Hans Günter Nöcker
Hans Günter Nöcker (; 22 January 1927 – 20 March 2019) was a German operatic bass-baritone who was based at the Bavarian State Opera for decades, performing in several world premieres including Aribert Reimann's ''Lear (opera), Lear'', and also had an international career. Career Born in Hagen, Nöcker was initially an actor at the theatre in Wolfenbüttel. When his singing voice was discovered, he studied with in Braunschweig and Hans-Hermann Nissen and Willi Domgraf-Fassbaender in Munich. He was first trained as a bass but later turned to roles for baritone characters. Nöcker made his stage debut as Alfio in Mascagni's ''Cavalleria rusticana'' at the Theater Münster in 1952. In the 195354 season he was a member of the Stadttheater Gießen. From 1954 to 1965, he worked at the Staatsoper Stuttgart, where he took part in the world premieres of Carl Orff's ''Comoedia de Christi Resurrectione'' (1957) and his ''Oedipus der Tyrann'' (1959). Nöcker was a member of the ensem ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Hagen
Hagen () is a city in the States of Germany, state of North Rhine-Westphalia, in western Germany, on the southeastern edge of the Ruhr area, 15 km south of Dortmund, where the rivers Lenne and Volme meet the Ruhr (river), Ruhr. In 2023, the population was 197,677. The city is home to the FernUniversität Hagen (University of Hagen), the only state-funded distance education university in Germany. Geography The largest extension of Hagen's municipal area is 17.1 km in a north-south direction and 15.5 km in a west-east direction. The city boundary of 89.7 km is made up of 3.3 km to Dortmund, 9 km to the Unna (district), district of Unna, 56.6 km to the Ennepe-Ruhr-Kreis, Ennepe-Ruhr district and 20.8 km to the Märkischer Kreis, Märkisch district. The area of the city (160.36 km²) is roughly the size of the Liechtenstein, Principality of Liechtenstein. 42 per cent of Hagen's municipal area consists of forest. The four rivers in Hagen stretch over a length of 52.2 km: Ruhr ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Tosca
''Tosca'' is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. It premiered at the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, Teatro Costanzi in Rome on 14 January 1900. The work, based on Victorien Sardou's 1887 French-language dramatic play, ''La Tosca'', is a melodramatic piece set in Rome in June 1800, with the Kingdom of Naples's control of Rome threatened by Napoleon's Campaigns of 1800 in the French Revolutionary Wars#Italy, invasion of Italy. It contains depictions of torture, murder, and suicide, as well as some of Puccini's best-known lyrical arias. Puccini saw Sardou's play when it was touring Italy in 1889 and, after some vacillation, obtained the rights to turn the work into an opera in 1895. Turning the wordy French play into a succinct Italian opera took four years, during which the composer repeatedly argued with his librettists and publisher. ''Tosca'' premiered at a time of unrest in Rome, and its first performance was delayed ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Nikolaus Lehnhoff
Nikolaus Lehnhoff (20 May 1939 in Hanover – 29 August 2015 in Berlin) was a German opera director. Life and career Born in Hanover to Erika (née Fiediger) and Friedrich Lehnhoff, Lehnhoff studied at the University of Munich and the University of Vienna. Lehnhoff began his career working as a stage director at the Deutsche Oper Berlin and as an assistant to Wieland Wagner at the Bayreuth Festival in the 1960s. He then became a stage director for the Metropolitan Opera, beginning with the 1967 revival of Mozart's ''The Marriage of Figaro''. He served as stage director for several more Met productions through 1970, including ''Ariadne auf Naxos'', ''La bohème'', '' The Flying Dutchman'', and ''Simon Boccanegra''. In 1972 Lehnhoff directed his first opera; a production of Strauss' ''Die Frau ohne Schatten'' at the Paris Opera with Christa Ludwig and Walter Berry. He directed that same work for his directorial debut at the San Francisco Opera (SFO) with Leonie Rysanek as the Empre ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Götterdämmerung
' (; ''Twilight of the Gods''), Wagner-Werk-Verzeichnis, WWV 86D, is the last of the four epic poetry, epic music dramas that constitute Richard Wagner's Literary cycle, cycle ''Der Ring des Nibelungen'' (English: ''The Ring of the Nibelung''). It received its premiere at the on 17 August 1876, as part of the first complete performance of the whole work. The title is a German calque of the Old Norse phrase ', which in Norse mythology refers to a prophesied war among various beings and gods that ultimately results in the burning, immersion in water, and renewal of the world. As with the rest of the ''Ring'', however, Wagner's account diverges significantly from these Old Norse sources. The autograph manuscript of the work is preserved in the Richard Wagner Foundation. Composition Roles Synopsis Prologue Prelude to the Prologue ''Scene 1'' The three Norns, daughters of Jörð, Erda, the goddess of Nature, gather beside Brunhild, Brünnhilde's rock, weaving the W ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Werther
''Werther'' is an opera (''drame lyrique'') in four acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Édouard Blau, Paul Milliet and Georges Hartmann (who used the pseudonym Henri Grémont). It is loosely based on Goethe's epistolary novel ''The Sorrows of Young Werther'', which was based both on fact and on Goethe's own early life. Earlier examples of operas using the story were made by Kreutzer (1792) and Pucitta (1802). Milnes R. Werther. In: ''The New Grove Dictionary of Opera''. Macmillan, London and New York, 1997. Performance history Massenet started composing ''Werther'' in 1885, completing it in 1887. He submitted it to Léon Carvalho, the director of the Paris Opéra-Comique, that year, but Carvalho declined to accept it on the grounds that the scenario was too serious. With the disruption of the fire at the Opéra-Comique and Massenet's work on other operatic projects (especially ''Esclarmonde''), it was put to one side, until the Vienna Opera, pleased with the success ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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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 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 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 depiction of the Nuremberg of the era and the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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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'' Play (theatre), plays, ''Erdgeist'' (''Earth Spirit (play), Earth Spirit'', 1895) and ''Die Büchse der Pandora'' (''Pandora's Box (play), Pandora's Box'', 1904). Berg died before completing the third and final act, and the opera was typically performed as a "torso" until Friedrich Cerha's 1979 orchestration of the act 3 sketches, which is now established as the standard version. ''Lulu'' is notable for using twelve-tone technique during a time that was particularly inhospitable to it. Theodor W. Adorno praised it as "one of those works that reveals the extent of its quality the longer and more deeply one immerses oneself in it." The opera tells the story of Lulu, an ambiguous in the fin de siècle, through a series of chiastic structures in both the music and drama alike. Introduced allegor ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Tristan Und Isolde
''Tristan und Isolde'' (''Tristan and Isolde''), WWV 90, is a music drama in three acts by Richard Wagner set to a German libretto by the composer, loosely based on the medieval 12th-century romance ''Tristan and Iseult'' by Gottfried von Strassburg. First conceived in 1854, the music 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. While performed by opera companies, Wagner preferred the term ''Handlung'' (German for "plot" or "action") for ''Tristan'' to distinguish its structure of continuous narrative flow (" endless melody") as distinct from that of conventional opera at the time which was constructed of mundane recitatives punctuated by showpiece arias, which Wagner had come to regard with great disdain. Wagner's composition of ''Tristan und Isolde'' was inspired in part by the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, as well as by his relationship with his muse ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Fidelio
''Fidelio'' (; ), originally titled ' (''Leonore, or The Triumph of Marital Love''), Opus number, Op. 72, is the sole opera by German composer Ludwig van Beethoven. The libretto was originally prepared by Joseph Sonnleithner from the French of Jean-Nicolas Bouilly. The opera premiered at Vienna's Theater an der Wien on 20 November 1805. The following year, Beethoven's friend Stephan von Breuning (librettist), Stephan von Breuning rewrote the libretto, shortening the work from three acts to two. After further work on the libretto by Georg Friedrich Treitschke, a final version was performed at the Theater am Kärntnertor, Kärntnertortheater on 23 May 1814. As these libretto revisions were going on, Beethoven was also revising some of the music. By convention, only the final version is called ''Fidelio'', and the others are referred to as ''Leonore''. The libretto tells how Leonore, disguised as a prison guard named "Fidelio", Rescue opera, rescues her husband Florestan from death ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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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]   |
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Salome (opera)
''Salome'', Op. 54, is an opera in one act by Richard Strauss. The libretto is Hedwig Lachmann's German translation of the 1891 French play '' Salomé'' by Oscar Wilde, edited by the composer. Strauss dedicated the opera to his friend Sir Edgar Speyer. The opera is famous (at the time of its premiere, infamous) for its " Dance of the Seven Veils". The final scene is frequently heard as a concert-piece for dramatic sopranos. Composition history Oscar Wilde originally wrote his ''Salomé'' in French. Strauss saw the Lachmann version of the play in Max Reinhardt's production at the Kleines Theater in Berlin on 15 November 1902, and immediately set to work on an opera. The play's formal structure was well-suited to musical adaptation. Wilde himself described ''Salomé'' as containing "refrains whose recurring ''motifs'' make it so like a piece of music and bind it together as a ballad". Strauss pared down Lachmann's German text to what he saw as its essentials, and in the proc ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Arabella
''Arabella'', Op. 79, is a lyric comedy, or opera, in three acts by Richard Strauss to a German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, their sixth and last operatic collaboration. Performance history It was first performed on 1 July 1933 at the Dresden Sächsisches Staatstheater. The opera received its premiere in the UK on 17 May 1934 at London's Royal Opera House. The Western Hemisphere premiere was at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires on 16 August 1934, conducted by Fritz Busch, with Margarete Teschemacher in the title role. Two decades later, on 10 February 1955, it was performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York with Eleanor Steber in the title role. The Met has given numerous performances of the work since that date. At the 2008 Helpmann Awards, the production by Opera Australia won the Award for Best Opera. [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |