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René Pape
René Pape (born 4 September 1964) is a German operatic bass. Pape has received two Grammys, was named "Vocalist of the Year" by Musical America in 2002, "Artist of the Year" by the German opera critics in 2006, and won an ECHO award (the German equivalent of the Grammy) in 2009. Biography René Pape was born in Dresden, then part of East Germany. His mother is a hairdresser and his father a chef. His parents divorced when he was two years old and he sometimes lived with his grandmother, who opened the way for his interest in music. His maternal grandfather was an operetta tenor. Pape received his musical education from 1974 to 1981 with the Dresdner Kreuzchor (he even appeared as one of the Three Boys in Die Zauberflöte) and the Dresden Conservatory in the early '80s. He had his debut with the Berlin Staatsoper Unter den Linden in 1988, and joined the company of the Berlin State Opera that year. He achieved international recognition in 1991, when Sir Georg Solti cast him as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dresden
Dresden (; ; Upper Saxon German, Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; , ) is the capital city of the States of Germany, German state of Saxony and its second most populous city after Leipzig. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth largest by area (after Berlin, Hamburg, and Cologne), and the third-most populous city in the area of former East Germany, after Berlin and Leipzig. Dresden's urban area comprises the towns of Freital, Pirna, Radebeul, Meissen, Coswig, Saxony, Coswig, Radeberg, and Heidenau and has around 790,000 inhabitants. The Dresden metropolitan area has approximately 1.34 million inhabitants. Dresden is the second largest city on the River Elbe after Hamburg. Most of the city's population lives in the Dresden Basin, Elbe Valley, but a large, albeit very sparsely populated, area of the city east of the Elbe lies in the West Lusatian Hill Country and Uplands (the westernmost part of the Sudetes) and thus in Lusatia. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bayreuth Festival
The Bayreuth Festival () is a music festival held annually in Bayreuth, Germany, at which performances of stage works by the 19th-century German composer Richard Wagner are presented. Wagner himself conceived and promoted the idea of a special festival to showcase his own works, in particular his monumental cycle and '' Parsifal''. Performances take place in a specially designed theatre, the Bayreuth Festspielhaus. Wagner personally supervised the design and construction of the theatre, which contained many architectural innovations to accommodate the huge orchestras for which Wagner wrote as well as the composer's particular vision about the staging of his works. The Festival has become a pilgrimage destination for Wagnerians and classical-music enthusiasts. Origins The origins of the Festival itself lie rooted in Richard Wagner's interest in establishing his financial independence. A souring of the relationship with his patron, Ludwig II of Bavaria, led to his expulsion f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Macbeth (Verdi)
''Macbeth'' () is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi, with an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave and additions by Andrea Maffei, based on William Shakespeare's play of the same name. Written for the Teatro della Pergola in Florence, ''Macbeth'' was Verdi's tenth opera and premiered on 14 March 1847. It was the first Shakespeare play that Verdi adapted for the operatic stage. Almost twenty years later, ''Macbeth'' was revised and expanded into a French version and given in Paris on 21 April 1865. After the success of ''Attila'' in 1846, by which time the composer had become well-established, ''Macbeth'' came before the great successes of 1851 to 1853 (''Rigoletto'', '' Il trovatore'' and '' La traviata'') which propelled him into universal fame. As sources, Shakespeare's plays provided Verdi with lifelong inspiration: some, such as an adaption of ''King Lear'' (as '' Re Lear'') were never realized, but he wrote his two final operas using ''Othello'' as the basis fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Faust (opera)
''Faust'' is a grand opera in five acts by Charles Gounod to a French libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré from Carré's play ''Faust et Marguerite'', in turn loosely based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's '' Faust, Part One''. It debuted at the Théâtre Lyrique on the Boulevard du Temple in Paris on 19 March 1859, with influential sets designed by Charles-Antoine Cambon and Joseph Thierry, Jean Émile Daran, Édouard Desplechin, and Philippe Chaperon. Performance history The original version of Faust employed spoken dialogue, and it was in this form that the work was first performed. The manager of the Théâtre Lyrique, Léon Carvalho cast his wife Caroline Miolan-Carvalho as Marguerite and there were various changes during production, including the removal and contraction of several numbers. The tenor Hector Gruyer was originally cast as Faust but was found to be inadequate during rehearsals, being eventually replaced by a principal of the Opéra-Comique, Jose ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Don Giovanni
