Nicholas Hytner
Sir Nicholas Robert Hytner (; born 7 May 1956) is an English theatre director, film director, and film producer. He was previously the Artistic Director of London's National Theatre. His major successes as director include ''Miss Saigon'', ''The History Boys'' and ''One Man, Two Guvnors''. He has also known for directing films such as ''The Madness of King George'' (1994), ''The Crucible'' (1996), ''The History Boys'' (2006), and ''The Lady in the Van'' (2015). Hytner was knighted in the 2010 New Year Honours for services to drama by Queen Elizabeth II. Early life and education Hytner was born in the prosperous suburbs of south Manchester in 1956,Andrew Dickson"A life in theatre: Nicholas Hytner" ''The Guardian'', 16 October 2010. Retrieved 28 October 2012. to barrister Benet Hytner and his wife, Joyce Hytner, Joyce.Paul Harris"A Knight At The Theater – But Just Call Him Nick" ''Jewish Telegraph ''. Retrieved 28 October 2012. He is the eldest child of four, and has described ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Didsbury
Didsbury is a suburban area of Manchester, England, on the north bank of the River Mersey, south of Manchester city centre. The population at the 2011 census was 26,788. Within the boundaries of the historic county of Lancashire, there are records of Didsbury existing as a small hamlet as early as the 13th century. Its early history was dominated by being part of the Manor of Withington, a feudal estate that covered a large part of what is now the south of Manchester. Didsbury was described during the 18th century as a township separate from outside influence. In 1745 Charles Edward Stuart crossed the Mersey at Didsbury in the Jacobite march south from Manchester to Derby, and again in the subsequent retreat. Didsbury was largely rural until the mid-19th century, when it underwent development and urbanisation during the Industrial Revolution. It became part of Manchester in 1904. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds was formed in Didsbury in 1889. History ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Queen Elizabeth II
Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; 21 April 1926 – 8 September 2022) was Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms from 6 February 1952 until Death and state funeral of Elizabeth II, her death in 2022. She was queen regnant of List of sovereign states headed by Elizabeth II, 32 sovereign states during her lifetime, and was head of state of 15 realms at the time of her death. Her reign of 70 years and 214 days was the List of monarchs in Britain by length of reign, longest of any British monarch and the List of longest-reigning monarchs, longest verified reign of any female monarch in history. Elizabeth was born in Mayfair, London, as the first child of the Duke and Duchess of York (later King George VI and Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother). Her father acceded to the throne in 1936 upon Abdication of Edward VIII, the abdication of his brother Edward VIII, making the ten-year-old Princess Elizabeth the heir presumptive. She was educated privat ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Rienzi
' (''Rienzi, the last of the tribunes''; WWV 49) is an early opera by Richard Wagner in five acts, with the libretto written by the composer after Edward Bulwer-Lytton's novel of the same name (1835). The title is commonly shortened to ''Rienzi''. Written between July 1838 and November 1840, it was first performed at the Königliches Hoftheater Dresden, on 20 October 1842, and was the composer's first success. The opera's format is the Grand Opera in Meyerbeer style. Wagner had been fascinated by this genre of opera at an early age, and with Rienzi and its enormous dimensions wanted to surpass anything else that had previously been composed in this style. It is thus a rare study in pomp and splendor, both scenically and musically, and partly represents a great contrast to his later works. Rienzi is in full version Wagner's longest opera. It includes a ballet that lasts alone for 40 minutes. During the premiere in Dresden, Wagner noted to his dismay that the performance lasted be ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Wexford Festival Opera
Wexford Festival Opera () is an opera festival that takes place in the town of Wexford in south-eastern Ireland during the months of October and November. The festival began in 1951 under Tom Walsh and a group of opera lovers who quickly generated considerable interest by programming unusual and rare works, a typical festival staging three operas. This concept has been maintained over the company's history under the direction of seven different artistic directors. From the beginning, the company embraced new and upcoming young singers, many of whom were Irish, but it also included new international names who made first appearances there. By the 1960s Czech and Russian operas entered the repertory, while the 1970s saw an interest in the operas of Jules Massenet under director Thomson Smillie, followed by an emphasis on Italian operas from the end of that decade. However, into the mix there appeared more modern operas by Benjamin Britten and Carlisle Floyd while Elaine Padmore's ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Kent Opera
Kent Opera was a British opera company active between 1969 and 1989. It was based in Ashford and regular venues included The Orchard Theatre, Dartford; Assembly Halls, Tunbridge Wells; Marlowe Theatre, Canterbury; Kings Theatre, Southsea; Theatre Royal,Norwich, and the Derngate, Northampton. Its operas were performed in English, usually with new translations of the libretto by professor Michael Irwin, but also by Norman Platt or Anne Riddler. For the first two years it performed with the Midland Sinfonia but later had its own orchestra. History Kent Operawas England's first regional opera company, founded in 1969 by Norman Platt (1920-2004), in response to a perceived need for first-class opera in England outside the main centres, in productions that were composer-centred. Kent Opera gave its inaugural performances in 1969 with ''The Coronation of Poppea'', sung in English at Canterbury and Tunbridge Wells with Adrian de Peyer, a high tenor, as Nero and Laura Sarti as Poppea. T ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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English National Opera
