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Rosl Zapf
Rosl Zapf (17 February 19251 March 2019) was an Austrian operatic mezzo-soprano. She was a member of the Oper Frankfurt from 1950 to 1976, where she appeared in leading roles such as Herodias in ''Salome''. She took part in world premieres such as Luise Talma's '' Die Alkestiade'' and ''Uno sguardo dal ponte'' by Renzo Rossellini. She performed at leading opera houses internationally, including La Monnaie in Brussels, Teatro Nacional de São Carlos in Lisbon and the Paris Opéra. Life Born in Hof, Land Salzburg, Zapf studied voice in Graz with Stoja von Milinković. She had her first engagement from 1945 to 1949 at the Landestheater Salzburg. After a short engagement at the Bavarian State Opera, she was a soloist at the Oper Frankfurt from 1950 where she was a permanent member until she retired from the stage in 1976, becoming one of the most popular members of the ensemble. On 1 July 1950, she appeared in a performance of Krenek's ''Leben des Orest'' as part of the Darmstäd ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hof Bei Salzburg
Hof bei Salzburg is a municipality in the district of Salzburg-Umgebung in the state of Salzburg in Austria. The mezzo-soprano Rosl Zapf (1925–2019) was born in Hof bei Salzburg. Geography Hof bei Salzburg is on the shore of the Fuschlsee and is surrounded by the Salzkammergut The Salzkammergut (; ; bar, Soizkaumaguad, label=Central Austro-Bavarian) is a resort area in Austria, stretching from the city of Salzburg eastwards along the Alpine Foreland and the Northern Limestone Alps to the peaks of the Dachstein Mou ... mountains. The town is on the Austrian motorway A1. References Cities and towns in Salzburg-Umgebung District {{Salzburg-geo-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bernd Aldenhoff
Bernd Aldenhoff (14 June 1908, in Duisburg – 8 October 1959, in München) was a German Heldentenor. Career He was born in 1908 in Duisburg, and raised in an orphanage in the Rhineland. Despite his humble beginnings, he managed to secure an engagement in the Cologne Opera chorus. While in Cologne he continued his vocal studies with a Professor Lenz, and was eventually promoted to soloist in the Cologne theater. After engagements in Darmstadt and Erfurt, he first came to national prominence at the Deutsche Oper am Rhein, Düsseldorf, where he sang from 1938 to 1944. During this period he made several guest appearances at the Oper Frankfurt, where he made a strong impression in the Verdi spinto roles of Manrico and Riccardo. During the war he sang in a number of German provincial houses, and from 1944 to 1952 he was a member of the Dresden Semperoper, where he developed into a Heldentenor. He first appeared at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus in 1951 as Siegfried in "Der Ring des Nibe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Operetta
Operetta is a form of theatre and a genre of light opera. It includes spoken dialogue, songs, and dances. It is lighter than opera in terms of its music, orchestral size, length of the work, and at face value, subject matter. Apart from its shorter length, the operetta is usually of a light and amusing character. It sometimes also includes satirical commentaries. "Operetta" is the Italian diminutive of "opera" and was used originally to describe a shorter, perhaps less ambitious work than an opera. Operetta provides an alternative to operatic performances in an accessible form targeting a different audience. Operetta became a recognizable form in the mid-19th century in France, and its popularity led to the development of many national styles of operetta. Distinctive styles emerged across countries including Austria-Hungary, Germany, England, Spain, the Philippines, Mexico, Cuba, and the United States. Through the transfer of operetta among different countries, cultural cosmop ... [...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] |
Lulu (opera)
''Lulu'' (composed from 1929 to 1935, premièred incomplete in 1937 and complete in 1979) is an opera in three acts by Alban Berg. Berg adapted the libretto from Frank Wedekind's two ''Lulu'' plays, ''Erdgeist'' ('' Earth Spirit'', 1895) and ''Die Büchse der Pandora'' (''Pandora's Box'', 1904). The opera tells the story of a mysterious young woman known as Lulu, who follows a downward spiral from a well-kept mistress in Vienna to a street prostitute in London, while being both a victim and a purveyor of destruction. It explores the idea of the '' femme fatale'' and the duality between her feminine and masculine qualities. Berg died before completing the third and final act, and in the following decades the opera was typically performed incomplete. Since the 1979 publication of the version including Friedrich Cerha's orchestration of the act 3 sketches, it has become standard. ''Lulu'' is especially notable for using serialism at a time that was particularly inhospitable to it. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Albert Herring
