Ronald Naldi
Ronald Naldi is an American lyric tenor who has sung on the stages of the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Arena di Verona, Salzburger Landestheater, L'Opéra Français, and New Jersey State Opera, under the baton of maestri James Levine, Valery Gergiev, James Conlon, David Robertson, Leonard Slatkin, Joseph Colaneri, Charles Mackerras, Christopher Keene, Alfredo Silipigni, Lukas Foss, Nello Santi, Vincent LaSelva, Thomas Booth, and Eduardo Müller, and alongside singers Plácido Domingo, Luciano Pavarotti, Leo Nucci, James Morris, Samuel Ramey, and Renee Fleming, among many. His repertory comprises over 100 operatic roles in six languages, as well as an extensive repertory of American, English, French, German, and Italian songs. Naldi has sung over 300 performances at the Metropolitan Opera since his debut there in 1983, including Ismaele in ''Nabucco'', Tschekalinsky in '' The Queen of Spades'', and Vitek in the Met premiere of Leoš Janáček's ''The Makropulos ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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WikiProject Opera
A WikiProject, or Wikiproject, is a Wikimedia movement affinity group for contributors with shared goals. WikiProjects are prevalent within the largest wiki, Wikipedia, and exist to varying degrees within sister projects such as Wiktionary, Wikiquote, Wikidata, and Wikisource. They also exist in different languages, and translation of articles is a form of their collaboration. During the COVID-19 pandemic, CBS News noted the role of Wikipedia's WikiProject Medicine in maintaining the accuracy of articles related to the disease. Another WikiProject that has drawn attention is WikiProject Women Scientists, which was profiled by '' Smithsonian'' for its efforts to improve coverage of women scientists which the profile noted had "helped increase the number of female scientists on Wikipedia from around 1,600 to over 5,000". On Wikipedia Some Wikipedia WikiProjects are substantial enough to engage in cooperative activities with outside organizations relevant to the field at issue. For ex ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Nello Santi
Nello Santi (22 September 1931 – 6 February 2020) was an Italian conductor. He was associated with the Opernhaus Zürich for six decades, and was a regular conductor at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City. He was focused on Italian repertoire, especially operas by Verdi and Puccini, in a style following the tradition of Toscanini. He made sound and video recordings of Italian operas, including in 1971 Leoncavallo's ''Pagliacci'' with Plácido Domingo, Montserrat Caballé and Sherrill Milnes, in 1976 Montemezzi's ''L'amore dei tre re'' with Anna Moffo, Domingo and Pablo Elvira, in 2000 Verdi's '' I due Foscari'', and in 2006 Donizetti's ''Don Pasquale'' in a Zürich production. Santi conducted from memory, and said "I love all of Verdi, but when he composed ''Rigoletto'', ''Il trovatore'' and ''La traviata'' he was in a profound state of grace." Life Santi was born on 22 September 1931 in Adria (Veneto), Kingdom of Italy, to Giovanni and Alfonsina () Santi. His mother ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Otello
''Otello'' () is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Arrigo Boito, based on Shakespeare's play ''Othello''. It was Verdi's penultimate opera, first performed at the Teatro alla Scala, Milan, on 5 February 1887. The composer was reluctant to write anything new after the success of ''Aida'' in 1871, and he retreated into retirement. It took his Milan publisher Giulio Ricordi the next ten years, first to encourage the revision of Verdi's 1857 ''Simon Boccanegra'' by introducing Boito as librettist and then to begin the arduous process of persuading and cajoling Verdi to see Boito's completed libretto for ''Otello'' in July/August 1881. However, the process of writing the first drafts of the libretto and the years of their revision, with Verdi all along not promising anything, dragged on. It wasn't until 1884, five years after the first drafts of the libretto, that composition began, with most of the work finishing in late 1885. When it finally premiere ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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War And Peace (Prokofiev)
''War and Peace'' (Op. 91) (russian: Война и мир, ''Voyna i mir'') is a 1946 230-minute opera in 13 scenes, plus an overture and an epigraph, by Sergei Prokofiev. Based on the 1869 novel ''War and Peace'' by Leo Tolstoy, its Russian libretto was prepared by the composer and Mira Mendelson. The first seven scenes are devoted to peace, the latter six, after the epigraph, to war. Although Tolstoy's work is classified as a novel, the 1812 invasion of Russia by the French was a historical event, and some real-life people appear as characters in both the novel and the opera, e.g. Prince Mikhail Kutuzov and Napoleon Bonaparte. Composition history Mendelson and Prokofiev's original scheme for the libretto of the opera envisaged 11 scenes, and Prokofiev began composing the music in the summer of 1942, spurred on by the German invasion of the Soviet Union which began on June 22, 1941. The description "lyric-dramatic scenes" in the libretto accurately suggests both a homage to Tch ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Macbeth (opera)
''Macbeth'' () is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi, with an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave and additions by Andrea Maffei, based on William Shakespeare's play of the same name. Written for the Teatro della Pergola in Florence, it was Verdi's tenth opera and premiered on 14 March 1847. ''Macbeth'' was the first Shakespeare play that Verdi adapted for the operatic stage. Almost twenty years later, ''Macbeth'' was revised and expanded in a French version and given in Paris on 19 April 1865. After the success of ''Attila'' in 1846, by which time the composer had become well established, ''Macbeth'' came before the great successes of 1851 to 1853 (''Rigoletto'', ''Il trovatore'' and '' La traviata'') which propelled him into universal fame. As sources, Shakespeare's plays provided Verdi with lifelong inspiration: some, such as an adaption of ''King Lear'' (as ''Re Lear'') were never realized, but he wrote his two final operas using ''Othello'' as the basis for ' ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Makropulos Affair (opera)
