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Psyche (Locke)
''Psyche'' is a semi-opera in five acts with music by Matthew Locke to a libretto by Thomas Shadwell with dances by Giovanni Battista Draghi. It was first performed at Dorset Garden Theatre, London on 27 February 1675 by the Duke's Company with choreography the French dancing-master Saint-André. Stage machinery was by Thomas Betterton and the scenery by Stephenson. The work is loosely based on Jean-Baptiste Lully's 1671 ''tragédie-ballet'' ''Psyché''. Composition, performance and publication According to Peter Holman, ''Psyche'' was "the first semi-opera written from scratch." It has over a dozen musical episodes and requires a large orchestra. Holman believes Locke composed it in response to the visit to Britain of a French opera company under the direction of Robert Cambert, which performed the opera ''Ariane, ou le mariage de Bacchus'' at the Drury Lane Theatre in March, 1674. Locke had produced his first semi-opera, ''The Tempest'', in the same year and was eager to follow u ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Semi-opera
The terms "semi-opera", "dramatic opera" and "English opera" were all applied to Restoration entertainments that combined spoken plays with masque-like episodes employing singing and dancing characters. They usually included machines in the manner of the restoration spectacular. The first examples were the Shakespeare adaptations produced by Thomas Betterton with music by Matthew Locke. After Locke's death, a second flowering produced the semi-operas of Henry Purcell, notably ''King Arthur'' and ''The Fairy-Queen''. Semi-opera received a deathblow when the Lord Chamberlain separately licensed plays without music and the new Italian opera. Semi-operas were performed with singing, speaking and dancing roles. When music was written, it was usually for moments in the play immediately following either love scenes or those concerning the supernatural. It has been observedCurtis Price and Louise K. Stein: "Semi-opera" in ''New Grove Dictionary of Opera'' that several of Calderón's '' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theatre Royal, Drury Lane
The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, commonly known as Drury Lane, is a West End theatre and Grade I listed building in Covent Garden, London, England. The building faces Catherine Street (earlier named Bridges or Brydges Street) and backs onto Drury Lane. The building is the most recent in a line of four theatres which were built at the same location, the earliest of which dated back to 1663, making it the oldest theatre site in London still in use. According to the author Peter Thomson, for its first two centuries, Drury Lane could "reasonably have claimed to be London's leading theatre". For most of that time, it was one of a handful of patent theatres, granted monopoly rights to the production of "legitimate" drama in London (meaning spoken plays, rather than opera, dance, concerts, or plays with music). The first theatre on the site was built at the behest of Thomas Killigrew in the early 1660s, when theatres were allowed to reopen during the English Restoration. Initially ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paul Agnew
Paul Agnew (born 1964 in Glasgow Glasgow ( ; sco, Glesca or ; gd, Glaschu ) is the most populous city in Scotland and the fourth-most populous city in the United Kingdom, as well as being the 27th largest city by population in Europe. In 2020, it had an estimated popul ...) is a Scottish operatic tenor and Conducting, conductor. Biography Agnew read music as a Choral scholar, Choral Scholar at Magdalen College, Oxford. He became associated with various groups specializing in early music (Ex Cathedra, the Consort of Musicke, the Tallis Scholars, the Sixteen and the Gothic Voices) before embarking on a solo career in the early 1990s. He is well known for singing Haute-contre, high tenor roles in French repertoire, although he has had success in other types of music. Paul Agnew's recordings include Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Mozart's ''Coronation Mass (Mozart), Coronation Mass'', Bach cantatas and Bach's ''Mass in B minor'' with Ton Koopman and the Amsterdam Baroque ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Catherine Bott
Catherine Bott (born 11 September 1952) is a British soprano and a Baroque specialist. She has also pursued a broadcasting career. Following her studies at The King's High School For Girls and Guildhall School of Music and Drama, with Arthur Reckless, she began her career as a member of the English Baroque-jazz crossover group, The Swingle Singers (then called "Swingle II"). By 1980 she had begun appearing frequently in the New London Consort and thereafter began performing across the world in Europe, Latin America and the USSR with several other period-instrument groups. She has recorded extensively, for example as Dido in Purcell's ''Dido and Aeneas'' (with Christopher Hogwood and the Academy of Ancient Music in 1994), with the choir of King's College, Cambridge conducted by Stephen Cleobury in Bach's '' St. John Passion'', as Venus in John Blow’s '' Venus and Adonis'' with Philip Pickett, and in Monteverdi's ''L'Incoronazione di Poppea'' with Sir John Eliot Gardiner. She a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
MacFlecknoe
''Mac Flecknoe'' (full title: ''Mac Flecknoe; or, A satyr upon the True-Blue-Protestant Poet, T.S.''Cox, Michael, editor, ''The Concise Oxford Chronology of English Literature'', Oxford University Press, 2004, ) is a verse mock-heroic satire written by John Dryden. It is a direct attack on Thomas Shadwell, another prominent poet of the time. It opens with the lines: Written about 1678, but not published until 1682 (see 1682 in poetry), "Mac Flecknoe" is the outcome of a series of disagreements between Thomas Shadwell and Dryden. Their quarrel blossomed from the following disagreements: "1) their different estimates of the genius of Ben Jonson, 2) the preference of Dryden for comedy of wit and repartee and of Shadwell, the chief disciple of Jonson, for humors comedy, 3) a sharp disagreement over the true purpose of comedy, 4) contention over the value of rhymed plays, and 5) plagiarism." Oden, Richard, L. ''Dryden and Shadwell, The Literary Controversy and 'Mac Flecknoe' (1668–16 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Dryden
'' John Dryden (; – ) was an English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who in 1668 was appointed England's first Poet Laureate. He is seen as dominating the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden. Romanticist writer Sir Walter Scott called him "Glorious John". Early life Dryden was born in the village rectory of Aldwincle near Thrapston in Northamptonshire, where his maternal grandfather was the rector of All Saints. He was the eldest of fourteen children born to Erasmus Dryden and wife Mary Pickering, paternal grandson of Sir Erasmus Dryden, 1st Barone t (1553–1632), and wife Frances Wilkes, Puritan landowning gentry who supported the Puritan cause and Parliament. He was a second cousin once removed of Jonathan Swift. As a boy, Dryden lived in the nearby village of Titchmarsh, where it is likely that he received his first education. In 1644 he was sent to Westminst ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Duffet
Thomas Duffet ( fl. 1673 – 1676), or Duffett, was an Irish playwright and songwriter active in England in the 1670s. He is remembered for his popular songs and his burlesques of the serious plays of John Dryden, Thomas Shadwell, Elkanah Settle and Sir William Davenant. By profession, Duffet was a milliner who maintained a shop in the New Exchange in London. Virtually nothing is known of his life apart from his surviving works. A Thomas Duffet confessed to forgery in 1677 and this may have been the author. Duffet's plays show a close familiarity with the lower and criminal classes of London society, perhaps suggesting first-hand knowledge. Plays Duffet's dramatic canon is uncertain and in dispute among scholars and critics. Six plays are generally attributed to him with a fair degree of certainty: *'' The Spanish Rogue'', 1673 (printed 1674) * ''The Amorous Old Woman'', 1674 * '' The Mock Tempest, or the Enchanted Castle'', 1674 (1675) * ''The Empress of Morocco: a Farce'', ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cupid And Psyche
Cupid and Psyche is a story originally from ''Metamorphoses'' (also called ''The Golden Ass''), written in the 2nd century AD by Lucius Apuleius Madaurensis (or Platonicus). The tale concerns the overcoming of obstacles to the love between Psyche (; , , "Soul" or "Breath of Life") and Cupid (Latin ''Cupido'', "Desire") or Amor ("Love", Greek Eros, Ἔρως), and their ultimate union in a sacred marriage. Although the only extended narrative from antiquity is that of Apuleius from 2nd century AD, Eros and Psyche appear in Greek art as early as the 4th century BC. The story's Neoplatonic elements and allusions to mystery religions accommodate multiple interpretations, and it has been analyzed as an allegory and in light of folktale, '' Märchen'' or fairy tale, and myth. The story of Cupid and Psyche was known to Boccaccio in c. 1370, but the '' editio princeps'' dates to 1469. Ever since, the reception of ''Cupid and Psyche'' in the classical tradition has been extensive. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harpsichord
A harpsichord ( it, clavicembalo; french: clavecin; german: Cembalo; es, clavecín; pt, cravo; nl, klavecimbel; pl, klawesyn) is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. This activates a row of levers that turn a trigger mechanism that plucks one or more strings with a small plectrum made from quill or plastic. The strings are under tension on a soundboard, which is mounted in a wooden case; the soundboard amplifies the vibrations from the strings so that the listeners can hear it. Like a pipe organ, a harpsichord may have more than one keyboard manual, and even a pedal board. Harpsichords may also have stop buttons which add or remove additional octaves. Some harpsichords may have a buff stop, which brings a strip of buff leather or other material in contact with the strings, muting their sound to simulate the sound of a plucked lute. The term denotes the whole family of similar plucked-keyboard instruments, including the smaller virginals, muselar, and spinet. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philip Pickett
Philip Pickett (born 17 November 1950) is an English musician. Pickett was director of early music ensembles including the New London Consort, and taught at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He played recorders, shawms and similar instruments. In February 2015, Pickett received an 11-year prison sentence for the rape and sexual assault of pupils at the school. Early life Born in London but raised in Gloucestershire, he began playing the trumpet while a student at Marling School, Stroud. There he met Antony Baines and David Munrow, who encouraged him to try early woodwind instruments such as the recorder, shawm and rackett. He studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Pickett was forced to give up the trumpet after being kicked in the mouth while being assaulted on the London Underground at the end of his first year. Career Pickett played for the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, the English Concert, the English Chamber Orchestra and the London Mozart Play ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Cambert
Robert Cambert (c. 1628–1677) was a French composer principally of opera. His opera '' Pomone'' was the first actual opera in French. Biography Under Mazarin Born in Paris c. 1628, he studied music under Chambonnières. His first position was as organist at the church of Saint-Honoré in Paris. In 1655 he married Marie du Moustier. At this time he came under the patronage of Cardinal Mazarin who was instrumental in his appointment as Superintendent of music to the Dowager Queen Anne of Austria, mother of Louis XIV. Cambert's early works with libretto written by Pierre Perrin were frequently performed at court during this period. However, following the death of the powerful Mazarin, and the Queen's subsequent retirement to a convent, Cambert's position at court was weakened, as new powers came into force at court. ''Académie Royale de Musique'' In 1669 Perrin founded the ''Académie Royale de Musique'', under the auspices of the French King. Cambert was invited to join Perrin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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