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Le Prophète
''Le prophète'' (''The Prophet'') is a grand opera in five acts by Giacomo Meyerbeer, which was premiered in Paris on 16 April 1849. The French-language libretto was by Eugène Scribe and Émile Deschamps, after passages from the ''Essay on the Manners and Spirit of Nations'' by Voltaire. The plot is based on the life of John of Leiden, Anabaptist leader and self-proclaimed "King of Münster" in the 16th century. Composition After the brilliant success of their grand opera ''Les Huguenots'' (1836), Meyerbeer and his librettist Scribe decided to collaborate again on a piece based on a historical religious conflict. Meyerbeer's great personal wealth and his duties as official court composer to King Frederick William IV of Prussia meant that there was no hurry to complete the opera; the composition and planning took more than a decade. Performance history ''Le prophète'' was first performed by the Paris Opera at the Salle Le Peletier on 16 April 1849. The production featured cos ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Théophile Gautier
Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier ( , ; 30 August 1811 – 23 October 1872) was a French poet, dramatist, novelist, journalist, and art and literary critic. While an ardent defender of Romanticism, Gautier's work is difficult to classify and remains a point of reference for many subsequent literary traditions such as Parnassian poets, Parnassianism, Symbolism (arts), Symbolism, Decadent movement, Decadence and Modernism. He was widely esteemed by writers as disparate as Honoré de Balzac, Balzac, Charles Baudelaire, Baudelaire, the Goncourt brothers, Gustave Flaubert, Flaubert, Ezra Pound, Pound, T. S. Eliot, Eliot, Henry James, James, Marcel Proust, Proust and Oscar Wilde, Wilde. Life and times Gautier was born on 30 August 1811 in Tarbes, capital of Hautes-Pyrénées département (southwestern France). His father was Jean-Pierre Gautier,See "Cimetières de France et d'ailleurs – La descendance de Théophile Gautier", landrucimetieres.fr/ref> a fairly cultured minor government ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gustave-Hippolyte Roger
Gustave-Hippolyte Roger (17 December 1815 – 12 September 1879) was a French tenor. He is best known for creating the leading tenor roles in '' La damnation de Faust'' by Berlioz in 1846 and Meyerbeer's ''Le prophète'' in 1849. Early years and education Born in Paris and orphaned at an early age, Roger was brought up in Paris by his uncle. He entered the Paris Conservatoire and studied with Blès Martin. At the completion of his training, he won first prize in singing and declamation. Career In 1838, Roger made his professional debut at the Opéra-Comique, Paris, in ''L’éclair'' by Fromental Halévy. He went on to create numerous leading roles in new operas with that company, including works by Daniel Auber (Raphaël in '' La Part du Diable'', 1843 and Lorédan in '' Haydée'', 1847, and others), Halévy (Edgard in '' Le shérif'', 1839, Olivier in ''Les Mousquetaires de la Reine'', 1846, and others). Roger was the first Marquis in ''Perruquier de la Régence'' by Ambroise ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pauline Viardot
Pauline Viardot (; 18 July 1821 – 18 May 1910) was a French dramatic mezzo-soprano, composer and pedagogue of Spanish descent. Born Michelle Ferdinande Pauline GarcÃa,FitzLyon, p. 15, referring to the baptismal name. Thbirth recorddigitized at Paris's ''État civil reconstitué (XVIe-1859)'' reads instead: "Michelle Pauline Ferdinande Laurence Garcia". she came from a musical family and took up music at a young age. She began performing as a teenager and had a long and illustrious career as a star performer. Name Her name appears in various forms. When it is not simply "Pauline Viardot", it most commonly appears in association with her maiden name GarcÃa or the unaccented form, Garcia. This name sometimes precedes Viardot and sometimes follows it. Sometimes the words are hyphenated; sometimes they are not. She achieved initial fame as "Pauline GarcÃa"; the accent was dropped at some point, but exactly when is not clear. After her marriage, she referred to herself simply as " ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jeanne-Anaïs Castellan
Jeanne-Anaïs Castellan (real name Jeanne Anaïs Castel or Chastel), born in Beaujeu, Rhône on 26 October 1819, died after 1858, was a French soprano. She is most notable for creating the part of Berthe in ''Le prophète'' by Meyerbeer. Training and career Jeanne-Anaïs Castellan entered the Paris Conservatoire aged only twelve and studied there for six years, as a pupil of Laure Cinti-Damoreau and others. Upon completing her studies at the Conservatoire in 1836, she won first prize in singing. She began her career in Italy, singing in Rome, Milan and Florence among other cities, where she met and married the Italian tenor Emilio Giampietro. Castellan enjoyed an international career, singing in Cuba, the United States, England and Russia. In the Italian premiere of Meyerbeer's ''Robert le diable'' she sang the role of Isabelle, with Jenny Lind as Alice. This production was attended by the composer, who brought her to Paris to create the leading role of Berthe in his sensat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arc Lamp
An arc lamp or arc light is a lamp that produces light by an electric arc (also called a voltaic arc). The carbon arc light, which consists of an arc between carbon electrodes in air, invented by Humphry Davy in the first decade of the 1800s, was the first practical electric light. It was widely used starting in the 1870s for street and large building lighting until it was superseded by the incandescent light in the early 20th century. It continued in use in more specialized applications where a high intensity point light source was needed, such as searchlights and movie projectors until after World War II. The carbon arc lamp is now obsolete for most of these purposes, but it is still used as a source of high intensity ultraviolet light. The term is now used for gas discharge lamps, which produce light by an arc between metal electrodes through a gas in a glass bulb. The common fluorescent lamp is a low-pressure mercury arc lamp. The xenon arc lamp, which produces a high ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jules Duboscq
