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The Old Maid And The Thief
''The Old Maid and the Thief'' is a radio opera in one act by Italian-American composer Gian Carlo Menotti. The work uses an English language libretto by the composer which tells a twisted tale of morals and evil womanly power. Menotti writes in the libretto "The devil couldn't do what a woman can- Make a thief out of an honest man." Commissioned by NBC, ''The Old Maid and the Thief'' was one of the earliest operas composed specifically for performance on the radio. Menotti wrote the libretto to ''The Old Maid and the Thief'' himself; initially in Italian but with the intention of having the work translated into English for its premiere. It was the first of several operas in the English language by the young composer who was just 28 years old at the time. He was inspired to write the story of the opera after visiting the family of his partner Samuel Barber. He found that what seemed to be a quaint, cute town actually covered up a plethora of secrets about people and places. Upon t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Radio Opera
Radio opera (German: 'Funkoper' or 'Radiooper') is a genre of opera. It refers to operas which were specifically composed to be performed on the radio and is not to be confused with broadcasts of operas which were originally written for the stage. Radio operas were generally shorter than staged operas and some occupied less than fifteen minutes. Plots were usually more straightforward than those of stage operas.Lionel Salter: ''Radio'' in Sadie, vol. 3, pp. 1212-1214. The earliest radio operas were broadcast in the 1920s and followed earlier broadcasts of plays with incidental music. The first radio opera seems to have been '' The Red Pen'', composed by Geoffrey Toye to a libretto by A. P. Herbert. It was originally aired by the British Broadcasting Corporation on March 24, 1925."Broadcasting", ''The Times'', 20 March 1925, p. 6 Germany followed with Gustav Kneip's Christmas opera for children, ''Christkinds Erdenreise'' (The Christ-child's journey on Earth), 24 December 1929, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fritz Busch
Fritz Busch (13 March 1890 – 14 September 1951) was a German conductor. Busch was born in Siegen, Westphalia, to a musical family, and studied at the Cologne Conservatory. After army service in the First World War, he was appointed to senior posts in two German opera houses. At the Stuttgart Opera (1918 to 1922) he modernised the repertory, and at the Dresden State Opera (1922 to 1933) he presented world premieres of operas by Richard Strauss, Ferruccio Busoni, Paul Hindemith and Kurt Weill among others. He also conducted at the Bayreuth and Salzburg Festivals. Being an ardent Anti-Nazi, Busch was dismissed from his post as director at Dresden in 1933 and made most of his later career outside Germany. He conducted in New York and London, but his main bases were Buenos Aires, where he was in charge at the Teatro Colón for several opera seasons in the 1930s and 1940s; Copenhagen and Stockholm, conducting the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Stockholm Philharmonic; ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arcola Theatre
Arcola Theatre is an Off West End theatre in the London Borough of Hackney. It presents plays, operas and musicals featuring established and emerging artists. The theatre building, in the former Colourworks paint factory on Ashwin Street, Dalston, houses two studio theatre spaces, two rehearsal studios and a café-bar. In 2021 the theatre opened Arcola Outside, also on Ashwin Street. The theatre runs one of East London's most extensive arts engagement programmes. Since 2007 the ''Green Arcola'' project has aimed to make Arcola the world's first carbon-neutral theatre. History Arcola Theatre was founded by artistic director Mehmet Ergen, in September 2000. Its original location was a former textile factory on Arcola Street in Dalston. The theatre celebrated this with its fifth anniversary production, ''The Factory Girls'' by Frank McGuinness. In January 2011 the Arcola moved to a former paint-manufacturing workshop on Ashwin Street in Dalston, after its previous landlord ear ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Teatro Regio Di Parma
