AUTHORITATIVE | CURATED | First 500 words Free

• Major Operas
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

Composed: 1907–09 Premiered: 1909, Moscow Libretto by Vladimir Nikolayevich Bel’sky after Alexander Pushkin Prologue An astrologer warns the audience that the story has a moral. Act I King Dodon’s country is surrounded by enemies. He is not satisfied by the advice offered by his sons, Guidon and Afron, or by General Polkan. The astrologer offers a magic golden ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Late Romantic

(Ni’-ku-li Rim’-ske Kôr’-sa-kôf) 1844–1908 Russian composer Born to a land-owning family, Rimsky-Korsakov served in the Russian navy and composed the first ‘Russian’ symphony while on duty off Gravesend. He joined Balakirev’s circle, ‘The Five’, in 1861 and following the success of Sadko (1867), a tone-poem about the sea, was appointed professor at the new St Petersburg Conservatory. In addition ...

• Personalities
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

1844–1908, Russian In spite of being the most prolific of contributors to Russian opera, Rimsky-Korsakov’s stage works have never found a solid place in the mainstream international repertoire. As a youth, Rimsky-Korsakov was encouraged and taught by Mily Alexeyevich Balakirev (1837–1910). The young composer displayed an undoubted mastery of orchestration and a keen ear for evocative harmony, ...

• Personalities
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

1858–1924, Italian Puccini’s unerring instinct for strong melody and evocative harmony, coupled with his ability to bring to life passionate and sensual relationships, has made him one the most popular of opera composers. Puccini brought Italian opera into the twentieth century, synthesizing music and drama in a symphonic idiom, but retaining the voice as the focal ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Late Romantic

(Maks Ra’-ger) 1873–1916 German composer A student of Hugo Riemann (1849–1919), Reger bridged the divide between nineteenth-century Brahmsian academicism and Liszt’s ‘New German School’, with music that combined Bachian counterpoint and Wagnerian chromaticism. Reger was among the most frequently performed composers at Schoenberg’s Society for Private Musical Performance. After army service, he worked in Munich (1901) then as a professor at ...

• Personalities
• Modern Era
• Opera

1891–1953, Russian One of the most accessible and well known of twentieth-century Russian composers, Prokofiev merged an experimental approach with melodic conventionality to create music that was distinct in its national style. A fine pianist and impetuous personality who studied orchestration at the St Petersburg Academy with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844–1909), Prokofiev wrote three childhood operas by the age of ...

• Styles & Forms
• Classical
• Late Romantic

Composers at the end of the nineteenth century were awestruck by the music dramas of Richard Wagner. His colossal achievements could not be followed, and yet the challenge his music laid down, particularly in the realms of harmony, had to be reckoned with – either developed or rejected – by any European composer of the next generation. Music ...

• Opera
• High Romantic

On the face of it, the French Revolution failed when the House of Bourbon returned to rule France after the defeat of Napoleon in 1815. The face of it, however, was deceptive. The forces of liberalism unleashed by the Revolution had simply made a strategic withdrawal. In France, liberals, socialists and republicans remained opposed to extreme ...

• Performance
• Classical
• Modern Era

Few non-performing or non-composing figures have had as much effect on the development of twentieth-century music as Serge Diaghilev (1872–1929). Born in Russia, he became enamoured early of Russian national music, memorizing Ruslan i Lyudmila (‘Ruslan and Ludmilla’, 1842) by Mikhail Ivanovich Glinka (1804–57) as a child. Though he studied composition with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844–1908), Diaghilev abandoned it to concentrate ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Instrumentalist
• Late Romantic

(An’-ton Roo’-ben-stin) 1829–94 Russian pianist and composer Rubinstein’s younger brother Nikolai (1835–81) founded the Moscow Conservatory. As a child prodigy Anton played to Liszt. His legendary virtuosity was acclaimed across Europe and the US, where he toured with Wieniawski in 1872. He espoused German Romanticism and thus, as founder-director of the St Petersburg Conservatory (1862), represented the ‘conservative’ opposition to ...

• Personalities
• Alternative/Indie Rock
• Garage Rock
• Post-Punk
• Rock
• Twenty-First Century

(Vocal/instrumental group, 1998–present) Formed after a complicated network of Swiss schooling and gigging frenzy in New York’s Lower East Side, The Strokes – Julian Casablancas (vocals), Nick Valensi, Albert Hammond Jr. (both guitar), Nikolai Fraiture (bass) and Fabrizio Moretti (drums) – have come to signify the mass appeal that revivalist bands from the US can achieve. After a ...