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Thomas Hemsley
Thomas Jeffrey Hemsley, CBE (12 April 192711 April 2013) was an English baritone. Hemsley was born in Coalville, Leicestershire, and attended Ashby de la Zouch Grammar School. He took a degree in natural sciences from Brasenose College, Oxford. He moved to London and became a pupil of Lucie Manén, and also served as a Vicar Choral at St Paul's Cathedral. He made his debut in 1951 as Aeneas in Purcell's ''Dido and Aeneas'' at the Mermaid Theatre, London, alongside Kirsten Flagstad as Dido. The pair recorded the opera for EMI the same year. He debuted at Glyndebourne in 1953. He was principal baritone at the Aachen Opera from 1953 to 1956, the Deutsche Oper am Rhein from 1956 to 1963, and the Zürich Opera from 1962 to 1967. In 1960, Hemsley created the role of Demetrius in Britten's ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'' with the English Opera Group at Aldeburgh. His other work in contemporary opera included his Covent Garden debut in 1970 as Mangus in Tippett's ''The Knot Garden'', ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Commander Of The Order Of The British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established on 4 June 1917 by King George V and comprises five classes across both civil and military divisions, the most senior two of which make the recipient either a knight if male or dame if female. There is also the related British Empire Medal, whose recipients are affiliated with, but not members of, the order. Recommendations for appointments to the Order of the British Empire were originally made on the nomination of the United Kingdom, the self-governing Dominions of the Empire (later Commonwealth) and the Viceroy of India. Nominations continue today from Commonwealth countries that participate in recommending British honours. Most Commonwealth countries ceased recommendations for appointments to the Order of the British Empire when they cre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michael Tippett
Sir Michael Kemp Tippett (2 January 1905 – 8 January 1998) was an English composer who rose to prominence during and immediately after the Second World War. In his lifetime he was sometimes ranked with his contemporary Benjamin Britten as one of the leading British composers of the 20th century. Among his best-known works are the oratorio ''A Child of Our Time'', the orchestral '' Fantasia Concertante on a Theme of Corelli'', and the opera ''The Midsummer Marriage''. Tippett's talent developed slowly. He withdrew or destroyed his earliest compositions, and was 30 before any of his works were published. Until the mid-to-late 1950s his music was broadly lyrical in character, before changing to a more astringent and experimental style. New influences, including those of jazz and blues after his first visit to America in 1965, became increasingly evident in his compositions. While Tippett's stature with the public continued to grow, not all critics approved of these changes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rafael Kubelík
Rafael Jeroným Kubelík, KBE (29 June 1914 – 11 August 1996) was a Czech conductor and composer. Son of a well-known violinist, Jan Kubelík, he was trained in Prague, and made his debut with the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra at the age of 19. Having managed to maintain a career in Czechoslovakia under the Nazi occupation, he refused to work under what he considered a "second tyranny" after the Communist Czechoslovak coup d'état of 1948, and took refuge in Britain. He became a Swiss citizen in 1967. Kubelík was music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra (1950–53), musical director of The Royal Opera, Covent Garden (1955–58). In 1957, he conducted and recorded the Wold premiere Berlioz's ''Les Troyens.'' During (1961- 79), he was music director of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra (1961–79), and was a frequent guest conductor for leading orchestras in Europe and America. As a composer, Kubelík wrote in a neo-romantic idiom. His works include five operas, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bayreuth
Bayreuth (, ; bar, Bareid) is a town in northern Bavaria, Germany, on the Red Main river in a valley between the Franconian Jura and the Fichtelgebirge Mountains. The town's roots date back to 1194. In the 21st century, it is the capital of Upper Franconia and has a population of 72,148 (2015). It hosts the annual Bayreuth Festival, at which performances of operas by the 19th-century German composer Richard Wagner are presented. History Middle Ages and Early Modern Period The town is believed to have been founded by the counts of Andechs probably around the mid-12th century,Mayer, Bernd and Rückel, Gert (2009). ''Bayreuth – Tours on Foot'', Heinrichs-Verlag, Bamberg, p.5, . but was first mentioned in 1194 as ''Baierrute'' in a document by Bishop Otto II of Bamberg. The syllable ''-rute'' may mean ''Rodung'' or "clearing", whilst ''Baier-'' indicates immigrants from the Bavarian region. Already documented earlier, were villages later merged into Bayreuth: Seulbitz (in 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Otto Klemperer
Otto Nossan Klemperer (14 May 18856 July 1973) was a 20th-century conductor and composer, originally based in Germany, and then the US, Hungary and finally Britain. His early career was in opera houses, but he was later better known as a concert-hall conductor. A protégé of the composer Gustav Mahler, Klemperer was appointed to a succession of increasingly senior conductorships in opera houses in and around Germany. From 1929 to 1931 he was director of the Kroll Opera in Berlin, where he presented new works and avant-garde productions of classics. The rise of the Nazis caused him to leave Germany in 1933, and shortly afterwards he was appointed chief conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and guest-conducted other American orchestras, including the San Francisco Symphony, the New York Philharmonic and later the Pittsburgh Symphony, which he reorganised as a permanent ensemble. In the late 1930s Klemperer became ill with a brain tumour. An operation to remove it was succe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Die Meistersinger Von Nürnberg
