‘That’s Women for You’ While Don Giovanni was the nineteenth century’s favourite Mozart opera, Così fan tutte, premiered on 26 January 1790, was widely considered frivolous, immoral and (not least by Beethoven) an insult to women. Today we can see it as perhaps the most ambivalent and disturbing of Mozart’s three Da Ponte comedies. In the composer’s ...
John Fahey (1939–2001) was an American fingerstyle guitarist, composer, folklorist, intellectual and eccentric. Influenced by the folk and blues traditions of America, he incorporated classical, Brazilian, Indian and abstract music into his works. His moody instrumentals foreshadowed new-age music, but Fahey’s intensity makes him more closely aligned with rock. His eclectic approach won him ...
c. 1586–1639 Italian composer Although Stefano Landi was active as a church musician in his own time, he is chiefly remembered nowadays as one of the most gifted and successful opera composers of the period between Monteverdi’s Florentine dramas and those that the composer wrote for Venice. During the 1630s, the focus on dramma per musica (‘drama through music’) ...
Adele has attracted a diverse, cross-generational, international legion of fans. While it was teenage girls who first clicked onto the singer via channels such as Myspace, their mothers soon grew to love her too. The star has often paid tribute to her loyal fanbase, particularly for accepting her as she is. ‘To all the fans,’ she ...
(Fa’-ne [Men’-del-son] Hen’-zel) 1805–47 German composer Fanny was the sister of Mendelssohn. They received identical musical education, but their conservative father expected Fanny to display her undoubted musical talents only within the semi-public world of the family’s renowned Sunday concerts, which she organized and performed in as pianist and conductor. Encouraged by her husband, Hensel started to publish her ...
(Vocals, songwriter, bandleader, 1912–96) Louisiana-born Theron Eugene Daffan was a noted songwriter and popular bandleader who helped pave the way for honky-tonk music’s emergence in the 1940s. Daffan started out in the mid-1930s as part of The Blue Ridge Playboys and The Bar X Cowboys – a pair of regionally popular bands of the day. In 1941, ...
c. 1586–1639, Italian Stefano Landi, who was born and gained his musical training in Rome, became maestro di cappella to the bishop of Padua in around 1618. The next year, Landi’s La morte d’Orfeo (‘The Death of Orpheus’, 1619) was performed in Rome, where the composer returned in 1620. Four years later, Landi was appointed ...
‘Saint Alexius’ Premiered: 1632, Rome Libretto by Giulio Rospigliosi Prologue The figure of Roma (Rome), surrounded by a chorus of slaves, dedicates the performance to the Prince of Polonia (Poland). Act I Eufemiano, a Roman senator and Alessio’s father, encounters Adrasto, a knight returning from war. While pleased to see Adrasto, Eufemiano mourns the disappearance ...
1812–67, Italian The angelic-looking soprano Fanny Tacchinardi-Persiani was made to play the delicate, suffering heroines of early Romantic opera. Fanny Tacchinardi – as she was before marrying the composer Giuseppe Persiani in 1830 – made her debut in 1832 at Livorno and went on to great success in Venice, Naples and Milan. She sang at the Théâtre Italien ...
Puccini visited the Metropolitan Opera in New York during 1907 to see the US premieres of Manon Lescaut and Madama Butterfly. While there he saw David Belasco’s play The Girl of the Golden West and his next opera began to take shape. La fanciulla del West is notable particularly for the vital part the vast orchestra plays in depicting the characters’ ...
Composed: 1920–25 Premiered: 1925, Monte Carlo Libretto by Colette (Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette) The child has been naughty. His mother does not think he deserves more than tea without sugar and dry bread. He must think about how sad he has made her. He shouts after her, ‘I don’t love anybody! I’m naughty!’ He starts smashing and ill-treating everything ...
1921–2008, Italian Possessing a beautiful voice that was recorded to great effect, di Stefano was renowned for performances of the bel canto repertoire. His speciality roles included Edgardo in Lucia di Lammermoor, Nadir in Les pêcheurs de perles and Fritz in L’amico Fritz. However, by the mid-1950s he began to sing heavier roles that robbed his voice ...
(Vocals, b. 1957) Originally scoring hits as part of the Latin-powered Miami Sound Machine in the late 1980s with husband Emilio, Cuban-born Estefan soon went solo with hugely successful pop albums like Into The Light (1991) and Destiny (1996). Always keeping a foot firmly in the Latin market with Spanish-language albums like Abriendo Puertas (1995), she was ideally placed ...
(Vocals, b. 1969) After finding success with the ska-punk/balladry of band No Doubt, Californian Stefani went out on her own to attempt a solo career away from the genre. After a 2001 smash single with Eve, ‘Let Me Blow Ya Mind’, she worked with dance and hip hop producers such as Dr. Dre and the ever-popular Neptunes, ...
The classical period saw the rise of the ‘Harmonie’, a small wind band of up to a dozen instruments. Usually this consisted of a mixture of brass and reeds, such as horns, clarinets, oboes and bassoons: Beethoven’s octet op. 103 (1792) is written for two of each of these (the 1796 op. 71 sextet leaves out the oboes). ...
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