''Don Giovanni'' (; K. 527; full title: , literally ''The Rake Punished, or Don Giovanni'') is an opera in two acts with music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to an Italian libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. Its subject is a centuries-old Spanish legend about a libertine as told by playwright Tirso de Molina in his 1630 play '' El burlador de Sevilla y convidado de piedra''. It is a ''dramma giocoso'' blending comedy, melodrama and supernatural elements (although the composer entered it into his catalogue simply as ''opera buffa''). It was premiered by the Prague Italian opera at the National Theatre (of Bohemia), now called the Estates Theatre, on 29 October 1787. ''Don Giovanni'' is regarded as one of the greatest operas of all time and has proved a fruitful subject for commentary in its own right; critic Fiona Maddocks has described it as one of Mozart's "trio of masterpieces with librettos by Da Ponte". Composition and premiere The opera was commissioned after the success of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Parsifal
''Parsifal'' ( WWV 111) is a music drama in three acts by the German composer Richard Wagner and his last composition. Wagner's own libretto for the work is freely based on the 13th-century Middle High German chivalric romance ''Parzival'' of the '' Minnesänger'' Wolfram von Eschenbach and the Old French chivalric romance ''Perceval ou le Conte du Graal'' by the 12th-century ''trouvère'' Chrétien de Troyes, recounting different accounts of the story of the Arthurian knight Parzival (Percival) and his spiritual quest for the Holy Grail. Wagner conceived the work in April 1857, but did not finish it until 25 years later. In composing it he took advantage of the particular acoustics of his newly built Bayreuth Festspielhaus. ''Parsifal'' was first produced at the second Bayreuth Festival in 1882. The Bayreuth Festival maintained a monopoly on ''Parsifal'' productions until 1914, however the opera was performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1903 after a US court ruled ... [...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] |
Carmen
''Carmen'' () is an opera in four acts by the French composer Georges Bizet. The libretto was written by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on the novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée. The opera was first performed by the Opéra-Comique in Paris on 3 March 1875, where its breaking of conventions shocked and scandalised its first audiences. Bizet died suddenly after the 33rd performance, unaware that the work would achieve international acclaim within the following ten years. ''Carmen'' has since become one of the most popular and frequently performed operas in the classical canon; the " Habanera" and "Seguidilla" from act 1 and the " Toreador Song" from act 2 are among the best known of all operatic arias. The opera is written in the genre of ''opéra comique'' with musical numbers separated by dialogue. It is set in southern Spain and tells the story of the downfall of Don José, a naïve soldier who is seduced by the wiles of the fiery gypsy Carmen. Jos� ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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] |
Samson Et Dalila
''Samson and Delilah'' (), Op. 47, is a grand opera in three acts and four scenes by Camille Saint-Saëns to a French libretto by Ferdinand Lemaire. It was first performed in Weimar at the (Grand Ducal) Theater (now the Staatskapelle Weimar) on 2 December 1877 in a German translation. The opera is based on the Bible, Biblical tale of Delilah#Biblical narrative, Samson and Delilah found in Chapter 16 of the Book of Judges in the Old Testament. It is the only opera by Saint-Saëns that is regularly performed. The second act love scene in Delilah's tent is one of the set pieces that define French opera. Two of Delilah's arias are particularly well known: "" ("Spring begins") and "" ("My heart opens itself to your voice", also known as "Softly awakes my heart"), the latter of which is one of the most popular recital pieces in the mezzo-soprano/contralto repertoire. Composition history In the middle of the 19th century, a revival of interest in Choir, choral music swept France, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aida
''Aida'' (or ''Aïda'', ) is a tragic opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni. Set in the Old Kingdom of Egypt, it was commissioned by Cairo's Khedivial Opera House and had its première there on 24 December 1871, in a performance conducted by Giovanni Bottesini. Today the work holds a central place in the operatic canon, receiving performances every year around the world. At New York's Metropolitan Opera alone, ''Aida'' has been sung more than 1,100 times since 1886. Ghislanzoni's scheme follows a scenario often attributed to the French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette, but Verdi biographer Mary Jane Phillips-Matz argues that the source is actually Temistocle Solera. Elements of the opera's genesis and sources Isma'il Pasha, Khedive of Egypt, commissioned Verdi to write an opera to celebrate the opening of the Suez Canal, but Verdi declined. However, Auguste Mariette, a French Egyptologist, proposed to Khedive Pasha a plot for a cele ... [...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 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] |
