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Koanga
''Koanga'' is an opera written between 1896 and 1897, with music by Frederick Delius and a libretto by Charles Francis Keary, inspired partly by the book '' The Grandissimes: A Story of Creole Life'' by George Washington Cable (1880). Inspiration also came from Delius's own experiences as a young man, when his family sent him to work in Florida. It was Delius's third opera, and he thought better of it than of its predecessors, ''Irmelin'' and ''The Magic Fountain'', because of the incorporation of dance scenes and his treatment of the choruses. ''Koanga'' is reputed to be the first opera in the European tradition to base much of its melodic material on African-American music. Performance history ''Koanga'' was the first of Delius's operas to be performed. It was also the most labour-intensive with regard to the libretto, which was continually revised. The opera was posthumously published in 1935. It was performed privately in March 1899 at the residence of Adela Maddison in Par ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frederick Delius
Delius, photographed in 1907 Frederick Theodore Albert Delius ( 29 January 1862 – 10 June 1934), originally Fritz Delius, was an English composer. Born in Bradford in the north of England to a prosperous mercantile family, he resisted attempts to recruit him to commerce. He was sent to Florida in the United States in 1884 to manage an orange plantation. He soon neglected his managerial duties and in 1886 returned to Europe. Having been influenced by African-American music during his short stay in Florida, he began composing. After a brief period of formal musical study in Germany beginning in 1886, he embarked on a full-time career as a composer in Paris and then in nearby Grez-sur-Loing, where he and his wife Jelka lived for the rest of their lives, except during the First World War. Delius's first successes came in Germany, where Hans Haym and other conductors promoted his music from the late 1890s. In Delius's native Britain, his music did not make regular appearances ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oda Slobodskaya
Oda Slobodskaya (28 November/10 December 1888 – 30 July 1970) was a Russian soprano who became a British citizen. Early life Her biographer Maurice Leonard quotes Slobodskaya as having been born on 28 November 1888 in Vilno (now Vilnius). She won a scholarship for secondary education but, having completed her schooling, to her displeasure, found herself working with her parents in a secondhand clothes shop. Knowing she had a good voice, in 1907 she applied for an audition at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. Having no classical repertoire she sang the simple songs she had learned as a child. Despite this lack of sophistication, her vocal potential was immediately apparent. The Director, Glazunov, and Natalya Iretskaya (the most important Russian singing tutor and herself a pupil of Pauline Viardot) accepted her and awarded her a scholarship for nine years' study. The Mariinsky Theatre In 1916 she made her debut, as Lisa in Tchaikovsky's ''The Queen of Spades'' the Mariinsk ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Beecham
Sir Thomas Beecham, 2nd Baronet, Order of the Companions of Honour, CH (29 April 18798 March 1961) was an English conductor and impresario best known for his association with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Philharmonic and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic orchestras. He was also closely associated with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Liverpool Philharmonic and The Hallé, Hallé orchestras. From the early 20th century until his death, Beecham was a major influence on the musical life of United Kingdom, Britain and, according to the BBC, was Britain's first international conductor. Born to a rich industrial family, Beecham began his career as a conductor in 1899. He used his access to the family fortune to finance opera from the 1910s until the start of the Second World War, staging seasons at Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, Drury Lane and Her Majesty's Theatre, His Majesty's Theatre with international stars, his own ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fritz Cassirer
Friedrich (Fritz) Leopold Cassirer, (29 March 1871 – 26 November 1926) was a German conductor. He was one of the early proponents of the music of Frederick Delius, and conducted the premiere of Delius's first opera. Biography Cassirer was born into a Jewish family in Breslau. His father, Julius Cassirer, was one of nine children; Julius was distantly related to his wife, Julcher (Julie) ''née'' Cassirer, through a common great-grandfather.Falk, Jim"Cassirer and Cohen: histories, relatives and descendants" accessed 7 January 2012 Fritz Cassirer studied music with Hans Pfitzner and Gustav Holländer, after which he was appointed to conducting posts in a succession of German opera houses: Lübeck, Posen, Saarbrücken and Elberfeld.Blyth, Alan"Cassirer, Fritz."Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, accessed 6 November 2010 While Cassirer was in charge of the Elberfeld opera, his colleague Hans Haym introduced him to the music of Frederick Delius, which was little known in Ge ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Groves
Sir Charles Barnard Groves CBE (10 March 191520 June 1992) was an English conductor. He was known for the breadth of his repertoire and for encouraging contemporary composers and young conductors. After accompanying positions and conducting various orchestras and studio work for the BBC, Groves spent a decade as conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. His best-known musical directorship was of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, beginning in 1963, with which he made most of his recordings. From 1967 until his death, Groves was associate conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and in the 1970s he was one of the regular conductors of the Last Night of the Proms. He also served as president of the National Youth Orchestra from 1977, and, during the last decade of his life, as guest conductor for orchestras around the world. Life and career Early years Groves was born in London, the only child of Frederick Groves and Annie (née Whitehead). Groves b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Adela Maddison
