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Rosetta Pampanini
Rosetta Pampanini (2 September 1896 – 2 August 1973) was an Italian soprano, particularly associated with Puccini roles, especially Madama Butterfly. Biography Pampanini was born in Milan. She began singing as a child, and later studied with Emma Malajoli. She made her stage debut in 1920, at the Teatro Nazionale in Rome, as Micaela, and in Turin in 1921, as Siebel. After further studies, she made her debut at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, as Desdemona, in 1923, and sang the following year Elsa in Bergamo. Noticed by conductor Arturo Toscanini, she made her debut at the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, as Madama Butterfly, in 1925, and appeared there until 1937. Afterwards she began singing at all the major opera houses of Europe; the Monte Carlo Opera in 1927, the Royal Opera House in London, from 1928 to 1933, the Liceu in Barcelona and the Vienna State Opera in 1930, the Lyric Opera of Chicago from 1931 to 1932, and the Paris Opéra in 1935. She also appeared in Buenos Aires ... [...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" '' |
Manon Lescaut (Puccini)
''Manon Lescaut'' () is an Italian-language opera in four acts composed by Giacomo Puccini between 1889 and 1892 to a libretto by Luigi Illica, Marco Praga and , based on the 1731 novel '' Histoire du Chevalier des Grieux, et de Manon Lescaut'' by the Abbé Prévost. The opera was first performed in 1893 in Turin, at the Teatro Regio. Composition history The libretto is in Italian, and was cobbled together by five librettists whom Puccini employed: Ruggero Leoncavallo, Marco Praga, Giuseppe Giacosa, and Luigi Illica. The publisher, Giulio Ricordi, and the composer himself also contributed to the libretto. So confused was the authorship of the libretto that no one was credited on the title page of the original score. However, it was Illica and Giacosa who completed the libretto and went on to contribute the libretti to Puccini's next three – and most successful – works, ''La Bohème'', ''Tosca'' and ''Madama Butterfly''. Puccini took some musical elements in ''Manon Lesca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Umberto Giordano
Umberto Menotti Maria Giordano (28 August 186712 November 1948) was an Italian composer, mainly of operas. He was born in Foggia in Apulia, southern Italy, and studied under Paolo Serrao at the Conservatoire of Naples. His first opera, ''Marina'', was written for a competition promoted by the music publishers Casa Sonzogno for the best one-act opera, remembered today because it marked the beginning of Italian ''verismo''. The winner was Mascagni's ''Cavalleria rusticana''. Giordano, the youngest contestant, was placed sixth among seventy-three entries with his ''Marina'', a work which generated enough interest for Sonzogno to commission the staging of an opera based on it in the 1891–92 season. The result was ''Mala vita'', a gritty ''verismo'' opera about a labourer who vows to reform a prostitute if he is cured of his tuberculosis. This work caused something of a scandal when performed at the Teatro Argentina, Rome, in February 1892. It played successfully in Vienna, Pragu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aida
''Aida'' (or ''Aïda'', ) is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni. Set in the Old Kingdom of Egypt, it was commissioned by Cairo's Khedivial Opera House and had its première there on 24 December 1871, in a performance conducted by Giovanni Bottesini. Today the work holds a central place in the operatic canon, receiving performances every year around the world; at New York's Metropolitan Opera alone, ''Aida'' has been sung more than 1,100 times since 1886. Ghislanzoni's scheme follows a scenario often attributed to the French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette, but Verdi biographer Mary Jane Phillips-Matz argues that the source is actually Temistocle Solera. Elements of the opera's genesis and sources Isma'il Pasha, Khedive of Egypt, commissioned Verdi to write an opera to celebrate the opening of the Suez Canal, but Verdi declined. However, Auguste Mariette, a French Egyptologist, proposed to Khedive Pasha a plot for a celebratory ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Il Trovatore
''Il trovatore'' ('The Troubadour') is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto largely written by Salvadore Cammarano, based on the play ''El trovador'' (1836) by Antonio García Gutiérrez. It was García Gutiérrez's most successful play, one which Verdi scholar Julian Budden describes as "a high flown, sprawling melodrama flamboyantly defiant of the Aristotelian unities, packed with all manner of fantastic and bizarre incident." The premiere took place at the Teatro Apollo in Rome on 19 January 1853, where it "began a victorious march throughout the operatic world," a success due to Verdi's work over the previous three years. It began with his January 1850 approach to Cammarano with the idea of ''Il trovatore''. There followed, slowly and with interruptions, the preparation of the libretto, first by Cammarano until his death in mid-1852 and then with the young librettist Leone Emanuele Bardare, which gave the composer the opportunity to propose signifi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Giuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi (; 9 or 10 October 1813 – 27 January 1901) was an Italian composer best known for his operas. He was born near Busseto to a provincial family of moderate means, receiving a musical education with the help of a local patron. Verdi came to dominate the Italian opera scene after the era of Gioachino Rossini, Gaetano Donizetti, and Vincenzo Bellini, whose works significantly influenced him. In his early operas, Verdi demonstrated a sympathy with the Risorgimento movement which sought the unification of Italy. He also participated briefly as an elected politician. The chorus "Va, pensiero" from his early opera ''Nabucco'' (1842), and similar choruses in later operas, were much in the spirit of the unification movement, and the composer himself became esteemed as a representative of these ideals. An intensely private person, Verdi did not seek to ingratiate himself with popular movements. As he became professionally successful, he was able ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spinto
