AUTHORITATIVE | CURATED | First 500 words Free

• Major Operas
• High Romantic
• Opera

Composed: 1867–68; 1873–77 Premiered: 1877, Weimar Libretto by Ferdinand Lemaire Act I Outside the temple of Dagon, the Hebrews fear that God has deserted them. The Philistine satrap, Abimélech, mocks them, saying that they should worship Dagon. When Samson speaks out Abimélech attacks him and is slain. The gates of the temple open, revealing the ...

• Personalities
• High Romantic
• Opera

1835–1921, French Camille Saint-Saëns was a child prodigy as both pianist and composer. He began composing when he was six. At 10, he gave his first piano recital, and entered the Paris Conservatory aged 13. At 17, in 1852, Saint-Saëns wrote his prizewinning Ode à Sainte-Cécile (‘Ode to Saint Cecilia’) and at 18, he produced ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Late Romantic

(Ka-mel’ San-San) 1835–1921 French composer Saint-Saëns was the founder of the National Society for French Music (1871) and influenced the development of the French style through his immense output and through his pupil Fauré. His music epitomizes French qualities of formal elegance, clarity of texture and craftsmanship, all allied to techniques of Romanticism. He was a prodigy, beginning his ...

• Instruments
• Keyboards

Often regarded as the country cousin (and hence the bumpkin) of the organ family, the harmonium did add a touch of warmth to many nineteenth-century rural homes, where the purchase of a piano would have been an unaffordable luxury. But the two instruments often cohabited, too. Harmonium Compositions Today, unlike the piano, the harmonium is a ...

• Instruments
• Keyboards
• Percussion

Keyboard percussion instruments include the western xylophone, marimba, vibraphone and glockenspiel, the log xylophones and marimbas of Africa and Central America, and the barred instruments played in the Indonesian gamelan. The orchestral xylophone, marimba and glockenspiel have thin wooden or metal rectangular bars laid out like a chromatic piano keyboard. The back row of bars – ...

• Performance
• Classical
• Early Romantic

One of the most startling developments in instrumental music during the first half of the nineteenth century was the rise of the virtuoso performer, particularly the composer-performer who wrote very difficult works to demonstrate his own flamboyant skills. Virtuoso performers were nothing new, of course – Mozart and Clementi were both dazzling pianists who wrote works for their own ...

• Arts & Culture
• Classical
• Contemporary Classical

Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921) is said to have written the first film score with L’assassinat du duc de Guise (‘The Assassination of the Duke of Guise’, c. 1908). Many composers in the US and Europe followed suit, although few wished to make a career in films. A famous exception was Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897–1957), whose scores include the Academy Award-winning The ...

• Houses & Companies
• High Romantic
• Opera

The Teatro alla Scala – known outside Italy as La Scala, Milan – is one of the world’s most famous opera houses and originally opened in the sixteenth century as the Salone Margherita in the Palazzo Ducale. Both this theatre and another built on its site, the Teatro Regio Ducale, burned down, in 1708 and 1776 respectively. ...

• Instruments
• Brass
• Electric & Electronic
• Keyboards
• Percussion
• Stringed
• Woodwind

The history of musical instruments has always been very closely linked to the history of music itself. New musical styles often come about because new instruments become available, or improvements to existing ones are made. Improvements to the design of the piano in the 1770s, for instance, led to its adoption by composers such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart ...

• Classical
• Early Baroque

The revival and imitation of ancient theatrical genres in sixteenth-century Italy bore fruit in seventeenth-century England and France in the works of the great dramatists of those countries: William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, Pierre Corneille and Jean Racine. In Italy, however, the sixteenth-century innovations in spoken drama were followed in the next century not by a great national ...

• 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 ...

• Classical
• Medieval Era

The seven centuries covered here saw, essentially, the making of modern Europe. They saw the rise of the papacy and its numerous conflicts. They saw the shaping and reshaping of nations and empires. Yet beyond, and often because of, these conflicts and changes, they also saw the formation of great cultures. As nation met nation in ...

• Major Operas
• High Romantic
• Opera

Aida, set in Ancient Egypt, was not composed to celebrate the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, as has often been suggested. Nor was it commissioned by the Khedive of Egypt to mark the opening of the Cairo Opera House that same year. It happened that the French Egyptologist, Auguste Mariette, keeper of monuments to ...

• Major Operas
• Modern Era
• Opera

Composed: 1953–56 Premiered: 1957, Milan Libretto by the composer after Georges Bernanos’ play Act I It is April 1789 and revolution is stirring. Blanche de la Force, timid and highly strung, announces her intention to become a nun. The prioress of the Carmelite convent at Compiègne warns Blanche that this is not a refuge. She wishes to be ...

• Major Operas
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

‘The Merry Widow’ Composed: 1905 Premiered: 1905, Vienna Libretto by Victor Léon and Leo Stein, after Henri Meilhac’s L’attaché d’ambassade Act I Baron Zeta, the Pontevedrin ambassador in Paris, must ensure that only a Pontevedrin marries Hanna Glawari, a rich, glamorous widow. All the French guests swoon over her at an embassy reception. Zeta thinks ...