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Producer's Opera
Regietheater (German for ''director's theater'') is the modern practice of allowing a director freedom in devising the way a given opera or play is staged so that the creator's original, specific intentions or stage directions (where supplied) can be changed, together with major elements of geographical location, chronological situation, casting and plot. Typically such changes may be made to point a particular political point or modern parallels which may be remote from traditional interpretations. Examples found in Regietheater productions may include some or all of the following: * Relocating the story from the original location to a more modern period (including setting in a totalitarian regime)Neil Fisher, ''The Times'' (London), 12 May 2006 (Subscription required) "Tak ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Opera
Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a librettist and incorporates a number of the performing arts, such as acting, scenery, costume, and sometimes dance or ballet. The performance is typically given in an opera house, accompanied by an orchestra or smaller musical ensemble, which since the early 19th century has been led by a conductor. Although musical theatre is closely related to opera, the two are considered to be distinct from one another. Opera is a key part of the Western classical music tradition. Originally understood as an entirely sung piece, in contrast to a play with songs, opera has come to include numerous genres, including some that include spoken dialogue such as '' Singspiel'' and '' Opéra comique''. In traditional number opera, singers employ two styles of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bayreuth Festival
The Bayreuth Festival (german: link=no, Bayreuther Festspiele) is a music festival held annually in Bayreuth, Germany, at which performances of operas by the 19th-century German composer Richard Wagner are presented. Wagner himself conceived and promoted the idea of a special festival to showcase his own works, in particular his monumental cycle and ''Parsifal''. Performances take place in a specially designed theatre, the Bayreuth Festspielhaus. Wagner personally supervised the design and construction of the theatre, which contained many architectural innovations to accommodate the huge orchestras for which Wagner wrote as well as the composer's particular vision about the staging of his works. The Festival has become a pilgrimage destination for Wagnerians and classical-music enthusiasts. Origins The origins of the Festival itself lie rooted in Richard Wagner's interest in establishing his financial independence. A souring of the relationship with his patron, Ludwig II o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most opera composers, Wagner wrote both the libretto and the music for each of his stage works. Initially establishing his reputation as a composer of works in the romantic vein of Carl Maria von Weber and Giacomo Meyerbeer, Wagner revolutionised opera through his concept of the ''Gesamtkunstwerk'' ("total work of art"), by which he sought to synthesise the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, with music subsidiary to drama. He described this vision in a series of essays published between 1849 and 1852. Wagner realised these ideas most fully in the first half of the four-opera cycle ''Der Ring des Nibelungen'' (''The Ring of the Nibelung''). His compositions, particularly those of his later period, are notable for their complex textures, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wieland Wagner
Wieland Wagner (5 January 1917 – 17 October 1966) was a German opera director, grandson of Richard Wagner. As co-director of the Bayreuth Festival when it re-opened after World War II, he was noted for innovative new stagings of the operas, departing from the naturalistic scenery and lighting of the originals. His wartime involvement in the development of the V-2 rocket was kept secret for many years. Life Wieland Wagner was the elder of two sons of Siegfried and Winifred Wagner, grandson of composer Richard Wagner, and great-grandson of composer Franz Liszt through Wieland's paternal grandmother. In 1941, he married the dancer and choreographer Gertrud Reissinger. They had four children: Iris (1942–2014), Wolf Siegfried (born 1943), Nike (born 1945) and Daphne (born 1946). Their son Wolf married Marie Eleanore von Lehndorff-Steinort, sister of fashion model Veruschka, whose father was involved in the 20 July plot to assassinate Hitler. Late in his life, Wieland had a lov ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Don Giovanni
''Don Giovanni'' (; K. 527; Vienna (1788) title: , literally ''The Rake Punished, or Don Giovanni'') is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. Its subject is a centuries-old Spanish legend about a libertine as told by playwright Tirso de Molina in his 1630 play '' El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra''. It is a ''dramma giocoso'' blending comedy, melodrama and supernatural elements (although the composer entered it into his catalogue simply as ''opera buffa''). It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the National Theater (of Bohemia), now called the Estates Theatre, on 29 October 1787. ''Don Giovanni'' is regarded as one of the greatest operas of all time and has proved a fruitful subject for commentary in its own right; critic Fiona Maddocks has described it as one of Mozart's "trio of masterpieces with librettos by Da Ponte". Composition and premiere The opera was commissioned after the succes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 17565 December 1791), baptised as Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period (music), Classical period. Despite his short life, his rapid pace of composition resulted in more than List of compositions by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, 800 works of virtually every genre of his time. Many of these compositions are acknowledged as pinnacles of the symphony, symphonic, concerto, concertante, chamber music, chamber, operatic, and choir, choral repertoire. Mozart is widely regarded as among the greatest composers in the history of Western music, with his music admired for its "melodic beauty, its formal elegance and its richness of harmony and texture". Born in Prince-Archbishopric of Salzburg, Salzburg, in the Holy Roman Empire, Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood. Already competent on Keyboard instrument, keyboard and violin, he composed from the age of fi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Opera Theatre Of Saint Louis
