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William Lewis (tenor)
William L. Lewis (born November 23, 1931 in Tulsa, Oklahoma) is an American operatic tenor and academic. Biography William Lewis was educated at the University of Colorado, Texas Christian University and New York University. He began his career as a writer and an athlete before deciding to pursue a career in opera. He began his voice training under Karl Kritz and Arthur Faguy Coté in Fort Worth, followed by studies with Susan Seton and Hulda and Luigi Rossini in New York. In the summer of 1951 he attended the Music Academy of the West. He made his professional opera debut in 1953 with Fort Worth Opera as Rinuccio in Puccini's ''Gianni Schicchi''. Two years later he won the Metropolitan Opera's ''Audition of the Air'' competition (precursor to the National Council Auditions). Lewis made his debut at the Metropolitan Opera as Narraboth in ''Salome'' on March 1, 1958 and subsequently sang in 234 performances in his 35 years with the company. In 1975 he made his debut at San Francisc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tulsa, Oklahoma
Tulsa () is the second-largest city in the state of Oklahoma and 47th-most populous city in the United States. The population was 413,066 as of the 2020 census. It is the principal municipality of the Tulsa Metropolitan Area, a region with 1,023,988 residents. The city serves as the county seat of Tulsa County, the most densely populated county in Oklahoma, with urban development extending into Osage, Rogers, and Wagoner counties. Tulsa was settled between 1828 and 1836 by the Lochapoka Band of Creek Native American tribe and most of Tulsa is still part of the territory of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. Historically, a robust energy sector fueled Tulsa's economy; however, today the city has diversified and leading sectors include finance, aviation, telecommunications and technology. Two institutions of higher education within the city have sports teams at the NCAA Division I level: Oral Roberts University and the University of Tulsa. As well, the University of Oklaho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Tales Of Hoffmann
''The Tales of Hoffmann'' (French: ) is an by Jacques Offenbach. The French libretto was written by Jules Barbier, based on three short stories by E. T. A. Hoffmann, who is the protagonist of the story. It was Offenbach's final work; he died in October 1880, four months before the premiere. Composition history and sources Offenbach saw a play, , written by Barbier and Michel Carré and produced at the Odéon Theatre in Paris in 1851. After returning from America in 1876, Offenbach learned that Barbier had adapted the play, which had now set to music at the Opéra. Salomon handed the project to Offenbach. Work proceeded slowly, interrupted by the composition of profitable lighter works. Offenbach had a premonition, like Antonia, the heroine of Act 2, that he would die prior to its completion. Offenbach continued working on the opera throughout 1880, attending some rehearsals. On 5 October 1880, he died with the manuscript in his hand, just four months before the opening. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Makropulos Affair (opera)
''The Makropulos Affair'' (or ''The Makropoulos Case'', ''The Makropulos Secret'', or, literally, ''The Makropulos Thing''; Czech ''Věc Makropulos'') is a Czech opera in 3 acts, with music and libretto by Leoš Janáček. Janáček based his opera on the play ''Věc Makropulos'' by Karel Čapek. Composed between 1923 and 1925, ''The Makropulos Affair'' was his penultimate opera and, like much of his later work, was inspired by his infatuation with Kamila Stösslová, a married woman much younger than himself. The opera received its world premiere at the National Theatre in Brno on 18 December 1926, conducted by František Neumann. Composition history Janáček had seen the play early in its run in Prague on 10 December 1922, and immediately saw its potential as an opera. He entered into a correspondence with Čapek, who was accommodating towards the idea, although legal problems in securing the rights to the play delayed work. When these problems were cleared on 10 September 19 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Billy Budd (opera)
''Billy Budd'', Op. 50, is an opera by Benjamin Britten to a libretto by the English novelist E. M. Forster and Eric Crozier, based on the short novel '' Billy Budd'' by Herman Melville. Originally in four acts, the opera received its premiere at the Royal Opera House (ROH), London, on 1 December 1951. Britten later revised the work into a two-act opera, with a prologue and an epilogue. The revised version received its first performance at the ROH, Covent Garden, London, on 9 January 1964. Composition history E. M. Forster had an interest in the novella, which he discussed in his Clark lectures at Cambridge University. Forster had admired Britten's music since 1937 when he attended a performance of the play ''The Ascent of F6'' (for which Britten wrote incidental music). Forster met Britten in October 1942, when he heard Peter Pears and Britten perform Britten's '' Seven Sonnets of Michelangelo'' at the National Gallery. In 1948, Britten and Forster discussed whether Forster ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oedipus Rex (opera)
''Oedipus rex'' is an opera-oratorio by Igor Stravinsky, scored for orchestra, speaker, soloists, and male chorus. The libretto, based on Sophocles's tragedy, was written by Jean Cocteau in French and then translated by Abbé Jean Daniélou into Latin; the narration, however, is performed in the language of the audience. ''Oedipus rex'' was written towards the beginning of Stravinsky's neoclassical period, and is considered one of the finest works from this phase of the composer's career. He had considered setting the work in Ancient Greek, but decided ultimately on Latin: in his words "a medium not dead but turned to stone." Performance history ''Oedipus rex'' is sometimes performed in the concert hall as an oratorio, similarly to its original performance in the Théâtre Sarah Bernhardt in Paris on 30 May 1927, and at its American premiere the following year, given by the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Harvard Glee Club. It has also been presented on stage as an opera, th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lulu (opera)
