|
Les Fêtes De Polymnie
''Les fêtes de Polymnie'' (''The Festivals of Polyhymnia'') is an ''opéra-ballet'' in three ''entrées'' and a prologue by Jean-Philippe Rameau. The work was first performed on 12 October 1745 at the Opéra, Paris, and is set to a libretto by Louis de Cahusac. The piece was written to celebrate the French victory at the Battle of Fontenoy in the War of the Austrian Succession. It was revived at the same venue on 21 August 1753. Neither Cuthbert Girdlestone nor Graham Sadler (in the ''New Penguin Guide'') consider this among Rameau's finest works, though both remark on the originality of its overture, which breaks the traditional Lullian mould common to French overtures up to that time. Roles Information taken from the site Rameau2014.fr. Synopsis The prologue, ''Le temple de Mémoire'' ("The Temple of Memory"), describes the victory of Fontenoy in allegorical fashion. The first ''entrée'' is entitled ''La fable'' (''Legend'') and depicts the marriage of Hercules and Hebe, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Portrait Of Jean-Philippe Rameau - Joseph Aved
A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expressions are predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the person. For this reason, in photography a portrait is generally not a snapshot, but a composed image of a person in a still position. A portrait often shows a person looking directly at the painter or photographer, in order to most successfully engage the subject with the viewer. History Prehistorical portraiture Plastered human skulls were reconstructed human skulls that were made in the ancient Levant between 9000 and 6000 BC in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B period. They represent some of the oldest forms of art in the Middle East and demonstrate that the prehistoric population took great care in burying their ancestors below their homes. The skulls denote some of the earliest sculptural examples of portraiture in the history of art. Historical portraitu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bass (voice)
A bass is a type of classical male singing voice and has the lowest vocal range of all voice types. According to ''The New Grove Dictionary of Opera'', a bass is typically classified as having a vocal range extending from around the second E below middle C to the E above middle C (i.e., E2–E4).; ''The Oxford Dictionary of Music'' gives E2–E4/F4 Its tessitura, or comfortable range, is normally defined by the outermost lines of the bass clef. Categories of bass voices vary according to national style and classification system. Italians favour subdividing basses into the ''basso cantante'' (singing bass), ''basso buffo'' ("funny" bass), or the dramatic ''basso profondo'' (low bass). The American system identifies the bass-baritone, comic bass, lyric bass, and dramatic bass. The German ''Fach'' system offers further distinctions: Spielbass (Bassbuffo), Schwerer Spielbass (Schwerer Bassbuffo), Charakterbass (Bassbariton), and Seriöser Bass. These classification systems can ov ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
French-language Operas
French opera is one of Europe's most important operatic traditions, containing works by composers of the stature of Rameau, Berlioz, Gounod, Bizet, Massenet, Debussy, Ravel, Poulenc and Messiaen. Many foreign-born composers have played a part in the French tradition as well, including Lully, Gluck, Salieri, Cherubini, Spontini, Meyerbeer, Rossini, Donizetti, Verdi and Offenbach. French opera began at the court of Louis XIV of France with Jean-Baptiste Lully's ''Cadmus et Hermione'' (1673), although there had been various experiments with the form before that, most notably '' Pomone'' by Robert Cambert. Lully and his librettist Quinault created ''tragédie en musique'', a form in which dance music and choral writing were particularly prominent. Lully's most important successor was Rameau. After Rameau's death, the German Gluck was persuaded to produce six operas for the Paris, Parisian stage in the 1770s. They show the influence of Rameau, but simplified and with greater foc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Operas By Jean-Philippe Rameau
Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a librettist and incorporates a number of the performing arts, such as acting, scenery, costume, and sometimes dance or ballet. The performance is typically given in an opera house, accompanied by an orchestra or smaller musical ensemble, which since the early 19th century has been led by a conductor. Although musical theatre is closely related to opera, the two are considered to be distinct from one another. Opera is a key part of the Western classical music tradition. Originally understood as an entirely sung piece, in contrast to a play with songs, opera has come to include numerous genres, including some that include spoken dialogue such as '' Singspiel'' and '' Opéra comique''. In traditional number opera, singers employ two styles of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
György Vashegyi
György Vashegyi (born 1970) is a Hungarian harpsichordist and conductor. He founded the Purcell Choir in 1990 for a performance of ''Dido and Aeneas''. From November 2017 he was elected President of the Hungarian Academy of Arts (MMA, Magyar Művészeti Akadémia), founded 1992. "Prime Minister Viktor Orbán congratulated György Vashegyi in a letter, in which he wrote: "Culture is an expression of the strength of a nation, the embodiment of its intellectual radiation, and a pledge of its survival." Selected recordings * - ''Messe à 8 vo ...[...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Véronique Gens
Véronique Gens (born 19 April 1966) is a French operatic soprano. She has spent much of her career recording and performing Baroque music, Baroque music. Gens was born in Orléans, France, and studied at the Conservatoire de Paris, winning first prize at the school. Her debut in 1986 was with William Christie (musician), William Christie and his Les Arts Florissants (ensemble), Les Arts Florissants. She has since worked with Marc Minkowski, René Jacobs, Christophe Rousset, Philippe Herreweghe, Martin Gester, and Jean-Claude Malgoire. While she started out as a Baroque specialist, Gens has also come into demand for roles in Mozart operas, and as an interpreter of songs by Hector Berlioz, Berlioz, Claude Debussy, Debussy (see also Beau Soir), Gabriel Fauré, Fauré and others. Her numerous recordings include many works by Mozart and Henry Purcell, Purcell, as well as Joseph Canteloube, Joseph Canteloube's ''Chants d'Auvergne'' and Berlioz's ''Les nuits d'été, Nuits d'été''. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stratonice (opera)
''Stratonice'' is a one-act '' opéra comique'' by Étienne Méhul to a libretto by François-Benoît Hoffman, first performed at the Théâtre Favart in Paris, on 3 May 1792. The plot is taken from ''De Dea Syria'' ("On the Syrian Goddess", attributed to Lucian) concerning an incident from the history of the Seleucid dynasty which ruled much of the Middle East during the Hellenistic era of the ancient world. Performance history ''Stratonice'' was a popular opera, receiving over 200 performances during Méhul's lifetime. On 6 June 1792 a parody, ''Nice'', by Jean-Baptiste Desprez and Alexandre de Ségur, appeared at the Théâtre du Vaudeville. In 1821 Méhul's nephew Joseph Daussoigne-Méhul wrote new recitatives for the opera's revival in Paris at the Académie Royale de Musique. Roles Synopsis Antiochus, the son of King Seleucus, is pining away yet he would rather die than name the cause of his disease to his father. The doctor, Erasistratus, suspects love is behind Ant ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Étienne Méhul
Étienne Nicolas Méhul (; 16 November 1765 ~ 24 December 1817) was a French composer of the Classical period (music), classical period. He was known as "the most important opera composer in France during the French Revolution, Revolution". He was also the first composer to be called a "Romanticism, Romantic". He is known particularly for his operas, written in keeping with the reforms introduced by Christoph Willibald Gluck and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Life Méhul was born at Givet in Ardennes to Jean-François Méhul, a wine merchant, and his wife Marie-Cécile (née Keuly). His first music lessons came from a blind local organist. When he showed promise, he was sent to study with a German musician and organist, , at the monastery of Lavaldieu, a few miles from Givet. Here Méhul developed his lifelong love of flowers. In 1778 or 1779 he went to Paris and began to study with Jean-Frédéric Edelmann, a harpsichord player and friend of Méhul's idol Christoph Willibald Gluck. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Syria
Syria ( ar, سُورِيَا or سُورِيَة, translit=Sūriyā), officially the Syrian Arab Republic ( ar, الجمهورية العربية السورية, al-Jumhūrīyah al-ʻArabīyah as-Sūrīyah), is a Western Asian country located in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant. It is a unitary republic that consists of 14 governorates (subdivisions), and is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east and southeast, Jordan to the south, and Israel and Lebanon to the southwest. Cyprus lies to the west across the Mediterranean Sea. A country of fertile plains, high mountains, and deserts, Syria is home to diverse ethnic and religious groups, including the majority Syrian Arabs, Kurds, Turkmens, Assyrians, Armenians, Circassians, Albanians, and Greeks. Religious groups include Muslims, Christians, Alawites, Druze, and Yazidis. The capital and largest city of Syria is Damascus. Arabs are the largest ethnic group, and Mu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hellenistic
In Classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Mediterranean history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the emergence of the Roman Empire, as signified by the Battle of Actium in 31 BC and the conquest of Ptolemaic Egypt the following year. The Ancient Greek word ''Hellas'' (, ''Hellás'') was gradually recognized as the name for Greece, from which the word ''Hellenistic'' was derived. "Hellenistic" is distinguished from "Hellenic" in that the latter refers to Greece itself, while the former encompasses all ancient territories under Greek influence, in particular the East after the conquests of Alexander the Great. After the Macedonian invasion of the Achaemenid Empire in 330 BC and its disintegration shortly after, the Hellenistic kingdoms were established throughout south-west Asia ( Seleucid Empire, Kingdom of Pergamon), north-east Africa ( Ptolemaic Kingdom) and South Asia ( Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, Indo-Gree ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Allegory
As a literary device or artistic form, an allegory is a narrative or visual representation in which a character, place, or event can be interpreted to represent a hidden meaning with moral or political significance. Authors have used allegory throughout history in all forms of art to illustrate or convey complex ideas and concepts in ways that are comprehensible or striking to its viewers, readers, or listeners. Writers and speakers typically use allegories to convey (semi-)hidden or complex meanings through symbolic figures, actions, imagery, or events, which together create the moral, spiritual, or political meaning the author wishes to convey. Many allegories use personification of abstract concepts. Etymology First attested in English in 1382, the word ''allegory'' comes from Latin ''allegoria'', the latinisation of the Greek ἀλληγορία (''allegoría''), "veiled language, figurative", which in turn comes from both ἄλλος (''allos''), "another, different" ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gérard De Lairesse - Antiochus En Stratonice
Gérard (French: ) is a French masculine given name and surname of Germanic origin, variations of which exist in many Germanic and Romance languages. Like many other early Germanic names, it is dithematic, consisting of two meaningful constituents put together. In this case, those constituents are ''gari'' > ''ger-'' (meaning 'spear') and -''hard'' (meaning 'hard/strong/brave'). The English cognate of Gérard is Gerard. As a given name * Gérard Adanhoumé (born 1986), Beninese footballer * Gérard Araud (born 1953), Permanent Representative of France to the United Nations * Gérard Asselin (born 1950), Canadian politician * Gérard Audran (1640-1703), French engraver * Gérard Bailly (born 1940), French politician * Gérard Balanche (born 1968), Swiss ski jumper and Olympian * Gérard Banide (born 1936), French football coach * Gérard Bapt (born 1946), French politician * Gérard Barray (born 1931), French film and television actor * Gérard Barreaux (1948-2010), French acco ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