Opera Theatre of Saint Louis (OTSL) is an American summer opera festival held in St. Louis, Missouri. Typically four operas, all sung in English, are presented each season, which runs from late May to late June. Performances are accompanied by the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, which is divided into two ensembles, each covering two of the operas, for the season. The company's performances are presented in the Loretto-Hilton Center for the Performing Arts on the campus of Webster University. First seasons and achievements In 1976, Leigh Gerdine, Laurance L. Browning, Jr. and James Van Sant co-founded OTSL. They hired Richard Gaddes, who at the time was working at The Santa Fe Opera, as the company's first Artistic Director. They signed him as full-time General Director in 1978 at the suggestion of Ed Korn, who was brought in as a consultant from the Metropolitan Opera. Gaddes acknowledged that the model for OTSL was The Santa Fe Opera: : That was not a coincidence. I always sa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
I Capuleti E I Montecchi
''I Capuleti e i Montecchi'' (''The Capulets and the Montagues'') is an Italian opera (''Tragedia lirica'') in two acts by Vincenzo Bellini. The libretto by Felice Romani was a reworking of the story of ''Romeo and Juliet'' for an opera by Nicola Vaccai called '' Giulietta e Romeo'' and based on the play of the same name by Luigi Scevola written in 1818, thus an Italian source rather than taken directly from William Shakespeare. Bellini was persuaded to write the opera for the 1830 Carnival season at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, with only a month and a half available for composition. He succeeded by appropriating a large amount of music previously written for his unsuccessful opera '' Zaira''. The first performance of ''I Capuleti e i Montecchi'' took place on 11 March 1830. Composition history After ''Zaira'' Following the poor reception which ''Zaira'' received in Parma, Bellini returned to Milan by the end of June 1829 with no contract for another opera in sight. Gi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
San Francisco Opera
San Francisco Opera (SFO) is an American opera company founded in 1923 by Gaetano Merola (1881–1953) based in San Francisco, California. History Gaetano Merola (1923–1953) Merola's road to prominence in the Bay Area began in 1906 when he first visited the city. In 1909, he returned as the conductor of the International Opera Company of Montreal, one of the many visiting troupes that frequented the bustling city. Continued visits for the next decade convinced him that a San Francisco company was viable. In 1921, Merola returned to live in the city under the patronage of Mrs. Oliver Stine. During this time, Merola conceived of branching away from the area's reliance on visiting troupes for entertainment that had been common place since the Gold Rush era. By the fall, he was planning his first season, and the very next year, Merola organized a trial season at Stanford University. The first performance occurred in the Stanford Cardinal's football stadium on June 3rd, 1922 wi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nicole Cabell
Nicole Cabell (born October 17, 1977) is an American opera singer. She is best known as the 2005 winner of the BBC Cardiff Singer of the World Competition. Cabell was born in Panorama City, California. Her grandfather, Luther Lanier, was the first African American Chief in the Sheriff's Department in Los Angeles. She is of African American, Korean and Caucasian ancestry, and was brought up in the California beach town of Ventura. As a child, she did not listen to classical music, but she did play the flute in her junior high school band. She and a classmate used to play basketball together and would "imitate opera singers". Her mother encouraged her to join the school choir and she tried out for a school musical and was a success. Early life and education At the age of 15, Cabell began to notice that "People obviously can hear something, even if I can't", she said. "That's sort of how it's been: I've been walking through doors as they've been presented to me". She had three yea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joyce DiDonato
Joyce DiDonato (née Flaherty; born February 13, 1969) is an American lyric-coloratura mezzo-soprano. She is notable for her interpretations of operas and concert works in the 19th-century romantic era in addition to works by Handel and Mozart. She has performed with many of the world's leading opera companies and orchestras, and won multiple awards including the 2012, 2016 and 2020 Grammy Award for Best Classical Vocal Solo. Early life and education Joyce Flaherty was born in Prairie Village, Kansas in 1969, the sixth of seven children in an Irish-American family. Her father, Donald, was a self-employed architect who designed houses in the area. One of her sisters, Amy Hetherington, was a music teacher at St. Ann Catholic School, which Joyce and her siblings attended. She later went to Bishop Miege High School where she sang in musicals. She entered Wichita State University (WSU) in 1988 to study vocal music education, because she was initially more interested in teaching high ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
