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Torsten Ralf
Torsten Ralf (2 January 1901 – 27 April 1954) was a Swedish operatic tenor, particularly associated with Wagner and Strauss roles, one of the leading dramatic tenors/heldentenors of the inter-war period. Ralf was born in Malmö. He began his vocal studies in Stockholm with Haldis Ingebjart and John Forsell, and later studied in Berlin with Hertha Dehmlow. He made his debut in 1930, as Cavaradossi in Stettin. After singing in Chemnitz (1931–33) and Frankfurt (1933–35), he joined the Staatsoper Dresden in 1935. He also appeared regularly at the Munich State Opera and the Vienna State Opera, establishing himself in roles such as Florestan, Tannhäuser, Lohengrin, Stolzing, Siegmund, Tristan, Parsifal, Bacchus, but also Radames, Otello. He created Apollo in Strauss's ''Daphne'' in 1938, and was part of the premiere of Heinrich Sutermeister's ' in 1942. Ralf made guest appearances at the Royal Opera House in London, the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires. During the war, Ralf san ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Tenor
A tenor is a type of male singing voice whose vocal range lies between the countertenor and baritone voice types. It is the highest male chest voice type. Composers typically write music for this voice in the range from the second B below middle C to the G above middle C (i.e. B2 to G4) in choral music, and from the second B flat below middle C to the C above middle C (B2 to C5) in operatic music, but the range can extend at either end. Subtypes of tenor include the ''leggero'' tenor, lyric tenor, spinto tenor, dramatic tenor, heldentenor, and tenor buffo or . History The name "tenor" derives from the Latin word '' tenere'', which means "to hold". As noted in the "Tenor" article at ''Grove Music Online'': In polyphony between about 1250 and 1500, the enor was thestructurally fundamental (or 'holding') voice, vocal or instrumental; by the 15th century it came to signify the male voice that sang such parts. All other voices were normally calculated in relation to the ten ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Die Walküre
(; ''The Valkyrie''), Wagner-Werk-Verzeichnis, WWV 86B, is the second 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 was performed, as a single opera, at the National Theatre Munich on 26 June 1870, and received its first performance as part of the ''Ring'' cycle at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus on 14 August 1876. As the ''Ring'' cycle was conceived by Wagner in reverse order of performance, ''Die Walküre'' was the third of the four texts to be written, although Wagner composed the music in performance sequence. The text was completed by July 1852, and the music by March 1856. Wagner largely followed the principles related to the form of musical drama, which he had set out in his 1851 essay ''Opera and Drama'' under which the music would interpret the text emotionally, reflecting the feelings and moods behind the work, using a system of recurring leitmotifs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Fritz Busch
Fritz Busch (13 March 1890 – 14 September 1951) was a German conductor. Busch was born in Siegen to a musical family and studied at the Cologne Conservatory. After army service in the First World War, he was appointed to senior posts in two German opera houses. At the Stuttgart Opera (1918 to 1922) he modernised the repertory, and at the Dresden State Opera (1922 to 1933) he presented world premieres of operas by Richard Strauss, Ferruccio Busoni, Paul Hindemith and Kurt Weill among others. He also conducted at the Bayreuth and Salzburg Festivals. Being an ardent Anti-Nazi, Busch was dismissed from his post as director at Dresden in 1933 and made most of his later career outside Germany. He conducted in New York and London, but his main bases were Buenos Aires, where he was in charge at the Teatro Colón for several opera seasons in the 1930s and 1940s; Copenhagen and Stockholm, conducting the Danish Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Stockholm Philharmonic; and Glyndebourn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Metropolitan Opera
The Metropolitan Opera is an American opera company based in New York City, currently resident at the Metropolitan Opera House (Lincoln Center), Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center, situated on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Referred to colloquially as the Met, the company is operated by the non-profit Metropolitan Opera Association, with Peter Gelb as the general manager. The company's music director has been Yannick Nézet-Séguin since 2018. The Met was founded in 1883 as an alternative to the previously established Academy of Music (New York City), Academy of Music opera house and debuted the same year in a new Metropolitan Opera House (39th Street), building on 39th and Broadway (now known as the "Old Met"). It moved to the new Lincoln Center location in 1966. The Metropolitan Opera is the largest classical music organization in North America. The company presents about 18 different operas each year from late September through early June. The operas are presente ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Royal Swedish Opera
Royal Swedish Opera () is an opera and ballet company based in Stockholm, Sweden. Location and environment The building is located in the centre of Sweden's capital, Stockholm, in the borough of Norrmalm (borough), Norrmalm, on the eastern side of Gustav Adolfs torg, Stockholm, Gustav Adolfs torg across from the former Arvfurstens Palats, now the Ministry for Foreign Affairs (Sweden), Ministry for Foreign Affairs. It lies on the north side of the Norrström River and is connected to the Stockholm Palace, Royal Palace through the Norrbro Bridge. Other historically and architecturally important buildings in the close neighbourhood are the Sager House, the official residence of the Prime Minister of Sweden, and the Riksdag building. History The opera company was founded with the Royal Swedish Academy of Music by King Gustav III of Sweden, Gustav III, and its first performance, ''Thetis and Phelée'' with Carl Stenborg and Elisabeth Olin, was given on 18 January 1773; this was th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Berlin State Opera