''Lulu'' (composed from 1929 to 1935, premièred incomplete in 1937 and complete in 1979) is an opera in three acts by Alban Berg. Berg adapted the libretto from Frank Wedekind's two ''Lulu'' plays, ''Erdgeist'' ('' Earth Spirit'', 1895) and ''Die Büchse der Pandora'' (''Pandora's Box'', 1904). The opera tells the story of a mysterious young woman known as Lulu, who follows a downward spiral from a well-kept mistress in Vienna to a street prostitute in London, while being both a victim and a purveyor of destruction. It explores the idea of the '' femme fatale'' and the duality between her feminine and masculine qualities. Berg died before completing the third and final act, and in the following decades the opera was typically performed incomplete. Since the 1979 publication of the version including Friedrich Cerha's orchestration of the act 3 sketches, it has become standard. ''Lulu'' is especially notable for using serialism at a time that was particularly inhospitable to it. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jenůfa
''Její pastorkyňa'' (''Her Stepdaughter''; commonly known as ''Jenůfa'' ) is an opera in three acts by Leoš Janáček to a Czech libretto by the composer, based on the play ''Její pastorkyňa'' by Gabriela Preissová. It was first performed at the National Theatre, Brno on 21 January 1904. Composed between 1896 and 1902, it is among the first operas written in prose. The first of Janáček's operas in which his distinctive voice can clearly be heard, it is a grim story of infanticide and redemption. Like the playwright's original work, it is known for its unsentimental realism. While today it is heard in the composer's original version, ''Jenůfas early popularity was due to a revised version by Karel Kovařovic, altering what was considered its eccentric style and orchestration. Thus altered, it was well-received, first in Prague, and particularly after its Vienna première also worldwide. More than 70 years passed before audiences again heard it in Janáček's original ve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Elektra (opera)
''Elektra'', Opus number, Op. 58, is a one-act opera by Richard Strauss, to a German-language libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, which he adapted from his 1903 drama ''Elektra''. The opera was the first of many collaborations between Strauss and Hofmannsthal. It was first performed at the Semperoper, Königliches Opernhaus in Dresden on 25 January 1909. It was dedicated to his friends Natalie and Willy Levin. History While based on ancient Greek mythology and Sophocles' tragedy ''Electra (Sophocles play), Electra'', the opera is highly Modernism, modernist and Expressionist music, expressionist in style. Hofmannsthal's and Strauss's adaptation of the story focuses tightly on Electra, Elektra, thoroughly developing her character by single-mindedly expressing her emotions and psychology as she meets with other characters, mostly one at a time. (The order of these conversations closely follows Sophocles' play.) The other characters are Clytemnestra, Klytaemnestra, her mother and o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wozzeck
''Wozzeck'' () is the first opera by the Austrian composer Alban Berg. It was composed between 1914 and 1922 and first performed in 1925. The opera is based on the drama ''Woyzeck'', which the German playwright Georg Büchner left incomplete at his death. Berg attended the first production in Vienna of Büchner's play on 5 May 1914, and knew at once that he wanted to base an opera on it. (At the time, the play was still known as ''Wozzeck'', due to an incorrect transcription by Karl Emil Franzos, who was working from a barely-legible manuscript; the correct title would not emerge until 1921.) From the fragments of unordered scenes left by Büchner, Berg selected 15 to form a compact structure of three acts with five scenes each. He adapted the libretto himself, retaining "the essential character of the play, with its many short scenes, its abrupt and sometimes brutal language, and its stark, if haunted, realism..." The plot depicts the everyday lives of soldiers and the townspeopl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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] |
Mozart
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 17565 December 1791), baptised as Joannes Chrysostomus Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period (music), Classical period. Despite his short life, his rapid pace of composition resulted in more than List of compositions by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, 800 works of virtually every genre of his time. Many of these compositions are acknowledged as pinnacles of the symphony, symphonic, concerto, concertante, chamber music, chamber, operatic, and choir, choral repertoire. Mozart is widely regarded as among the greatest composers in the history of Western music, with his music admired for its "melodic beauty, its formal elegance and its richness of harmony and texture". Born in Prince-Archbishopric of Salzburg, Salzburg, in the Holy Roman Empire, Mozart showed prodigious ability from his earliest childhood. Already competent on Keyboard instrument, keyboard and violin, he composed from the age of fi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Azio Corghi
Azio Corghi (9 March 1937 – 17 November 2022) was an Italian composer, academic teacher and musicologist. He composed mostly operas and chamber music. His operas are often based on literature, especially in collaboration with José Saramago as librettist. His first opera, ''Gargantua'', was premiered at the Teatro Regio in Turin in 1984, his second opera, ''Blimunda'', was first performed at La Scala in Milan in the 1989/90 season, and his third opera, '' Divara – aqua e sangue'', was premiered in 1993 at the Theater Münster, Germany. He taught composition at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, among other academies. In 2005, he was awarded the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic. Life and career Born in Cirié, in the Province of Turin, on 9 March 1937, Corghi was interested in both painting and music. His first instrument was an accordion. From 1956, he studied the piano at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory of Turin with Mario Zanfi. After graduation in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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