Louis Jules Duboscq (March 5, 1817 – September 24, 1886) was a French instrument maker, inventor, and pioneering photographer. He was known in his time, and is remembered today, for the high quality of his optical instruments. Life and work Duboscq was born at Villaines-sous-Bois (Seine-et-Oise) in 1817. He was apprenticed in 1834 to Jean-Baptiste-François Soleil (1798–1878), a prominent instrument maker, and he married one of Soleil's daughters, Rosalie Jeanne Josephine, in 1839. Among the instruments Duboscq built were a stereoscope (marketing David Brewster's lenticular stereoscope), a colorimeter, a polarimeter, a heliostat A heliostat () is a device that reflects sunlight toward a target, turning to compensate for the Sun's apparent motion. The reflector is usually a plane mirror. The target may be a physical object, distant from the heliostat, or a direct ... and a saccharimeter. See also * Colorimetry (chemical method) References Fur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Léon Foucault
Jean Bernard Léon Foucault (, ; ; 18 September 1819 – 11 February 1868) was a French physicist best known for his demonstration of the Foucault pendulum, a device demonstrating the effect of Earth's rotation. He also made an early measurement of the speed of light, discovered eddy currents, and is credited with naming the gyroscope. Early years The son of a publisher, Foucault was born in Paris on 18 September 1819. After an education received chiefly at home, he studied medicine, which he abandoned in favour of physics due to a blood phobia. He first directed his attention to the improvement of Louis Daguerre's photographic processes. For three years he was experimental assistant to Alfred Donné (1801–1878) in his course of lectures on microscopic anatomy. With Hippolyte Fizeau he carried out a series of investigations on the intensity of the light of the sun, as compared with that of carbon in the arc lamp, and of lime in the flame of the oxyhydrogen blowpipe; on the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Édouard Desplechin
Édouard Desplechin His name is often spelt "Despléchin" » with an acute accent. (12 April 1802 – 10 December 1871), was a 19th-century French scenic designer, one of the most famous of his time. Biography He created numerous settings for grands opéras and theatre plays of the romantic era, and closely collaborated with great composers such as Meyerbeer, Verdi, Gounod and Wagner Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, essayist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most o .... His workshop was taken over by Eugène Carpezat and Jean-Baptiste Lavastre. Students * Jean-Baptiste Lavastre (1839–1891). References Bibliography * Jean-Maxime Levêque, ''Édouard Desplechin, le décorateur du grand opéra à la française (1802-1871)'', L’Harmattan, collection « Univers musical », 2008, 198 p. {{DEFAU ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Séchan
Charles Polycarpe Séchan (29 June 1803 – 14 September 1874) was a French painter and theatre designer. Life Born in Paris, son of the tailor merchant Jean-Fris Séchan, he lost his parents, who had no fortune, very early on. He learned the first elements of drawing from a humble local school. He made his first steps in the career by entering the studio of Lefèvre, decorator of the Théâtre de la Porte-Saint-Martin. He created the sets of ''Périnet Leclerc'', by Lockroy and Auguste Anicet-Bourgeois, and particularly the one representing a ''Vue du vieux Paris'', was executed entirely on his drawings. After four or five years in the Lefèvre workshop, he moved to the Ciceri workshop, the first and most famous in his time.. Recommended by the marquis de la Valette, he was commissioned by the sultan Abdulmejid I ʻAbd al-Majīd (ALA-LC romanization of , ), also spelled as Abd ul Majid, Abd ul-Majid, Abd ol Majid, Abd ol-Majid, and Abdolmajid, is a Muslim male given name ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles-Antoine Cambon
Charles-Antoine Cambon (; 21 April 1802 – 22 October 1875) was a French scenographer, theatrical production designer, who acquired international renown in the Romanticism, Romantic Era. Career Little biographical information exists on Cambon's early years, other than that he would have been active as an Watercolor painting, aquarelle and sepia artist before studying with Pierre-Luc-Charles Ciceri, Pierre-Luc Charles Ciceri. At Ciceri's workshop Cambon made acquaintance with Humanité-René Philastre, who would become his first long-term associate. As a stage design for a "Salon" at the Bibliothèque-Musée de l'Opéra testifies, Philastre and Cambon started collaborating in 1824 at the latest. From that time until 1848, Philastre and Cambon accepted numerous joint commissions for theatrical interior decorations and stage designs. Thus, they decorated the interiors of venues in Angoulême, Antwerp, Beaune, Brest, Choiseul, Dijon, Douai, Ghent, Lille, Lyon, Paris and Rouen, o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hector Berlioz
Louis-Hector Berlioz (11 December 1803 – 8 March 1869) was a French Romantic music, Romantic composer and conductor. His output includes orchestral works such as the ''Symphonie fantastique'' and ''Harold en Italie, Harold in Italy'', choral pieces including the Requiem (Berlioz), Requiem and ''L'Enfance du Christ'', his three operas ''Benvenuto Cellini (opera), Benvenuto Cellini'', ''Les Troyens'' and ''Béatrice et Bénédict'', and works of hybrid genres such as the "dramatic symphony" ''Roméo et Juliette (Berlioz), Roméo et Juliette'' and the "dramatic legend" ''La Damnation de Faust''. The elder son of a provincial physician, Berlioz was expected to follow his father into medicine, and he attended a Parisian medical college before defying his family by taking up music as a profession. His independence of mind and refusal to follow traditional rules and formulas put him at odds with the conservative musical establishment of Paris. He briefly moderated his style ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