Katharine Mary Adela Maddison, née Tindal (15 December 1862 – 12 June 1929), usually known as Adela Maddison, was a British composer of operas, ballets, instrumental music and songs. She was also a concert producer. She composed a number of French songs in the style of mélodies; for some years she lived in Paris, where she was a pupil, friend and possibly lover of Gabriel Fauré. Subsequently, living in Berlin, she composed a German opera which was staged in Leipzig. On returning to England she created works for Rutland Boughton's Glastonbury Festivals. Biography She was born at 42 York Terrace, Regent's Park, London on 15 December 1862 (rather than in 1866 as is sometimes stated), the daughter of Vice Admiral Louis Symonds Tindal (1811–76) and Henrietta Maria O'Donel Whyte (1831/2–1917). Her grandfather was the judge Nicholas Conyngham Tindal. She seems to have been raised in London. On 14 April 1883 she married barrister and former footballer Frederick Brunnin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Francis Keary
Charles Francis Keary (1848 – 25 October 1917) was an English scholar and historian. His later work as a novelist influenced the modernist writer James Joyce. However, the English novelist George Gissing read four of Keary's works, including three novels, in the first 31 days of 1896, and found the novel ''Herbert Vanlennert'', "a long, conscientious, uninspired book". Early life Charles was born to a Galway Irish family which had settled in the industrial Midlands borough of Stoke-on-Trent. He was the son of William Keary, who in 1874 would become Stoke-on-Trent's first mayor. He was schooled at Marlborough College and took his degree at Trinity College, Cambridge. Specialisms Keary then became fascinated by Scandinavian history and primitive mythology, then a promising new academic field, and wrote a number of scholarly books on such topics: ''The Vikings in Western Christendom'' (1890) stood as a standard work for many decades. He also became expert on Norway and the Norwe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amanuensis
An amanuensis () is a person employed to write or type what another dictates or to copy what has been written by another, and also refers to a person who signs a document on behalf of another under the latter's authority. In one example Eric Fenby assisted the blind composer Frederick Delius in writing down the notes that Delius dictated. Origin and secretarial uses The word originated in ancient Rome, for a slave at his master's personal service "within hand's reach", performing any command; later it was specifically applied to an intimately trusted servant (often a freedman) acting as a personal secretary (amanuensis is what he does, not what he is). In the Bible, the Apostle Paul is shown as the author of the Book of Romans. However, at the end of the book, Tertius of Iconium describes himself as the scribe who wrote the letter. A similar semantic evolution occurred at the French royal court, where the ''secrétaire de la main du roi'', originally a lowly clerk specializing ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eric Fenby
Eric William Fenby Order of the British Empire, OBE (22 April 190618 February 1997) was an English composer, conductor, pianist, organist and teacher who is best known for being Frederick Delius's amanuensis from 1928 to 1934. He helped Delius realise a number of works that would not otherwise have been forthcoming. Fenby was born in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, and as a youth took lessons in the piano, organ and cello. At the age of 12 he was appointed organist at Holy Trinity Church. As a composer he was largely self-taught. By 1925 he had conducted a work for string orchestra at the The Spa, Scarborough, Spa Grand Hall in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, Scarborough and had written some minor pieces. Working for Delius In 1928, hearing that Delius had become virtually helpless because of blindness and paralysis (due to syphilis), he offered to serve him as an amanuensis. Fenby worked, at the composer's home in Grez-sur-Loing, near Paris, for extended periods until Delius died ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most opera composers, Wagner wrote both the libretto and the music for each of his stage works. Initially establishing his reputation as a composer of works in the romantic vein of Carl Maria von Weber and Giacomo Meyerbeer, Wagner revolutionised opera through his concept of the ''Gesamtkunstwerk'' ("total work of art"), by which he sought to synthesise the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, with music subsidiary to drama. He described this vision in a series of essays published between 1849 and 1852. Wagner realised these ideas most fully in the first half of the four-opera cycle ''Der Ring des Nibelungen'' (''The Ring of the Nibelung''). His compositions, particularly those of his later period, are notable for their complex textures, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Olwen Wymark
Olwen Margaret Wymark (née Buck, 14 February 1932 – 14 June 2013) was an American writer and playwright. Biography Olwen Margaret Buck was born on 14 February 1932 in Oakland, California, the daughter of Philip W. (a professor of political science) and Barbara (Jacobs) Buck, and the granddaughter of English author W. W. Jacobs. She attended Pomona College from 1949–51 and University College, London from 1951–52. Her most successful play was ''Find Me'' (1977), about mental illness, which is still used as a set text for drama qualifications in UK schools. Others included ''Gymnasium'' (1972), ''Loved'' (1980), ''Best Friends'' (1984), ''Strike Up The Banns'' (1990), and ''Mirror Mirror'' (1992). She also wrote dozens of BBC radio play adaptations, including her 2001 version of Thomas Mann's ''The Magic Mountain''; one of her last works, it starred Paul Scofield in one of his greatest radio roles. Personal life She was married to British actor Patrick Wymark, whom she met ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sadler's Wells Theatre
Sadler's Wells Theatre is a performing arts venue in Clerkenwell, London, England located on Rosebery Avenue next to New River Head. The present-day theatre is the sixth on the site since 1683. It consists of two performance spaces: a 1,500-seat main auditorium and the Lilian Baylis Studio, with extensive rehearsal rooms and technical facilities also housed within the site. Sadler's Wells is renowned as one of the world's leading dance venues. As well as a stage for visiting companies, the theatre is also a producing house, with a number of associated artists and companies that produce original works for the theatre. Sadler's Wells is also responsible for the management of the Peacock Theatre in the West End, during times not used by the London School of Economics. History First theatre and pleasure gardens Richard Sadler opened a "Musick House" in 1683, the second public theatre newly opened in London after the Restoration, the first being the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. The f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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