English National Opera (ENO) is an opera company based in London, resident at the London Coliseum in St Martin's Lane. It is one of the two principal opera companies in London, along with The Royal Opera. ENO's productions are sung in English. The company's origins were in the late 19th century, when the philanthropist Emma Cons, later assisted by her niece Lilian Baylis, presented theatrical and operatic performances at the Old Vic, for the benefit of local people. Baylis subsequently built up both the opera and the theatre companies, and later added a ballet company; these evolved into the ENO, the Royal National Theatre and The Royal Ballet, respectively. Baylis acquired and rebuilt the Sadler's Wells theatre in north London, a larger house, better suited to opera than the Old Vic. The opera company grew there into a permanent ensemble in the 1930s. During the Second World War, the theatre was closed and the company toured British towns and cities. After the war, the comp ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Colin Graham
Colin Graham OBE (22 September 1931 in Hove, England – 6 April 2007 in St. Louis, Missouri) was a stage director of opera, theatre, and television. Graham was educated at Northaw School (Hertfordshire), Stowe School and RADA. Early in his career, he began a long association with Benjamin Britten, for whom he directed all but one of the composer's stage works, including all of the world premieres after 1954. He became associated with the English Opera Group in 1953. In the 1950s, he also worked for the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in London and later at Glyndebourne and at the English National Opera in the 1970s. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Graham was associated with several recordings of Gilbert and Sullivan operas conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent with the Glyndebourne Festival Chorus and principals including George Baker. He enhanced these recordings with movement for the performers that makes the recordings sound more like a live staged performance. Graham m ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Rise And Fall Of The City Of Mahagonny
''Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny'' (german: Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny, links=no) is a political-satirical opera composed by Kurt Weill to a German libretto by Bertolt Brecht. It was first performed on 9 March 1930 at the in Leipzig. Some interpreters have viewed the play as a critique of American society. Others have perceived it as a critique of the chaotic and immoral Weimar Republic, particularly Berlin of the 1920s with its rampant prostitution, unstable government, political corruption, and economic crises. Composition history Weill was asked by the 1927 Baden-Baden music festival committee to write a one-act chamber opera for the festival. He ended up writing ''Mahagonny-Songspiel'', sometimes known as ''Das kleine Mahagonny'', a concert work commissioned for voices and a small orchestra. The work was written in May 1927, and performed in June. It consisted of eleven numbers, including "Alabama Song" and "Benares Song". Weill then continued to re ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Kurt Weill
Kurt Julian Weill (March 2, 1900April 3, 1950) was a German-born American composer active from the 1920s in his native country, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht. With Brecht, he developed productions such as his best-known work, ''The Threepenny Opera'', which included the ballad "Mack the Knife". Weill held the ideal of writing music that served a socially useful purpose,Kurt Weill Cjschuler.net. Retrieved on August 22, 2011. ''''. He also wrote several works for the concert hall and a number of works on Jewish themes. He became a United States citizen on August 27, 1943.
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Bertolt Brecht
Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a playwright in Munich and moved to Berlin in 1924, where he wrote ''The Threepenny Opera'' with Kurt Weill and began a life-long collaboration with the composer Hanns Eisler. Immersed in Marxist thought during this period, he wrote didactic ''Lehrstücke'' and became a leading theoretician of epic theatre (which he later preferred to call "dialectical theatre") and the . During the Nazi Germany period, Brecht fled his home country, first to Scandinavia, and during World War II to the United States, where he was surveilled by the FBI. After the war he was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Returning to East Berlin after the war, he established the theatre company Berliner Ensemble with his wife and long-time collaborator ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Footlights
Cambridge University Footlights Dramatic Club, commonly referred to simply as the Footlights, is an amateur theatrical club in Cambridge, England, founded in 1883 and run by the students of Cambridge University. History Footlights' inaugural performance took place in June 1883. For some months before the name "Footlights" was chosen, the group had performed to local audiences in the Cambridge area (once, with a cricket match included, at the "pauper lunatic asylum"). They wished to go wider than the University Amateur Dramatic Club (ADC), founded in 1855, with its membership drawn largely from Trinity College, and its theatre seating only 100. They were to perform every May Week at the Theatre Royal, Barnwell, Cambridge, the shows soon open to the public. A local paper commended the club's appeal to the "general public, the many different classes of which life in Cambridge is made up". The club grew in prominence in the 1960s as a hotbed of comedy and satire, and established ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Trinity Hall, Cambridge
Trinity Hall (formally The College or Hall of the Holy Trinity in the University of Cambridge) is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. It is the fifth-oldest surviving college of the university, having been founded in 1350 by William Bateman, Bishop of Norwich, to train clergymen in canon law following their decimation during the Black Death. Historically, Trinity Hall taught law; today, it teaches the sciences, arts, and humanities. Trinity Hall has two sister colleges at the University of Oxford, All Souls and University College. Notable alumni include theoretical physicists Stephen Hawking and Nobel Prize winner David Thouless, Australian Prime Minister Stanley Bruce, Canadian Governor General David Johnston, philosopher Marshall McLuhan, Conservative cabinet minister Geoffrey Howe, Charles Howard, 1st Earl of Nottingham, writer J. B. Priestley, and Academy Award-winning actress Rachel Weisz. History The devastation caused by the Black Death plague of ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |