Nico Castel
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Nico Castel
Nico Castel (August 1, 1931 – May 31, 2015), born Naftali Chaim Castel Kalinhoff, was a comprimario tenor and well-known language and diction coach, as well as a prolific translator of libretti and writer of books on singing diction. Although Castel performed throughout Europe, North America and South America, he was best known for his nearly 800 performances at The Metropolitan Opera, where he also served as staff diction coach for three decades. Biography Castel was born in Lisbon, Portugal, the "scion of a multigenerational dynasty of Sephardic rabbis" with roots in 15th century Castile.Fox, Margalit"Nico Castel, Tenor and Diction Coach at the Met, Dies at 83" ''The New York Times'', June 3, 2015 He was raised in Venezuela by multilingual parents and a German nanny and attended a French school in Caracas. After some vocal study in Caracas and then the University of Mainz in Germany, Castel moved to New York City at the age of 16 to pursue a singing career and to study romance ...
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Comprimario
A comprimario is a small supporting role in an opera (or a singer who sings those roles). The word is derived from the Italian "''con primario''", or "with the primary", meaning that the ''comprimario'' role (or singer) is not a principal role (or singer).http://enciclopedia_universal.esacademic.com/172152/comprimario The term usually refers to characters who do not sing any full-length arias or long scenes (although mute characters who do not sing at all, are not considered ''comprimarios''). Many singers began their careers as ''comprimario'' singers; many others end their careers that way when they become too infirm to cope with long roles; some have made a career out of singing such parts. Among these latter are singers such as Anthony Laciura, Jean Kraft, Nico Castel and Charles Anthony of the Metropolitan Opera; others include Plinio Clabassi and Karl Dönch. Some notable ''comprimario'' roles Notable ''comprimario'' roles, in operas which are performed often, include ...
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Carlisle Floyd
Carlisle Sessions Floyd (June 11, 1926September 30, 2021) was an American composer primarily known for his operas. These stage works, for which he wrote the librettos, typically engage with themes from the American South, particularly the Post-civil war South, the Great Depression and rural life. His best known opera, ''Susannah'', is based on a story from the Biblical Apocrypha, transferred to contemporary rural Tennessee, and written for a Southern dialect. It was premiered at Florida State University in 1955, with Phyllis Curtin in the title role. When it was staged at the New York City Opera the following year, the reception was initially mixed; some considered it a masterpiece, while others degraded it as a 'folk opera'. Subsequent performances led to an increase in ''Susannah'''s reputation and the opera quickly became among the most performed of American operas. In 1976, he became M. D. Anderson professor at the University of Houston. He co-founded the Houston Opera S ...
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Spoleto Festival
The ''Festival dei Due Mondi'' (Festival of the Two Worlds) is an annual summer music and opera festival held each June to early July in Spoleto, Italy, since its founding by composer Gian Carlo Menotti in 1958. It features a vast array of concerts, opera, dance, drama, visual arts and roundtable discussions on science. The "Two Worlds" in the name of the festival comes from Gian Carlo Menotti's intention to have the worlds of American and European culture facing each other in his event; this concept would then be strengthened by the fact that it was held in conjunction with its "twin", the Spoleto Festival USA held annually in May/June in Charleston, South Carolina. That twinning lasted some 15 years and, after growing disputes between the Menotti family and the board of Spoleto Festival USA, in the early 1990s a separation occurred. Under Menotti's direction in 1986, a third installment in the Spoleto Festival series was held in Melbourne, Australia. Melbourne's Spoleto Festiva ...
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Teatro Nacional De São Carlos
The ''Teatro Nacional de São Carlos'' () (''National Theatre of Saint Charles'') is an opera house in Lisbon, Portugal. It was opened on June 30, 1793 by Queen Maria I as a replacement for the Tejo Opera House, which was destroyed in the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. The theatre is located in the historical center of Lisbon, in the Chiado district. History In 1792, a group of Lisbon businessmen decided to finance the construction of a new Opera House in the city. The theatre was built in only six months following a design by Portuguese architect José da Costa e Silva, with neoclassical and rococo elements. The general project is clearly inspired by great Italian theatres like the San Carlo of Naples (interior) and La Scala in Milan (interior and façade). In the early 19th century, when the Portuguese Royal Court had to flee to the Portuguese colony of Brazil to escape the invading Napoleonic troops, a theatre modelled on the São Carlos was built in Rio de Janeiro. The the ...
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Opera In Venezuela
In Venezuela, since the opening of the Teatro Municipal of Caracas, Teatro Caracas and, earlier, the Teatro Maderero (then called Teatro de la Zarzuela), there has been a great lyrical tradition ranging from serious opera to operetta, zarzuela, and Spanish musical reviews. History The first Venezuelan opera was ''El maestro Rufo Zapatero'' an opera buffa composed in 1848 by José María Osorio. ''Virginia'' by José Ángel Montero (sometimes incorrectly called the first Venezuelan opera) debuted in 1877, under the auspices of Antonio Guzmán Blanco. Another major early Venezuelan opera composer was Reynaldo Hahn, who was greatly influenced by his teacher Jules Massenet. He greatly expanded the genre of French operetta, of which ''Ciboulette'' was his most famous work; he also composed operas as ''Le Merchand de Venise''. Before the foregoing had occurred, José María Osorio had composed early zarzuelas. The first Venezuelan zarzuela to debut, however, was José Ángel Montero's ' ...
