Selina Dolaro
Selina Simmons Belasco Dolaro (20 August 1849 – 23 January 1889) was an English singer, actress, theatre manager and writer of the late Victorian era. During her career in operetta and other forms of musical theatre, she managed several of her own opera companies and directed the Royalty Theatre in London. She is best remembered as a producer of the original production of ''Trial by Jury'' by Gilbert and Sullivan. Dolaro sang the title role in the opera ''Carmen'' in the first English language version of that opera with the Carl Rosa Opera Company. She also wrote plays and novels. Early life Dolaro was born in London to Jewish parents, Benjamin Simmons, a violinist and conductor, and Julia (''née'' Lewis).Siegel, Michele"Selina Dolaro" ''Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia'', 1 March 2009, Jewish Women's Archive, accessed 12 January 2010 She received early music lessons from her father's colleagues, and she attended the Paris Conservatory as a teenager ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Gaiety Theatre, London
The Gaiety Theatre was a West End theatre in London, located on Aldwych at the eastern end of the Strand. The theatre was first established as the Strand Musick Hall in 1864 on the former site of the Lyceum Theatre. In 1868, it became known as the Gaiety Theatre and was, at first, known for music hall and then for musical burlesque, pantomime and operetta performances. From 1868 to the 1890s, it had a major influence on the development of modern musical comedy. Under the management of John Hollingshead until 1886, the theatre had early success with ''Robert the Devil'', by W. S. Gilbert, followed by many other burlesques of operas and literary works. Many of the productions starred Nellie Farren. Hollingshead's last production at the theatre was the burlesque ''Little Jack Sheppard'' (1885–86), produced together with his successor, George Edwardes. Edwardes's first show, ''Dorothy'', became a long-running hit. In the 1880s and 90s, the theatre had further success with a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Nelly Bromley
Eleanor Elizabeth Emily (Nelly, sometimes Nellie) Bromley (30 September 1850 – 27 October 1939) was an English actor and singer who performed in operettas, musical burlesques and comic plays. She is best remembered today for having created the role of the Plaintiff in Gilbert & Sullivan's first success, ''Trial by Jury'', although she played in that piece for just over three months out of a successful career spanning nearly two decades. Life and early career Bromley was born on 30 September 1850 in London to an actress and singer, also Eleanor Bromley (1826–1860). The identity of her father is unknown. Her mother was born into the large family of John Charles Bromley (died 1839) and his wife Hannah ''née'' Shailer. Her mother had begun acting while still a teenager, in 1843, appearing at many of the major West End theatres, especially at the Olympic Theatre. She continued to act until she died in childbirth in 1860. In 1857, she had married Charles Henry Cook. After her moth ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Arthur Sullivan
Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan (13 May 1842 – 22 November 1900) was an English composer. He is best known for 14 comic opera, operatic Gilbert and Sullivan, collaborations with the dramatist W. S. Gilbert, including ''H.M.S. Pinafore'', ''The Pirates of Penzance'' and ''The Mikado''. His works include 24 operas, 11 major orchestral works, ten choral works and oratorios, two ballets, incidental music to several plays, and numerous church pieces, songs, and piano and chamber pieces. His hymns and songs include "Onward, Christian Soldiers" and "The Lost Chord". The son of a military bandmaster, Sullivan composed his first anthem at the age of eight and was later a soloist in the boys' choir of the Chapel Royal. In 1856, at 14, he was awarded the first Mendelssohn Scholarship by the Royal Academy of Music, which allowed him to study at the academy and then at the Felix Mendelssohn College of Music and Theatre, Leipzig Conservatoire in Germany. His graduation piece, inc ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Richard D'Oyly Carte
Richard D'Oyly Carte (; 3 May 1844 – 3 April 1901) was an English talent agent, theatrical impresario, composer, and hotelier during the latter half of the Victorian era. He built two of London's theatres and a hotel empire, while also establishing an opera company that ran continuously for over a hundred years and a management agency representing some of the most important artists of the day. Carte started his career working for his father, Richard Carte, in the music publishing and musical instrument manufacturing business. As a young man he conducted and composed music, but he soon turned to promoting the entertainment careers of others through his management agency. Carte believed that a school of wholesome, well-crafted, family-friendly, English comic opera could be as popular as the risqué French works dominating the London musical stage in the 1870s. To that end he brought together the dramatist W. S. Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan and nurtured their collaboration ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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La Périchole
''La Périchole'' () is an opéra bouffe in three acts by Jacques Offenbach. Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy wrote the French libretto based on the 1829 one act play '' Le carrosse du Saint-Sacrement'' by Prosper Mérimée, which was revived on 13 March 1850 at the Théâtre-Français. Offenbach was probably aware of this production, as he conducted the orchestra of the Comédie-Française from around this time. Another theatrical creation that pre-dates Offenbach's opéra bouffe and may have influenced the piece is a farce by Desforges and Théaulon given on 21 October 1835 at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal. ''La Périchole''s title character is based on Micaela Villegas, a beloved 18th century Peruvian entertainer and the famous mistress of Manuel de Amat y Juniet, Viceroy of Peru from 1761 to 1776. The story concerns two impoverished Peruvian street-singers, too poor to afford a marriage license, and a lecherous viceroy, Don Andrès de Ribeira, who wishes to make La Péric ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Durward Lely
Durward Lely (2 September 1852 – 29 February 1944) was a Scottish opera singer and actor. Although he had an extensive opera, concert and acting career, he is primarily remembered as the creator of five tenor roles in Gilbert and Sullivan's comic operas, including Nanki-Poo in ''The Mikado'', for the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company. Lely studied singing in Italy in the early 1870s and beginning his career there. He returned to tour in concerts and made his British opera debut in 1879, at Her Majesty's Theatre, in what would become one of his signature roles, Don José, in ''Carmen''. After touring in opera, he joined the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company in 1880, soon becoming their leading tenor. He began there in the role of Frederic in ''The Pirates of Penzance'' and went on to create five roles in the famous series of Savoy operas, including Nanki-Poo in ''The Mikado''. He remained with the company until 1887. After this, Lely resumed a grand opera and concert career, appearing often wi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet (; 25 October 18383 June 1875) was a French composer of the Romantic music, Romantic era. Best known for his operas in a career cut short by his early death, Bizet achieved few successes before his final work, ''Carmen'', which has become one of the most popular and frequently performed works in the entire opera repertoire. During a brilliant student career at the Conservatoire de Paris, Bizet won many prizes, including the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1857. He was recognised as an outstanding pianist, though he chose not to capitalise on this skill and rarely performed in public. Returning to Paris after almost three years in Italy, he found that the main Parisian opera theatres preferred the established classical repertoire to the works of newcomers. His keyboard and orchestral compositions were likewise largely ignored; as a result, his career stalled, and he earned his living mainly by arranging and transcribing the music of others. Restless for success, he ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Zampa
''Zampa'','' ou La fiancée de marbre'' (''Zampa, or the Marble Bride'') is an opéra comique in three acts by French composer Ferdinand Hérold, with a libretto by Mélesville. The overture to the opera is one of Hérold's most famous works and is a staple of orchestral repertoire. Performance history ''Zampa'' was first performed in Paris on 3 May 1831 at the Opéra-Comique (Salle Ventadour), where it became popular, achieving 500 performances by 1877. In the 20th century however, it faded from the repertoire. It was also popular in Germany and Italy; in the latter the spoken dialogue was replaced by recitatives. It was first performed in the United States on 16 February 1833 at the Théâtre d'Orléans in New Orleans, and in the United Kingdom on 19 April 1833 at the King's Theatre in London. The opera was revived at the Opéra-Comique in March 2008 under William Christie in a production by Macha Makeïeff and Jérôme Deschamps. [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ferdinand Hérold
Louis Joseph Ferdinand Herold (28 January 1791 – 19 January 1833), better known as Ferdinand Hérold (), was a French composer. He was celebrated in his lifetime for his operas, of which he composed more than twenty, but he also wrote ballet music, works for piano and choral pieces. He is best known today for the ballet ''La fille mal gardée#Jean-Pierre Aumer's new version taddo the music of Hérold, La Fille mal gardée'' and the overture to the opera ''Zampa''. Born in Paris to a musical family, Hérold trained at the Paris Conservatoire and won France's premier musical prize, the Prix de Rome in 1812. After a time in Italy he returned to Paris and worked first at the Comédie-Italienne, Théâtre Italien and then at the Paris Opéra, Opéra. He wrote several ballets for the latter, but was best known as a composer of opéra comique. Some of them particularly in his early days, were hampered by poor librettos, but later he had more successes than failures, and his last two ope ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Victorian Burlesque
Victorian burlesque, sometimes known as travesty or extravaganza, is a genre of theatrical entertainment that was popular in Victorian era, Victorian England and in the New York theatre of the mid-19th century. It is a form of parody music, parody in which a well-known opera or piece of classical theatre or ballet is adapted into a broad comic play, usually a musical play, usually risqué in style, mocking the theatrical and musical conventions and styles of the original work, and often quoting or pastiche, pastiching text or music from the original work. Victorian burlesque is one of several forms of burlesque. Like ballad opera, burlesques featured musical scores drawing on a wide range of music, from popular contemporary songs to operatic arias, although later burlesques, from the 1880s, sometimes featured original scores. Dance played an important part, and great attention was paid to the staging, costumes and other spectacular elements of stagecraft, as many of the pieces we ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Doctor Faust
Faust is the protagonist of a classic German legend based on the historical Johann Georg Faust ( 1480–1540). The erudite Faust is highly successful yet dissatisfied with his life, which leads him to make a pact with the Devil at a crossroads, exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. The Faust legend has been the basis for many literary, artistic, cinematic, and musical works that have reinterpreted it through the ages. "Faust" and the adjective "Faustian" imply sacrificing spiritual values for power, knowledge, or material gain. The Faust of early books—as well as the ballads, dramas, movies, and puppet-plays which grew out of them—is irrevocably damned because he prefers human knowledge over divine knowledge: "he laid the Holy Scriptures behind the door and under the bench, refused to be called doctor of theology, but preferred to be styled doctor of medicine". Plays and comic puppet theatre loosely based on this legend were popular throughout ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |