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L'Africaine
''L'Africaine'' (''The African Woman'') is an 1865 French ''grand opéra'' in five acts with music by Giacomo Meyerbeer and a libretto by Eugène Scribe. Meyerbeer and Scribe began working on the opera in 1837, using the title ''L'Africaine'', but around 1852 changed the plot to portray fictitious events in the life of the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama and introduced the working title ''Vasco de Gama'', the French version of his name. The copying of the full score was completed the day before Meyerbeer died in 1864. The opera was premiered the following year by the Paris Opéra in a version made by François-Joseph Fétis, who restored the earlier title, ''L'Africaine''. The Fétis version was published and was used for subsequent performances until 2013, when some productions and recordings began using Meyerbeer's preferred title, ''Vasco de Gama'', for performing versions with revisions based on the manuscript score. In 2018 the music publisher Casa Ricordi, Ricordi issued a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Giacomo Meyerbeer
Giacomo Meyerbeer (born Jakob Liebmann Beer; 5 September 1791 – 2 May 1864) was a German opera composer, "the most frequently performed opera composer during the nineteenth century, linking Mozart and Wagner". With his 1831 opera ''Robert le diable'' and its successors, he gave the genre of grand opera 'decisive character'. Meyerbeer's grand opera style was achieved by his merging of German orchestra style with Italian vocal tradition. These were employed in the context of sensational and melodramatic libretti created by Eugène Scribe and were enhanced by the up-to-date theatre technology of the Paris Opéra. They set a standard which helped to maintain Paris as the opera capital of the nineteenth century. Born to a rich Jewish family, Meyerbeer began his musical career as a pianist but soon decided to devote himself to opera, spending several years in Italy studying and composing. His 1824 opera '' Il crociato in Egitto'' was the first to bring him Europe-wide reputation, but ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eugène Scribe
Augustin Eugène Scribe (; 24 December 179120 February 1861) was a French dramatist and librettist. He is known for writing "well-made plays" ("pièces bien faites"), a mainstay of popular theatre for over 100 years, and as the librettist of many of the most successful grand operas and opéras-comiques. Born to a middle-class Parisian family, Scribe was intended for a legal career, but was drawn to the theatre, and began writing plays while still in his teens. His early years as a playwright were unsuccessful, but from 1815 onwards he prospered. Writing, usually with one or more collaborators, he produced several hundred stage works. He wrote to entertain the public rather than educate it. Many of his plays were written in a formulaic manner which aimed at neatness of plot and focus on dramatic incident rather than naturalism, depth of characterisation or intellectual substance. For this he was much criticised by intellectuals, but the "well-made play" remained established in th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grand Opéra
Grand opera is a genre of 19th-century opera generally in four or five acts, characterized by large-scale casts and orchestras, and (in their original productions) lavish and spectacular design and stage effects, normally with plots based on or around dramatic historic events. The term is particularly applied (sometimes specifically used in its French language equivalent grand opéra, ) to certain productions of the Paris Opéra from the late 1820s to around 1850; 'grand opéra' has sometimes been used to denote the Paris Opéra itself. The term 'grand opera' is also used in a broader application in respect of contemporary or later works of similar monumental proportions from France, Germany, Italy, and other countries. It may also be used colloquially in an imprecise sense to refer to 'serious opera without spoken dialogue'. Origins Paris at the turn of the 19th century drew in many composers, both French and foreign, and especially those of opera. Several Italians working d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Grand Opéra
Grand opera is a genre of 19th-century opera generally in four or five acts, characterized by large-scale casts and orchestras, and (in their original productions) lavish and spectacular design and stage effects, normally with plots based on or around dramatic historic events. The term is particularly applied (sometimes specifically used in its French language equivalent grand opéra, ) to certain productions of the Paris Opéra from the late 1820s to around 1850; 'grand opéra' has sometimes been used to denote the Paris Opéra itself. The term 'grand opera' is also used in a broader application in respect of contemporary or later works of similar monumental proportions from France, Germany, Italy, and other countries. It may also be used colloquially in an imprecise sense to refer to 'serious opera without spoken dialogue'. Origins Paris at the turn of the 19th century drew in many composers, both French and foreign, and especially those of opera. Several Italians working d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sophie Cruvelli
Sophie Johanne Charlotte Crüwell, vicountess Vigier, stage name Sophie Cruvelli (12 March 1826 – 6 November 1907) was a German opera singer. She was a dramatic soprano who had a brief but stellar public career especially in London and Paris in the middle years of the 19th century. She was admired for her vocal powers and as a tragédienne. Both Verdi and Meyerbeer created operatic roles with the intention that she should first perform them. Origins and training Sophie Crüwell was the daughter of a Protestant Bielefeld family of comfortable means. She showed an early disposition towards music, and she and her sister Marie (later a mezzo-soprano) and her brother (later a baritone) were encouraged and assisted to training by the family. Sophie and Marie commenced their vocal studies with Louis Spohr in Kassel. In 1844 their mother took the girls to Paris to continue their studies, first with Francesco Piermarini, and then with the distinguished tenor Marco Bordogni.Ferris, ''Gr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Hubert Millevoye
Charles Hubert Millevoye (24 December 1782 in Abbeville – 12 August 1816 in Paris) was a French poet several times honored by the Académie française. He was a transitional figure between the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries as revealed in his Romanticism, Romantic poems. His poem beginning "Dans les bois l'amoureux Myrtil" (La Fauvette) is also well known as set to music in ''Vieille Chanson'' by Georges Bizet, as well as ''Le Mancenillier,'' as referred to in Meyerbeer's ''L'Africaine'' and Louis Moreau Gottschalk's serenade for piano ''Le Mancenillier (Gottschalk), Le Mancenillier,'' Op. 11. Life First taught by an uncle, he later studied with M. Bardoux, a professor in the College of Abbeville. His father died when he was 13 years old, and he was then sent by his family to Paris to finish his education. He began to study law, then became a bookseller, but finally abandoned both to commit himself to writing. Millevoye married Margaret Flora Delattre on 31 August 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vasco Da Gama
Vasco da Gama, 1st Count of Vidigueira (; ; c. 1460s – 24 December 1524), was a Portuguese explorer and the first European to reach India by sea. His initial voyage to India by way of Cape of Good Hope (1497–1499) was the first to link Europe and Asia by an ocean route, connecting the Atlantic and the Indian oceans. This is widely considered a milestone in world history, as it marked the beginning of a sea-based phase of global multiculturalism. Da Gama's discovery of the sea route to India opened the way for an age of global imperialism and enabled the Portuguese to establish a long-lasting colonial empire along the way from Africa to Asia. The violence and hostage-taking employed by da Gama and those who followed also assigned a brutal reputation to the Portuguese among India's indigenous kingdoms that would set the pattern for western colonialism in the Age of Exploration. Traveling the ocean route allowed the Portuguese to avoid sailing across the highly disputed Medit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Camille Du Locle
Camille du Locle (16 July 18329 October 1903) was a French theatre manager and a librettist. He was born in Orange, France. From 1862 he served as assistant to his father-in-law, Émile Perrin, at the Paris Opéra. From 1870, he was co-director at the Opéra-Comique with Adolphe de Leuven, and sole director from 1874 to 1876. He is best remembered for mounting the original production of Bizet's ''Carmen'' in 1875.Huebner 1992. Du Locle was responsible for completing the libretto of Giuseppe Verdi's ''Don Carlos'' (1867) after the death of Joseph Méry. He also played a key role in the genesis of ''Aida'' in 1869–70. According to Charles Pigot, Du Locle inspired the subject, words and music of Bizet's ''Djamileh'' (1872). He was a pall-bearer at Bizet's funeral in 1875 and made a speech at his interment at Père Lachaise. In 1876, a financial dispute arose with Verdi, and Du Locle moved to Capri, where he constructed and lived in the Villa Certosella, now a hotel. In Capri he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Madagascar
Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Africa across the Mozambique Channel. At Madagascar is the world's List of island countries, second-largest island country, after Indonesia. The nation is home to around 30 million inhabitants and consists of the island of Geography of Madagascar, Madagascar (the List of islands by area, fourth-largest island in the world), along with numerous smaller peripheral islands. Following the prehistoric breakup of the supercontinent Gondwana, Madagascar split from the Indian subcontinent around 90 million years ago, allowing native plants and animals to evolve in relative isolation. Consequently, Madagascar is a biodiversity hotspot; over 90% of wildlife of Madagascar, its wildlife is endemic. Human settlement of Madagascar occurred during or befo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mélesville
Baron Anne-Honoré-Joseph Duveyrier, pen-name Mélesville (13 December 1787 in Paris – 7 November 1865 in Marly-le-Roi) was a French dramatist. The playwright Mélesville fils was his son. Life The son of Honoré-Nicolas-Marie Duveyrier, Mélesville initially had success at the bar and as a magistrate. He left the legal profession in 1814 to dedicate himself to the theatre, though he had first gained praise in that area in 1811 for his comedy ''l'Oncle rival''. Out of consideration for his father's position, he wrote under the pseudonym Mélesville, by which he is still known. He wrote in all genres - dramas, melodramas, comedies, vaudevilles, opera librettos - and is the sole or collaborative author of more than 340 plays. His collaborators included Eugène Scribe and Delestre-Poirson, with the collective pseudonym of Amédée de Saint-Marc. He collaborated with the more famous authors Brazier, Carmouche, Bayard, Scribe, Léon Laya on over 500 plays, some of which enjoy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Lusiads
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the most frequently used word in the English language; studies and analyses of texts have found it to account for seven percent of all printed English-language words. It is derived from gendered articles in Old English which combined in Middle English and now has a single form used with pronouns of any gender. The word can be used with both singular and plural nouns, and with a noun that starts with any letter. This is different from many other languages, which have different forms of the definite article for different genders or numbers. Pronunciation In most dialects, "the" is pronounced as (with the voiced dental fricative followed by a schwa) when followed by a consonant sound, and as (homophone of pronoun ''thee'') when followed by a v ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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