The Rhinemaidens, who guard the magic gold hidden beneath the waters of the Rhine, are approached by Alberich, a Nibelung dwarf. They tease him mercilessly and, unwisely, reveal that if someone were prepared to renounce love and fashion a ring from the gold, he would acquire the power to dominate the world. Failing to woo ...
Clad head-to-toe in studded black leather and featuring a thundering rhythm section, a dynamic twin-guitar assault and one of the purest rock vocalists in music history, it simply doesn’t get any more ‘metal’ than Judas Priest. And the man behind many of the band’s greatest riffs and solos is guitarist Glenn Tipton (b. 1947). Born in Blackheath, England ...
(Bal-das-sa’-ra Ga-loop’-pe) 1706–85 Italian composer Galuppi had great influence on the development of opera buffa. Most of his career was spent in his native Venice, apart from spells in London in the 1740s and St Petersburg in the 1760s. He was maestro di cappella at the famous St Mark’s basilica and worked at the girls’ orphanage-conservatories. His music is largely notable ...
1706–85, Italian Baldassare Galuppi wrote his first opera, La fede nell’incostanza (‘Faith in Inconstancy’, 1722), when he was 16. It failed. Undeterred, Galuppi studied with Antonio Lotti (1667–1740) to improve his technique. Eventually, in 1729, he achieved his first big success, in Venice, with Dorinda. This opened the door to a brilliant career in ...
(Vocal/instrumental group, 1969–present) This Birmingham heavy metal outfit, led by vocalist Rob Halford, first charted with Sin After Sin in 1977. British Steel (1980) consolidated their position as one of the leading bands in the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. Their lyrics littered with Satanic imagery, the band were unsuccessfully sued in 1985 by parents of ...
A brass instrument with the tubing curled in an elliptical loop ending in a small bell and fingered using four valves, this is a type of tuba probably based on the saxhorn. When writing the Ring, Wagner wanted a brass instrument to bridge the gap between the French horns and the trombones. The 1853 sketch for Das Rheingold specifies ...
Wagner’s Ring cycle is made up of four works – Das Rheingold (‘The Rhinegold’, 1851–54), Die Walküre (‘The Valkyrie’, 1851–56), Siegfried (1851–57; 1864–71) and Götterdämmerung (‘Twilight of the Gods’, 1848–52; 1869–74). Although there have been other, even more ambitious projects in the history of opera – Rutland Boughton’s cycle of choral dramas based on the Arthurian legends and Karlheinz Stockhausen’s ...
Act I A storm rages. Siegmund enters a forest cottage and collapses. Sieglinde offers him refreshment. She persuades him to stay and meet her husband Hunding, who arrives and is suspicious. Siegmund reveals that his mother and sister were abducted and that he and his father were separated. Earlier that day he fought to rescue a girl from a forced ...
Act I The act opens in Mime’s smithy, in a forest near where Fafner, now a dragon thanks to the tarnhelm, lives in a cave guarding his treasure. Years before, Sieglinde sheltered there and, dying, entrusted her child and the broken sword to Mime’s care. He has raised Siegfried as his son, hoping to ...
Prologue Erda’s daughters, the Norns, sit on a rock spinning the rope of destiny. They recall recent events but are unable to see the future, since the rope has frayed. The rope beaks and they return under the earth. Siegfried prepares to set off. He gives Brünnhilde the ring and she gives him her horse, Grane. Act ...
b. 1939 German mezzo-soprano After her Munich debut in 1961, Brigitte Fassbaender took on a variety of operatic personae, from trouser roles, such as Octavian in Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier (sung also for her Covent Garden and Metropolitan Opera debuts), to Fricka in Wagner’s Das Rheingold and Countess Geschwitz in the first complete production of Berg’s Lulu (Paris, 1979). She ...
b. 1924, German An outstanding mezzo-soprano recitalist and concert singer, Ludwig was the daughter of two singers: tenor Anton Ludwig, and contralto Eugenie Besalla-Ludwig, who sang under Herbert von Karajan. Forced into early retirement, Eugenie became her daughter’s voice coach. Making her debut at 18 as Prince Orlovsky in Frankfurt, Ludwig remained there until 1952 ...
1813–83, German If – to quote Mark Twain – Wagner’s music ‘is not as bad as it sounds’, then the composer’s life was by no means as turpitudinous as it is generally claimed to be. Idolized by his friends and supporters as a family man who was kind to animals and plagued by self-doubts, he was demonized by his ...
(Rich’-ärd Varg’-na) 1813–83 German composer Wagner is one of the most influential and controversial composers in the history of classical music. He was born in Leipzig and educated there and in Dresden. His later years were spent in Bayreuth, the home of the festival theatre and the yearly summer festival he founded, which still flourish today. The idea of Bayreuth ...
In 1891, when the Irish playwright Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) wrote his famous words ‘Life imitates art far more than art imitates life’, he had somehow managed to overlook the artistic realities of the late nineteenth century. By that time, after some 50 years of the High Romantic era, music and opera had brought real life on stage and ...
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