbols. As well as signifying the overall class of punctuation, the word "bracket" is commonly used to refer to a specific form of bracket, which varies from region to region. In most English-speaking countries, an unqualified word "bracket" refers to the parenthesis (round bracket); in the United States, the square bracket. Various forms of brackets are used in mathematics, with ... [...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 recogn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hortensia Fussy
Hortensia Fussy (also Hortensia; born 25 March 1954 in Graz) is an Austrian sculptor. Biography Hortensia studied sculpture at the School of Applied Arts Graz with Josef Pillhofer from 1970 to 1972 and at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna with Fritz Wotruba from 1972 to 1975. She was his last student.Gabriele Stöger-Spevak, from the book "Sculpture House Hortensia", ISBN 978-3-9502799-2-4, 2016 Since 1975 she has been a freelance artist. She held her first exhibition in 1984 at Galerie Würthle, and since then numerous solo exhibitions in Europe, the United States, and Africa. From 2003 to 2012 she ran the ''Hortensia Drawing School for Figure and Landscape'', Bad Gams, Western Styria. On 2 May 2015, she opened the "Sculpture House Hortensia" in Bad Gams, Western Styria. As a permanent exhibition space, it houses sculptures from all creative periods. The sculpture workroom and the drawing room are located opposite the house. For her "extensive artistic work" she was awarded t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James King (tenor)
James King (May 22, 1925November 20, 2005) was an American operatic tenor who had an active international singing career in operas and concerts from the 1950s through 2000. Widely regarded as one of the finest American heldentenors of the post-war period, he excelled in performances of the works of Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss. King made several recording during his career, most notably singing the role of Siegmund in ''Die Walküre'' for Sir Georg Solti's famous recording of Wagner's '' Ring Cycle''. He was a member of the voice faculties at the University of Missouri–Kansas City and the Jacobs School of Music of Indiana University. Biography King was born in Dodge City, Kansas, to an Irish father and a mother of German lineage. In his youth he actively sang in church choirs and studied the violin. He earned a bachelor's degree in music from Louisiana State University in 1949, where he trained to be a baritone with Dallas Draper. He then pursued a master's degree in v ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kurt Herbert Adler
Kurt Herbert Adler (2 April 1905 – 9 February 1988) was an Austrian-born American conductor and opera house director. Biography Adler was born in Vienna, Austria, to a Jewish family; his mother, Ida Bauer, was one of the first patients of Sigmund Freud. His work in the field of music led him to become the assistant to Arturo Toscanini at the Salzburg Festival in 1936 and he also worked in Italy. Following the Nazi occupation of Austria in 1938, as a Jew he was forced to leave and went to the Chicago City Opera Company as assistant chorus director where he worked for five years. Gaetano Merola, then General Director of the San Francisco Opera, heard of him and, over the telephone, invited him to the San Francisco Opera in 1943 as chorus director. In the following ten years, he took on more and more administrative details as Merola's health and energy diminished. While Adler was not the Board's natural choice to replace Merola at the time of his death in 1953, after three m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leontyne Price
Mary Violet Leontyne Price (born February 10, 1927) is an American soprano who was the first African American soprano to receive international acclaim. From 1961 she began a long association with the Metropolitan Opera, where she was the first African American to be a leading performer. She regularly appeared at the world's major opera houses, the Royal Opera House, San Francisco Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, and La Scala, the last at which she was also the first African American to sing a leading role. She was particularly renowned for her performances of the title role in Verdi's ''Aida''. Born in Laurel, Mississippi, Price attended Central State University and then Juilliard, where she had her operatic debut as Mistress Ford in Verdi's ''Falstaff''. Having heard the performance, Virgil Thomson engaged her in ''Four Saints in Three Acts'' and she then toured—starring alongside her husband William Warfield—in a successful revival of Gerswhin's ''Porgy and Bess''. Numerous ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Antony And Cleopatra (opera)
''Antony and Cleopatra'', Op. 40, is an opera in three acts by American composer Samuel Barber. The libretto was prepared by Franco Zeffirelli. It was based on the play ''Antony and Cleopatra'' by William Shakespeare and made use of Shakespeare's language exclusively. The opera was first performed on September 16, 1966, commissioned for the opening of the new Metropolitan Opera House in Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City. After an unsuccessful premiere, the opera was extensively revised by Barber and Gian Carlo Menotti into an edition first performed in 1975. Performance history For the world premiere—also the opening of the new Metropolitan Opera House—no expense was spared, with the creative team including Zeffirelli himself directing and designing the production. The team included revolutionary choreographer Alvin Ailey, conductor Thomas Schippers, and a top rate cast headed by Leontyne Price as Cleopatra. Condensing Shakespeare's text from five acts ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Samuel Barber
