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• Personalities
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

1848–1923, French Maurel studied in Paris and made his debut in Marseilles in Rossini’s Guillaume Tell in 1867. He appeared in Paris shortly afterwards and steadily expanded his international career by appearing in Cairo, Venice and St Petersburg. Maurel was much admired by Verdi, who chose him to create the first Iago in 1887 and the first Falstaff ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Renaissance

(To-mas’ Loo-es’ da Vik-tôr’-ya) 1548–1611 Spanish composer After training as a choirboy at Avila Cathedral, Victoria spent his early adult life in Rome, prin­cipally at the Jesuit Collegio Germanico, as both pupil and teacher. He returned to Spain permanently in the 1580s, where he became the chaplain to Philip II’s sister, Maria; he remained there as organist ...

• Personalities
• Jazz & Blues
• Twenties

(Vocals, piano, 1906–76) Houston native Victoria Spivey cut her first sides for OKeh in 1926 and she was soon one of the most popular artists of the ‘classic blues’ era. An eloquent lyricist alongside her vocal gifts, Spivey worked steadily into the 1940s; in 1962 she emerged from retirement as the head of blues label Spivey Records, ...

• Personalities
• High Romantic
• Opera

1802–85, French Like the Scots novelist Sir Walter Scott, the French writer Victor Hugo had the happy facility for writing fiction that naturally lent itself to opera. Apart from his genius as a story-teller, Hugo’s secret lay in his vigorous attachment to Romantic principles, which exercised profound influence over librettists and composers of Romantic opera. Hugo himself ...

• Personalities
• Modern Era
• Opera

1923–2005, Spanish Possessing fine musicianship and a warm, sincere stage presence, soprano de Los Angeles gained recognition when she won first prize in the 1947 Geneva International Competition. She performed the following year in London, then at the Paris Opéra in 1949 and the Salzburg Festival in 1950. After her Met debut in 1951, she was ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Conductor
• Modern Era

1892–1967 Italian conductor After an early career as a composer, de Sabata became conductor of the Monte Carlo Opera. In 1930 he began his association with La Scala, Milan, which lasted beyond his retirement in 1957. He conducted fiery performances of Wagner and Verdi, and made an outstanding recording of Tosca. Introduction | Modern Era | Classical ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Late Romantic

(Joo’-sep-pa Ver’-de) 1813–1901 Italian composer Verdi composed 28 operas over a period of 54 years. In his native Italy he became immensely popular early in his career, and by the time he died he was idolized as the greatest Italian composer of the nineteenth century. In other musical centres of Europe it took a little longer for Verdi’s genius to be ...

• Personalities
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

1842–1912, French The son of a businessman, Jules Massenet had a musical mother and was admitted to the Paris Conservatoire at the age of 11. He had a prolific career with varying degrees of success, but above all he became reputed for his orientalist excursions, his brilliant musical projection of the female character, and the ability ...

• Personalities
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

1857–1919, Italian Leoncavallo was born and studied in Naples. His first opera, Chatterton (1876), written to a libretto by himself, did not initially procure any performances and, in spite of encouragement from his family, Leoncavallo did not appear to be going far in the world of opera. However, with the support of the baritone Victor ...

• Arts & Culture
• Classical
• Classical Era

When, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, French critics came into contact with Italian opera, many felt that the musical freedom of the Italians offered something that French opera, so closely tied to theatrical declamatory traditions, made impossible. The Abbé Raguenet, enamoured of Italian singing and the supporting instrumental skills, mocked French opera ...

• Inside the Music
• Country
• Early Years of Hillbilly

If you look for country music’s Big Bang, there is nothing more momentous than Bristol, 1927. Within four summer days, two stars appeared that would change the cosmology of country – remap the sky. And it all happened in a disused office building in a quiet mountain town perched on the state line between Virginia and Tennessee. Why ...

• Instruments
• Percussion

The celesta is a type of keyboard glockenspiel, with a range of four octaves upwards from middle C, and a damping pedal like a piano. Inside the body of the instrument is a series of chromatically tuned metal bars, which are struck with felt hammers when the performer plays the keyboard. Creation of the Celesta The celesta was ...

• Classical
• Early Romantic

Following the social and political upheaval of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars, Europe enjoyed a short period of relative stability with Napoleon’s exile, the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in France and the establishment of the Vienna Peace Settlement in 1815. However, in the early 1820s a number of minor revolts broke out in Naples and ...

• 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 ...

• Classical
• Late Romantic

The 1860s saw a number of major reorganizations in European politics. Italy became a united country under the king of (former) Piedmont-Sardinia, Victor Emmanuel II, in 1861 and its new national government tried to retain the kingdom’s liberal ideals, such as removing instances of operatic and intellectual censorship. However, Italy’s liberalism was not aspired to by other ...