John Ardoin
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John Ardoin
John Ardoin, (January 8, 1935 in Alexandria, Louisiana – March 18, 2001 in San José, Costa Rica), was best known as the music critic of ''The Dallas Morning News'' for thirty-two years and especially for his friendship with and encyclopedic knowledge of the work of the famous opera soprano, Maria Callas, about whom he wrote four books. But his influence stretched much further than Dallas, and he knew many of the most important figures in classical music of the postwar era. As a child of twelve, he became interested in listening to the Saturday Met broadcasts and also heard and saw many singers of the day on ''The Voice of Firestone'', and ''The Bell Telephone Hour''. As he notes, "the radio was my first important link to the whole world".James Jordenbr> interview on ''The Parterre Box'' web site November 2005 He also describes his first experiences of seeing opera: it wasn't until I was about 16 or 17 I saw my first opera – the old Charles Wagner Company, which used to ba ...
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Alexandria, Louisiana
Alexandria is the ninth-largest city in the state of Louisiana and is the parish seat of Rapides Parish, Louisiana, United States. It lies on the south bank of the Red River in almost the exact geographic center of the state. It is the principal city of the Alexandria metropolitan area (population 153,922) which encompasses all of Rapides and Grant parishes. Its neighboring city is Pineville. In 2010, the population was 47,723, an increase of 3 percent from the 2000 census. History Located along the Red River, the city of Alexandria was originally home to a community which supported activities of the adjacent French trader outpost of ''Post du Rapides''. The area developed as an assemblage of traders, Caddo people, and merchants in the agricultural lands bordering the mostly unsettled areas to the north and providing a link from the south to the El Camino Real and then larger settlement of Natchitoches, the oldest permanent settlement in the Louisiana Purchase. Ale ...
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Denton, Texas
Denton is a city in and the county seat of Denton County, Texas, United States. With a population of 139,869 as of 2020, it is the 27th-most populous city in Texas, the 197th-most populous city in the United States, and the 12th-most populous city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex. A Texas land grant led to the formation of Denton County in 1846, and the city was incorporated in 1866. Both were named after pioneer and Texas militia captain John B. Denton. The arrival of a railroad line in the city in 1881 spurred population, and the establishment of the University of North Texas in 1890 and Texas Woman's University in 1901 distinguished the city from neighboring regions. After the construction of Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport finished in 1974, the city had more rapid growth; as of 2011, Denton was the seventh-fastest growing city with a population over 100,000 in the country. Located on the far north end of the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex in North Texas on Int ...
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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"
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Avery Fisher Hall
David Geffen Hall is a concert hall in New York City's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts complex on Manhattan's Upper West Side. The 2,200-seat auditorium opened in 1962, and is the home of the New York Philharmonic. The facility, designed by Max Abramovitz, was originally named Philharmonic Hall and was renamed Avery Fisher Hall in honor of philanthropist Avery Fisher, who donated $10.5 million ($ million today) to the orchestra in 1973. In November 2014, Lincoln Center officials announced Fisher's name would be removed from the Hall so that naming rights could be sold to the highest bidder as part of a $500 million fund-raising campaign to refurbish the Hall. In 2015, the Hall acquired its present name after David Geffen donated $100 million to the Lincoln Center. Renovations 20th-century renovations The Hall underwent extensive renovations in 1976, to address acoustical problems that had been present since its opening. Another, smaller renovation attempted to ad ...
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Musical America
''Musical America'' is the oldest American magazine on classical music, first appearing in 1898 in print and in 1999 online, at musicalamerica.com. It is published by Performing Arts Resources, LLC, of East Windsor, New Jersey. History 1898–1964 ''Musical America's'' first issue was on October 8, 1898. Its founder was John Christian Freund (1848–1924), who with Milton Weil, also founded ''The Music Trades'' magazine in 1893. Thirty-six issues appeared until June 24, 1899, covering music, drama, and the arts. In 1899 the publication was discontinued for six years due to a lack of financial resources. It reappeared as a weekly from November 18, 1905, until 1929, solely focusing on classical music. In 1921 Musical America published the first "Guide," which later evolved into the International Directory of the Performing Arts, now the Musical America Directory. After John Freund died in 1924, Milton Weil who had been Freund's business partner continued the publication. In June 1 ...
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Martha Mödl
Martha Mödl (22 March 1912, Nuremberg – 17 December 2001, Stuttgart) was a German soprano, and later a mezzo-soprano. She specialized in large dramatic roles such as Isolde, Brünnhilde, and particularly Kundry, and is considered, along with Astrid Varnay and Birgit Nilsson, one of the three major postwar Wagner sopranos. She was among the preeminent Wagner sopranos—and most compelling singing actresses—of the twentieth century.Obituary
theguardian.com, 20 December 2001; accessed 8 September 2015.
She was celebrated for her highly individualized interpretations, exceptional acting ability, intense stage presence, and "rich, sexy voice."
telegraph.co.uk; ac ...
