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Patience And Sarah (opera)
''Patience and Sarah'' is a 1998 opera by Paula M. Kimper. The libretto is by Wende Persons, based on the novel of the same name by Isabel Miller. It has been described as the first lesbian opera and as the first mainstream gay-themed opera. History Persons began writing the libretto in 1981, after a lesbian opera singer, upon whom Persons had a crush, mentioned that she had trouble identifying with the straight characters she played. "She never got to be who she really was and sing of her love for women," Persons says. "I thought about it and said to myself, wouldn't it be great to do this?" Having read a lot of lesbian literature that ended unhappily, Persons was drawn to Miller's happy ending for the two women. She finished the first draft in three weeks in order to impress the singer. In 1989, she asked her then-partner Kimper to collaborate; Kimper, a composer of incidental stage music and film scores, initially refused, but reconsidered after seeing a performance of the Rin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mary Ann Willson
Mary Ann Willson (active 1810 to 1825) was an American folk artist whose work remained undiscovered for over a century, until it appeared in an exhibition of American Primitive paintings in 1944. Little is known of her life, but evidence suggests that she may have been one of the first American watercolourists. Life and career Mary Ann Willson was an American folk artist based in Greene County, New York. She was unknown until 1943, when a portfolio of her work was discovered by staff at the Harry Stone Gallery in New York City. According to art historian Jean Lipman, Willson and her contemporary Eunice Pinney of Connecticut are considered two of the earliest American painters to work in the medium of watercolor.Harry Stone Gallery. ''Miss Willson's Watercolors, 1800-1825'' xh. New York, Comp. Jean Lipman. February 3 – March 11, 1944, n.p. Little is known about the artist. What information is available is derived from two anonymous letters, one of which accompanied the por ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Soprano
A soprano () is a type of classical female singing voice and has the highest vocal range of all voice types. The soprano's vocal range (using scientific pitch notation) is from approximately middle C (C4) = 261 Hz to "high A" (A5) = 880 Hz in choral music, or to "soprano C" (C6, two octaves above middle C) = 1046 Hz or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which often encompasses the melody. The soprano voice type is generally divided into the coloratura, soubrette, lyric, spinto, and dramatic soprano. Etymology The word "soprano" comes from the Italian word '' sopra'' (above, over, on top of),"Soprano" '' |
Fellow Travelers (opera)
''Fellow Travelers'' is an opera in 16 scenes composed by Gregory Spears to a libretto by Greg Pierce, based on Thomas Mallon's 2007 novel ''Fellow Travelers''. A co-commission by Cincinnati Opera and G. Sterling Zinsmeyer, the opera was developed by Opera Fusion: New Works, a collaboration between Cincinnati Opera and the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music which focuses on the creation of new American operas. ''Fellow Travelers'' premiered at Cincinnati Opera in June 2016 and was presented by the Lyric Opera of Chicago in March 2018, the Minnesota Opera in June 2018, and Boston Lyric Opera in November 2019. Roles Synopsis The opera is set during the McCarthy era of the 1950s and focuses on the "lavender scare", a witch hunt and mass firings of gay people from the United States government. The story centers on the love affair between two men working for the federal government—Hawkins "Hawk" Fuller, a State Department official, and Timothy Laughlin, a rec ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maurice Ravel
Joseph Maurice Ravel (7 March 1875 – 28 December 1937) was a French composer, pianist and conductor. He is often associated with Impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, although both composers rejected the term. In the 1920s and 1930s Ravel was internationally regarded as France's greatest living composer. Born to a music-loving family, Ravel attended France's premier music college, the Paris Conservatoire; he was not well regarded by its conservative establishment, whose biased treatment of him caused a scandal. After leaving the conservatoire, Ravel found his own way as a composer, developing a style of great clarity and incorporating elements of modernism, baroque, neoclassicism and, in his later works, jazz. He liked to experiment with musical form, as in his best-known work, ''Boléro'' (1928), in which repetition takes the place of development. Renowned for his abilities in orchestration, Ravel made some orchestral arrangements of other compose ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Virgil Thomson
Virgil Thomson (November 25, 1896 – September 30, 1989) was an American composer and critic. He was instrumental in the development of the "American Sound" in classical music. He has been described as a modernist, a neoromantic, a neoclassicist, and a composer of "an Olympian blend of humanity and detachment" whose "expressive voice was always carefully muted" until his late opera ''Lord Byron'' which, in contrast to all his previous work, exhibited an emotional content that rises to "moments of real passion". Biography Early years Thomson was born in Kansas City, Missouri. As a child he befriended Alice Smith, great-granddaughter of Joseph Smith, founder of the Latter-day Saint movement. During his youth he often played the organ in Grace Church, (now Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral), as his piano teacher was the church's organist. After World War I, he entered Harvard University thanks to a loan from Dr. Fred M. Smith, the president of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Chr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Ballad Of Baby Doe
''The Ballad of Baby Doe'' is an opera by the American composer Douglas Moore that uses an English-language libretto by John Latouche. It is Moore's most famous opera and one of the few American operas to be in the standard repertory. Especially famous are the title heroine's five arias: "Letter Aria," "Willow Song," "I Knew it Was Wrong", "Gold is a Fine Thing", and "Always Through the Changing." Horace Tabor's "Warm as the Autumn Light" is also frequently heard. Distinguished sopranos who have portrayed Baby Doe include Beverly Sills (Moore's favorite interpreter of the role), Ruth Welting, Karan Armstrong, Faith Esham, and Elizabeth Futral. The opera's premiere took place at the Central City Opera in Colorado in 1956. Hanya Holm and Edwin Levy directed the production, and sopranos Dolores Wilson and Leyna Gabriele alternated in the title role. The opera's New York premiere, directed by Vladimir Rosing, was presented at the New York City Opera in 1958. This revised version a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Jorden