(; "The Master-Singers of Nuremberg"), WWV 96, is a music drama, or opera, in three acts, by Richard Wagner. It is the longest opera commonly performed, taking nearly four and a half hours, not counting two breaks between acts, and is traditionally not cut. With Hans von Bülow conducting, it was first performed on 21 June 1868 at the National Theatre Munich, National Theater in Munich, today home of Bavarian State Opera. The story is set in Nuremberg in the mid-16th century. At the time, Nuremberg was a free imperial city and one of the centers of the Renaissance in Northern Europe. The story revolves around the city's guild of ''Meistersinger'' (Master Singers), an association of amateur poets and musicians who were primarily Master craftsman, master craftsmen of various trades. The master singers had developed a craftsmanlike approach to music-making, with an intricate system of rules for composing and performing songs. The work draws much of its atmosphere from its depictio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most opera composers, Wagner wrote both the libretto and the music for each of his stage works. Initially establishing his reputation as a composer of works in the romantic vein of Carl Maria von Weber and Giacomo Meyerbeer, Wagner revolutionised opera through his concept of the ''Gesamtkunstwerk'' ("total work of art"), by which he sought to synthesise the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, with music subsidiary to drama. He described this vision in a series of essays published between 1849 and 1852. Wagner realised these ideas most fully in the first half of the four-opera cycle ''Der Ring des Nibelungen'' (''The Ring of the Nibelung''). His compositions, particularly those of his later period, are notable for their complex textures, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Groves
Sir Charles Barnard Groves CBE (10 March 191520 June 1992) was an English conductor. He was known for the breadth of his repertoire and for encouraging contemporary composers and young conductors. After accompanying positions and conducting various orchestras and studio work for the BBC, Groves spent a decade as conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. His best-known musical directorship was of the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, beginning in 1963, with which he made most of his recordings. From 1967 until his death, Groves was associate conductor of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and in the 1970s he was one of the regular conductors of the Last Night of the Proms. He also served as president of the National Youth Orchestra from 1977, and, during the last decade of his life, as guest conductor for orchestras around the world. Life and career Early years Groves was born in London, the only child of Frederick Groves and Annie (née Whitehead). Groves b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra
Royal Liverpool Philharmonic is a music organisation based in Liverpool, England, that manages a professional symphony orchestra, a concert venue, and extensive programmes of learning through music. Its orchestra, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, is the UK's oldest continuing professional symphony orchestra. In addition to the orchestra, the organisation administers the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Choir, the Liverpool Philharmonic Youth Company and other choirs and ensembles. It is involved in educational and community projects in Liverpool and its surrounding region. It is based in the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall, an Art Deco concert hall built in the late 1930s. History 19th century The organisation has its origins in a group of music amateurs in the early 19th century. They had met during the 1830s in St Martin's Church under the leadership of William Sudlow, a stockbroker and organist; their main interest was choral music.Spiegl, Fritz and Sara Cohen"Liverpool ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Requiem (Delius)
The Requiem by Frederick Delius was written between 1913 and 1916, and first performed in 1922. It is set for soprano, baritone, double chorus and orchestra, and is dedicated "To the memory of all young artists fallen in the war". The ''Requiem'' is Delius's least-known major work, not being recorded until 1968 and having received only seven performances worldwide by 1980. Background The reasons why Delius, an avowed atheist, started work on a Requiem, a decidedly Christian (specifically Catholic) form, are obscure. (''A Mass of Life'' from 1905 also has a title suggestive of religion, but with an apparently anti-religious text.) He started work on the Requiem in 1913, after a holiday in Norway. The dedication "To the memory of all young artists fallen in the war" was clearly not in Delius's mind at the outset, as there was no war happening at that time. He had substantially completed the work by 26 October 1914, barely ten weeks after the start of the World War I, First World ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frederick Delius
Delius, photographed in 1907 Frederick Theodore Albert Delius ( 29 January 1862 – 10 June 1934), originally Fritz Delius, was an English composer. Born in Bradford in the north of England to a prosperous mercantile family, he resisted attempts to recruit him to commerce. He was sent to Florida in the United States in 1884 to manage an orange plantation. He soon neglected his managerial duties and in 1886 returned to Europe. Having been influenced by African-American music during his short stay in Florida, he began composing. After a brief period of formal musical study in Germany beginning in 1886, he embarked on a full-time career as a composer in Paris and then in nearby Grez-sur-Loing, where he and his wife Jelka lived for the rest of their lives, except during the First World War. Delius's first successes came in Germany, where Hans Haym and other conductors promoted his music from the late 1890s. In Delius's native Britain, his music did not make regular appearances ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Wilson (composer)
Thomas Wilson CBE FRSE (10 October 1927 – 12 June 2001) was an American-born Scottish composer of classical music. Early life and education Thomas Brendan Wilson was born in Trinidad, Colorado to British parents and moved to Britain with his family when he was 17 months old. The family settled in the Glasgow, Scotland area where he lived and worked for the remainder of his life. Wilson was educated in Glasgow before taking an undergraduate course at St. Mary's College, Aberdeen. He then studied Music at the University of Glasgow, where he continued as a postgraduate, receiving a doctorate (DMus). He served in the Royal Air Force from 1945 to 1948. Career One of the first honours graduates in music from Glasgow University, Wilson became a lecturer at his ''alma mater'' in 1957. He was later appointed a Reader (1971) and given a Personal Chair in 1977. He consistently played an active part in the musical life of the UK, holding executive and advisory positions in such org ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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