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Beecham Opera Company
The Beecham Opera Company was an opera company founded by Thomas Beecham which presented opera in English in London and on tour between 1916 and 1920.Jefferson, Alan (2004) "Beecham, Sir Thomas, second baronet (1879–1961)" ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, online edition, January 2011. Retrieved 29 January 2012. The initiative was conceived as part of Beecham's campaign to foster musical life during World War I, after the forced closure of the Covent Garden Opera Company, where the conductor had been mounting opera seasons. Conveniently, Beecham's project was able to draw on many former members of the Edinburgh-based Denhof Opera Company, thereby effectively continuing the earlier company's work. The company was formed with mainly British singers, with New Zealander Rosina Buckman a notable exception; she was assigned the role of a principal dramatic soprano. Supported financially by Beecham's father, Joseph, the new outfit quickly turned into ...
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Thomas Beecham
Sir Thomas Beecham, 2nd Baronet, Order of the Companions of Honour, CH (29 April 18798 March 1961) was an English conductor and impresario best known for his association with the London Philharmonic Orchestra, London Philharmonic and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, Royal Philharmonic orchestras. He was also closely associated with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Liverpool Philharmonic and The Hallé, Hallé orchestras. From the early 20th century until his death, Beecham was a major influence on the musical life of United Kingdom, Britain and, according to the BBC, was Britain's first international conductor. Born to a rich industrial family, Beecham began his career as a conductor in 1899. He used his access to the family fortune to finance opera from the 1910s until the start of the Second World War, staging seasons at Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, Drury Lane and Her Majesty's Theatre, His Majesty's Theatre with international stars, his own ...
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Aldwych Theatre
The Aldwych Theatre is a West End theatre, located in Aldwych in the City of Westminster, central London. It was listed Grade II on 20 July 1971. Its seating capacity is 1,200 on three levels. History Origins The theatre was constructed in the newly built Aldwych as a pair with the Waldorf Theatre, now known as the Novello Theatre. Both buildings were designed in the Edwardian Baroque style by W. G. R. Sprague. The Aldwych Theatre was funded by Seymour Hicks in association with the American impresario Charles Frohman, and built by Walter Wallis of Balham. The theatre opened on 23 December 1905 with a production of ''Blue Bell'', a new version of Hicks's popular pantomime ''Bluebell in Fairyland''. In 1906, Hicks's ''The Beauty of Bath'', followed in 1907 by '' The Gay Gordons'', played at the theatre. In February 1913, the theatre was used by Serge Diaghilev and Vaslav Nijinsky for the first rehearsals of ''Le Sacre du Printemps'' before its première in Paris during May. In ...
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Musical Groups Established In 1915
Musical is the adjective of music. Musical may also refer to: * Musical theatre, a performance art that combines songs, spoken dialogue, acting and dance * Musical film and television, a genre of film and television that incorporates into the narrative songs sung by the characters * MusicAL, an Albanian television channel * Musical isomorphism, the canonical isomorphism between the tangent and cotangent bundles See also * Lists of musicals * Music (other) * Musica (other) * Musicality Musicality (''music -al -ity'') is "sensitivity to, knowledge of, or talent for music" or "the quality or state of being musical", and is used to refer to specific if vaguely defined qualities in pieces and/or genres of music, such as melodiousnes ...
, the ability to perceive music or to create music * {{Music disambiguation ...
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British Opera Companies
British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, the English language as spoken and written in the United Kingdom or, more broadly, throughout the British Isles * Celtic Britons, an ancient ethno-linguistic group * Brittonic languages, a branch of the Insular Celtic language family (formerly called British) ** Common Brittonic, an ancient language Other uses *''Brit(ish)'', a 2018 memoir by Afua Hirsch *People or things associated with: ** Great Britain, an island ** United Kingdom, a sovereign state ** Kingdom of Great Britain (1707–1800) ** United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (1801–1922) See also * Terminology of the British Isles * Alternative names for the British * English (other) * Britannic (other) * British Isles * Brit (other) * Briton (d ...
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British National Opera Company
The British National Opera Company presented opera in English in London and on tour in the British provinces between 1922 and 1929. It was founded in December 1921 by singers and instrumentalists from Thomas Beecham, Sir Thomas Beecham's Beecham Opera Company (1915–1920), which was disbanded when financial problems over buying Thomas Beecham#Covent Garden estate, The Bedford Estate forced Beecham to withdraw from the music scene for a short period. The new venture was financed by the issue of 40,000 preference shares at £1 each. Among the musicians who met at the inaugural meeting of the new enterprise at the Queen's Hall were Alexander Mackenzie (composer), Sir Alexander Mackenzie, Charles Villiers Stanford, Sir Charles Stanford, Harry Plunket Greene, Walter Hyde, Aylmer Buesst and William Henry Hadow, Sir Henry Hadow. The new company bought the entire assets of the Beecham company, comprising the scenery, costumes, scores, instruments and performing rights for 48 operas. The c ...