Spinto (from Italian, "pushed") is a vocal term used to characterize a soprano or tenor voice of a weight between lyric and dramatic that is capable of handling large musical climaxes in opera at moderate intervals. (Sometimes the terms ' or ' are used to denote this category of voice.) The spinto voice type is recognisable by its tonal "slice" or ''squillo''. This enables the singer to cut through the wall of sound produced by a full Romantic orchestra in a wide variety of roles, excluding only the most taxing ones written by the likes of Richard Wagner (such as ''Brünhilde'', ''Isolde'', ''Tristan'' and ''Siegfried''), Giacomo Meyerbeer (''John of Leyden''), Verdi (''Otello''), Puccini (''Turandot'', ''Calaf'') and Richard Strauss (''Elektra''). * : a fundamentally lyric soprano with a fair amount of extra "pulp" in her tone and a distinct thrust in her vocal attack. As they possess both a lyric and a dramatic quality, spinto sopranos are suitable for a broad spectrum of rol ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pagliacci
''Pagliacci'' (; literal translation, "Clowns") is an Italian opera in a prologue and two acts, with music and libretto by Ruggero Leoncavallo. The opera tells the tale of Canio, actor and leader of a commedia dell'arte theatrical company, who murders his wife Nedda and her lover Silvio on stage during a performance. ''Pagliacci'' premiered at the Teatro Dal Verme in Milan on 21 May 1892, conducted by Arturo Toscanini, with Adelina Stehle as Nedda, Fiorello Giraud as Canio, Victor Maurel as Tonio, and Mario Ancona as Silvio. Soon after its Italian premiere, the opera played in London (with Nellie Melba as Nedda) and in New York (on 15 June 1893, with Agostino Montegriffo as Canio). ''Pagliacci'' is the composer's only opera that is still widely performed. ''Pagliacci'' is often staged with ''Cavalleria rusticana'' by Pietro Mascagni, a double bill known colloquially as "Cav and Pag". Origin and disputes Leoncavallo was a little-known composer when Pietro Mascagni's ''Cavalleria ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ruggero Leoncavallo
Ruggero (or Ruggiero) Leoncavallo ( , , ; 23 April 18579 August 1919) was an Italian opera composer and librettist. Although he produced numerous operas and other songs throughout his career it is his opera '' Pagliacci'' (1892) that remained his lasting contribution, despite attempts to escape the shadow of his greatest success. Today he remains largely known for ''Pagliacci'', one of the most popular and frequently performed works in the opera repertory. His other compositions include the song "Mattinata", popularized by Enrico Caruso, and the symphonic poem ''La Nuit de mai''. Biography The son of Vincenzo Leoncavallo, a police magistrate and judge, Leoncavallo was born in Naples on 23 April 1857. As a child, Leoncavallo moved with his father to the town of Montalto Uffugo in Calabria, where he lived during his adolescence. He later returned to Naples and was educated at the city's San Pietro a Majella Conservatory and later the University of Bologna studying literature ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Iris (opera)
''Iris'' () is an opera in three acts by Pietro Mascagni to an original Italian libretto by Luigi Illica. It premiered on 22 November 1898 at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome. The story is set in Japan during legendary times. Background and performance history In common with all of Mascagni's full-length operas, ''Iris'' is now rarely performed, even in Italy, although along with ''L'amico Fritz'' it remains one of the composer's more performed operas. Two of the opera's most memorable numbers are the tenor's serenade ("Apri la tua finestra") and the Hymn to the Sun ("Inno al Sole"). The so-called "aria della piovra" ("Octopus aria"), "Un dì, ero piccina", where Iris describes a screen she had seen in a Buddhist temple when she was a child, depicting an octopus coiling its tentacles around a young woman, is a rare Western use of the popular Japanese tentacle erotica (''shokushu goukan'', 触手強姦, "tentacle violation") tradition, exemplified in the print ''The Dream of the Fisher ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Il Piccolo Marat
''Il piccolo Marat'' is a ''dramma lirico'' or opera in three acts by the Italian composer Pietro Mascagni from a libretto by Giovacchino Forzano. Performance history The opera was first performed on 2 May 1921 at the Teatro Costanzi, Rome and then many times in Italy and South America, with at least 450 individual performances documented. Though Mascagni was slated to perform the opera in the United States in 1926, logistics proved too difficult for rehearsal, and the North American premiere waited until 13 April 2009, when Teatro Grattacielo performed the opera at Avery Fisher Hall in New York. Roles Synopsis Source: Time of the Reign of Terror in France. Act One Scene: A small town square. On the left a building with a gallery and stairs, door beneath the gallery - The Committee Building. In the distance a bridge spanning a river. On the right a convent converted to a prison. All is deserted save "an American hussar" who stands guard at the prison. An autumn evening ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pietro Mascagni
Pietro Mascagni (7 December 1863 – 2 August 1945) was an Italian composer primarily known for his operas. His 1890 masterpiece ''Cavalleria rusticana'' caused one of the greatest sensations in opera history and single-handedly ushered in the ''Verismo'' movement in Italian dramatic music. While it was often held that Mascagni, like Ruggero Leoncavallo, was a "one-opera man" who could never repeat his first success, ''L'amico Fritz'' and ''Iris'' have remained in the repertoire in Europe (especially Italy) since their premieres. Mascagni wrote fifteen operas, an operetta, several orchestral and vocal works, and also songs and piano music. He enjoyed immense success during his lifetime, both as a composer and conductor of his own and other people's music and created a variety of styles in his operas. Biography Early life and education Mascagni was born on 7 December 1863 in Livorno, Tuscany, the second son of Domenico and Emilia Mascagni. His father owned and operated a baker ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
