Opera
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Days with Guiseppe Verdi: La Traviata
La Traviata is one of the cornerstones of the operatic repertory. The score is littered with fantastic tunes that are now wildly famous (even those who aren’t at all operatically versed will know many of the arias from countless TV ads), but beyond that, the coherence of the whole piece makes it a masterpiece. The…
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Days with Giuseppe Verdi: Ernani / featuring Luciano Pavarotti *X 12 1935
Music: Giuseppe VerdiLibretto: Francesco Maria Piave`ACT I: THE BANDIT Spain, 1519. Don Juan of Aragon has lost his title and wealth during a civil war. Taking the name Ernani, he leads a band of outlaws in the mountains. He tells his men of his love for Elvira and his daring plan to rescue her from…
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Days with Giuseppe Verdi: Simon Boccanegra
Music: Giuseppe Verdi Libretto: Francesco Maria Piave World premiere: Teatro la Fenice, Venice, 1857 (original version); Teatro alla Scala, Milan, 1881 (revised version). PROLOGUE Genoa, 14th century. Paolo and Pietro, leaders of the plebeians, are conspiring to overthrow the aristocracy. They name the popular former pirate Simon Boccanegra as their candidate for the office of…
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Falstaff — the last opera by Giuseppe Verdi
ACT I The Garter Inn. Dr. Caius bursts into Sir John Falstaff’s room in the Garter Inn, accusing him of unseemly behavior the previous night. He further accuses Falstaff’s two henchmen, Bardolph and Pistol, of having robbed him while he was drunk. Unable to obtain reparations, Dr. Caius leaves in a fury. Falstaff contemplates the…
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musicus organicus — Days with Giuseppe Verdi *X 9 1813
It is a wonderful world, nevertheless. This sentiment could be seen as the central motivation which led to an on-going compilation of birthdates for hundreds of individuals who, beyond their to us recognizable presence on earth, have contributed music, words, pictures, thinking, and views on life which have been engraved in our planet’s DNA, some…
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Steve Reich *X 3 1936 — The Life You Give
Steve Reich, born Stephen Michael Reich, October 3, 1936, in New York, New York, U.S.A., is the composer who was one of the leading exponents of Minimalism, a style based on repetitions and combinations of simple motifs and harmonies. Reich was the son of an attorney and a singer-lyricist. He majored in philosophy at Cornell…
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Jessye Norman *IX 15 1945 — The Life You Give
Jessye Norman, born Jessye Mae Norman on September 15, 1945, in Augusta, Georgia, U.S.A., is the operatic soprano, one of the finest of her day, who also enjoyed a successful concert career. Norman was reared in a musical family. Both her mother and grandmother were pianists and her father sang in church, as did the…
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Arnold Schönberg *IX 13 1874 — The Life You Give
Arnold Schoenberg, born Arnold Franz Walter Schönberg, September 13, 1874 in Vienna, Austria, is the composer who created new methods of musical composition involving atonality, namely serialism and the 12-tone row. He was also one of the most-influential teachers of the 20th century; among his most-significant pupils were Alban Berg and Anton Webern. Schoenberg’s father,…
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Karlheinz Stockhausen *VIII 22 1928 / The Life You Give
Karlheinz Stockhausen, born Aug. 22, 1928, in Mödrath, near Cologne, Germany, is the composer, and important creator and theoretician of electronic and serial music who strongly influenced avant-garde composers from the 1950s through the ’80s. Stockhausen studied at the State Academy for Music in Cologne and the University of Cologne from 1947 to 1951. In…
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Jacopo Peri *VIII 20 1561 / Composer of the first opera
Jacopo Peri, byname Il Zazzerino, born August 20, 1561, in Rome or Florence, is the composer noted for his contribution to the development of dramatic vocal style in early Baroque opera. Under the early sponsorship of the Florentine Cristofano Malvezzi, Peri had published by 1583 both an instrumental work and a madrigal. After early posts…
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Götterdämmerung (Wagner) premiered on this day in 1876
Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods) is the last in the music drama set of four, entitled Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung) or The Ring Cycle or The Ring for short) which premiered at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus on 17 August 1876, concluding the first performance of the complete cycle. The title is…
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Enrique Granados *VII 27 1867 / La Vida Que Das
See the biography in English below Enrique o Enric Granados y Campiña nacido en Lérida, 1867, en el canal de la Mancha, fue pianista y compositor español, hijo de padre cubano y de madre gallega. Su disposición para la música se reveló ya en su niñez; estudió los primeros elementos de solfeo y teoría, en…
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“Parsifal” (Wagner) premiered today in 1882
The Poem Parzival, an epic poem, is one of the masterpieces of the Middle Ages, written between 1200 and 1210 in Middle High German by Wolfram von Eschenbach. This 16-book, 25,000-line poem is in part a religious allegory describing Parzival’s painful journey from utter ignorance and naïveté to spiritual awareness. The poem introduced the theme…
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The Life You Give: Aleksandr Pushkin *1799
Aleksandr Pushkin, born Aleksandr Sergeyevich Pushkin, May 26 [June 6, New Style], 1799, Moscow, Russia, is the poet, novelist, dramatist, and short-story writer, often considered his country’s greatest poet and the founder of modern Russian literature. Pushkin’s father came of an old boyar family; his mother was a granddaughter of Abram Hannibal, who, according to…
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Thomas Mann *VI 6 1875 / The Life You Give
Thomas Mann, (born June 6, 1875, Lübeck, Germany—died August 12, 1955, near Zürich, Switzerland), German novelist and essayist whose early novels—Buddenbrooks (1900), Der Tod in Venedig (1912; Death in Venice), and Der Zauberberg (1924; The Magic Mountain)—earned him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929. Early literary endeavoursMann’s father died in 1891, and Mann moved…
Sila Blume 