James Jorden, born 1954, is an American blogger, journalist and music critic. Jorden is the founding editor of the e-zine-cum-blog '' Parterre Box'' which covers the topic of opera from a queer perspective. Jorden's work with ''parterre box'' also includes a podcast, ''Unnatural Acts of Opera''. ''Parterre Box'' and Jorden have been featured in numerous media publications, including '' Opera News'' magazine, '' The Advocate'', and ''The New York Times''. He is a former web producer for Fox News. Until 2013, he was employed full-time as a legal secretary. After 10 years as a reviewer for ''Gay City News'', Jorden became opera critic for the ''New York Post'' in March 2009, succeeding Clive Barnes. In the fall of 2014, Jorden left the ''Post'' to write about opera for ''The New York Observer ''The New York Observer'' was a weekly newspaper printed from 1987 to 2016, when it ceased print publication and became the online-only newspaper ''Observer''. The media site focuses on cul ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Romantic Music
Romantic music is a stylistic movement in Western Classical music associated with the period of the 19th century commonly referred to as the Romantic era (or Romantic period). It is closely related to the broader concept of Romanticism—the intellectual, artistic and literary movement that became prominent in Western culture from approximately 1798 until 1837. Romantic composers sought to create music that was individualistic, emotional, dramatic and often programmatic; reflecting broader trends within the movements of Romantic literature, poetry, art, and philosophy. Romantic music was often ostensibly inspired by (or else sought to evoke) non-musical stimuli, such as nature, literature, poetry, super-natural elements or the fine arts. It included features such as increased chromaticism and moved away from traditional forms. Background The Romantic movement was an artistic, literary, and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anthony Tommasini
Anthony Carl Tommasini (born April 14, 1948) is an American music critic and author who specializes in classical music. Described as "a discerning critic, whose taste, knowledge and judgment have made him a must-read", Tommasini was the chief classical music critic for ''The New York Times'' from 2000 to 2021. Also a pianist, he has released two CDS and two books on the music of his colleague and mentor, the composer and critic Virgil Thomson. A classical music enthusiast since his youth, Tommasini attended both Yale University and Boston University to study piano, and then taught music at Emerson College. In 1986 he left academia to write music criticism for ''The Boston Globe''. Tommasini joined the ''Times'' in 1996 and became their chief classical music critic in 2000 for over two decades. He traveled to cover important premieres of contemporary classical music, encouraged diversity in both classical repertoire and ensembles, and wrote books covering influential operas and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Impressionistic Music
Impressionism in music was a movement among various composers in Western classical music (mainly during the late 19th and early 20th centuries) whose music focuses on mood and atmosphere, "conveying the moods and emotions aroused by the subject rather than a detailed tone‐picture". "Impressionism" is a philosophical and aesthetic term borrowed from late 19th-century French painting after Monet's ''Impression, Sunrise''. Composers were labeled Impressionists by analogy to the Impressionist painters who use starkly contrasting colors, effect of light on an object, blurry foreground and background, flattening perspective, etc. to make the observer focus their attention on the overall impression.J. Peter Burkholder, Donald Jay Grout and Claude V. Palisca, ''A History of Western Music'', eighth edition (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2010). . The most prominent feature in musical Impressionism is the use of "color", or in musical terms, timbre, which can be achieved through o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Allan Kozinn
Allan Kozinn (born July 28, 1954) is an American journalist, music critic, and teacher. Kozinn received bachelor's degrees in music and journalism from Syracuse University in 1976. He began freelancing as a critic and music feature writer for ''The New York Times'' in 1977, and joined the paper's staff in 1991. Before joining the ''Times'', he was a contributing editor to ''High Fidelity'' and ''Keynote'' magazines, and a frequent contributor to ''Guitar Player'', ''Keyboard'', ''Pulse'' and other publications. He was also the first music critic for ''The New York Observer''. Kozinn has written a number of books, including ''Guitar: The History, the Music, the Players'' (1984), ''Mischa Elman and the Romantic Style'' (1990), ''The Beatles'' (1995) and ''Classical Music: A Critic's Guide to the 100 Most Important Recordings'' (2004). Kozinn joined the faculty of New York University in 2004, where he has taught courses in music criticism, Baroque music literature and the Beatles. He ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bass (voice)
A bass is a type of classical male singing voice and has the lowest vocal range of all voice types. According to ''The New Grove Dictionary of Opera'', a bass is typically classified as having a vocal range extending from around the second E below middle C to the E above middle C (i.e., E2–E4).; ''The Oxford Dictionary of Music'' gives E2–E4/F4 Its tessitura, or comfortable range, is normally defined by the outermost lines of the bass clef. Categories of bass voices vary according to national style and classification system. Italians favour subdividing basses into the ''basso cantante'' (singing bass), ''basso buffo'' ("funny" bass), or the dramatic ''basso profondo'' (low bass). The American system identifies the bass-baritone, comic bass, lyric bass, and dramatic bass. The German ''Fach'' system offers further distinctions: Spielbass (Bassbuffo), Schwerer Spielbass (Schwerer Bassbuffo), Charakterbass (Bassbariton), and Seriöser Bass. These classification systems can ov ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