''Albert Herring'', Op. 39, is a chamber opera in three acts by Benjamin Britten. Composed in the winter of 1946 and the spring of 1947, this comic opera was a successor to his serious opera ''The Rape of Lucretia''. The libretto, by Eric Crozier, was based on Guy de Maupassant's novella '' Le Rosier de Madame Husson'', with the action transposed to an English setting. Composition history After having composed and staged ''The Rape of Lucretia'', Britten decided he should attempt a comedy, preferably set in England.Nigel Douglas. "Some personal memories of Benjamin Britten, the English Opera Group and ''Albert Herring''". Booklet note to Nimbus NI 5824/6 (2008). Crozier suggested adapting the Maupassant short story ''Le rosier de Madame Husson'' and transplanting it to the Suffolk landscape already familiar to Britten from his home in Snape. Britten composed ''Albert Herring'' at his home, The Old Mill at Snape, in the winter of 1946 and the spring of 1947. He scored the oper ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Der Evangelimann
''Der Evangelimann'' (''The Evangelist'') is an opera in two acts by the Austrian composer Wilhelm Kienzl. The libretto, by the composer, is based on short story "". It was adapted in 1924 as a silent film '' The Evangelist''. Composition history Kienzl composed the opera in a relatively short space of time during 1894 in Graz and in the little Austrian town of Vöcklabruck. When he played extracts from the score to conductor Karl Muck and Count (then artistic director of the Berlin Opera), they immediately secured the rights to the premiere. The score was published by Bote & Bock Berlin, now part of Boosey & Hawkes. Performance history The opera was first performed at the on 4 May 1895. It was a triumphant success. Within only a few years most German and Austrian opera houses had the work in their repertory. Famous conductors such as Felix Mottl, Gustav Mahler, Franz Schalk and Richard Strauss gave it their support, and the title role of the Evangelist Mathias was sung by p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Falstaff (opera)
''Falstaff'' () is a comic opera in three acts by the Italian composer Giuseppe Verdi. The Italian-language libretto was adapted by Arrigo Boito from the play '' The Merry Wives of Windsor'' and scenes from '' Henry IV, Part 1'' and '' Part 2'', by William Shakespeare. The work premiered on 9 February 1893 at La Scala, Milan. Verdi wrote ''Falstaff'', the last of his 28 operas, as he approached the age of 80. It was his second comedy, and his third work based on a Shakespeare play, following '' Macbeth'' and '' Otello''. The plot revolves around the thwarted, sometimes farcical, efforts of the fat knight Sir John Falstaff to seduce two married women to gain access to their husbands' wealth. Verdi was concerned about working on a new opera at his advanced age, but he yearned to write a comic work and was pleased with Boito's draft libretto. It took the collaborators three years from mid-1889 to complete. Although the prospect of a new opera from Verdi aroused im ... [...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] |
Hänsel Und Gretel (opera)
''Hansel and Gretel'' (German: ') is an opera by nineteenth-century composer Engelbert Humperdinck, who described it as a ' (fairy-tale opera). The libretto was written by Humperdinck's sister, Adelheid Wette, based on the Grimm brothers' fairy tale "Hansel and Gretel". It is much admired for its folk music-inspired themes, one of the most famous being the "" ("Evening Benediction") from act 2. The idea for the opera was proposed to Humperdinck by his sister, who approached him about writing music for songs that she had written for her children for Christmas based on "Hansel and Gretel". After several revisions, the musical sketches and the songs were turned into a full-scale opera. Humperdinck composed ''Hansel and Gretel'' in Frankfurt in 1891 and 1892. The opera was first performed in the Hoftheater in Weimar on 23 December 1893, conducted by Richard Strauss. It has been associated with Christmas since its earliest performances and today it is still most often performed at ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Merry Wives Of Windsor (opera)
''The Merry Wives of Windsor'' (German: ''Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor'') is an opera in three acts by Otto Nicolai to a German libretto by Salomon Hermann Mosenthal based on the play ''The Merry Wives of Windsor'' by William Shakespeare. The opera is a ''Singspiel'', containing much spoken dialogue between distinct musical numbers. The opera remains popular in Germany, and the overture is sometimes heard in concert in other countries. Composition history Otto Nicolai composed the music from 1845 to 1849. He had previously achieved great success with a few Italian operas, but this opera was to become his masterpiece in the German language. The composer himself made some changes to the libretto. Performance history It was difficult at first to find a stage that was willing to mount the opera. Following the premiere at the Königliches Opernhaus (Royal Opera House, now Berlin State Opera) in Berlin on 9 March 1849 under the baton of the composer, it proved unsuccessful at first, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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