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Kamen Tchanev
Kamen Tchanev / Kamen Chanev ( bg, Камен Чанев) (27 August 1964 – 26 November 2020) was a Bulgarian operatic tenor who enjoyed an international career. Early years and education Kamen Tchanev was born in Sliven and studied at the French language school in his home town. In 1991 he graduated from the Bulgarian State Music Academy "Pancho Vladigerov" and in 1992 he specialized at the Boris Hristov Academy of Music and Arts in Rome. He has worked together with Alexandrina Miltcheva, Ghena Dimitrova, and Leone Magiera, Luciano Pavarotti's pianist. In 1994, he was laureate in the Jussi Björling international competition for tenors. Career In 1993 Kamen Tchanev started working at the Sofia National Opera, where he made his stage debut as the Duke of Mantua in Verdi's ''Rigoletto''. Five years later he moved to Prague, where he sang for two years before becoming a freelancer whilst remaining a frequent guest at the Prague State Opera. He has subsequently performed i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aida
''Aida'' (or ''Aïda'', ) is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni. Set in the Old Kingdom of Egypt, it was commissioned by Cairo's Khedivial Opera House and had its première there on 24 December 1871, in a performance conducted by Giovanni Bottesini. Today the work holds a central place in the operatic canon, receiving performances every year around the world; at New York's Metropolitan Opera alone, ''Aida'' has been sung more than 1,100 times since 1886. Ghislanzoni's scheme follows a scenario often attributed to the French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette, but Verdi biographer Mary Jane Phillips-Matz argues that the source is actually Temistocle Solera. Elements of the opera's genesis and sources Isma'il Pasha, Khedive of Egypt, commissioned Verdi to write an opera to celebrate the opening of the Suez Canal, but Verdi declined. However, Auguste Mariette, a French Egyptologist, proposed to Khedive Pasha a plot for a celebratory ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
La Traviata
''La traviata'' (; ''The Fallen Woman'') is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. It is based on ''La Dame aux camélias'' (1852), a play by Alexandre Dumas ''fils'' adapted from his own 1848 novel. The opera was originally titled ''Violetta'', after the main character. It was first performed on 6 March 1853 at La Fenice opera house in Venice. Piave and Verdi wanted to follow Dumas in giving the opera a contemporary setting, but the authorities at La Fenice insisted that it be set in the past, "c. 1700". It was not until the 1880s that the composer's and librettist's original wishes were carried out and " realistic" productions were staged. ''La traviata'' has become immensely popular and is among the most frequently performed of all operas. Composition history For Verdi, the years 1851 to 1853 were filled with operatic activity. First, he had agreed with the librettist Salvadore Cammarano on a subject for what would ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Donato Renzetti
Donato Renzetti (born on 30 January 1950) is an Italian conductor. He is the recipient of the 1980 Guido Cantelli Award. Biography Renzetti was once a percussionist at Milan's La Scala. He left it to return as a conductor and winner of the Cantelli Award while still a young man. He conducted "many of the most esteemed orchestras," including the English Chamber Orchestra, London Sinfonietta, London Philharmonic, Philharmonia Orchestra, DSO Berlin, Tokyo Philharmonic, and led operas in such renowned opera houses as the Dallas Opera, Grand Théâtre de Genève, Opéra de Paris, Bayerische Staatsoper and Covent Garden. He made his first appearance at Glyndebourne with Rossini's ''La Cenerentola'', which was acclaimed. Among his students was 27-year-old Gianandrea Noseda Gianandrea Noseda (born 23 April 1964, Sesto San Giovanni, Italy) is an Italian conductor. Biography Noseda studied piano and composition in Milan. He began conducting studies at age 27. He furthered his co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paolo Carignani
Paolo Carignani (born 1961) is an Italian conductor. He has been chief conductor of the Opern- und Schauspielhaus Frankfurt (1997–2008),Something Sensational p295 William Guy – 2008 "... and this sort of ecstasy is what occurred for me in Frankfurt this time, almost from the moment the overture began under the direction of the elfin and agile Paolo Carignani, whose illuminated bald head was visible bobbing around ..." and season conductor of the Frankfurter Opern- und Museumsorchester. Selected discography and videography * Puccini's ''Tosca'' with Emily Magee, Jonas Kaufmann and Thomas Hampson for the Zürich Opera Zürich Opera (Oper Zürich) is a Swiss opera company based in Zürich. The company gives performances in the Zürich Opera House. History The first performance at the current theatre occurred on 30 September 1891, with a production of Wagner's '' ... 2009, DVD Decca 2011. * * * References Italian male conductors (music) Musicians from Milan 1961 b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michail Jurowski
Michail Vladimirovich Jurowski (; 25 December 1945 – 19 March 2022) was a Russian Conducting, conductor who worked internationally, based in Germany for most of his career. He was particularly interested in the works of Dmitri Shostakovich, in concerts and recordings. Jurowski grew up in a musical family, where his father Vladimir Mikhailovich Yurovsky was a composer, and many prominent Russian musicians were family friends. He first worked in Moscow, but was from 1978 a regular guest conductor at the Komische Oper Berlin, then in East Berlin. With a 1989 contract for the Staatsoper Dresden, he moved to Germany with his family. He was music director of the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie from 1992, and the Norddeutsche Philharmonie Rostock from 1999, followed by positions with the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra and the WDR Rundfunkorchester Köln. He worked as a guest worldwide, including Scandinavia and Argentina. His recordings include the first recordings of Dmitri Shostakov ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nicola Luisotti
Nicola Luisotti (born 26 November 1961, in Viareggio, Italy) is an Italian conductor. He currently holds the title "Director Principal Invitado" (principal guest conductor) of Madrid's Teatro Real. Biography Luisotti grew up in Bargecchia. He began studying music as a child, with lessons on the church organ. A seminary student until age 14, he was the director of his village church choir by age 11. He later trained as a pianist, with secondary degrees in composition, trumpet and voice. Upon completing his formal study, he traveled between Milan, where he was a rehearsal pianist for La Scala, and Florence, where he was a member of the chorus of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino. Subsequent posts allowed him to assist such conductors as Lorin Maazel and Riccardo Muti at La Scala. His earliest full-time position was as chorus master for La Fenice in Venice. Luisotti's first professional opera conducting engagements were a 2000 production of ''Stiffelio'' in Trieste and a 2001 St ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lorin Maazel
Lorin Varencove Maazel (, March 6, 1930 – July 13, 2014) was an American conductor, violinist and composer. He began conducting at the age of eight and by 1953 had decided to pursue a career in music. He had established a reputation in the concert halls of Europe by 1960 but, by comparison, his career in the U.S. progressed far more slowly. He served as music director of The Cleveland Orchestra, Orchestre National de France, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, and the New York Philharmonic, among other posts. Maazel was well-regarded in baton technique and possessed a photographic memory for scores. Described as mercurial and forbidding in rehearsal, he mellowed in old age. Early life Maazel was born to American parents of Ukrainian Jewish origin in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. His grandfather Isaac Maazel (1873-1925), born in Poltava, Ukraine, then in the Russian Empire, was a violinist in the Metropolitan Opera orchestra. He and his wife Est ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Riccardo Muti
Riccardo Muti, (; born 28 July 1941) is an Italian conductor. He currently holds two music directorships, at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and at the Orchestra Giovanile Luigi Cherubini. Muti has previously held posts at the Maggio Musicale in Florence, the Philharmonia Orchestra in London, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, and the Salzburg Whitsun Festival. A prolific recording artist, Muti has received numerous honours and awards, including two Grammy Awards. He is especially associated with the music of Giuseppe Verdi. Among the world's leading conductors, in a 2015 '' Bachtrack'' poll, he was ranked by music critics as the world's fifth best living conductor. Childhood and education Muti was born in Naples but he spent his early childhood in Molfetta, near Bari, in the long region of Apulia on Italy's southern Adriatic coast. His father, Domenico, was a pathologist in Molfetta, as well as an amateur singer and great music lover; his mother, G ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Turandot
''Turandot'' (; see below) is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, posthumously completed by Franco Alfano in 1926, and set to a libretto in Italian by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni. ''Turandot'' best-known aria is "Nessun dorma", which became globally popular in the 1990s following Luciano Pavarotti's performance of it for the 1990 FIFA World Cup. Though Puccini first became interested in the subject matter when reading Friedrich Schiller's 1801 adaptation,. ''Freely translated from Schiller by Sabilla Novello:'' . he based his work more closely on the earlier play ''Turandot'' (1762) by Count Carlo Gozzi. The original story is one of the seven stories in the epic ''Haft Peykar''—a work by twelfth-century Persian poet Nizami ( 1141–1209). Nizami aligned his seven stories with the seven days of the week, the seven colors, and the seven planets known in his era. This particular narrative is the story of Tuesday, as told to the king of Iran, Bahram V (), by his c ... [...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] |
Don Giovanni
''Don Giovanni'' (; K. 527; Vienna (1788) title: , literally ''The Rake Punished, or Don Giovanni'') is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. Its subject is a centuries-old Spanish legend about a libertine as told by playwright Tirso de Molina in his 1630 play '' El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra''. It is a ''dramma giocoso'' blending comedy, melodrama and supernatural elements (although the composer entered it into his catalogue simply as ''opera buffa''). It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the National Theater (of Bohemia), now called the Estates Theatre, on 29 October 1787. ''Don Giovanni'' is regarded as one of the greatest operas of all time and has proved a fruitful subject for commentary in its own right; critic Fiona Maddocks has described it as one of Mozart's "trio of masterpieces with librettos by Da Ponte". Composition and premiere The opera was commissioned after the succes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Il Barbiere Di Siviglia
''The Barber of Seville, or The Useless Precaution'' ( it, Il barbiere di Siviglia, ossia L'inutile precauzione ) is an ''opera buffa'' in two acts composed by Gioachino Rossini with an Italian libretto by Cesare Sterbini. The libretto was based on Pierre Beaumarchais's French comedy ''The Barber of Seville'' (1775). The première of Rossini's opera (under the title ''Almaviva, o sia L'inutile precauzione'') took place on 20 February 1816 at the Teatro Argentina, Rome, with designs by Angelo Toselli. Rossini's ''Barber of Seville'' has proven to be one of the greatest masterpieces of comedy within music, and has been described as the opera buffa of all "opere buffe". After two hundred years, it remains a popular work. Composition history Rossini's opera recounts the events of the first of the three plays by French playwright Pierre Beaumarchais that revolve around the clever and enterprising character named Figaro, the barber of the title. Mozart's opera ''The Marriage of Fi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
