(Vocal duo, 1933–58) In Chicago in the early 1930s, Myrtle Cooper (Lulu Belle, 1913–99) and Scott Wiseman (1909–81) were young North Carolinians performing on WLS’s National Barn Dance. When they fell in love, the station exploited them as sweethearts of the radio, increasing their fan mail and attracting record and movie companies. Their rapport and old-fashioned ...
As a member of the first family of country music, Maybelle Carter (1909–78) distinguished herself far beyond her role as accompanist to her brother-in-law A.P. Carter and his wife Sara (Maybelle’s cousin) in the Carter Family, the first recording stars of country music. Maybelle was born Maybelle Addington in Nickelsville, Virginia. In 1926 she married Ezra J. ...
‘Fair Helen’ Composed: 1864 Premiered: 1864, Paris Libretto by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy Act I Since Pâris awarded Vénus the golden apple, her cult has become more popular than Jupiter’s. Hélène, wife of King Ménélas of Sparta, is waiting for Pâris to come and claim her. Disguised as a shepherd, Pâris enlists the help of ...
First performed as an incomplete work on 2 June 1937 in Zurich, this opera boasts a Berg libretto that is based on two Frank Wedekind tragedies: Erdgeist (‘Earth Spirit’, 1895) and Die Büchse der Pandora (‘Pandora’s Box’, 1904). Following the composer’s death, controversy arose as to the fate of the incomplete third act. Berg’s widow asked Schoenberg, Webern ...
(Vocals, guitar, 1895–1991) The Kentuckian singer-guitarist was a superstar of early country radio, appealing to the vast mid-western audience of the WLS National Barn Dance with gentle renditions of old songs like ‘Barbara Allen’ and ‘The Fatal Wedding’. In the 1920s and 1930s he sold hundreds of thousands of songbooks and records. After retiring to run a music ...
‘The fiddle and guitar craze is sweeping northward!’ ran Columbia Records’ ad in Talking Machine World on 15 June 1924. ‘Columbia leads with records of old-fashioned southern songs and dances. [Our] novel fiddle and guitar records, by Tanner and Puckett, won instant and widespread popularity with their tuneful harmony and sprightliness… The records of these quaint musicians which ...
The vibraphone is a kind of electronic steel marimba, initially produced in the US in 1916. The player uses rubber-topped beaters to strike two rows of metal bars. The sound is not amplified electronically: it is amplified by the action of the resonators (like the marimba) which enhance the sound. Each resonator has a fan, and all are joined ...
The schools of naturalism and realism had an immediate effect in Italy. With scant literary tradition to draw on from this period, Italian writers in the second half of the nineteenth century seized upon Zola’s beliefs as a potent dramatic source. The style they developed came to be known as verismo and was exemplified by writers such as Giovanni Verga ...
‘The Magic Flute’ The librettist of Die Zauberflöte, Emanuel Schikaneder, Mozart’s old friend and fellow freemason, drew on an eclectic variety of sources, including a French novel, Sethos, Paul Wranitzky’s magic opera Oberon (1789) and the oriental fairy tale Lulu. In the bird catcher Papageno, Schikaneder created for himself a character that could exploit ...
European culture lay in ruins after the end of World War II. There were many who, in company with the philosopher Theodor Adorno, felt that Nazi atrocities such as Auschwitz rendered art impossible, at least temporarily. Others, though, felt that humanity could only establish itself anew by rediscovering the potency of art, including opera. On ...
(Al’-ban Bârg) 1885–1935 Austrian composer Berg came from a cultured background, but had little serious musical training until, at 19, he began studying with Schoenberg. His progress was rapid, but although he was Schoenberg’s most naturally talented and most devoted pupil, Mahler’s influence on him remained strong. His first published work, the Piano Sonata op. ...
1885–1935, Austrian The composer of just two operas, Berg was a man who took atonality and stretched it to its expressionistic limits. While Joseph Haydn (1732–1809), Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) are often referred to as the First Viennese School, the so-called Second Viennese School consists of Berg together with fellow student Anton Webern (1883–1945) and their ...
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 ...
(Che-pre-a’-no da Ro’-ra) c. 1515–65 Franco-Flemish composer Rore spent much of his relatively short life in Italy, first in Ferrara and then in the brilliant musical circle around Willaert in Venice. Rore was cited by Monteverdi as a pioneer of the seconda pratica, and modern critics tend to emphasize the serious, intellectually rigorous side to his musical personality. But ...
From a shy piano player, Elton John became one of the most extrovert performers of the 1970s. He has sold over 250 million records worldwide and is now almost a national institution. Born Reginald Kenneth Dwight on 25 March 1947, he won a part-time piano scholarship to London’s Royal Academy Of Music at the age of 11. By the ...
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