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Paul Althouse
Paul Shearer Althouse (December 2, 1889 – February 6, 1954) was an American opera singer. He began his career as a lyric tenor with a robust Italianate sound, in roles including Cavaradossi in ''Tosca'', Pinkerton in ''Madama Butterfly'', and Turiddu in ''Cavalleria rusticana''. He later branched out into the dramatic tenor repertoire, finding success in portraying Wagnerian heroes. He sang with the Metropolitan Opera in New York City for 30 years. Biography He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania on December 2, 1889 to Harry Jacob Althouse (1871-1937) and Laura May Shearer (1873-1942). Althouse sang as a boy soprano in the choir of his hometown's Episcopal Church. He received his first voice lessons at the church from Evelyn Essick. He studied music at Bucknell University and then singing privately with Perley Dunn Aldrich in Philadelphia and Oscar Saenger and Percy Rector Stevens in New York City. He made his professional opera debut with the Philadelphia-Chicago Grand Opera Co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zabetta Brenska
Zabetta Brenska (March 1, 1896 – December 26, 1966), born Elizabeth Breen, was an American singer. Early life Elizabeth Breen was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, the daughter of Thomas M. Breen and Rachel Ann Eastwood Breen. Her paternal grandparents Matthias and Elizabeth Breen were born in Ireland. She received musical training in Florence. Career Brenska, who sang as a mezzo-soprano or contralto, gave recitals and concerts, sometimes sharing the stage with her first husband, Paul Althouse. She also assisted Althouse with his operatic career, organizing and hand-copying his music and translations. "It was one of our little 'pacts' that after our wedding I should be allowed to work at my music," she explained to an interviewer in 1917. She expressed admiration for the songs of Black composer Harry T. Burleigh. After her second marriage, she lived in the Ringoes section of East Amwell Township, New Jersey and directed community theatre productions and wartime benefit show ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reading, Pennsylvania
Reading ( ; Pennsylvania Dutch: ''Reddin'') is a city in and the county seat of Berks County, Pennsylvania, United States. The city had a population of 95,112 as of the 2020 census and is the fourth-largest city in Pennsylvania after Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Allentown. Reading is located in the southeastern part of the state and is the principal city of the Greater Reading Area, which had 420,152 residents as of 2020. Reading is part of the Delaware Valley, also known as the Philadelphia metropolitan area, a region that also includes Philadelphia, Upper Darby Township, Pennsylvania, Camden, and other suburban Philadelphia cities and regions. With a 2020 population of 6,228,601, the Delaware Valley is the seventh largest metropolitan region in the nation. Reading's name was drawn from the now-defunct Reading Company, widely known as the Reading Railroad and since acquired by Conrail, that played a vital role in transporting anthracite coal from the Pennsylvania's ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Gounod
Charles-François Gounod (; ; 17 June 181818 October 1893), usually known as Charles Gounod, was a French composer. He wrote twelve operas, of which the most popular has always been ''Faust (opera), Faust'' (1859); his ''Roméo et Juliette'' (1867) also remains in the international repertory. He composed a large amount of church music, many songs, and popular short pieces including his Ave Maria (Bach/Gounod), Ave Maria (an elaboration of a Johann Sebastian Bach, Bach piece), and ''Funeral March of a Marionette''. Born in Paris into an artistic and musical family Gounod was a student at the Conservatoire de Paris and won France's most prestigious musical prize, the Prix de Rome. His studies took him to Italy, Austria and then Prussia, where he met Felix Mendelssohn, whose advocacy of the music of Bach was an early influence on him. He was deeply religious, and after his return to Paris, he briefly considered becoming a priest. He composed prolifically, writing church music, songs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Victor Herbert