Samuel Osmond Barber II (March 9, 1910 – January 23, 1981) was an American composer, pianist, conductor, baritone, and music educator, and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century. The music critic Donal Henahan said, "Probably no other American composer has ever enjoyed such early, such persistent and such long-lasting acclaim." Principally influenced by nine years' composition studies with Rosario Scalero at the Curtis Institute and more than 25 years' study with his uncle, the composer Sidney Homer, Barber's music usually eschewed the experimental trends of musical modernism in favor of traditional 19th-century harmonic language and formal structure embracing lyricism and emotional expression. However, he adopted elements of modernism after 1940 in some of his compositions, such as an increased use of dissonance and chromaticism in the ''Cello Concerto'' (1945) and '' Medea's Dance of Vengeance'' (1955); and the use of tonal ambiguity and a narrow use of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lincoln Center
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (also simply known as Lincoln Center) is a complex of buildings in the Lincoln Square neighborhood on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It has thirty indoor and outdoor facilities and is host to 5 million visitors annually. It houses internationally renowned performing arts organizations including the New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera, the New York City Ballet, and the Juilliard School. History Planning A consortium of civic leaders and others, led by and under the initiative of philanthropist John D. Rockefeller III, built Lincoln Center as part of the "Lincoln Square Renewal Project" during Robert Moses's program of New York's urban renewal in the 1950s and 1960s."Rockefeller Philanthropy: Lincoln Center" ( < ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Metropolitan Opera House (Lincoln Center)
The Metropolitan Opera House (also known as The Met) is an opera house located on Broadway at Lincoln Square on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. Part of Lincoln Center, the theater was designed by Wallace K. Harrison. It opened in 1966, replacing the original 1883 Metropolitan Opera House at Broadway and 39th Street. With a seating capacity of approximately 3,850, the house is the largest repertory opera house in the world. Home to the Metropolitan Opera Company, the facility also hosts the American Ballet Theatre in the summer months. History Planning and construction Planning for a new home for the Metropolitan Opera began as early as the mid-1920s, when the backstage facilities of the former house were becoming vastly inadequate for growing repertory and advancing stagecraft. As part of the development of the present-day Rockefeller Center site, there was to be a development with a new 4,000-seat opera house at its center. Financial problems and the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Siegfried (opera)
''Siegfried'' (), WWV 86C, is the third of the four music dramas that constitute '' Der Ring des Nibelungen'' (''The Ring of the Nibelung''), by Richard Wagner. It premiered at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus on 16 August 1876, as part of the first complete performance of ''The Ring'' cycle. Background and context The libretto of ''Siegfried'' was drafted by Wagner in November–December 1852, based on an earlier version he had prepared in May–June 1851 and originally entitled ''Jung-Siegfried'' (''Young Siegfried''), later changed to ''Der junge Siegfried''. The musical composition was commenced in 1856, but not finally completed until 1871.Millington, (n.d.) The libretto arose from Wagner's gradual reconception of the project he had initiated with his libretto ''Siegfrieds Tod'' (''Siegfried's Death'') which was eventually to be incarnated as '' Götterdämmerung'', the final section of the Ring cycle. Having grappled with his text for ''Siegfrieds Tod'', and indeed having u ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tannhäuser (opera)
''Tannhäuser'' (; full title , "Tannhäuser and the Minnesängers' Contest at Wartburg") is an 1845 opera in three acts, with music and text by Richard Wagner ( WWV 70 in the catalogue of the composer's works). It is based on two German legends: Tannhäuser, the mythologized medieval German Minnesänger and poet, and the tale of the Wartburg Song Contest. The story centres on the struggle between sacred and profane love, as well as redemption through love, a theme running through most of Wagner's work. The opera remains a staple of major opera house repertoire in the 21st century. Composition history Sources The libretto of ''Tannhäuser'' combines mythological elements characteristic of German '' Romantische Oper'' (Romantic opera) and the medieval setting typical of many French Grand Operas. Wagner brings these two together by constructing a plot involving the 14th-century Minnesingers and the myth of Venus and her subterranean realm of Venusberg. Both the historical and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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