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Opera Boston
Opera Boston was an opera company in Boston, Massachusetts. It specialized in less-frequently heard repertoire as well as modern works or opera premieres, along with opera education and outreach programs designed to bring opera education to children both in schools and after-school programs throughout the Boston area. After eight years, it was announced on 23 December 2011 that Opera Boston would cease operations on 1 January 2012. Board chairman Winifred Gray and president Gregory Bulger cited "an insurmountable budget deficit" as the reason. Its home base was the Cutler Majestic Theatre, a 1903 Beaux-Arts opera house designed by architect John Galen Howard. In addition to its regular season the company mounted an "Opera Unlimited Festival" which presented 20th and 21st century chamber opera in an outdoor setting, free of charge. The Festival also commissioned new works. Productions Dates in parenthesis are the dates of the Opera Boston production. The list is limited to only ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
2009 Emerson Majestic Theatre Boston 3599607642
9 (nine) is the natural number following and preceding . Evolution of the Arabic digit In the Brahmi numerals, beginning, various Indians wrote a digit 9 similar in shape to the modern closing question mark without the bottom dot. The Kshatrapa, Andhra and Gupta started curving the bottom vertical line coming up with a -look-alike. The Nagari continued the bottom stroke to make a circle and enclose the 3-look-alike, in much the same way that the sign @ encircles a lowercase ''a''. As time went on, the enclosing circle became bigger and its line continued beyond the circle downwards, as the 3-look-alike became smaller. Soon, all that was left of the 3-look-alike was a squiggle. The Arabs simply connected that squiggle to the downward stroke at the middle and subsequent European change was purely cosmetic. While the shape of the glyph for the digit 9 has an Ascender (typography), ascender in most modern typefaces, in typefaces with text figures the character usually has a desc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
L'étoile (opera)
''L'étoile'' is an opéra bouffe in three acts by Emmanuel Chabrier with a libretto by Eugène Leterrier and Albert Vanloo. Chabrier met his librettists at the home of a mutual friend, the painter Gaston Hirsh, in 1875. Chabrier played to them early versions of the romance "O petite étoile" and the ensemble "Le pal, est de tous les supplices..." (with words by Verlaine which Leterrier and Vanloo found too bold and toned down). They agreed to collaborate and Chabrier set about composition with enthusiasm. The story echoes some of the characters and situations of Chabrier's ''Fisch-Ton-Kan''.Delage, pp. ?? Performance history ''L'étoile'' premiered on 28 November 1877 at Offenbach's '' Théâtre des Bouffes Parisiens''. In its initial run the modest orchestra was appalled at the difficulty of Chabrier’s score, which was much more sophisticated than anything Offenbach wrote for the small boulevard theatre. It was first performed outside France in Berlin on 4 October 1878, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zhou Long
Zhou Long (; born July 8, 1953) is a Chinese American composer. He won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Music. Biography Zhou Long was born in Beijing, China. Born into an artistic family, he began studying piano from an early age. Due to the artistic restrictions implemented during the Cultural Revolution, he was forced to delay his piano studies and live on a state-run farm where he operated a tractor. The deserted landscape with fierce winds and fires he experienced during the Cultural Revolution made a deep impression and influence his compositions even today. Nearing the end of the Cultural Revolution, he was able to resume his musical studies in the areas of composition, music theory, conducting and also traditional Chinese music. One year after the end of the Cultural Revolution, Zhou Long was one of one hundred students chosen from eighteen thousand applicants to study at the newly reopened Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing in 1977. From 1977 to 1983, he studied compo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Madame White Snake (Long)
''Madame White Snake'' is an opera with music by Zhou Long and libretto by Cerise Lim Jacobs, published by Oxford University Press. Awarded the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for Music, it was premiered on Feb. 26, 2010, by Opera Boston at the Cutler Majestic Theatre. It is based on the Legend of the White Snake and was created by Jacobs as a gift to her now late husband. The Pulitzer Committee described the opera as, "a deeply expressive opera that draws on a Chinese folk tale to blend the musical traditions of the East and the West."Brown, Joel (April 19, 2011).Opera Boston production wins Pulitzer, ''Boston.com''. Zhou stated, "I have been working very hard to blend the East and the West for years." The opera was performed, in English, in Beijing in October 2010. In China Zhou's 2010 English-language opera shares the same title as the traditional Beijing opera version, ''Legend of the White Snake'', ''Báishézhuàn'', but is distinguished by the term "''geju''" (Western opera) rather than " ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tancredi
''Tancredi'' is a ''melodramma eroico'' ('' opera seria'' or heroic opera) in two acts by composer Gioachino Rossini and librettist Gaetano Rossi (who was also to write ''Semiramide'' ten years later), based on Voltaire's play ''Tancrède'' (1760). The opera made its first appearance at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice on 6 February 1813, and because ''Il signor Bruschino'' premiered in late January, the composer must have completed ''Tancredi'' in less than a month. The overture, borrowed from ''La pietra del paragone'', is a popular example of Rossini's characteristic style and is regularly performed in concert and recorded. Considered by Stendhal, Rossini's earliest biographer, to be "high amongst the composer's masterworks", and describing it as "a genuine thunderbolt out of a clear, blue sky for the Italian lyric theatre," his librettist Gaetano Rossi notes that, with it, "Rossini rose to glory".Rossi, in Osborne, Richard 2007, p. 199 Richard Osborne proclaims it to be "his f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Nose (opera)
''The Nose'', Op. 15, (russian: Нос, translit=Nos, links=noThe title in Russian (, Nos) is the reverse of the Russian word for "dream" ( Son).), is Dmitri Shostakovich's first opera, a satirical work completed in 1928 based on Nikolai Gogol's 1836 story of the same name. Style and structure The opera was written between 1927 and 1928. The libretto is by Shostakovich, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Georgy Ionin, and Alexander Preis. Shostakovich stated it was a satire on the times of Alexander I. The plot concerns a Saint Petersburg official whose nose leaves his face and develops a life of its own. Gogol's original work was expanded by borrowing from some of his other works, including "The Overcoat", ''Marriage'', " Diary of a Madman", and '' Dead Souls'' as well as ''The Brothers Karamazov'' (1881) by Dostoyevsky. The latter occurs in act 2, scene 6, where Kovalyov returns home to find Ivan singing. The song is Shostakovich's setting of the words of part 2, book 5, chapter 2 of ''Karamaz ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Der Freischütz
' ( J. 277, Op. 77 ''The Marksman'' or ''The Freeshooter'') is a German opera with spoken dialogue in three acts by Carl Maria von Weber with a libretto by Friedrich Kind, based on a story by Johann August Apel and Friedrich Laun from their 1810 collection ''Gespensterbuch''. It premiered on 18 June 1821 at the Schauspielhaus Berlin. It is considered the first German Romantic opera. The opera's plot is mainly based on August Apel's tale "Der Freischütz" from the ''Gespensterbuch'' though the hermit, Kaspar and Ännchen are new to Kind's libretto. That Weber's tunes were just German folk music is a common misconception. Its unearthly portrayal of the supernatural in the famous Wolf's Glen scene has been described as "the most expressive rendering of the gruesome that is to be found in a musical score". Performance history The reception of ''Der Freischütz'' surpassed Weber's own hopes and it quickly became an international success, with productions in Vienna the same year f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ernani
''Ernani'' is an operatic ''dramma lirico'' in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, based on the 1830 play ''Hernani (drama), Hernani'' by Victor Hugo. Verdi was commissioned by the Teatro La Fenice in Venice to write an opera, but finding the right subject took some time, and the composer worked with the inexperienced Piave in shaping first one and then another drama by Hugo into an acceptable libretto. As musicologist Roger Parker notes, the composer "intervened on several important points, insisting for example that the role of Ernani be sung by a tenor (rather than by a contralto as had originally been planned).Parker, p. 71 ''Ernani'' was first performed on 9 March 1844 and it was "immensely popular, and was revived countless times during its early years". It became Verdi's most popular opera until it was superseded by ''Il trovatore'' after 1853. In 1904 it became the first opera to be recorded completely. Composition history Fol ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Semele (Handel)
''Semele'' ( HWV 58) is a 'musical drama', originally presented "after the manner of an oratorio", in three parts by George Frideric Handel. Based on an existing opera libretto by William Congreve, the work is an opera in all but name but was first presented in concert form at Covent Garden theatre on 10 February 1744. The story comes from Ovid's ''Metamorphoses'' and concerns Semele, mother of Bacchus. Handel also referred to the work as 'The Story of Semele'. The work contains the famous aria ''Where'er you walk.'' The work fuses elements of opera, oratorio and classical drama. ''Semele'' was presented during Lent, one of Handel's regular oratorio seasons. However it was not what London audiences were expecting of an oratorio during the solemn season of Lent. ''Semele'' has a secular text with a story involving an adulterous sexual relationship. It is distinguished from Handel's operas by the large number of polyphonic choruses. ''Semele'' was performed four times during its o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ainadamar
''Ainadamar'' (Arabic for 'Fountain of Tears') is the first opera by Argentinian composer Osvaldo Golijov. The libretto was written by American playwright David Henry Hwang and translated from English into Spanish by the composer. It premiered in Tanglewood on 10 August 2003 and, after major revisions, the new version was given its premiere at the Santa Fe Opera on 30 July 2005. The opera tells the story of playwright Federico García Lorca and his muse, Catalan actress Margarita Xirgu. A unique aspect of this opera is that the part of male Lorca is a breeches role performed by a woman. Subtitled "an Opera in Three Images," ''Ainadamar'' is told in reverse in a series of flashbacks, and involves Lorca's opposition to the Falange, accusations of homosexuality, and his subsequent murder. The opera ''Ainadamar'' has features of both an opera and a passion play, as it examines the powerful symbolic role Lorca has embodied after his death, especially among other artists. Lorca becomes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Pearl Fishers
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the most frequently used word in the English language; studies and analyses of texts have found it to account for seven percent of all printed English-language words. It is derived from gendered articles in Old English which combined in Middle English and now has a single form used with pronouns of any gender. The word can be used with both singular and plural nouns, and with a noun that starts with any letter. This is different from many other languages, which have different forms of the definite article for different genders or numbers. Pronunciation In most dialects, "the" is pronounced as (with the voiced dental fricative followed by a schwa) when followed by a consonant sound, and as (homophone of pronoun '' thee'') when followed by a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The 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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