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Tel Aviv
Tel Aviv-Yafo ( he, תֵּל־אָבִיב-יָפוֹ, translit=Tēl-ʾĀvīv-Yāfō ; ar, تَلّ أَبِيب – يَافَا, translit=Tall ʾAbīb-Yāfā, links=no), often referred to as just Tel Aviv, is the most populous city in the Gush Dan metropolitan area of Israel. Located on the Israeli Mediterranean coastline and with a population of , it is the economic and technological center of the country. If East Jerusalem is considered part of Israel, Tel Aviv is the country's second most populous city after Jerusalem; if not, Tel Aviv is the most populous city ahead of West Jerusalem. Tel Aviv is governed by the Tel Aviv-Yafo Municipality, headed by Mayor Ron Huldai, and is home to many foreign embassies. It is a beta+ world city and is ranked 57th in the 2022 Global Financial Centres Index. Tel Aviv has the third- or fourth-largest economy and the largest economy per capita in the Middle East. The city currently has the highest cost of living in the world. Tel ...
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Helsinki
Helsinki ( or ; ; sv, Helsingfors, ) is the capital, primate, and most populous city of Finland. Located on the shore of the Gulf of Finland, it is the seat of the region of Uusimaa in southern Finland, and has a population of . The city's urban area has a population of , making it by far the most populous urban area in Finland as well as the country's most important center for politics, education, finance, culture, and research; while Tampere in the Pirkanmaa region, located to the north from Helsinki, is the second largest urban area in Finland. Helsinki is located north of Tallinn, Estonia, east of Stockholm, Sweden, and west of Saint Petersburg, Russia. It has close historical ties with these three cities. Together with the cities of Espoo, Vantaa, and Kauniainen (and surrounding commuter towns, including the eastern neighboring municipality of Sipoo), Helsinki forms the Greater Helsinki metropolitan area, which has a population of over 1.5 million. Of ...
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Finnish National Opera
The Finnish National Opera and Ballet ( fi, Suomen Kansallisooppera ja -baletti; sv, Finlands Nationalopera och -balett) is a Finnish opera company and ballet company based in Helsinki. It is headquartered in the Opera House on the coast of the Töölönlahti bay in Töölö, which opened in 1993, and is state-owned through Senate Properties. The Opera House features two auditoriums, the main auditorium with 1,350, seats and a smaller studio auditorium with 300–500 seats. History Regular opera performances began in Finland in 1873 with the founding of the Finnish Opera by Kaarlo Bergbom. Prior to that, opera had been performed in Finland sporadically by touring companies, and on occasion by Finnish amateurs, the first such production being ''The Barber of Seville'' in 1849. However, the Finnish Opera company soon plunged into a financial crisis and folded in 1879. During its six years of operation, Bergbom's opera company had given 450 performances of a total of 26 operas, and ...
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Palacio De Bellas Artes
The Palacio de Bellas Artes (Palace of Fine Arts) is a prominent cultural center in Mexico City. It has hosted notable events in music, dance, theatre, opera and literature in Mexico and has held important exhibitions of painting, sculpture and photography. Consequently, the Palacio de Bellas Artes has been called the "Cathedral of Art in Mexico". The building is located on the western side of the historic center of Mexico City next to the Alameda Central park. The first National Theater of Mexico was built in the late 19th century, but it was soon decided to tear this down in favor of a more opulent building in time for Centennial of the Mexican War of Independence in 1910. The initial design and construction was undertaken by Italian architect Adamo Boari in 1904, but complications arising from the soft subsoil and the political problem both before and during the Mexican Revolution, hindered then stopped construction completely by 1913. Construction began again in 1932 under Me ...
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The Marriage Of Figaro
''The Marriage of Figaro'' ( it, Le nozze di Figaro, links=no, ), K. 492, is a ''commedia per musica'' (opera buffa) in four acts composed in 1786 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with an Italian libretto written by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It premiered at the Burgtheater in Vienna on 1 May 1786. The opera's libretto is based on the 1784 stage comedy by Pierre Beaumarchais, '' La folle journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro'' ("The Mad Day, or The Marriage of Figaro"). It tells how the servants Figaro and Susanna succeed in getting married, foiling the efforts of their philandering employer Count Almaviva to seduce Susanna and teaching him a lesson in fidelity. Considered one of the greatest operas ever written, it is a cornerstone of the repertoire and appears consistently among the top ten in the Operabase list of most frequently performed operas. In 2017, BBC News Magazine asked 172 opera singers to vote for the best operas ever written. ''The Marriage of Figaro'' came in first out ...
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Metropolitan Opera
The Metropolitan Opera (commonly known as the Met) is an American opera company based in New York City, resident at the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center, currently situated on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as general manager. As of 2018, the company's current music director is Yannick Nézet-Séguin. The Met was founded in 1883 as an alternative to the previously established Academy of Music opera house, and debuted the same year in a new building on 39th and Broadway (now known as the "Old Met"). It moved to the new Lincoln Center location in 1966. The Metropolitan Opera is the largest classical music organization in North America. Until 2019, it presented about 27 different operas each year from late September through May. The operas are presented in a rotating repertory schedule, with up to seven performances of four different works staged each week. Performances a ...
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Opera News
''Opera News'' is an American classical music magazine. It has been published since 1936 by the Metropolitan Opera Guild, a non-profit organization located at Lincoln Center which was founded to engender the appreciation of opera and also support the Metropolitan Opera of New York City. ''Opera News'' was initially focused primarily on the Met, particularly providing information for listeners of the Saturday afternoon live Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts. Over the years, the magazine has broadened its scope to include the larger American and international opera scenes. Currently published monthly, ''Opera News'' offers opera related feature articles; artist interviews; production profiles; musicological pieces; music-business reportage; reviews of performances in the United States and Europe; reviews of recordings, videos, books and audio equipment; and listings of opera performances in the U.S. The Editor-in-Chief is currently F. Paul Driscoll. Regular contributors to the m ...
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