Victor August Herbert (February 1, 1859 – May 26, 1924) was an American composer, cellist and conductor of English and Irish ancestry and German training. Although Herbert enjoyed important careers as a cello soloist and conductor, he is best known for composing many successful operettas that premiered on Broadway from the 1890s to World War I. He was also prominent among the Tin Pan Alley composers and was later a founder of the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP). A prolific composer, Herbert produced two operas, a cantata, 43 operettas, incidental music to 10 plays, 31 compositions for orchestra, nine band compositions, nine cello compositions, five violin compositions with piano or orchestra, 22 piano compositions and numerous songs, choral compositions and orchestrations of works by other composers, among other music. In the early 1880s, Herbert began a career as a cellist in Vienna and Stuttgart, during which he began to compose orchestral ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Adamo Didur
Adam Didur or Adamo Didur (24 December 18747 January 1946) was a famous Polish operatic bass singer. He sang extensively in Europe and had a major career at New York's Metropolitan Opera from 1908 to 1932. Career He was born on 24 December 1874 in Wola Sękowa near Sanok, Poland.''The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Opera, 2nd edition'' (1980); ''Großes Sängerlexikon'', Vol. 4 (2003). Didur studied in Lwów with Walery Wysocki and later with Franz Emmerich in Milan. He made his vocal debut as a soloist at a concert performance of Ludwig van Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in Milan, Italy. His operatic stage debut came in 1894 as Méphistophélès in Gounod's ''Faust'' in Rio de Janeiro. Besides South America, he also toured Egypt and Italy in 1894, including the small town of Pierolo near Turin where he met his first wife, a Mexican singer Angela Aranda Arellano. After steady years at Warsaw Opera from 1899 to 1903, Didur launched a career at major European opera houses. His gues ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marie Duchène
Marie may refer to: People Name * Marie (given name) * Marie (Japanese given name) * Marie (murder victim), girl who was killed in Florida after being pushed in front of a moving vehicle in 1973 * Marie (died 1759), an enslaved Cree person in Trois-Rivières, New France * ''Marie'', Biblical reference to Holy Mary, mother of Jesus * Marie Curie, scientist Surname * Jean Gabriel Marie (other) * Peter Marié (1826–1903), American socialite from New York City, philanthropist, and collector of rare books and miniatures * Rose Marie (1923–2017), American actress and singer * Teena Marie (1956–2010), American singer, songwriter, and producer Places * Marie, Alpes-Maritimes, commune of the Alpes-Maritimes department, France * Lake Marie, Umpqua Lighthouse State Park, Winchester Bay, Oregon, U.S. * Marie, Arkansas, U.S. * Marie, West Virginia, U.S. Art, entertainment, and media Music * "Marie" (Cat Mother and the All Night Newsboys song), 1969 * "Marie" (Johnny Hally ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leonora Sparkes
Lenora Beatrice Sparkes (1878 - June 8, 1969) was a British-American mezzo-soprano who performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City in the 1910s. Biography She was born in 1878 in Gloucestershire, England to Jacob Sparkes and Elizabeth Mountain. Andreas Dippel heard her sing at Covent Garden and offered her a contract at the Metropolitan Opera in 1908. She appeared in the American premiere of ''Boris Godunov'' at the Metropolitan Opera as Tsarevna Xenia Borisovna of Russia on March 19, 1913 with Arturo Toscanini conducting. She sang with Enrico Caruso three times, including in the Met's production of ''Aida'' in 1913. Her career was primarily spent in London and New York, but she also sang in Paris. She died in Erie, Pennsylvania Erie (; ) is a city on the south shore of Lake Erie and the county seat of Erie County, Pennsylvania, United States. Erie is the fifth largest city in Pennsylvania and the largest city in Northwestern Pennsylvania with a population of 9 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anna Case
Anna Case (October 29, 1887 - January 7, 1984) was an American operatic soprano. She recorded with Thomas Alva Edison, who used her voice extensively in "tone tests" of whether a live audience could tell the difference between the actual singer and a recording. In addition to recordings for Edison Records on both phonograph cylinder and Diamond Disc, Case recorded for Victor and Columbia Records, and made sound film for Vitaphone. She was born in Clinton, New Jersey, on October 29, 1887. and educated by vocal trainer Augusta Öhrström-Renard in New York. She made her debut in 1909 at the New Theatre in New York as the Dutch Boy in ''Werther'', and from 1909–1916 was a member of the Metropolitan Opera Company. In first American performances, she created the roles of Sophie in ''Der Rosenkavalier'' (1913) and Feodor in ''Boris Godunov'' (1913). She sang Olympia in ''Tales of Hoffmann'', Mimi in ''La Boheme,'' and Micaela in ''Carmen.'' She wrote music and lyrics to several s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Louise Homer