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Tristan Und Isolde
''Tristan und Isolde'' (''Tristan and Isolde''), WWV 90, is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner to a German libretto by the composer, based largely on the 12th-century romance Tristan and Iseult by Gottfried von Strassburg. It was composed between 1857 and 1859 and premiered at the Königliches Hoftheater und Nationaltheater in Munich on 10 June 1865 with Hans von Bülow conducting. Wagner referred to the work not as an opera, but called it "" (literally ''a drama'', ''a plot'', or ''an action''). Wagner's composition of ''Tristan und Isolde'' was inspired by the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer (particularly ''The World as Will and Representation''), as well as by Wagner's affair with Mathilde Wesendonck. Widely acknowledged as a pinnacle of the operatic repertoire, ''Tristan'' was notable for Wagner's unprecedented use of chromaticism, tonal ambiguity, orchestral colour, and harmonic suspension. The opera was enormously influential among Western classical com ...
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Boris Godunov (opera)
''Boris Godunov'' ( rus, Борис Годунов, links=no, Borís Godunóv ) is an opera by Modest Mussorgsky (1839–1881). The work was composed between 1868 and 1873 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It is Mussorgsky's only completed opera and is considered his masterpiece. Its subjects are the Russian ruler Boris Godunov, who reigned as Tsar (1598 to 1605) during the Time of Troubles, and his nemesis, the False Dmitriy (reigned 1605 to 1606). The Russian-language libretto was written by the composer, and is based on the 1825 drama '' Boris Godunov'' by Aleksandr Pushkin, and, in the Revised Version of 1872, on Nikolay Karamzin's ''History of the Russian State''. Among major operas, ''Boris Godunov'' shares with Giuseppe Verdi's ''Don Carlos'' (1867) the distinction of having an extremely complex creative history, as well as a great wealth of alternative material. The composer created two versions—the Original Version of 1869, which was rejected for production by the Imper ...
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Zeppelin
A Zeppelin is a type of rigid airship named after the German inventor Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin () who pioneered rigid airship development at the beginning of the 20th century. Zeppelin's notions were first formulated in 1874Eckener 1938, pp. 155–157. and developed in detail in 1893.Dooley 2004, p. A.187. They were patented in Germany in 1895 and in the United States in 1899. After the outstanding success of the Zeppelin design, the word ''zeppelin'' came to be commonly used to refer to all rigid airships. Zeppelins were first flown commercially in 1910 by Deutsche Luftschiffahrts-AG (DELAG), the world's first airline in revenue service. By mid-1914, DELAG had carried over 10,000 fare-paying passengers on over 1,500 flights. During World War I, the German military made extensive use of Zeppelins as bombers and as scouts, resulting in over 500 deaths in bombing raids in Britain. The defeat of Germany in 1918 temporarily slowed the airship business. Although DELAG establish ...
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Shaftesbury Theatre (1888)
The Shaftesbury Theatre was a theatre in central London, England, between 1888 and 1941. It was built by John Lancaster for his wife, Ellen Wallis, a well-known Shakespearean actress. The theatre was designed by C. J. Phipps and built by Messrs. Patman and Fotheringham at a cost of £20,000 and opened with a production of '' As You Like It'' on 20 October 1888. The theatre had a stage of 28' 6" square. The capacity was 1,196. It was located on the south side of Shaftesbury Avenue, just east of Gerrard Place. History The theatre's first big hit was '' The Belle of New York'' produced by the prominent Broadway producer, George W. Lederer, which opened on 12 April 1898 and ran for an extremely successful 697 performances. In 1908–09 H. B. Irving became the lessee and manager of the theatre and presented a successful season of plays. Robert Courtneidge was lessee for most of the early years of the 20th century and produced mostly comic operas and Edwardian musical comedies, in ...
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World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fighting occurring throughout Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Pacific, and parts of Asia. An estimated 9 million soldiers were killed in combat, plus another 23 million wounded, while 5 million civilians died as a result of military action, hunger, and disease. Millions more died in genocides within the Ottoman Empire and in the 1918 influenza pandemic, which was exacerbated by the movement of combatants during the war. Prior to 1914, the European great powers were divided between the Triple Entente (comprising France, Russia, and Britain) and the Triple Alliance (containing Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy). Tensions in the Balkans came to a head on 28 June 1914, following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdin ...
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Theatre Royal, Drury Lane
The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, commonly known as Drury Lane, is a West End theatre and Grade I listed building in Covent Garden, London, England. The building faces Catherine Street (earlier named Bridges or Brydges Street) and backs onto Drury Lane. The building is the most recent in a line of four theatres which were built at the same location, the earliest of which dated back to 1663, making it the oldest theatre site in London still in use. According to the author Peter Thomson, for its first two centuries, Drury Lane could "reasonably have claimed to be London's leading theatre". For most of that time, it was one of a handful of patent theatres, granted monopoly rights to the production of "legitimate" drama in London (meaning spoken plays, rather than opera, dance, concerts, or plays with music). The first theatre on the site was built at the behest of Thomas Killigrew in the early 1660s, when theatres were allowed to reopen during the English Restoration. Initially ...
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Frank Mullings
Frank Mullings (10 May 1881 – 19 May 1953) was a leading English tenor with Sir Thomas Beecham's Beecham Opera Company and its successor, the British National Opera Company, during the 1910s and 1920s. Blessed with a strong stage presence and a voice that provoked varying reactions from critics, his repertoire included such taxing dramatic parts as Tristan in ''Tristan und Isolde'', Radames in ''Aida'', the title role in '' Otello'', and Canio in '' Pagliacci.'' The limitations of early microphones meant that his voice was not always recorded successfully, although the British National Opera Company website notes that playing the recordings at 80 rpm produces a more reliable result.Mullings on Divineart.com
Mullings was born in