1925–2012 German baritone Fischer-Dieskau made his opera debut in Berlin as Posa (Don Carlos) in 1948. The following year he appeared in Vienna and Munich, and in 1952 at Salzburg. He sang at Bayreuth 1954–56, and appeared at Covent Garden in 1965 as Richard Strauss’s Mandryka (Arabella) and in 1967 as Verdi’s Falstaff. He was widely known as a ...
1925–2012, German In great demand as an opera singer and recitalist, Fischer-Dieskau was the most recorded baritone of the twentieth century. His opera work is remembered for roles such as Berg’s Wozzeck, Busoni’s Faust and Reimann’s Lear, for which he gave the first performance. He was not well suited to the Romantic Italian repertoire, but had ...
(Det’-rikh Books-te-hoo’-de) c. 1637–1707 German composer Buxtehude was born in Scandinavia, but from 1668 until his death held the post of organist at St Mary’s, Lübeck. The position did not require him to provide much in the way of vocal music; he also wrote cantatas and arias for the Abendmusiken (public concerts), in which he was deeply involved. His cantatas ...
1886–1960 Swiss pianist Fischer taught in Berlin 1905–14 and succeeded Schnabel at the Hochschule in 1931. He was one of the first modern pianists to direct concerto performances from the keyboard, for which purpose he founded a chamber orchestra in Berlin. After World War II, he appeared in recitals and gave master classes in Lucerne. Introduction | Modern Era ...
(Yo’-han Kas’-pâr Far’-de-nant Fish’-er) 1656–1746 German composer Fischer, who was Hofkapellmeister at the court of Baden, contributed to the dissemination of Lully’s French orchestral style with his eight suites published as Le journal du printemps (‘Spring Diary’, 1685). These follow the seventeenth-century French practice of five-part string writing, with the addition of two trumpets. Fischer was an imaginative keyboard composer ...
1913–76 English composer The finest English composer of his generation, Britten reacted against the folksong-derived pastoralism of his elder compatriots, finding inspiration in Purcell and influences as various as Mahler and Stravinsky. The international success of his opera Peter Grimes (1945) brought financial security, but he continued to appear as a pianist, accompanying his partner and outstanding ...
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 ...
(Kärl Lö’-ve) 1796–1869 German composer and singer Loewe studied first with his father and later with Daniel Türk at Halle. He was a gifted singer and performer and was appointed professor and Kantor at the Gymnasium and seminary in Stettin, where he spent the rest of his life. He was a devout Catholic, and his religion was an inspiration for ...
(Frants Shoo’-brt) 1797–1828 Austrian composer Described by Liszt as ‘the most poetic of all composers’, Franz Schubert (1797–1828) was both the heir to the great Viennese classical tradition of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, and the first true Romantic composer. In his short life, spent almost entirely in Vienna, he was known almost exclusively as a composer of songs ...
1881–1955, Romanian Enescu was a true prodigy – a brilliant pianist, superb conductor, and a man whose memory for music rivalled that of Mozart. Born in Romania, Enescu studied in Vienna and Paris, where he sat alongside Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924), Jules Massenet (1842–1912) and other celebrated French composers. Working with some of the best musicians of his ...
(Hoo’-go Vulf) 1860–1903 German composer A fervent Wagnerian, Wolf worked in Vienna as a music critic. As a composer he was master of the miniature: his songs are mini-dramas which encapsulate Wagnerian expression within a lyrical, intimate form, the subtle vocal melodies matched by an equally important, symphonic piano part. The first collections, settings of poems by ...
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 ...
This section encompasses styles that were, at least initially, designed to work in tandem with other forms of expression, deepening or enhancing their impact. The scores of musical theatre are woven into stories played out by the characters on stage. A film soundtrack is composed to interlock with the action on a cinema screen, while cabaret songs ...
Triumphantly premiered in Vienna’s Burgtheater on 26 December 1767, Alceste was the second of the three collaborations between Gluck and Calzabigi. Today it is probably more famous for the reforming manifesto of its preface than for its magnificent music. Like Orfeo, Alceste cultivates Gluck’s ideal of noble simplicity, with the whole opera based essentially on a single situation ...
‘The Abduction from the Seraglio’ Premiered on 16 July 1782, Die Entführung aus dem Serail quickly became his most popular work and sealed the composer’s operatic reputation in German-speaking lands. The Viennese expected plenty of laughs from a Singspiel. Mozart obliged with his first great comic creation: the ‘foolish, coarse and spiteful’ (Mozart’s words) harem overseer Osmin, a larger-than-life ...
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