The Staatsoper Unter den Linden ( State Opera under the Lime Trees), also known as the Berlin State Opera (), is a listed building on Unter den Linden boulevard in the historic center of Berlin, Germany. The opera house was built by order of Prussian king Frederick the Great from 1741 to 1743 according to plans by Georg Wenzeslaus von Knobelsdorff in the Palladian style. Damaged during the Allied bombing in World War II, the former Royal Prussian Opera House was rebuilt from 1951 to 1955 as part of the Forum Fridericianum square. Nicknamed ''Lindenoper'' in Berlin, it is "the world´s oldest state opera" and "the first theater anywhere to be, by itself, a prominent, freestanding monumental building in a city." History Names Originally called the ('Royal Opera'), the company was renamed the ('Prussian State Opera') in 1919. After World War II it began operating as the national opera company for Communist East Germany, taking the name ('German State Opera') in 1955. In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Teatro Colón
The Teatro Colón () is a historic opera house in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It is considered one of the ten best opera houses in the world by National Geographic. According to a survey carried out by the acoustics expert Leo Beranek among leading international opera and orchestra directors, the Teatro Colón has the room with the best acoustics for opera and the second best for concerts in the world. The present Colón replaced an original theatre which opened in 1857. Towards the end of the century, it became clear that a new theatre was needed, and after a 20-year process, the present theatre opened on 25 May 1908, with Giuseppe Verdi's ''Aïda''. The Teatro Colón was visited by the foremost singers and opera companies of the time, who would sometimes go on to other cities including Montevideo, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. After this period of huge international success, the theatre's decline became clear and plans were made for massive renovations. After an initial start ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera House (ROH) is a theatre in Covent Garden, central London. The building is often referred to as simply Covent Garden, after a previous use of the site. The ROH is the main home of The Royal Opera, The Royal Ballet, and the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House (now known collectively as the Royal Ballet and Opera). The first theatre on the site, the Theatre Royal (1732), served primarily as a playhouse for the first hundred years of its history. In 1734, the first ballet was presented. A year later, the first season of operas, by George Frideric Handel, began. Many of his operas and oratorios were specifically written for Covent Garden and had their premieres there. The current building is the third theatre on the site, following disastrous fires in 1808 and 1856 to previous buildings. The façade, foyer, and auditorium date from 1858, but almost every other element of the present complex dates from an extensive reconstruction in the 1990s. The main auditorium ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Heinrich Sutermeister
Heinrich Sutermeister (12 August 1910 – 16 March 1995) was a Swiss composer, most famous for his opera '' Romeo und Julia''. Life and career Sutermeister was born in Feuerthalen. During the early 1930s he was a student at the Akademie der Tonkunst in Munich, where Carl Orff was his teacher. Orff thereafter remained a powerful influence on his music. Returning to Switzerland in the mid-1930s, Sutermeister devoted his life to composition. He wrote some works for the radio, starting with '' Die schwarze Spinne'' in 1936, before turning later to television opera. His most successful stage work was '' Romeo und Julia'', premiered in Dresden in 1940 under Karl Böhm. Sutermeister's penultimate stage work, ''Madame Bovary'', first given in Zurich in 1967, is loosely based on Flaubert's novel. With many characters cut, it consists largely of monologues for Emma Bovary, who was sung by Anneliese Rothenberger. For his final opera, he adapted Ionesco's play '' Exit the King'' (''Le R ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Daphne (opera)
''Daphne'', Op. 82, is an opera in one act by Richard Strauss, subtitled "Bucolic Tragedy in One Act". The German libretto was by Joseph Gregor. The opera is based loosely on the mythological figure Daphne from Ovid's '' Metamorphoses'' and includes elements taken from '' The Bacchae'' by Euripides. Performance history The first performance of the opera took place at the Semperoper in Dresden on 15 October 1938. It was originally intended as a double bill with Strauss' '' Friedenstag'', but as the scale of ''Daphne'' grew, that idea was abandoned. The conductor of the first performance was Karl Böhm, to whom the opera was dedicated. The United States premiere of the opera was performed on October 10, 1960 in a concert version at Town Hall in Manhattan with Gloria Davy in the title role, Florence Kopleff as Gaea, Robert Nagy as Leukippos, Jon Crain as Apollo, Lawrence Davidson as Peneios, and The Little Orchestra Society under conductor Thomas Scherman. Roles Sy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Otello
''Otello'' () is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Arrigo Boito, based on William Shakespeare, Shakespeare's play ''Othello''. It was Verdi's penultimate opera, first performed at the La Scala, Teatro alla Scala, Milan, on 5 February 1887. The composer was reluctant to write anything new after the success of ''Aida'' in 1871, and he retreated into retirement. It took his Milan publisher Giulio Ricordi the next ten years, first to encourage the revision of Verdi's 1857 ''Simon Boccanegra'' by introducing Boito as librettist and then to begin the arduous process of persuading and cajoling Verdi to see Boito's completed libretto for ''Otello'' in July/August 1881. However, the process of writing the first drafts of the libretto and the years of their revision, with Verdi all along not promising anything, dragged on. It was not until 1884, five years after the first drafts of the libretto, that composition began, with most of the work finishing in late ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
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] [Amazon] |