''The Makropulos Affair'' (or ''The Makropoulos Case'', ''The Makropulos Secret'', or, literally, ''The Makropulos Thing''; Czech ''Věc Makropulos'') is a Czech opera in 3 acts, with music and libretto by Leoš Janáček. Janáček based his opera on the play ''Věc Makropulos'' by Karel Čapek. Composed between 1923 and 1925, ''The Makropulos Affair'' was his penultimate opera and, like much of his later work, was inspired by his infatuation with Kamila Stösslová, a married woman much younger than himself. The opera received its world premiere at the National Theatre in Brno on 18 December 1926, conducted by František Neumann. Composition history Janáček had seen the play early in its run in Prague on 10 December 1922, and immediately saw its potential as an opera. He entered into a correspondence with Čapek, who was accommodating towards the idea, although legal problems in securing the rights to the play delayed work. When these problems were cleared on 10 September 19 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Leoš Janáček
Leoš Janáček (, baptised Leo Eugen Janáček; 3 July 1854 – 12 August 1928) was a Czech composer, musical theorist, folklorist, publicist, and teacher. He was inspired by Moravian and other Slavic musics, including Eastern European folk music, to create an original, modern musical style.Sehnal and Vysloužil (2001), p. 175 Until 1895 he devoted himself mainly to folkloristic research. While his early musical output was influenced by contemporaries such as Antonín Dvořák, his later, mature works incorporate his earlier studies of national folk music in a modern, highly original synthesis, first evident in the opera ''Jenůfa'', which was premiered in 1904 in Brno. The success of ''Jenůfa'' (often called the "Moravian national opera") at Prague in 1916 gave Janáček access to the world's great opera stages. Janáček's later works are his most celebrated. They include operas such as ''Káťa Kabanová'' and ''The Cunning Little Vixen'', the Sinfonietta, the ''Glag ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Queen Of Spades (opera)
''The Queen of Spades'' or ''Pique Dame'', Op. 68 (russian: Пиковая дама, ''Pikovaya dama'' , french: La Dame de Pique) is an opera in three acts (seven scenes) by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky to a Russian libretto by the composer's brother Modest Tchaikovsky, based on the 1834 novella of the same name by Alexander Pushkin, but with a dramatically altered plot. The premiere took place in 1890 at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Composition history The Imperial Theatre offered Tchaikovsky a commission to write an opera based on the plot sketch by Ivan Vsevolozhsky in 1887/88. After first turning it down, Tchaikovsky accepted it in 1889. Toward the end of that year, he met with the theatre's managers to discuss the material and sketch out some of the scenes. He completed the full score in Florence in only 44 days. Later, working with the tenor who was to perform the lead character, he created two versions of Herman's aria in the seventh scene, using diff ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Nabucco
''Nabucco'' (, short for Nabucodonosor ; en, " Nebuchadnezzar") is an Italian-language opera in four acts composed in 1841 by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Temistocle Solera. The libretto is based on the biblical books of 2 Kings, Jeremiah, Lamentations and Daniel and the 1836 play by Auguste Anicet-Bourgeois and Francis Cornu. However, Antonio Cortese's ballet adaptation of the play (with its necessary simplifications), given at La Scala in 1836, was a more important source for Solera than the play itself. Under its original name of ''Nabucodonosor'', the opera was first performed at La Scala in Milan on 9 March 1842. ''Nabucco'' is the opera that is considered to have permanently established Verdi's reputation as a composer. He commented that "this is the opera with which my artistic career really begins. And though I had many difficulties to fight against, it is certain that ''Nabucco'' was born under a lucky star." The opera follows the plight of the Jews as t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Samuel Ramey
Samuel Edward Ramey (born March 28, 1942) is an American operatic bass. At the height of his career, he was greatly admired for his range and versatility, having possessed a sufficiently accomplished bel canto technique to enable him to sing the music of Handel, Mozart and Rossini, yet with power enough to handle the more overtly dramatic roles in Verdi and Puccini. Early life Ramey graduated from Colby High School in Colby, Kansas in 1960. He studied music in high school and in college at Kansas State University, as well as at Wichita State with Arthur Newman. In college at Kansas State, he was a member of the Kappa Sigma Fraternity. After further study in Central City (where he was in the chorus of ''Don Giovanni'' in 1963, with Norman Treigle in the title role) and as an apprentice with the Santa Fe Opera, he went to New York City where he worked for an academic publisher before he had his first breakthrough at the New York City Opera, debuting on March 11, 1973, as ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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James Morris (bass-baritone)
James Peppler Morris (born 10 January 1947) Goodwin, Noël (1992). "Morris, James" in Sadie, Stanley, ed. (1992). ''The new Grove dictionary of opera'', 3: 472. London: Macmillan. . is a leading American bass-baritone opera singer. He is known for his interpretation of the role of Wotan in Richard Wagner's operatic cycle, ''Der Ring des Nibelungen''. The Metropolitan Opera video recording of the complete cycle with Morris as Wotan has been described as an "exceptional issue on every count." It was broadcast on PBS in 1990, to the largest viewing audience of the ''Ring Cycle'' in human history. James Morris was born in Baltimore, Maryland, where he studied voice with Rosa Ponselle and at the Peabody Conservatory. He attended the University of Maryland and also studied at the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He made his debut with the Baltimore Opera in 1967, as "Crespel" in Jacques Offenbach's ''The Tales of Hoffmann'', which starred Beverly Sills and Norma ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |