The Rossini Bicentennial Birthday Gala
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The Rossini Bicentennial Birthday Gala
''The Rossini Bicentennial Birthday Gala'' is a live album of operatic and sacred music by Gioachino Rossini, performed by Rockwell Blake, Craig Estep, Maria Fortuna, Thomas Hampson, George Hogan, Marilyn Horne, Kathleen Kuhlmann, Mimi Lerner, Chris Merritt, Jan Opalach, Samuel Ramey, Henry Runey, Frederica von Stade, Deborah Voigt, the Concert Chorale of New York and the Orchestra of St. Luke's under the direction of Sir Roger Norrington. It was released in 1993 as a 119-minute video album and in 1994 as a 78-minute CD. Background In 1992, New York City's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts hosted two gala concerts commemorating the two hundredth anniversary of Rossini's birth. The concerts were filmed for EMI Records, who edited the best of their footage into a video album that they released in 1993 on both VHS tape and twelve-inch Laserdisc.''Gramophone'', June 1993, pp. 104-106 The following year, EMI issued most of the contents of their video album (arranged in a different ru ...
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Gioachino Rossini
Gioachino Antonio Rossini (29 February 1792 – 13 November 1868) was an Italian composer who gained fame for his 39 operas, although he also wrote many songs, some chamber music and piano pieces, and some sacred music. He set new standards for both comic and serious opera before retiring from large-scale composition while still in his thirties, at the height of his popularity. Born in Pesaro to parents who were both musicians (his father a trumpeter, his mother a singer), Rossini began to compose by the age of 12 and was educated at music school in Bologna. His first opera was performed in Venice in 1810 when he was 18 years old. In 1815 he was engaged to write operas and manage theatres in Naples. In the period 1810–1823 he wrote 34 operas for the Italian stage that were performed in Venice, Milan, Ferrara, Naples and elsewhere; this productivity necessitated an almost formulaic approach for some components (such as overtures) and a certain amount of self-borrowing. During ...
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Avery Fisher Hall
David Geffen Hall is a concert hall in New York City's Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts complex on Manhattan's Upper West Side. The 2,200-seat auditorium opened in 1962, and is the home of the New York Philharmonic. The facility, designed by Max Abramovitz, was originally named Philharmonic Hall and was renamed Avery Fisher Hall in honor of philanthropist Avery Fisher, who donated $10.5 million ($ million today) to the orchestra in 1973. In November 2014, Lincoln Center officials announced Fisher's name would be removed from the Hall so that naming rights could be sold to the highest bidder as part of a $500 million fund-raising campaign to refurbish the Hall. In 2015, the Hall acquired its present name after David Geffen donated $100 million to the Lincoln Center. Renovations 20th-century renovations The Hall underwent extensive renovations in 1976, to address acoustical problems that had been present since its opening. Another, smaller renovation attempted to ad ...
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Stabat Mater (Rossini)
Stabat Mater is a work by Gioachino Rossini based on the traditional structure of the Stabat Mater sequence for chorus and soloists. It was composed late in his career after retiring from the composition of opera. He began the work in 1831 but did not complete it until 1841. Composition In 1831 Rossini was traveling in Spain in the company of his friend the Spanish banker, Alexandre Aguado, owner of Château Margaux. In the course of the trip, Fernández Varela, a state councillor, commissioned a setting of the traditional liturgical text, the Stabat Mater. Rossini managed to complete part of the setting of the sequence in 1832, but ill health made it impossible for him to complete the commission. Having written only half the score (nos. 1 and 5–9), he asked his friend Giovanni Tadolini to compose six additional movements. Rossini presented the completed work to Varela as his own. It was premiered on Holy Saturday of 1833 in the Chapel of San Felipe el Real in Madrid, but this ...
