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Livia Frege
Virginia Livia Frege, née ''Gerhardt'' (13 June 1818, Gera – 22 August 1891, Abtnaundoft) was a German singer (soprano), Prima Donna of the Leipzig Stadttheater, arts patron and co-founder of the Leipzig Bach Society. She was referred to as the "Queen of Leipzig's romantic song singing". Frege is best known for her performances of the works by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. Her repertoire included songs by Heinrich Marschner, Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann and Mendelssohn. Early life and education Livia Gerhardt was a daughter of the businessman Johann Christian Gerhardt (1764–1839) and Anna Christiane Friederike Bartholomäi. She was trained as a soprano by Christian August Pohlenz in Leipzig. In 1834, she took lessons from the singer Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient in Dresden in order to perfect her skills. Career Livia Gerhardt made her debut on 9 July 1832 at the age of 14 in the Leipzig Gewandhaus in a concert by Clara Wieck with an aria and a duet by Ferdinando Pae ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gera
Gera is a city in the German state of Thuringia. With around 93,000 inhabitants, it is the third-largest city in Thuringia after Erfurt and Jena as well as the easternmost city of the ''Thüringer Städtekette'', an almost straight string of cities consisting of the six largest Thuringian cities from Eisenach in the west, via Gotha, Erfurt, Weimar and Jena to Gera in the east. Gera is the largest city in the Vogtland, and one of its historical capitals along with Plauen, Greiz and Weida. The city lies in the East Thuringian Hill Country, in the wide valley of the White Elster, between Greiz (upstream) and Leipzig (downstream). Gera is located in the Central German Metropolitan Region, approximately south of Saxony's largest city of Leipzig, east of Thuringia's capital Erfurt, west of Saxony's capital Dresden and 90 km (56 miles) north of Bavaria's city of Hof (Saale). First mentioned in 995 and developing into a city during the 13th century, Gera has historical significa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Le Diable
''Robert le diable'' (''Robert the Devil'') is an opera in five acts composed by Giacomo Meyerbeer between 1827 and 1831, to a libretto written by Eugène Scribe and Germain Delavigne. ''Robert le diable'' is regarded as one of the first grand operas at the Paris Opéra. It has only a superficial connection to the medieval legend of ''Robert the Devil''. The opera was immediately successful from its first night on 21 November 1831 at the Opéra; the dramatic music, harmony and orchestration, its melodramatic plot, its star singers and its sensational stage effects compelled Frédéric Chopin, who was in the audience, to say, "If ever magnificence was seen in the theatre, I doubt that it reached the level of splendour shown in ''Robert''...It is a masterpiece...Meyerbeer has made himself immortal".Brown, ''Robert le diable'', p. 572 ''Robert'' initiated the European fame of its composer, consolidated the fame of its librettist, Scribe, and launched the reputation of the new dire ... [...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] |
Ferdinand David (musician)
Ferdinand Ernst Victor Carl David (; 19 June 181018 July 1873) was a German virtuoso violinist and composer. Biography Born in the same house in Hamburg where Felix Mendelssohn had been born the previous year, David was raised Jewish but later converted to Protestant Christianity. David was a pupil of Louis Spohr and Moritz Hauptmann from 1823 to 1824 and in 1826 became a violinist at Königstädtischen Theater in Berlin. In 1829 he was the first violinist of the string quartet of Baron Carl Gotthard von Liphardt (father of Karl Eduard von Liphart) in Dorpat, and he undertook concert tours in Riga, Saint Petersburg and Moscow. In 1835 he became concertmaster (''Konzertmeister'') at the Gewandhaus in Leipzig working with Mendelssohn. David returned to Dorpat to marry Liphardt's daughter Sophie. In 1843 David became the first professor of violin (''Violinlehrer'') at the newly founded Leipziger Konservatorium für Musik. David worked closely with Mendelssohn, providing technical ad ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Julius Rietz
August Wilhelm Julius Rietz (28 December 1812 – 12 September 1877) was a German composer, conductor, cellist, and teacher. His students included Woldemar Bargiel, Salomon Jadassohn, Arthur O'Leary, and (by far the most celebrated) Sir Arthur Sullivan. He also edited many works by Felix Mendelssohn for publication. Biography Rietz was born in Berlin, and studied the cello under Bernhard Romberg. At 16, he joined the orchestra of Berlin's Königstädter Theater, for which he wrote the music to Karl Eduard von Holtei's play ''Lorbeerbaum und Bettelstab''. In 1834, he was appointed assistant conductor at the Düsseldorf Opera under Mendelssohn, whom he succeeded the following year. He moved in 1847 to Leipzig, where he served as kapellmeister and conductor of the Singakademie. During 1848, a year after Mendelssohn's death, Rietz took over Mendelssohn's former role as conductor of the Gewandhaus concerts in the same city, and as teacher of composition at the conservatoire there. He ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Otto Nicolai
Carl Otto Ehrenfried Nicolai (9 June 1810 – 11 May 1849) was a German composer, conductor, and one of the founders of the Vienna Philharmonic. Nicolai is best known for his operatic version of Shakespeare's comedy ''The Merry Wives of Windsor'' as '. In addition to five operas, Nicolai composed lieder, works for orchestra, chorus, ensemble, and solo instruments. Biography Nicolai, a child prodigy, was born in Königsberg, Prussia. He received his first musical education from his father, Carl Ernst Daniel Nicolai, who was also a composer and musical director. During his childhood his parents divorced, and while still a youth, early in June 1826, Nicolai ran away from his parents' "loveless" home, taking refuge in Stargard with a senior legal official called August Adler who treated the musical prodigy like a son and, when Nikolai was seventeen, sent him to Berlin to study with Carl Friedrich Zelter. After initial successes in Germany, including his first symphony (1831) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joseph Joachim
Joseph Joachim (28 June 1831 – 15 August 1907) was a Hungarian violinist, conductor, composer and teacher who made an international career, based in Hanover and Berlin. A close collaborator of Johannes Brahms, he is widely regarded as one of the most significant violinists of the 19th century. Joachim studied violin early, beginning in Buda at age five, then in Vienna and Leipzig. He made his debut in London in 1844, playing Beethoven's Violin Concerto, with Mendelssohn conducting. He returned to London many times throughout life. After years of teaching at the Leipzig Conservatory and playing as principal violinist of the Gewandhausorchester, he moved to Weimar in 1848, where Franz Liszt established cultural life. From 1852, Joachim served at the court of Hanover, playing principal violin in the opera and conducting concerts, with months of free time in summer for concert tours. In 1853, he was invited by Robert Schumann to the Lower Rhine Music Festival, where he met Clara ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elisabeth Von Herzogenberg
Elisabeth von Herzogenberg née Elisabet von Stockhausen (born in Paris on 13 April 1847; died in Sanremo on 7 January 1892) was a German pianist, composer, singer and philanthropist. Biography Her father had served as a Hanoverian ambassador and was a pianist linked to Frédéric Chopin and Charles-Valentin Alkan. Although a Protestant, she married the Catholic Heinrich von Herzogenberg. She is known in large part for her association with Johannes Brahms, with whom she studied and with whom she and her husband corresponded copiously. As an aristocratic musician, she largely did not perform or publish for the public, but did arrange children's folk songs. Her lover, the composer Ethel Smyth Dame Ethel Mary Smyth (; 22 April 18588 May 1944) was an English composer and a member of the women's suffrage movement. Her compositions include songs, works for piano, chamber music, orchestral works, choral works and operas. Smyth tended t ..., devoted chapter XX of ''Impressions T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Heinrich Von Herzogenberg
Heinrich Picot de Peccaduc, Freiherr von Herzogenberg (10 June 1843 – 9 October 1900) was an Austrian composer and conductor descended from a French aristocratic family. He was born in Graz and was educated at a Jesuit school in Feldkirch, Vorarlberg, Feldkirch and also in Munich, Dresden and Graz before studying law, philosophy and political science at the university of Vienna. He soon turned his energies to music and attended the composition classes of Felix Otto Dessoff until 1864. Early on he was attracted to the music of Richard Wagner, but after studying Johann Sebastian Bach, J. S. Bach's works he became an adherent of the classical tradition and an advocate for the music of Johannes Brahms, Brahms. In 1866 he married Elisabeth von Herzogenberg, Elisabet von Stockhausen, who had been a piano pupil of Brahms; Brahms's letters to and from both Herzogenbergs form one of the most delightful sections of his correspondence. They lived in Graz until 1872, when they moved to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paradise And The Peri
''Paradise and the Peri'', in German ''Das Paradies und die Peri'', is a secular oratorio for soloists, choir, and orchestra by Robert Schumann. Completed in 1843, the work was published as Schumann's Op. 50. The work is based on a German translation (by Schumann and his friend Emil Flechsig) of a tale from ''Lalla-Rookh'' by Irish poet and lyricist Thomas Moore. The peri, a creature from Persian mythology, is the focus of the story, having been expelled from Paradise and trying to regain entrance by giving the gift that is most dear to heaven. Eventually the peri is admitted after bringing a tear from the cheek of a repentant old sinner who has seen a child praying. Peter Ostwald in his biography ''Schumann: The Inner Voices of a Musical Genius'' records that Schumann "confided to a friend that 'while writing ''Paradise and the Peri'' a voice occasionally whispered to me "what you are doing is not done completely in vain,"'" and that even Richard Wagner praised this work. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Berlin State Opera
The (), also known as the Berlin State Opera (german: Staatsoper Berlin), is a listed building on Unter den Linden boulevard in the historic center of Berlin, Germany. The opera house was built by order of Prussian king Frederick the Great from 1741 to 1743 according to plans by Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff in the Palladian style. Damaged during the Allied bombing in World War II, the former Royal Prussian Opera House was rebuilt from 1951 to 1955 as part of the Forum Fridericianum square. Nicknamed ''Lindenoper'' in Berlin, it is "the first theater anywhere to be, by itself, a prominent, freestanding monumental building in a city." History Names Originally called the ''Königliche Oper'' (Royal Opera) from 1743, it was renamed as the ''Preußische Staatsoper'' (Prussian State Opera) in 1919, then as the ''Deutsche Staatsoper '' in 1955. Until 1990, it housed the state opera of East Germany. Since 1990, it is officially called the ''Staatsoper Unter den Linden'' (State Ope ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Königsstädtisches Theater
Königsstädtisches Theater was the name of different theater buildings in Berlin in the 19th and 20th century. The first Königsstädtisches Theater was built by Carl Theodor Ottmer in , a former settlement neighboring Berlin that is today part of the boroughs of Mitte, Prenzlauer Berg and Friedrichshain, and opened in 1824. Its first director was Karl Friedrich Cerf, who managed it until his death in 1845. An Aktiengesellschaft from its inception, the theater had to rely on financial support by the King of Prussia. When the monarchy stopped its support in 1840, the theater fell on hard times. Involvement in the German revolutions of 1848–49 meant that the theater was closed in 1851 by royal decree. Cerf's son, , had inherited the license and the name from his father, and named the building used by Circus Renz Circus Renz was a German circus company. It was established in 1842 in Berlin by Ernst Jakob Renz (1815–1892) as ''Circus Olympic'' and existed until 1897. The c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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