Stephen Langridge
Stephen Langridge is a British stage director, stage and opera director. From 2012-2019 he was Director of the Gothenburg Opera. He is the current Artistic Director of the Glyndebourne Festival. He has also staged works for several prominent opera houses and festivals internationally, including the Royal Opera House in London, the Lyric Opera of Chicago, the Nederlandse Reisopera, the Salzburg Festival, and the Staatsoper Hannover among others. Career The son of tenor Philip Langridge, Langridge studied singing and the french horn in his youth. He earned a diploma in drama from Exeter University. In 2004 Langridge directed the world premiere of Harrison Birtwistle's ''The Io Passion'' at the Aldeburgh Festival and in 2007 he directed Gluck's ''Orfeo ed Euridice'' for Opera Atelier. In 2008 he directed the world premiere of Birtwistle's ''The Minotaur (opera), The Minotaur'' at the Royal Opera House in London. The premiere cast featured his father. ''The New York Times'' described t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Stage Director
A theatre director or stage director is a professional in the theatre field who oversees and orchestrates the mounting of a theatre production such as a play, opera, dance, drama, musical theatre performance, etc. by unifying various endeavors and aspects of production. The director's function is to ensure the quality and completeness of theatre production and to lead the members of the creative team into realizing their artistic vision for it. The director thereby collaborates with a team of creative individuals and other staff to coordinate research and work on all the aspects of the production which includes the Technical and the Performance aspects. The technical aspects include: stagecraft, costume design, theatrical properties (props), lighting design, set design, and sound design for the production. The performance aspects include: acting, dance, orchestra, chants, and stage combat. If the production is a new piece of writing or a (new) translation of a play, the director ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Orfeo Ed Euridice
' (; French: '; English: ''Orpheus and Eurydice'') is an opera composed by Christoph Willibald Gluck, based on Orpheus, the myth of Orpheus and set to a libretto by Ranieri de' Calzabigi. It belongs to the genre of the ''azione teatrale'', meaning an opera on a mythological subject with choruses and dancing. The piece was first performed at the Burgtheater in Vienna on 5 October 1762, in the presence of Empress Maria Theresa. ''Orfeo ed Euridice'' is the first of Gluck's "reform" operas, in which he attempted to replace the abstruse plots and overly complex music of ''opera seria'' with a "noble simplicity" in both the music and the drama. The opera is the most popular of Gluck's works, and was one of the most influential on subsequent Opera in German, German operas. Variations on its plot—the underground rescue mission in which the hero must control, or conceal, his emotions—can be found in Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Mozart's ''The Magic Flute'', Ludwig van Beethoven, Beetho ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ambroise Thomas
Charles Louis Ambroise Thomas (; 5 August 1811 – 12 February 1896) was a French composer and teacher, best known for his operas ''Mignon'' (1866) and ''Hamlet'' (1868). Born into a musical family, Thomas was a student at the Conservatoire de Paris, winning France's top music prize, the Prix de Rome. He pursued a career as a composer of operas, completing his first opera, ''La double échelle'', in 1837. He wrote twenty further operas over the next decades, mostly comic, but he also treated more serious subjects, finding considerable success with audiences in France and abroad. Thomas was appointed as a professor at the Conservatoire in 1856, and in 1871 he succeeded Daniel Auber as director. Between then and his death at his home in Paris twenty-five years later, he modernised the Conservatoire's organisation while imposing a rigidly conservative curriculum, hostile to modern music, and attempting to prevent composers such as César Franck and Gabriel Fauré from influencing t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Ring Cycle
(''The Ring of the Nibelung''), WWV 86, is a cycle of four German-language epic music dramas composed by Richard Wagner. The works are based loosely on characters from Germanic heroic legend, namely Norse legendary sagas and the ''Nibelungenlied''. The composer termed the cycle a "Bühnenfestspiel" (stage festival play), structured in three days preceded by a ("preliminary evening"). It is often referred to as the ''Ring'' cycle, Wagner's ''Ring'', or simply ''The Ring''. Wagner wrote the libretto and music over the course of about twenty-six years, from 1848 to 1874. The four parts that constitute the ''Ring'' cycle are, in sequence: * ''Das Rheingold'' (''The Rhinegold'') * ''Die Walküre'' (''The Valkyrie'') * ''Siegfried'' * ''Götterdämmerung'' (''Twilight of the Gods'') Individual works of the sequence are often performed separately, and indeed the operas contain dialogues that mention events in the previous operas, so that a viewer could watch any of them without h ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Notorious (opera)
''Notorious'' is an opera in five acts and 22 scenes by Hans Gefors based on a Swedish-language libretto from after Alfred Hitchcock's 1946 film ''Notorious''. The opera premiered at Göteborg Opera in September 2015 with Nina Stemme in the leading role which had been played in the film by fellow Swede Ingrid Bergman. Gefors had previously composed full-length stage works for the Swedish Royal Opera (''Christina'', 1986), for Wiesbaden Opera (''Der Park'', 1992), and for the centenary of the Opéra-Comique at the Salle Favart in Paris (''Clara'', 1998). Background The work was commissioned from Gefors in 2009 and permission was sought from Disney / Buena Vista who held the rights to the story. When these were obtained Kerstin Perski (who had worked with Gefors on ''Vargen kommer'' (''The wolf is coming'', for Malmö in 1997) began work on the libretto and Stemme was booked for the leading role. The opera is set in Brazil and generally follows the scenario of the film faithfull ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Hans Gefors