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Jacopo Ferretti
Jacopo Ferretti (16 July 1784 – 7 March 1852) was an Italian writer, poet and opera librettist. His name is sometimes written as Giacomo Ferretti. He is most famous for having supplied the libretti for two operas composed by Rossini and for five operas composed by Donizetti. Life Introduced by his father to literature while very young, in addition to his native Italian, Ferretti mastered not only Latin and Ancient Greek but also French and English, and began writing verse early. Even though he worked in the tobacco industry from the age of about 30 until he was over 60, he was extremely prolific, writing "everything from love letter to odes and welcoming speeches", and numerous opera libretti, all but the few listed below being generally forgotten. His first big success was ''La Cenerentola'', written at great speed for Rossini over Christmas in 1816. Ferretti wrote afterwards how he had agreed to write a libretto on a subject which the censor vetoed, so he met the composer ...
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La Cenerentola
' (''Cinderella, or Goodness Triumphant'') is an operatic ''dramma giocoso'' in two acts by Gioachino Rossini. The libretto was written by Jacopo Ferretti, based on the libretti written by Charles-Guillaume Étienne for the opera '' Cendrillon'' with music by Nicolas Isouard (first performed Paris, 1810) and by Francesco Fiorini for ' with music by Stefano Pavesi (first performed Milan, 1814). All these operas are versions of the fairy tale '' Cendrillon'' by Charles Perrault. Rossini's opera was first performed in Rome's Teatro Valle on 25 January 1817. Rossini composed ''La Cenerentola'' when he was 25 years old, following the success of ''The Barber of Seville'' the year before. ''La Cenerentola'', which he completed in a period of three weeks, is considered to have some of his finest writing for solo voice and ensembles. Rossini saved some time by reusing an overture from '' La gazzetta'' and part of an aria from ''The Barber of Seville'' and by enlisting a collaborator, Luca ...
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Walter Scott
Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet (15 August 1771 – 21 September 1832), was a Scottish novelist, poet, playwright and historian. Many of his works remain classics of European and Scottish literature, notably the novels ''Ivanhoe'', ''Rob Roy (novel), Rob Roy'', ''Waverley (novel), Waverley'', ''Old Mortality'', ''The Heart of Mid-Lothian'' and ''The Bride of Lammermoor'', and the narrative poems ''The Lady of the Lake (poem), The Lady of the Lake'' and ''Marmion (poem), Marmion''. He had a major impact on European and American literature. As an advocate, judge and legal administrator by profession, he combined writing and editing with daily work as Clerk of Session and Sheriff court, Sheriff-Depute of Selkirkshire. He was prominent in Edinburgh's Tory (political faction), Tory establishment, active in the Royal Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland, Highland Society, long a president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1820–1832), and a vice president of the Society o ...
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Andrea Leone Tottola
Andrea Leone Tottola (died 15 September 1831) was a prolific Italian librettist, best known for his work with Gaetano Donizetti and Gioachino Rossini. It is not known when or where he was born. He became the official poet to the royal theatres in Naples and agent for the impresario Domenico Barbaia, and started writing librettos in 1802. His libretto for ''Gabriella di Vergy'', originally set by Michele Carafa in 1816, was reworked by Donizetti in the 1820s and 1830s. He wrote six other librettos for Donizetti, including those for '' La zingara'' (1822), ''Alfredo il grande'' (1823), ''Il castello di Kenilworth'' (1829) and ''Imelda de' Lambertazzi'' (1830). For Rossini he wrote ''Mosè in Egitto'' (1818), ''Ermione'' (1819), ''La donna del lago'' (1819) and ''Zelmira'' (1822). For Vincenzo Bellini he wrote ''Adelson e Salvini'' (1825). Other composers who set Tottola's librettos to music included Giovanni Pacini (''Alessandro nelle Indie'' (1824) and others), Saverio Mercad ...
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La Donna Del Lago
''La donna del lago'' (English: ''The Lady of the Lake'') is an opera composed by Gioachino Rossini with a libretto by Andrea Leone Tottola (whose verses are described as "limpid" by one critic) based on the French translationOsborne, Charles 1994, p. 94 of ''The Lady of the Lake'', a narrative poem written in 1810 by Sir Walter Scott, whose work continued to popularize the image of the romantic Scottish Highlands. Scott's basic story has been noted as coming from "the hint of an incident stemming from the frequent custom of James V, the King of Scotland, of walking through the kingdom in disguise". It was the first of the Italian operas to be based on Scott's romantic works,Gossett and Brauner (2001), in Holden (Ed.), p. 785 and marked the beginning of romanticism in Rossini's work. Scott was "deeply influential in the development of Italian romantic opera"Commons 2007, pp. 9 - 12 to the extent that by 1840 (barely 20 years after this opera), there were 25 Italian operas base ...
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Alexandre Soumet
Alexandre Soumet (; 18 February 178830 March 1845) was a French poet. Biography Alexandre Soumet was born at Castelnaudary, ''département'' of Aude. His love of poetry began at an early age. He was an admirer of Klopstock and Schiller, then little known in France. Soumet moved to Paris in 1810 and wrote poems in honor of Napoleon that secured his nomination as ''auditeur'' of the Conseil d'État. His elegy ''La pauvre fille'' appeared in 1814, and two successful tragedies produced in 1822, '' Clytemnestre'' and ''Saül'', secured his admission to the Academy in 1824. ''Jeanne d'Arc'' (1825) was his most critically acclaimed play. ''Elisabeth de France'' (1828) was a weak imitation of Schiller's ''Don Carlos'' but Soumet's real bent was towards epic poetry. A poem inspired by Klopstock, ''La divine épopée'', describes the descent of Christ into Hades. Soumet's ''Norma, ou L'infanticide'' (''Norma, or The Infanticide'') was adapted by Vincenzo Bellini into the well-known op ...
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Le Siège De Corinthe
''Le siège de Corinthe'' (English: ''The Siege of Corinth'') is an opera in three acts by Gioachino Rossini set to a French libretto by Luigi Balocchi and Alexandre Soumet, which was based on the reworking of some of the music from the composer's 1820 opera for Naples, ''Maometto II'', the libretto of which was written by Cesare della Valle. ''Le siège'' was Rossini's first French opera (known also in its Italian version as ''L'assedio di Corinto'') and was first given at the Salle Le Peletier of the Paris Opéra on 9 October 1826 Composition history The opera commemorates the siege and ultimate destruction of the town of Missolonghi in 1826 by Turkish troops during the ongoing Greek War of Independence (1821–1829). The same incident – condemned throughout Western Europe for its cruelty – also inspired a prominent painting by Eugène Delacroix (''Greece Expiring on the Ruins of Missolonghi''), and was mentioned in the writings of Victor Hugo. The reference ...
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Avery Fisher Hall Photo D Ramey Logan
Avery may refer to: Business * Avery Company, a former tractor manufacturer and later produced trucks and automobiles * Avery Weigh-Tronix, a British manufacturer of industrial weighing systems * Avery Berkel, a British manufacturer of retail weighing systems ** GEC Avery, a former British manufacturer of weighing machines (successor to W & T Avery) ** W & T Avery, a former British manufacturer of weighing machines * Avery Brewing Company, a regional brewery located in Boulder, Colorado * Avery Dennison, a major manufacturer of pressure-sensitive adhesive materials, apparel branding labels and tags, RFID inlays, and specialty medical products * Avery Publishing, an imprint of the Penguin Group People * Avery (given name), including fictional characters * Avery (surname) Places United States * Avery, California * Avery, Idaho * Avery, Indiana * Avery, Iowa * Avery, Michigan * Avery, Missouri * Avery, Crawford County, Missouri * Avery, Nebraska * Avery, Ohio * Avery, ...
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Jacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach (, also , , ; 20 June 18195 October 1880) was a German-born French composer, cellist and impresario of the Romantic period. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s to the 1870s, and his uncompleted opera ''The Tales of Hoffmann''. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss Jr. and Arthur Sullivan. His best-known works were continually revived during the 20th century, and many of his operettas continue to be staged in the 21st. ''The Tales of Hoffmann'' remains part of the standard opera repertory. Born in Cologne, the son of a synagogue cantor, Offenbach showed early musical talent. At the age of 14, he was accepted as a student at the Paris Conservatoire but found academic study unfulfilling and left after a year. From 1835 to 1855 he earned his living as a cellist, achieving international fame, and as a conductor. His ambition, however, was to compose comic pieces for the musical the ...
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