Louise Beatty Homer (April 30, 1871May 6, 1947) was an American operatic contralto who had an active international career in concert halls and opera houses from 1895 until her retirement in 1932. After a brief stint as a vaudeville entertainer in New England, she made her professional opera debut in France in 1898. She then became a member of the Metropolitan Opera from 1900 to 1919 and again from 1927 to 1929. She was also active as an opera singer in Boston, Chicago, and California. She recorded extensively for Victor Records and Columbia Records in the early decades of the 20th century. She was married to composer Sidney Homer for 52 years. The composer Samuel Barber was her nephew. Homer sang a broad repertoire which encompassed works from the French, German, and Italian repertoires. She enjoyed particular success in the operas of Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner. She often stated in interviews that her favorite role to perform was Amneris in Verdi's ''Aida''. At the Met sh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arturo Toscanini
Arturo Toscanini (; ; March 25, 1867January 16, 1957) was an Italian conductor. He was one of the most acclaimed and influential musicians of the late 19th and early 20th century, renowned for his intensity, his perfectionism, his ear for orchestral detail and sonority, and his eidetic memory. He was at various times the music director of La Scala in Milan and the New York Philharmonic. Later in his career he was appointed the first music director of the NBC Symphony Orchestra (1937–54), and this led to his becoming a household name (especially in the United States) through his radio and television broadcasts and many recordings of the operatic and symphonic repertoire. Biography Early years Toscanini was born in Parma, Emilia-Romagna, and won a scholarship to the local music conservatory, where he studied the cello. Living conditions at the conservatory were harsh and strict. For example, the menu at the conservatory consisted almost entirely of fish; in his later years, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Boris Godunov (opera)
''Boris Godunov'' ( rus, Борис Годунов, links=no, Borís Godunóv ) is an opera by Modest Mussorgsky (1839–1881). The work was composed between 1868 and 1873 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It is Mussorgsky's only completed opera and is considered his masterpiece. Its subjects are the Russian ruler Boris Godunov, who reigned as Tsar (1598 to 1605) during the Time of Troubles, and his nemesis, the False Dmitriy (reigned 1605 to 1606). The Russian-language libretto was written by the composer, and is based on the 1825 drama '' Boris Godunov'' by Aleksandr Pushkin, and, in the Revised Version of 1872, on Nikolay Karamzin's ''History of the Russian State''. Among major operas, ''Boris Godunov'' shares with Giuseppe Verdi's ''Don Carlos'' (1867) the distinction of having an extremely complex creative history, as well as a great wealth of alternative material. The composer created two versions—the Original Version of 1869, which was rejected for production by the Imper ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mussorgsky
Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky ( rus, link=no, Модест Петрович Мусоргский, Modest Petrovich Musorgsky , mɐˈdɛst pʲɪˈtrovʲɪtɕ ˈmusərkskʲɪj, Ru-Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky version.ogg; – ) was a Russian composer, one of the group known as "The Five (composers), The Five". He was an innovator of Music of Russia, Russian music in the Romantic music, Romantic period. He strove to achieve a uniquely Russian musical identity, often in deliberate defiance of the established conventions of Western music. Many of List of compositions by Modest Mussorgsky, his works were inspired by Russian history, Russian folklore, and other national themes. Such works include the opera ''Boris Godunov (opera), Boris Godunov'', the orchestral tone poem ''Night on Bald Mountain'' and the piano suite ''Pictures at an Exhibition''. For many years, Mussorgsky's works were mainly known in versions revised or completed by other composers. Many of his most important compos ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
