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• Major Operas
• High Romantic
• Opera

Composed: 1846–47 Premiered: 1858, Warsaw Libretto by Włodzimierz Wolski Act I Guests are celebrating the betrothal of Janusz, a nobleman, to Stolnik’s daughter Zofia. They are interrupted by the voice of Halka, a serf whom Janusz promised to marry. She is now pregnant and yearns to be near him. Janusz fears that this news would ruin his ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Early Romantic

(Sta’-ne-slwaf Mon-yoosh’-ko) 1819–72 Polish composer Moniuszko was the foremost composer of operas in nineteenth-century Poland, and his national importance is equivalent to that of Bedřich Smetana(1824–84) in the Czech lands and Glinka in Russia. He studied in Minsk (1830–37) and Berlin (1837–40) and began to write stage works in the mid-1840s. His opera Halka was staged in Warsaw in 1858 to ...

• Personalities
• High Romantic
• Opera

1819–72, Polish Stanisław Moniuszko began by writing a series of operettas before producing Halka (1846–47), his best-known work, and the first of his three operas. After a revised version was given its first performance in Warsaw in 1858, Halka was hailed as the first important Polish national opera and Moniuszko acquired a place at the forefront of Polish ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Early Romantic

(Ja’-ko-mo Mi’-er-bâr) 1791–1864 German composer Meyerbeer (like Mendelssohn) came from a wealthy German-Jewish family. He studied composition with Carl Friedrich Zelter and later with the renowned music theorist Georg Joseph Vogler. In 1831 he had a phenomenal success at the Paris Opéra with Robert le diable (‘Robert the Devil’), which within three years was performed in 77 theatres in 10 countries, ...

• Personalities
• High Romantic
• Opera

1832–1906, Russian Ivan Melnikov, the Russian baritone, was best known for creating the role of Boris Godunov in Mussorgsky’s opera in 1869. Trained in Russia and Italy, Melnikov had made his debut at the Maryinsky Imperial Theatre in St Petersburg only two years earlier, as Riccardo in Bellini’s I puritani. Melnikov continued to sing at the ...

• Opera
• High Romantic

On the face of it, the French Revolution failed when the House of Bourbon returned to rule France after the defeat of Napoleon in 1815. The face of it, however, was deceptive. The forces of liberalism unleashed by the Revolution had simply made a strategic withdrawal. In France, liberals, socialists and republicans remained opposed to extreme ...