Teatro Regio di Parma, originally constructed as the Nuovo Teatro Ducale (New Ducal Theatre),Martini, "Before the Teatro Regio", pp. 56 is an opera house and opera company in Parma, Italy. Replacing an obsolete house, the new Ducale achieved prominence in the years after 1829, and especially so after the composer Giuseppe Verdi, who was born near Busseto, some thirty kilometres away, had achieved fame. Also well known in Parma was the conductor Arturo Toscanini, born there in 1867. As has been noted by Lee Marshall, "while not as well known as La Scala in Milan or La Fenice in Venice, the city’s Teatro Regio....is considered by opera buffs to be one of the true homes of the great Italian tradition, and the well-informed audience is famous for giving voice to its approval or disapproval – not just from the gallery." The 1,400-seat auditorium, with four tiers of boxes topped by a gallery, was inaugurated on 16 May 1829 when it presented the premiere of Vincenzo Bellini's ' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Staatstheater Darmstadt
The Staatstheater Darmstadt (Darmstadt State Theatre) is a theatre company and building in Darmstadt, Hesse, Germany, presenting opera, ballet, plays and concerts. It is funded by the state of Hesse and the city of Darmstadt. Its history began in 1711 with a court theatre building. From 1919 it was run as ''Landestheater Darmstadt''. The present theatre was opened in 1972 when the company was named Staatstheater. History The theatre dates back more than 300 years. It was originally a court theatre at the residence of the county Darmstadt. At a request by a first theatre building in Darmstadt was opened in 1711 with Christoph Graupner's opera ''Telemach''. About a century later, Louis I, Grand Duke of Hesse, built a court theatre open to the citizens. The architect Georg Moller built a theatre with 2000 seats and advanced stage machinery, opened in 1819. It burnt down in 1871 and was restored in seven years. In 1919 the theatre became a '' Landestheater''. The former building ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
National Theatre Mannheim
The Mannheim National Theatre (german: Nationaltheater Mannheim) is a theatre and opera company in Mannheim, Germany, with a variety of performance spaces. It was founded in 1779 and is one of the oldest theatres in Germany. History In the 18th century Mannheim was the capital of the Electoral Palatinate and the residence city of the reigning prince-electors. When Charles Theodore also became the Duke of Bavaria in 1777, he moved to Munich and brought the theatre company of Theobald Marchand with him from Mannheim. In 1778 he instructed the courtier Wolfgang Heribert von Dalberg—the brother of Prince-Elector and Grand Duke Karl Theodor von Dalberg—to establish a new theatre in Mannheim. At first Dalberg contracted Abel Seyler's theatre company with performing in Mannheim on an occasional basis from 1778 to 1779. Performances included Shakespeare plays such as ''Hamlet'' and ''Macbeth''. In the autumn of 1779 Seyler moved permanently to Mannheim with the remaining members o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chautauqua Opera
The Chautauqua Opera is the resident summer opera company of the Chautauqua Institution. It is one of the oldest continuously active summer opera companies in the U.S, having been founded in 1929 as the Chautauqua Opera Association, and it has produced several operas during the Institution's nine-week summer season every year since. Generally opera productions are performed in English in Norton Memorial Hall, usually on specific Monday and Friday evenings throughout the season. Recently, however, Chautauqua opera has increasingly been performed in concert productions at the Chautauqua Amphitheater. The first production director of the company was Alfredo Valenti, who began Chautauqua's rich opera tradition with Flotow's "Martha" on July 19, 1929. Henry Ford and Mrs. Thomas A. Edison were in the audience. Valenti, who served as director for twenty-eight years, championed young American singers such as Rose Bampton, who performed that season and in 1930 and who, like many other sta ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fort Worth Opera
Fort Worth Opera is the oldest continually-performing opera company in the state of Texas and among the oldest in the United States, according to the company. While originally presenting operas one at a time over a fall/winter season, it changed to a "festival" format in 2007. It now performs three to four operas per year each spring in Bass Performance Hall, located in the downtown area of Fort Worth, Texas. In 2021, as the company celebrated its 75th anniversary season, Fort Worth Opera left the Festival format after fourteen years and returned to year-round programming. History The Fort Worth Civic Opera Association, now known as Fort Worth Opera, was founded by three women, Eloise MacDonald Snyder and Betty Spain, both former opera singers, and pianist and composer Jeanne Axtell Walker. In seven months, the trio pulled together a full-scale production of Verdi's ''La Traviata,'' performed on November 25, 1946, in a building now known as the Cowtown Coliseum, located in th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
