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Maritana
''Maritana'' is a three-act opera including both spoken dialogue and some recitatives, composed by William Vincent Wallace, with a libretto by Edward Fitzball (1792–1873). The opera is based on the 1844 French play ''Don César de Bazan'' by Adolphe d'Ennery and Philippe François Pinel (Dumanoir), which was also the source material for Jules Massenet's opéra comique ''Don César de Bazan'' (the character of Don César de Bazan first appeared in Victor Hugo's ''Ruy Blas''). The opera premiered at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane on 15 November 1845. The first of six operas by Wallace, the work is often cited as an inspiration for a plot device in Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera ''The Yeomen of the Guard'' in which a man weds a woman while awaiting execution in prison, escapes and, while he is disguised, the couple fall in love. Performance history ''Maritana'' was first produced at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane under Alfred Bunn's management on 15 November 1845, conducted fi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Vincent Wallace
William Vincent Wallace (11 March 1812 – 12 October 1865) was an Irish composer and pianist. In his day, he was famous on three continents as a double virtuoso on violin and piano. Nowadays, he is mainly remembered as an opera composer of note, with key works such as ''Maritana'' (1845) and '' Lurline'' (1847/60), but he also wrote a large amount of piano music (including some virtuoso pieces) that was much in vogue in the 19th century. His more modest output of songs and ballads, equally wide-ranging in style and difficulty, was also popular in his day, some numbers being associated with famous singers of the time. Early life Wallace was born at Colbeck Street, Waterford, Ireland. Both of his parents were Irish; his father, Spencer Wallace of County Mayo, one of four children, who was born in Killala, County Mayo in 1789, became a regimental bandmaster with the North Mayo Militia based in Ballina. William was born while the regiment was stationed for one year in Waterfo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Don César De Bazan
''Don César de Bazan'' is an opéra comique in four acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Adolphe d'Ennery, Philippe-François Pinel "Dumanoir" and Jules Chantepie, based on the play by d'Ennery and Dumanoir, which was first performed at Théâtre de la Porte Saint-Martin in 1844. This in turn drew on the popular character of Don César de Bazan, in the 1838 drama ''Ruy Blas'' by Victor Hugo, though it has little connection with the plot of Hugo's drama. Massenet's opera was first performed at the Opéra-Comique in Paris on 30 November 1872. It was the first full-length opera by Massenet to be produced, the one-act ''La grand'tante'' having been mounted five years earlier by the same company. ''Don César de Bazan'' was not a success and it would be another five years, with the premiere of ''Le roi de Lahore'' in 1877, before Massenet rose to his place among the most prominent composers of his time. ''Don César de Bazan'' was initially performed 13 times at the O ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mairead Buicke
Mairead Buicke (born 1981 in Limerick) is an Irish operatic soprano active in concert and recital work as well as opera. She is currently a Company Principal with the English National Opera and a member of their Young Singers Programme. She started taking singing lessons at 14 and in 2003 graduated from the Royal Irish Academy of Music with a First-class honours degree in Performance. In 2004 she was a special prize winner in the Belvedere International Singing Competition in Vienna as well as winning the Gervase Elwes Cup at Dublin's Feis Ceoil festival. Buicke's performances as the soprano soloist with Ireland's RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra include Mahler's '' Symphony No 8'' and '' Symphony No 4'', as well as RTÉ's eight part television series, "Mozart Sessions". She also sang Mimì in the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra's concert performance of ''La bohème'' (2005) and Gretel in their concert performance of Humperdinck's ''Hansel and Gretel'' (2007). Her other operat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carl Rosa Opera Company
The Carl Rosa Opera Company was founded in 1873 by Carl Rosa, a German-born musical impresario, and his wife, British operatic soprano Euphrosyne Parepa-Rosa to present opera in English in London and the British provinces. The company premiered many operas in the UK, employing a mix of established opera stars and young singers, reaching new opera audiences with popularly priced tickets. It survived Rosa's death in 1889, and continued to present opera in English on tour until 1960, when it was obliged to close for lack of funds. The company was revived in 1997, presenting mostly lighter operatic works including those by Gilbert and Sullivan. The company "was arguably the most influential opera company ever in the UK". Background Carl Rosa was born Karl August Nikolaus Rose in Hamburg, Germany, the son of a local businessman. A child violin prodigy, Rosa studied at the Conservatorium at Leipzig and in Paris. In 1863 he was appointed Konzertmeister at Hamburg, where he had oc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theatre Royal, Drury Lane
The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, commonly known as Drury Lane, is a West End theatre and Grade I listed building in Covent Garden, London, England. The building faces Catherine Street (earlier named Bridges or Brydges Street) and backs onto Drury Lane. The building is the most recent in a line of four theatres which were built at the same location, the earliest of which dated back to 1663, making it the oldest theatre site in London still in use. According to the author Peter Thomson, for its first two centuries, Drury Lane could "reasonably have claimed to be London's leading theatre". For most of that time, it was one of a handful of patent theatres, granted monopoly rights to the production of "legitimate" drama in London (meaning spoken plays, rather than opera, dance, concerts, or plays with music). The first theatre on the site was built at the behest of Thomas Killigrew in the early 1660s, when theatres were allowed to reopen during the English Restoration. Initially ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Yeomen Of The Guard
''The Yeomen of the Guard; or, The Merryman and His Maid'', is a Savoy Opera, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It premiered at the Savoy Theatre on 3 October 1888 and ran for 423 performances. This was the eleventh collaboration of fourteen between Gilbert and Sullivan. The opera is set in the Tower of London during the 16th century, and is the darkest, and perhaps most emotionally engaging, of the Savoy Operas, ending with a broken-hearted main character and two very reluctant engagements, rather than the usual numerous marriages. The libretto does contain considerable humour, including a lot of pun-laden one-liners, but Gilbert's trademark satire and topsy-turvy plot complications are subdued in comparison with the other Gilbert and Sullivan operas. The dialogue, though in prose, is quasi-William Shakespeare, Shakespearean, or Early Modern English, early modern English, in style. Critics considered the score to be Sullivan's finest, including its ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edward Fitzball
Edward Fitzball (20 March 179327 October 1873) was a popular English playwright, who specialised in melodrama. His real surname was Ball, and he was born at Burwell, Cambridgeshire. Fitzball was educated in Newmarket, was apprenticed to a Norwich printer in 1809. He produced some dramatic pieces at the local theatre, and eventually the marked success of his ''Innkeeper of Abbeville, or The Ostler and the Robber'' (1820), together with the friendly acceptance of one of his pieces at the Surrey Theatre by Thomas John Dibdin, induced him to settle in London. During the next twenty-five years, he produced a great number of plays, most of which were successful. He had a special talent for nautical drama. His ''Floating Beacon'' (Surrey Theatre, 19 April 1824) ran for 140 nights, and his ''Pilot'' (Adelphi, 1825) for 200 nights. He also produced a seminal play on ''The Flying Dutchman'' and wrote the libretto for Edward Loder's ''Raymond and Agnes''. His greatest triumph in melodram ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dumanoir
Philippe François Pinel, known as Dumanoir (31 July 1806 – 16 November 1865), was a French playwright and librettist. Biography Dumanoir was born in Capesterre-Belle-Eau, Guadeloupe. He was the son of Mrs. Pinel-Dumanoir, whose family planted the palm trees lining the ''Allée Dumanoir'' in Guadeloupe. He left Guadeloupe in 1816. Dumanoir wrote in the theatrical genre of Comédie en vaudevilles. He was director of the Théâtre des Variétés from 1837 to 1839. In 1844, he wrote in collaboration with Adolphe d'Ennery, an eponymous drama about Don César de Bazan, one of the characters in ''Ruy Blas'' by Victor Hugo. He died in Pau. List of major works Plays * 1842: ''Le Chevalier d'Éon'', comedy in 3 acts, (with Jean-François Bayard), Théâtre des Variétés * 1839: ''Les Premières Armes de Richelieu'' (with Jean-François Bayard), Théâtre du Palais Royal * 1840: ''Indiana et Charlemagne'' (with Jean-François Bayard), Théâtre du Palais Royal * 1842: ''Ma maà ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ruy Blas
''Ruy Blas'' is a tragic drama by Victor Hugo. It was the first play presented at the Théâtre de la Renaissance and opened on November 8, 1838. Though considered by many to be Hugo’s best drama, the play was initially met with only average success. Characters * Ruy Blas * Don Salluste de Bazan, Marquis of Finlas * Don César de Bazan, Count Of Garofa * Don Guritan * The Count of Camporeal * The Marquis of Santa-Cruz * The Marquis of Basto * The Count of Albe * The Marquis of Priego * Don Manuel Arias * Montazgo * Don Antonio Ubilla * Covadenga * Gudiel * Doña Maria de Neubourg, Queen of Spain * The Duchess of Albuquerque * Casilda * A lackey, an alcalde, alguacils, pages, ladies, lords, privy councillors, chaperones, guards, chamber and court bailiffs Synopsis The scene is Madrid; the time 1699, during the reign of Charles II. Ruy Blas, an indentured commoner (and a poet), dares to love the Queen. The play is a thinly veiled cry for political reform. The story cen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alfred Bunn
Alfred Bunn (April 8, 1796 in LondonDecember 20, 1860 in Boulogne-sur-Mer) was an English theatrical manager. He was married to Margaret Agnes (née Somerville) Bunn, a minor actress, in 1819. Biography Bunn was appointed stage manager of Drury Lane Theatre, London, in the year 1823. In 1826, he was managing the Theatre Royal in Birmingham, and in 1833 he undertook the joint management of Drury Lane and Covent Garden, London. In this undertaking he met with vigorous opposition. A bill for the abolition of the patent theatres was passed in the House of Commons, but on Bunn's petition was thrown out by the House of Lords. He had difficulties first with his company, then with the lord chamberlain, and had to face the keen rivalry of the other theatres. A longstanding quarrel with William Charles Macready resulted in the tragedian assaulting the manager. In Macready's own words, he walked past Bunn's door and “going up to him as he sat on the other side of the table, I struck hi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of the 20th century. Joyce's novel ''Ulysses'' (1922) is a landmark in which the episodes of Homer's ''Odyssey'' are paralleled in a variety of literary styles, particularly stream of consciousness. Other well-known works are the short-story collection ''Dubliners'' (1914), and the novels ''A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'' (1916) and ''Finnegans Wake'' (1939). His other writings include three books of poetry, a play, letters, and occasional journalism. Joyce was born in Dublin into a middle-class family. He attended the Jesuit Clongowes Wood College in County Kildare, then, briefly, the Christian Brothers-run O'Connell School. Despite the chaotic family life imposed by his father's unpredictable finances, he excelled at the Jesuit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ulysses (novel)
''Ulysses'' is a modernist novel by Irish writer James Joyce. Parts of it were first serialized in the American journal ''The Little Review'' from March 1918 to December 1920, and the entire work was published in Paris by Sylvia Beach on 2 February 1922, Joyce's 40th birthday. It is considered one of the most important works of modernist literature and has been called "a demonstration and summation of the entire movement." According to Declan Kiberd, "Before Joyce, no writer of fiction had so foregrounded the process of thinking". ''Ulysses'' chronicles the appointments and encounters of the itinerant Leopold Bloom in Dublin in the course of an ordinary day, 16 June 1904. Ulysses is the Latinised name of Odysseus, the hero of Homer's epic poem the ''Odyssey'', and the novel establishes a series of parallels between the poem and the novel, with structural correspondences between the characters and experiences of Bloom and Odysseus, Molly Bloom and Penelope, and Stephen Dedalus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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