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Stefanos Lazaridis
Stefanos Lazaridis (28 July 1942 – 8 May 2010) was a stage designer, best known for his work in opera. Originally intended for a business career, he studied stage design in London, and was quickly in demand in theatres and opera houses, working with John Copley and other directors. Originally his style was lavish and naturalistic, but he changed to a less traditional style, working with David Pountney and other more avant garde directors at English National Opera and elsewhere. He occasionally directed operas, and was for a short time director of the Greek National Opera. Life and career Lazaridis was born in Dire Dawa, Ethiopia, son of a prosperous expatriate Greek businessman, Nicholas Lazaridis. [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera House (ROH) is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is often referred to as simply Covent Garden, after a previous use of the site. It is the home of The Royal Opera, The Royal Ballet, and the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House. The first theatre on the site, the Theatre Royal (1732), served primarily as a playhouse for the first hundred years of its history. In 1734, the first ballet was presented. A year later, the first season of operas, by George Frideric Handel, began. Many of his operas and oratorios were specifically written for Covent Garden and had their premieres there. The current building is the third theatre on the site, following disastrous fires in 1808 and 1856 to previous buildings. The façade, foyer, and auditorium date from 1858, but almost every other element of the present complex dates from an extensive reconstruction in the 1990s. The main auditorium seats 2,256 people, mak ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Steven Pimlott
Steven Charles Pimlott (18 April 1953 – 14 February 2007) was an English opera and theatre director, whose obituary in ''The Times'' hailed him as "one of the most versatile and inventive theatre directors of his generation". His output ran the gamut of the theatrical and operatic repertoire, from musicals, such as ''Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat'', and popular plays, such as Agatha Christie's ''And Then There Were None'', through classics such as Shakespeare and Molière, to Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's '' Sunday in the Park with George'' and Alexander Borodin's ''Prince Igor''. Early life Pimlott's father worked in insurance, but Steven was interested in the performing arts from a young age. The first film he saw, ''The King and I'', and first theatre visit, to see Christopher Plummer in '' Richard III'' at Stratford, both made a great impression. He was educated at Manchester Grammar School, where he met the younger Nicholas Hytner. They performed t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tosca
''Tosca'' is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. It premiered at the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, Teatro Costanzi in Rome on 14 January 1900. The work, based on Victorien Sardou's 1887 French-language dramatic play, ''La Tosca'', is a melodramatic piece set in Rome in June 1800, with the Kingdom of Naples's control of Rome threatened by Napoleon's Campaigns of 1800 in the French Revolutionary Wars#Italy, invasion of Italy. It contains depictions of torture, murder, and suicide, as well as some of Puccini's best-known lyrical arias. Puccini saw Sardou's play when it was touring Italy in 1889 and, after some vacillation, obtained the rights to turn the work into an opera in 1895. Turning the wordy French play into a succinct Italian opera took four years, during which the composer repeatedly argued with his librettists and publisher. ''Tosca'' premiered at a time of unrest in Rome, and its first performance was delayed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phyllida Lloyd
Phyllida Christian Lloyd, (born 17 June 1957) is an English film director and producer, best known for '' Mamma Mia!'' (2008) and '' The Iron Lady'' (2011). Her theatre work includes directing productions at the Royal Court Theatre and Royal National Theatre, and opera director for Opera North and the Royal Opera House Covent Garden. Life and career Lloyd was born and raised in Nempnett Thrubwell, Somerset, south of Bristol. After graduating from the Department of Drama and Theatre Arts at Birmingham University in 1979 (BA, English), she spent five years working in BBC Television Drama. In 1985 she was awarded an Arts Council of Great Britain bursary to be Trainee Director at the Wolsey Theatre, Ipswich. The following year she was appointed Associate Director at the Everyman Theatre, Cheltenham, then in 1989 Associate Director of the Bristol Old Vic, where her production of ''The Comedy of Errors'' was a success. She moved on to the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester where sh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tim Albery
Tim Bronson Reginald Albery (born 20 May 1952) is an English stage director, best known for his productions of opera. Life and career Albery was born in Harpenden, the son of the impresario Donald Albery and grandson of the producer Sir Bronson Albery. Albery's brother was the social inventor Nicholas Albery. After directing drama in the British provinces, he directed his first operatic production, Britten's ''The Turn of the Screw'' for a music festival at Batignano, Italy in 1983. For Opera North, Albery directed operas by Tippett, Mozart and most notably Berlioz: his production of ''Les Troyens'' is described by ''The New Grove Dictionary of Opera'' as "triumphant". For the English National Opera (ENO), Albery directed Berlioz’s '' Beatrice and Benedict'' (1990) and Britten’s '' Billy Budd'' (1988) and ''Peter Grimes'' (1991). Together with his fellow directors, Richard Jones, Jude Kelly, Phyllida Lloyd, Deborah Warner and Francesca Zambello, Albery publicly supported ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Colin Graham
Colin Graham OBE (22 September 1931 in Hove, England – 6 April 2007 in St. Louis, Missouri) was a stage director of opera, theatre, and television. Graham was educated at Northaw School (Hertfordshire), Stowe School and RADA. Early in his career, he began a long association with Benjamin Britten, for whom he directed all but one of the composer's stage works, including all of the world premieres after 1954. He became associated with the English Opera Group in 1953. In the 1950s, he also worked for the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in London and later at Glyndebourne and at the English National Opera in the 1970s. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Graham was associated with several recordings of Gilbert and Sullivan operas conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent with the Glyndebourne Festival Chorus and principals including George Baker. He enhanced these recordings with movement for the performers that makes the recordings sound more like a live staged performance. Graham m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Patrick Garland
Patrick Ewart Garland (10 April 1935 – 19 April 2013) was a British director, writer and actor. Career Garland was educated at St Mary's College, Southampton, and St Edmund Hall, Oxford where he studied English and was Literary Editor of Isis magazine, Isis, President of the Oxford University Poetry Society and President of the Oxford University Dramatic Society. His poetry had appeared in John Lehmann's ''The London Magazine#1954–present, The London Magazine'' and the annual PEN International, PEN anthology during his teens. He was photographed in Oxford at 23 by Anthony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon, Lord Snowdon and later. His maternal grandfather was an artist and editor of Connoisseur Magazine, Herbert Granville Fell. His appearances as an actor included ''An Age of Kings'', where he played Prince John in ''Henry IV, Part 2'' and Clarence in ''The Tragedy of Richard III, Richard III'', among others. Garland started Poetry International in 1967 with Ted Hughes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nicholas Hytner
Sir Nicholas Robert Hytner (; born 7 May 1956) is an English theatre director, film director, and film producer. He was previously the Artistic Director of London's National Theatre. His major successes as director include ''Miss Saigon'', ''The History Boys'' and ''One Man, Two Guvnors''. He has also known for directing films such as ''The Madness of King George'' (1994), ''The Crucible'' (1996), ''The History Boys'' (2006), and ''The Lady in the Van'' (2015). Hytner was knighted in the 2010 New Year Honours for services to drama by Queen Elizabeth II. Early life and education Hytner was born in the prosperous suburbs of south Manchester in 1956,Andrew Dickson"A life in theatre: Nicholas Hytner" ''The Guardian'', 16 October 2010. Retrieved 28 October 2012. to barrister Benet Hytner and his wife, Joyce Hytner, Joyce.Paul Harris"A Knight At The Theater – But Just Call Him Nick" ''Jewish Telegraph ''. Retrieved 28 October 2012. He is the eldest child of four, and has described ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lady Macbeth Of Mtsensk (opera)
''Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk'' (russian: Леди Макбет Мценского уезда, translit=Ledi Makbet Mtsenskogo uyezda, link=no, translation=Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District) is an opera in four acts and nine scenes by Dmitri Shostakovich, his Opus 29. The libretto, jointly written by Alexander Preys and the composer, is based on the novella ''Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District'' by Nikolai Leskov. Dedicated by Shostakovich to his first wife, physicist Nina Varzar, the roughly 160-minute opera was first performed on 22 January 1934 at the Leningrad Maly Operny, and two days later in Moscow. It incorporates elements of expressionism and verismo, telling the story of a lonely woman in 19th-century Russia who falls in love with one of her husband's workers and is driven to murder. Performance history Despite early success on popular and official levels, ''Lady Macbeth'' became the vehicle for a general denunciation of Shostakovich's music by the Communist Par ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Doktor Faust
''Doktor Faust'' is an opera by Ferruccio Busoni with a German libretto by the composer, based on the myth of Faust. Busoni worked on the opera, which he intended as his masterpiece, between 1916 and 1924, but it was still incomplete at the time of his death. His pupil Philipp Jarnach finished it. More recently, in 1982, Antony Beaumont completed the opera using sketches by Busoni that were previously thought to have been lost. Nancy Chamness published an analysis of the libretto to ''Doktor Faust'' and a comparison with Goethe's version. Performance history ''Doktor Faust'' was given its world premiere at the Sächsisches Staatstheater, Dresden on 21 May 1925 using the version completed by Philipp Jarnach. The premiere was conducted by Fritz Busch, produced by Alfred Reucker, and designed by Karl Danneman.Beaumont, p. 311. Over the next few years the opera was performed in many of the opera houses of Germany including those in Dortmund, Duisburg, Karlsruhe, Weimar, and Hanover ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hansel And 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 a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