New England Opera Theater
The New England Opera Theatre (later known as the Goldovsky Opera Theater) was an American opera company that was active from 1945 to 1985. Founded by Boris Goldovsky in January 1945, the company was originally based in Boston, Massachusetts. It was initially established under the sponsorship of the New England Conservatory as a training ground for young opera singers. The company became independent and moved to New York in the 1950s and enjoyed four decades of touring during which young singers were trained for operatic careers. Many of them went on to sing at the Metropolitan Opera The Metropolitan Opera (commonly known as the Met) is an American opera company based in New York City, resident at the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center, currently situated on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The company is operat ... and other leading houses. The company disbanded upon Goldovsky's retirement in 1985.Bruce Macpherson and James Klein, ''Measure by Measure'', Boston: N ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ellen Faull
Ellen Hartla Faull (14 October 1918 – 2 December 2008) was an American operatic soprano and voice teacher.Stabler, David"Ellen Faul: Singer, Teacher, Inspiration" ''The Oregonian'', 9 December 2008Cummings, David M.Faull, Ellen ''International Who's Who in Music'', Routledge, 2000, p. 193. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, she was primarily associated with New York City Opera, where she sang from 1947 until 1978 and created the role of Abigail Borden in Jack Beeson's opera ''Lizzie Borden'' in its 1965 world premiere. After her retirement from the opera stage, she taught singing at Sarah Lawrence College, the Manhattan School of Music and the Juilliard School and later privately at her home in Camas, Washington. Biography Ellen Faull was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to a working-class family. During the Great Depression, she and her brothers and sisters went door-to-door selling their mother's home-baked bread to bring in extra money. She showed an early talent for singing a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Virginia MacWatters
Virginia MacWatters (June 19, 1912 – November 5, 2005) was an American coloratura soprano and university professor. Early life MacWatters was born in Philadelphia on June 19, 1912 to Frederick K. and Idoleein ( Hallowell) MacWatters. She began her musical studies in piano at the age of eight at the Zeckwer Hahn Musical Academy in Philadelphia. This led to a one year scholarship at the age of twelve to study voice with Henrietta Conrad, formerly of the Dresden Royal Opera. Her first appearance in a singing role was as Mabel in ''The Pirates of Penzance'' while still in junior high school. After graduating from the Philadelphia Normal School for Teachers, MacWatters supported her studies through substitute teaching and singing primarily in churches throughout the Philadelphia area. Career She received a scholarship to the renowned Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. MacWatters studied opera and acting under Ernest Lert and Greta Stauber. After graduating from Cur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marie Powers
Marie Powers (1902–1973) was an American contralto who was best known for her performance as Madame Flora in Gian Carlo Menotti’s ''The Medium'', a role that she played on stage, screen and television. Early life On June 20, 1902, Powers was born in Mount Carmel, Pennsylvania. At 17, Powers left home to study singing in Milan, Italy. Education Powers studied music and language at Cornell University. Powers studied at the Royal Conservatory in Florence, Italy. Career Powers sneaked into a friend’s audition before the conductor Arturo Toscanini at La Scala and landed a part with the legendary opera company. In 1947, Italian writer Lanfranco Rasponi introduced her to Menotti, who was casting the role of the fraudulent psychic in his opera ''The Medium''. The opera was staged on Broadway along with another one-act Menotti opera, ''The Telephone, or L'Amour à trois''. Powers was hailed as a star for her dramatic performance as the phony psychic, and she repeated the ro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