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Tristan Und Isolde
''Tristan und Isolde'' (''Tristan and Isolde''), WWV 90, is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner to a German libretto by the composer, based largely on the 12th-century romance Tristan and Iseult by Gottfried von Strassburg. It was composed between 1857 and 1859 and premiered at the Königliches Hoftheater und Nationaltheater in Munich on 10 June 1865 with Hans von Bülow conducting. Wagner referred to the work not as an opera, but called it "" (literally ''a drama'', ''a plot'', or ''an action''). Wagner's composition of ''Tristan und Isolde'' was inspired by the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer (particularly ''The World as Will and Representation''), as well as by Wagner's affair with Mathilde Wesendonck. Widely acknowledged as a pinnacle of the operatic repertoire, ''Tristan'' was notable for Wagner's unprecedented use of chromaticism, tonal ambiguity, orchestral colour, and harmonic suspension. The opera was enormously influential among Western classical com ...
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Ring Cycle
(''The Ring of the Nibelung''), WWV 86, is a cycle of four German-language epic music dramas composed by Richard Wagner. The works are based loosely on characters from Germanic heroic legend, namely Norse legendary sagas and the ''Nibelungenlied''. The composer termed the cycle a "Bühnenfestspiel" (stage festival play), structured in three days preceded by a ("preliminary evening"). It is often referred to as the ''Ring'' cycle, Wagner's ''Ring'', or simply ''The Ring''. Wagner wrote the libretto and music over the course of about twenty-six years, from 1848 to 1874. The four parts that constitute the ''Ring'' cycle are, in sequence: * ''Das Rheingold'' (''The Rhinegold'') * ''Die Walküre'' (''The Valkyrie'') * ''Siegfried'' * ''Götterdämmerung'' (''Twilight of the Gods'') Individual works of the sequence are often performed separately, and indeed the operas contain dialogues that mention events in the previous operas, so that a viewer could watch any of them without h ...
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Stuttgart
Stuttgart (; Swabian: ; ) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. It is located on the Neckar river in a fertile valley known as the ''Stuttgarter Kessel'' (Stuttgart Cauldron) and lies an hour from the Swabian Jura and the Black Forest. Stuttgart has a population of 635,911, making it the sixth largest city in Germany. 2.8 million people live in the city's administrative region and 5.3 million people in its metropolitan area, making it the fourth largest metropolitan area in Germany. The city and metropolitan area are consistently ranked among the top 20 European metropolitan areas by GDP; Mercer listed Stuttgart as 21st on its 2015 list of cities by quality of living; innovation agency 2thinknow ranked the city 24th globally out of 442 cities in its Innovation Cities Index; and the Globalization and World Cities Research Network ranked the city as a Beta-status global city in their 2020 survey. Stuttgart was one of the host cities ...
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East Lansing, Michigan
East Lansing is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan. Most of the city lies within Ingham County, Michigan, Ingham County with a smaller portion extending north into Clinton County, Michigan, Clinton County. At the 2020 United States Census, 2020 Census the population was 47,741. Located directly east of the state capital of Lansing, Michigan, Lansing, East Lansing is well-known as the home of Michigan State University. The city is part of the Lansing–East Lansing metropolitan area. History East Lansing is located on land that was an important junction of two major Native Americans in the United States, Native American groups: the Potawatomi and the Fox. By 1850, the Lansing and Howell Plank Road Company was established to connect a toll road to the Detroit and Howell Plank Road, improving travel between Detroit and Lansing, which cut right through what is now East Lansing. The toll road was finished in 1853, and included seven toll houses between Lansing and Howell, Michigan, Ho ...
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Michigan State University
Michigan State University (Michigan State, MSU) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in East Lansing, Michigan. It was founded in 1855 as the Agricultural College of the State of Michigan, the first of its kind in the United States. It is considered a Public Ivy, or a public institution which offers an academic experience similar to that of an Ivy League university. After the introduction of the Morrill Land-Grant Acts, Morrill Act in 1862, the state designated the college a land-grant institution in 1863, making it the first of the land-grant colleges in the United States. The college became coeducational in 1870. In 1955, the state officially made the college a university, and the current name, Michigan State University, was adopted in 1964. Today, Michigan State has the largest undergraduate enrollment among Michigan's colleges and universities and approximately 634,300 living alums worldwide. The university is a member of the ...
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Norman, Oklahoma
Norman () is the third-largest city in the U.S. state of Oklahoma, with a population of 128,097 as of 2021. It is the largest city and the county seat of Cleveland County, Oklahoma, Cleveland County, and the second-largest city in the Oklahoma City metropolitan area, behind the state capital, Oklahoma City. It is 20 miles (32 kilometers) south of OKC, OK, OKC. Norman was settled during the Land Run of 1889, which opened the former Unassigned Lands of Indian Territory to American pioneer settlement. The city was named in honor of Abner Norman, the area's initial land surveyor, and was formally incorporated on , 1891. Norman has prominent higher education and related research industries, as it is home to the University of Oklahoma, the largest university in the state, with nearly 32,000 students. The university is well known for its sporting events by teams under the banner of the nickname Oklahoma Sooners, "Sooners," with over 85,000 people routinely attending American football, f ...
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