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St James’s Hall
St. James's Hall was a concert hall in London that opened on 25 March 1858, designed by architect and artist Owen Jones, who had decorated the interior of the Crystal Palace. It was situated between the Quadrant in Regent Street and Piccadilly, and Vine Street and George Court. There was a frontage on Regent Street, and another in Piccadilly. Taking the orchestra into account, the main hall had seating for slightly over 2,000 persons. It had a grand hall long and broad, the seating was distributed between ground floor, balcony, gallery and platform and it had excellent acoustics. On the ground floor were two smaller halls, one square; the other by . The Hall was decorated in the 'Florentine' style, with features imitating the great Moorish Palace of the Alhambra. The Piccadilly facade was given a Gothic design, and the complex of two restaurants and three halls was hidden behind Nash's Quadrant.Hobhouse, Hermione. ''History of Regent Street'' (Macdonald and Jane's, L ...
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St James's Hall
St. James's Hall was a concert hall in London that opened on 25 March 1858, designed by architect and artist Owen Jones, who had decorated the interior of the Crystal Palace. It was situated between the Quadrant in Regent Street and Piccadilly, and Vine Street and George Court. There was a frontage on Regent Street, and another in Piccadilly. Taking the orchestra into account, the main hall had seating for slightly over 2,000 persons. It had a grand hall long and broad, the seating was distributed between ground floor, balcony, gallery and platform and it had excellent acoustics. On the ground floor were two smaller halls, one square; the other by . The Hall was decorated in the 'Florentine' style, with features imitating the great Moorish Palace of the Alhambra. The Piccadilly facade was given a Gothic design, and the complex of two restaurants and three halls was hidden behind Nash's Quadrant.Hobhouse, Hermione. ''History of Regent Street'' (Macdonald and Jane's, L ...
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Julius Benedict
Sir Julius Benedict (27 November 1804 – 5 June 1885) was a German-born composer and conductor, resident in England for most of his career. Life and music Benedict was born in Stuttgart, the son of a Jewish banker, and in 1820 learnt composition from Johann Nepomuk Hummel at Weimar and in 1821 from Carl Maria von Weber at Dresden; it was Weber who introduced him in Vienna to Beethoven on 5 October 1823. In the same year, he was appointed Kapellmeister of the Kärnthnerthor theatre at Vienna, and two years later in 1825, he became Kapellmeister of the San Carlo theatre at Naples. It was here he gave piano lessons to the young prodigy Theodor Döhler. In Naples his first opera, ''Giacinta ed Ernesto'', premiered in 1827, and another, written for his native city, ''I Portoghesi in Goa'', was given there in 1830; neither of these was a great success, and in 1834 he went to Paris, leaving it in 1835 at the suggestion of Maria Malibran for London, where he spent the remai ...
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Utopia, Limited
''Utopia, Limited; or, The Flowers of Progress'', is a Savoy opera, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It was the second-to-last of Gilbert and Sullivan's fourteen collaborations, premiering on 7 October 1893 for a run of 245 performances. It did not achieve the success of most of their earlier productions. Gilbert's libretto satirises limited liability companies, and particularly the idea that a bankrupt company could leave creditors unpaid without any liability on the part of its owners. It also lampoons the Joint Stock Company Act by imagining the absurd convergence of natural persons (or sovereign nations) with legal commercial entities under the limited companies laws. In addition, it mocks the conceits of the late 19th-century British Empire and several of the nation's beloved institutions. In mocking the adoption by a "barbaric" country of the cultural values of an "advanced" nation, it takes a tilt at the cultural aspects of imperialis ...
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Comic Opera
Comic opera, sometimes known as light opera, is a sung dramatic work of a light or comic nature, usually with a happy ending and often including spoken dialogue. Forms of comic opera first developed in late 17th-century Italy. By the 1730s, a new operatic genre, ''opera buffa'', emerged as an alternative to '' opera seria''. It quickly made its way to France, where it became ''opéra comique'', and eventually, in the following century, French operetta, with Jacques Offenbach as its most accomplished practitioner. The influence of the Italian and French forms spread to other parts of Europe. Many countries developed their own genres of comic opera, incorporating the Italian and French models along with their own musical traditions. Examples include German ''singspiel'', Viennese operetta, Spanish '' zarzuela'', Russian comic opera, English ballad and Savoy opera, North American operetta and musical comedy. Italian ''opera buffa'' In late 17th-century Italy, light-hearted m ...
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Gilbert And Sullivan
Gilbert and Sullivan was a Victorian era, Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the dramatist W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) and the composer Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900), who jointly created fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which ''H.M.S. Pinafore'', ''The Pirates of Penzance'' and ''The Mikado'' are among the best known.Davis, Peter G''Smooth Sailing'' ''New York'' magazine, 21 January 2002, accessed 6 November 2007 Gilbert, who wrote the libretti for these operas, created fanciful "topsy-turvy" worlds where each absurdity is taken to its logical conclusion; fairies rub elbows with British lords, flirting is a capital offence, gondoliers ascend to the monarchy, and pirates emerge as noblemen who have gone astray.Mike Leigh, Leigh, Mike"True anarchists" ''The Guardian'', 4 November 2007, accessed 6 November 2007 Sullivan, six years Gilbert's junior, composed the music, contributing memorable melodies that could convey both humour and pathos. Their operas have enj ...
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Blackface Minstrelsy
Blackface is a form of theatrical makeup used predominantly by non-Black people to portray a caricature of a Black person. In the United States, the practice became common during the 19th century and contributed to the spread of racial stereotypes such as the "happy-go-lucky darky on the plantation" or the " dandified coon". By the middle of the century, blackface minstrel shows had become a distinctive American artform, translating formal works such as opera into popular terms for a general audience. Early in the 20th century, blackface branched off from the minstrel show and became a form in its own right. In the United States, blackface declined in popularity beginning in the 1940s and into the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s,Clark, Alexis.How the History of Blackface Is Rooted in Racism. ''History''. A&E Television Networks, LLC. 2019. and was generally considered highly offensive, disrespectful, and racist by the turn of the 21st century, though the practice ...
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Willoughby Weiss
Willoughby Hunter Weiss (2 April 1820, Liverpool - 24 October 1867, London) was an English oratorio and opera singer and composer. He became one of the most celebrated bass singers of the 19th century, and sang in the premieres of many English works. Life He was born in Liverpool, the son of Willoughby Gaspard Weiss Esq., a professor of flute and a music publisher. He studied under Sir George Thomas Smart and Michael Balfe. Weiss made his operatic debut in Dublin in 1842 as Oroveso, and in London at the Prince's Theatre at that time as Count Rodolfo in ''La sonnambula''. H. F. Chorley saw him as Oroveso in an English ''Norma'' at the Princess's Theatre, London, opposite Adelaide Sartoris, saying 'he sang well and looked like a giraffe.' In 1845 he married Georgina Ansell Barrett. Mme Georgina Weiss (1826–1880), a soprano, often sang with her husband, and made her stage debut at Drury Lane in 1847. In 1846 he appeared at Drury Lane opposite Anna Bishop in the premiere of Lewi ...
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Charlotte Helen Sainton-Dolby
Charlotte Helen Sainton-Dolby (17 May 182118 February 1885), was an English contralto, singing teacher and composer. Life Charlotte Helen Dolby was born in London to Samuel Dolby and Charlotte Niven. Her father died when she was 10 years old. She studied at the Royal Academy of Music from 1832 to 1837, Domenico Crivelli being her principal singing-master. In 1837 she was elected to a King's scholarship, and first appeared at a Royal Philharmonic Society concert in 1841. In October 1845 she sang at the Gewandhaus, Leipzig, through the influence of Mendelssohn, who had been delighted by her singing in his oratorio ''St. Paul''. The contralto music in his ''Elijah'' was written for her voice, but she did not appear in that work until the performance at Exeter Hall on 16 April 1847. She was a principal soloist in the first English performance of Bach's '' St Matthew Passion'', directed by William Sterndale Bennett at the Hanover Square Rooms London on 6 April 1854 and again for t ...
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Helen Lemmens-Sherrington
Helen Lemmens-Sherrington (4 October 1834 – 9 May 1906) was an English concert and operatic soprano prominent from the 1850s to the 1880s. Born in northern England, she spent much of her childhood and later life in Belgium, where she studied at the Brussels Conservatory. After engagements in mainland Europe she made her London debut in 1856. Her singing career was mostly in concert, but in the first half of the 1860s she appeared in opera at Covent Garden and other leading London theatres. After she retired from performing, Lemmens-Sherrington became a teacher, at her old music college in Brussels, and at the Royal Academy of Music in London and the Royal Manchester College of Music. Early life Helen Sherrington was born in Preston, England, in 1834. When she was a child her family moved first to the Netherlands and then to Belgium. She studied singing at Rotterdam and at the Brussels Conservatory. She began her London career on the concert platform, building a reputation a ...
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William Sterndale Bennett
Sir William Sterndale Bennett (13 April 18161 February 1875) was an English composer, pianist, conductor and music educator. At the age of ten Bennett was admitted to the London Royal Academy of Music (RAM), where he remained for ten years. By the age of twenty, he had begun to make a reputation as a concert pianist, and his compositions received high praise. Among those impressed by Bennett was the German composer Felix Mendelssohn, who invited him to Leipzig. There Bennett became friendly with Robert Schumann, who shared Mendelssohn's admiration for his compositions. Bennett spent three winters composing and performing in Leipzig. In 1837 Bennett began to teach at the RAM, with which he was associated for most of the rest of his life. For twenty years he taught there, later also teaching at Queen's College, London. Amongst his pupils during this period were Arthur Sullivan, Hubert Parry, and Tobias Matthay. Throughout the 1840s and 1850s he composed little, although he perfo ...
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St Matthew Passion
The ''St Matthew Passion'' (german: Matthäus-Passion, links=-no), BWV 244, is a '' Passion'', a sacred oratorio written by Johann Sebastian Bach in 1727 for solo voices, double choir and double orchestra, with libretto by Picander. It sets the 26th and 27th chapters of the Gospel of Matthew (in the Luther Bible) to music, with interspersed chorales and arias. It is widely regarded as one of the greatest masterpieces of Baroque sacred music. The original Latin title translates to "The Passion of our Lord J susC[hrist">rist.html" ;"title="susC[hrist">susC[hristaccording to the Evangelist Matthew".Markus Rathey. 2016. ''Bach's Major Vocal Works. Music, Drama, Liturgy'', Yale University Press History The ''St Matthew Passion'' is the second of two Passion settings by Bach that have survived in their entirety, the first being the '' St John Passion'', first performed in 1724. Versions and contemporaneous performances Little is known with certainty about the creation proc ...
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