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New Opera Company
The New Opera Company was a British opera company active during the period 1956 to 1984. It was mainly based at Sadler's Wells Theatre, London and later worked in co-ordination with English National Opera. The company was responsible for the premieres or major revivals of important work in the operatic canon.Hume, Robert D, Jacobs, Arthur. "London, §II: Institutions, 1: Companies, K–N". In: ''The New Grove Dictionary of Opera''. London & New York, Macmillan, 1997. History The Cambridge university opera company was formed in 1956 and the following year became the New Opera Company. The founders of the company were the conductor Leon Lovett, the administrator Peter Hemmings and musicologist Brian Trowell. Its inaugural productions were welcomed with enthusiasm by London critics; Andrew Porter praised the conducting of Lovett and Trowell's production of ''The Rake's Progress'' while in ''A Tale of Two Cities'' Lovett was described as a "born conductor of opera", Besch's product ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Opera
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] |
Lord Harewood
Earl of Harewood (), in the County of York, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. History The title was created in 1812 for Edward Lascelles, 1st Baron Harewood, a wealthy sugar plantation owner and former Member of Parliament for Northallerton. He had already been created Baron Harewood, of Harewood in the County of York, in 1796, in the Peerage of Great Britain, and was made Viscount Lascelles at the same time as he was given the earldom. The viscountcy is used as the courtesy title by the heir apparent to the earldom. Lascelles was the second cousin and heir at law of Edwin Lascelles, who already in 1790 had been created Baron Harewood, of Harewood Castle in the County of York (in the Peerage of Great Britain). However, this title became extinct on his death in 1795. The Earl was succeeded by his son, the second Earl. He notably represented Yorkshire, Westbury and Northallerton in the House of Commons. His son, the third Earl, also sat as Member of Parliame ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Daniel Jones (composer)
Daniel Jenkyn Jones (7 December 1912 – 23 April 1993) was a Welsh composer of classical music, who worked in Britain. He used both serial and tonal techniques. He is best known for his quartets and thirteen symphonies (some composed in his own system of 'Complex Metres') and for his song settings for Dylan Thomas's play, ''Under Milk Wood''. Biography Jones was born in Pembroke in south Wales. His father, Jenkyn Jones, was a composer and his mother a singer,National Library of Wales Daniel Jones Archive: Context and by the time he was nine years old the young Daniel had himself written several piano sonatas. He attended the Bishop Gore School in Swansea (1924–1931), where his enthusiasm for literature led to a close friendship with the poet Dylan Thomas, and to his going on to study English literature at Swansea University. At this period Jones and Thomas were part of the informal group of aspiring artists who would meet at the Kardomah cafe in Castle Street, Swanse ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Buxton Orr
Buxton Orr (18 April 1924 – 27 December 1997) was a Glasgow-born Anglo-Scottish composer and teacher. Life Originally trained as a doctor, Orr gave up medicine and switched to music in 1952, studying composition at the Guildhall School of Music with Benjamin Frankel and conducting with Aylmer Buesst. Through Frankel's help and influence, Orr became active for a time composing film scores, and his first general recognition as a composer came from the high profile production of Tennessee Williams' ''Suddenly Last Summer'' in 1959, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Katharine Hepburn and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz. His one-act opera ''The Wager'' was successfully staged at Sadler’s Wells in 1961. With his return to the Guildhall School of Music as a professor in 1965, Orr soon gained a reputation as an energetic and influential teacher. He founded the Guildhall New Music Ensemble and also conducted the London Jazz Composers’ Orchestra between 1970 and 1980, the latter sti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Boulevard Solitude
' is a ' (lyric drama) or opera in one act by Hans Werner Henze to a German libretto by Grete Weil after the play by Walter Jockisch, in its turn a modern retelling of Abbé Prévost's 1731 novel ''Manon Lescaut''. The piece is a reworking of the Manon Lescaut story, already adapted operatically by Auber, Massenet and Puccini, and here relocated to Paris after World War II where, as is noted in Grove, the focus of the story moves away from Manon and towards Armand des Grieux. It became Henze's first fully-fledged opera.Clements 1998, p. 571 The work stands out for its strong jazz influences, from a composer who had hitherto been associated with twelve-tone technique. The premiere was given on 17 February 1952, at the Landestheater Hannover. Performance history Although it never became part of the core operatic repertoire, ''Boulevard Solitude'' continued to receive performances after the premiere. It was given in both Naples and Rome in 1954 and it received its UK premiere in L ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Francis Burt (composer)
Francis Burt (28 April 1926 – 3 October 2012) was a British composer and academic teacher Harten, UweBurt, Francis in ''Oesterreichisches Musiklexikon'' online, Vienna 2002, retrieved 6 August 2021 who spent most of his life in Austria. He was professor of composition at the Musikhochschule Wien, and organised the ''1 Long Night of New Sounds'' concert series at the Vienna Konzerthaus. He composed the ballet ''Der Golem'', operas, orchestral works, and music for ensembles and for voices. Life Born in London, Burt attended St Edward's School in Oxford in 1944 and 1945 as part of an officer's training. He completed a course as an engineer at Cambridge University and served as a first lieutenant in Nigeria from 1946 to 1947. He studied at the Royal Academy of Music from 1948 to 1951, where he became a composition pupil of Howard Ferguson. He also attended the Summer School of Music at Bryanston and Dartington. Subsequently, he was a student at the Musikhochschule Berlin, stud ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Humphrey Searle
Humphrey Searle (26 August 1915 – 12 May 1982) was an English composer and writer on music. His music combines aspects of late Romanticism and modernist serialism, particularly reminiscent of his primary influences, Franz Liszt, Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, who was briefly his teacher. As a writer on music, Searle published texts on numerous topics; he was an authority on the music of Franz Liszt, and created the initial cataloguing system for his works. Biography Searle was the son of Humphrey and Charlotte Searle and, through his mother, a grandson of Sir William Schlich. He was born in Oxford where he was a classics scholar before studying—somewhat hesitantly—with John Ireland at the Royal College of Music in London, after which he went to Vienna on a six-month scholarship to become a private pupil of Anton Webern, which became decisive in his composition career. Searle was one of the foremost pioneers of serial music in the United Kingdom, and used his role a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Diary Of A Madman (opera)
''The Diary of a Madman'' is a one-act chamber opera by the composer Humphrey Searle. It is based on the short story of the same name by Nikolai Gogol. The opera was premiered in 1958 in Berlin. The libretto is by the composer. Background The work, which is the first of Searle's operas, was commissioned by Hermann Scherchen, then the director of the Berlin Festival. Scherchen gave Searle complete choice of subject, stipulating only that the orchestra be of no more than 15 players, and that there should be no more than four singing roles. Searle had recently written incidental music for a radio production of Gogol's story, starring Paul Scofield, and decided to choose the story for his opera, providing completely new music.Searle (1982)Chapter 13 Accessed 18 December 2016. The libretto was written by the composer, based on the translation of Gogol's story by D. S. Mirsky. The opera is scored for an orchestra of single strings, woodwind and brass, with two percussionists. An ele ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Die Kluge
' (''The Wise irl The Story of the King and the Wise Woman'') is an opera in 12 scenes written by Carl Orff. It premiered at the Frankfurt Opera, Germany, on 20 February 1943. Orff referred to this opera as a ' ( fairy tale opera). The composer also wrote the libretto, based on "Die Kluge Bauerntochter" (" The Peasant's Wise Daughter") from ''Grimms' Fairy Tales''. A performance lasts for about 90 minutes and is often paired with Orff's '' Der Mond''. Roles Synopsis The plot of the opera is that a poor peasant finds on his land a mortar made out of gold. He decides to take it to the king, thinking that he will be rewarded for being a loyal subject. His wise daughter tells him not to, because the king will throw him in the dungeons thinking that he has stolen the pestle, which in truth he didn't find. The daughter's prediction comes true, and this is the beginning of the opera. When the king learns that the daughter had wisely known what his actions would be he sends for her to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Il Prigioniero
''Il prigioniero'' (''The Prisoner'') is an opera (originally a radio opera) in a prologue and one act, with music and libretto by Luigi Dallapiccola. The opera was first broadcast by the Italian radio station RAI on 1 December 1949. The work is based on the short story ''La torture par l'espérance'' ("Torture by Hope") from the collection ''Nouveaux contes cruels'' by the French writer Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam and from ''La Légende d'Ulenspiegel et de Lamme Goedzak'' by Charles De Coster. Some of the musical material is based on Dallapiccola's earlier choral work on a similar theme, ''Canti di prigionia'' (1938). Dallapiccola composed ''Il prigioniero'' in the period of 1944–1948. The work contains seven parts and lasts about 50 minutes. The musical idiom is serialism, and it is one of the first completed operas using that compositional method. Performance history The opera's first stage performance was at the Teatro Comunale Florence on May 20, 1950. The performers wer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sir John In Love
''Sir John in Love'' is an opera in four acts by the English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. The libretto, by the composer himself, is based on Shakespeare's ''The Merry Wives of Windsor'' and supplemented with texts by Philip Sidney, Thomas Middleton, Ben Jonson, and Beaumont and Fletcher. The music deploys English folk tunes, including "Greensleeves". Originally titled ''The Fat Knight'', Kennedy, Michael, ''The Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams''. Oxford University Press (1964), p. 218. the opera premiered at the Parry Opera Theatre, Royal College of Music, London, on 21 March 1929. Its first professional performance was on 9 April 1946 at Sadler's Wells Theatre. Performance history Performances of the opera have remained rare, including 1978 and 1988 productions by the Bronx Opera (New York City) and a 1997 Barbican concert performance. After 1958, the opera remained unstaged in the UK until the 2006 production at English National Opera (ENO), which was ENO's first production ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arthur Benjamin
Arthur Leslie Benjamin (18 September 1893, in Sydney – 10 April 1960, in London) was an Australian composer, pianist, conductor and teacher. He is best known as the composer of '' Jamaican Rumba'' (1938) and of the ''Storm Clouds Cantata'', featured in both versions of the Alfred Hitchcock film ''The Man who Knew Too Much'', in 1934 and 1956. Biography Arthur Benjamin was born in Sydney on 18 September 1893 into a Jewish family, although he was a non-practicing Jew. His parents moved to Brisbane when Arthur was three years old. At the age of six, he made his first public appearance as a pianist and his formal musical training began three years later with George Sampson, the Organist of St John's Cathedral and Brisbane City Organist. In 1911, Benjamin won a scholarship from Brisbane Grammar School to the Royal College of Music (RCM), where he studied composition with Charles Villiers Stanford, harmony and counterpoint with Thomas Dunhill, and piano with Frederic Cliffe. In 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