Hans Gefors (born 8 December 1952 in Stockholm) is a Swedish composer. He has lived in Lund since the mid-1990s. Selected works * ''La boîte chinoise'', for guitar (1975) * ''Poeten och glasmästaren'', chamber opera (1979, libretto: Lars Forssell after Baudelaire) * ''Slits'' for orchestra (1981) * ''Christina'', opera in two acts (1982–86, libretto: Lars Forssell och Hans Gefors) * ''Whales weep not!'', a cappella chorus (1987, D. H. Lawrence) * ''Twine'' (Music no 3) for orchestra (1988) * ''En obol'', song-cycle (1989, Lars Forssell) * ''Der Park'', opera in three acts (1986–91, libretto: Botho Strauss och Hans Gefors) * ''Vargen kommer'', opera in three acts (1994–96, libretto: Kerstin Perski * ''Lydias sånger'', song-cycle for mezzo-soprano and orchestra (1995-96 from the poem of Hjalmar Söderberg ''Den allvarsamma leken'') * ''Clara'', opera in two acts (1997–98, libretto: Jean-Claude Carrière) * ''Kabaretsånger'' (2001, Jonas Gardell) * ''Njutningen (La Jouissa ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Marriage Of Figaro
''The Marriage of Figaro'' ( it, Le nozze di Figaro, links=no, ), K. 492, is a ''commedia per musica'' (opera buffa) in four acts composed in 1786 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with an Italian libretto written by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It premiered at the Burgtheater in Vienna on 1 May 1786. The opera's libretto is based on the 1784 stage comedy by Pierre Beaumarchais, '' La folle journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro'' ("The Mad Day, or The Marriage of Figaro"). It tells how the servants Figaro and Susanna succeed in getting married, foiling the efforts of their philandering employer Count Almaviva to seduce Susanna and teaching him a lesson in fidelity. Considered one of the greatest operas ever written, it is a cornerstone of the repertoire and appears consistently among the top ten in the Operabase list of most frequently performed operas. In 2017, BBC News Magazine asked 172 opera singers to vote for the best operas ever written. ''The Marriage of Figaro'' came in first out of ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Gothenburg Opera House
The Gothenburg opera house ( sv, Göteborgsoperan) is an opera house at Lilla Bommen in Gothenburg, Sweden. The Artistic Director for opera is Henning Ruhe since 2019, while Katrín Hall leads the ballet and dance company. History The Gothenburg opera house is relatively new: construction started in September 1989 after significant local commitment in the late 1980s (with as many as 6,000 contributors to the new house) and it was completed with great speed. Ground breaking took place in June 1991, and the building was inaugurated in October 1994. It hosted Melodifestivalen 2000 Sweden was the host of the Eurovision Song Contest 2000 thanks to Charlotte Nilsson's victory the previous year. Sveriges Television chose to hold the contest in Sweden's capital, Stockholm. They were represented by Roger Pontare with the song ..., the Swedish national selection for the Eurovision Song Contest. Building and capacity The result was an auditorium built in the classical style. Wit ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Parsifal
''Parsifal'' ( WWV 111) is an opera or a music drama in three acts by the German composer Richard Wagner and his last composition. Wagner's own libretto for the work is loosely based on the 13th-century Middle High German epic poem ''Parzival'' of the ''Minnesänger'' Wolfram von Eschenbach, recounting the story of the Arthurian knight Parzival (Percival) and his quest for the Holy Grail. Wagner conceived the work in April 1857, but did not finish it until 25 years later. In composing it he took advantage of the particular acoustics of his Bayreuth Festspielhaus. ''Parsifal'' was first produced at the second Bayreuth Festival in 1882. The Bayreuth Festival maintained a monopoly on ''Parsifal'' productions until 1903, when the opera was performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. Wagner described ''Parsifal'' not as an opera, but as (a festival play for the consecration of the stage). At Bayreuth a tradition has arisen that audiences do not applaud at the end of the first ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Gawain (opera)
''Gawain'' is an opera with music by Harrison Birtwistle to a libretto by David Harsent. The story is based on the Middle English romance ''Sir Gawain and the Green Knight''. The opera was a commission from the Royal Opera House, London, where it was first performed on 30 May 1991. Rhian Samuel has published a detailed analysis of the opera. Birtwistle revised it in 1994, and the premiere of the revised version was given at the Royal Opera House on 20 April 1994. Music The plot of ''Gawain'' is ideally suited to Birtwistle's approach to musical structure. The repetitious structure of events can be paralleled with a repetitious musical structure. Thus the three hunts in Act 2 use the same musical material, as do the three seductions. The music is varied and adapted every time it is heard, but inner coherence is easily established. The synopsis also indicates many points where recurring motifs are heard: trios of door knocks; the return to the Arthurian court at the end of the ope ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Covent Garden
Covent Garden is a district in London, on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit-and-vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist site, and with the Royal Opera House, itself known as "Covent Garden". The district is divided by the main thoroughfare of Long Acre, north of which is given over to independent shops centred on Neal's Yard and Seven Dials, while the south contains the central square with its street performers and most of the historical buildings, theatres and entertainment facilities, including the London Transport Museum and the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. The area was fields until briefly settled in the 7th century when it became the heart of the Anglo-Saxon trading town of Lundenwic, then abandoned at the end of the 9th century after which it returned to fields. By 1200 part of it had been walled off by the Abbot of Westminster Abbey for use as arable l ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid digital subscribers. It also is a producer of popular podcasts such as '' The Daily''. Founded in 1851 by Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones, it was initially published by Raymond, Jones & Company. The ''Times'' has won 132 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any newspaper, and has long been regarded as a national " newspaper of record". For print it is ranked 18th in the world by circulation and 3rd in the U.S. The paper is owned by the New York Times Company, which is publicly traded. It has been governed by the Sulzberger family since 1896, through a dual-class share structure after its shares became publicly traded. A. G. Sulzberger, the paper's publisher and the company's chairman, is the fifth generation of the family to head the pa ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |