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• Personalities
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

1862–1949, Belgian Maeterlinck is best known for his play Pelléas et Mélisande set verbatim but with cuts by Debussy. It has become one of the pinnacles of French opera. Maeterlinck was one of the main founders of symbolist theatre. Thoroughly Belgian in his dark mysticism, he took Paris by storm in the early 1890s and was suddenly proclaimed the ...

• Major Operas
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

couple: a love too great for the world ? Or are there deeper scenarios ? Mélisande the abuse victim – at first by Bluebeard (we learn this from a subsequent Maeterlinck play, Ariane et Barbe-bleu) and then by Golaud – has been an angle recently explored. The first approach plays up the beauty of the music, the second its ...

• Personalities
• Modern Era
• Opera

1881–1945, Hungarian Widely recognized as one of the twentieth century’s most important composers, Bartók was a complete original in terms of his musical language, creating a national style that merged folk melodies with the asymmetric patterns of Hungarian speech. His vocal lines, often punctuated by a heavy chordal style, are evident in Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Modern Era

(Klod De’-bu-se) 1862–1918 French composer Debussy was one of the father figures of twentieth-century music, often associated with the Impressionist movement. He was not only influential on subsequent French composers such as Ravel and Messiaen, but also on other major European figures, including Stravinsky and Bartók. His early songs experimented with an intimate kind of word-setting, while ...

• Personalities
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

became fascinated by the English Pre-Raphaelites and composed a cantata, La damoiselle élue, to a text of Dante Gabriel Rossetti. At the same time the Belgian playwright Maurice Maeterlinck was similarly fascinated by the Pre-Raphaelites, which somehow probed modern life through a return to images from Medieval times: literally ‘before the time of Raphael’. Artistically, the two ...

• Personalities
• Modern Era
• Opera

1865–1935, French A contemporary of Debussy and Ravel who joined the French Wagnerian movement, Dukas is primarily known for his orchestral fantasy L’apprenti sorcier (‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’, 1897), memorably featured in Disney’s animated feature Fantasia. He was a perfectionist who spent years rewriting his partially written works. Two of Dukas’ operas remained unfinished: the Wagner-inspired Horn et Riemenhild (1892) ...

• Personalities
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

or inability to develop with the times. Introduction | Turn of the Century | Opera Major Operas | Pagliacci by Ruggero Leoncavallo | Turn of the Century Personalities | Maurice Maeterlinck | Turn of the Century | Opera ...