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• Personalities
• Early Romantic
• Opera

1759–1805, German Friedrich von Schiller, the great German poet, playwright and historian, trained for the Church, the army, the law and military medicine before he finally found his niche. It happened when, at his own expense, Schiller published his revolutionary drama Die Raüber (‘The Robbers’, 1781). When the play was staged in Mannheim ...

• Instruments
• Keyboards

In 1905, and probably for several decades before that, there were more pianos in the United States than there were bathtubs. In Europe, throughout the nineteenth century, piano sales increased at a greater rate than the population. English, French and German makers dispatched veritable armies of pianos to every corner of the Earth. It was the ...

• Major Operas
• High Romantic
• Opera

Verdi’s five-act opera Don Carlos was taken from a drama written in 1787 by the German playwright Friedrich von Schiller (1759–1805). Written for the Paris Opéra, Don Carlos was first performed there on 11 March 1867. Schiller’s play was translated and the libretto written by Joseph Méry, who unfortunately died before it was completed, and Camille du Locle ...

• Major Operas
• Early Romantic
• Opera

, sardonically: ‘What, the whole of it ?’ Composed: 1829 Premiered: 1829, Paris Libretto by Etienne de Jouy and Hippolyte Louis-Florent Blis, after Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller Act I As the villagers on the shores of Lake Lucerne celebrate the impending marriage celebrations, Guillaume Tell laments the rule of Gesler, an Austrian oppressor. The respected ...

• Major Operas
• High Romantic
• Opera

it was extensively revised for its Milan production. Composed: 1861–62; rev. 1869 Premiered: 1862, St Petersburg Libretto by Francesco Maria Piave, after Angel de Saavedra and Friedrich von Schiller Act I Leonora is preparing to elope with Alvaro. Her father, the Marquis of Calatrava, considers Alvaro unworthy. Leonora regrets having to leave her home and family, ...

• Personalities
• Early Romantic
• Opera

the Théâtre Italien in Paris in 1825 and 1831–43, London 1831–43, and St Petersburg in 1843 and 1844. Introduction | Early Romantic | Opera Personalities | Friedrich von Schiller | Early Romantic | Opera Houses & Companies | La Scala, Milan | High Romantic | Opera ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Composer
• Late Romantic

out for London in early summer 1847. He was contracted to write an opera for Her Majesty’s Theatre, and I masnadieri (‘The Robbers’), an adaptation of a play by Schiller, was performed on 22 July, with Queen Victoria and Prince Albert attending the premiere. Verdi then left for Paris, to adapt I Lombardi for the Paris Opéra. ...

• Personalities
• Classical
• Classical Era
• Composer

(Lood’-wig van Bat’-ho-fan) 1770–1827 German composer Ludwig van Beethoven is one of the greatest composers in history – perhaps the greatest. Standing at the crossroads between the classical and Romantic eras, he created music that belongs not just to its period but to all time. He excelled in virtually every genre of his day, and had enormous influence on the ...

• Personalities
• Opera
• Turn of the Century

wider than Dvořák and Smetana for his inspiration. His theatrical works draw on subjects as diverse as Greek mythology (Hippodamia, 1888–91), Czech mythology (Sárka, 1896–97) and writers including Schiller, Lord Byron and Shakespeare. As was the case for most stage composers of the time, the influence of Wagner was unavoidable. Fibich was also indebted to Carl Maria ...

• Opera
• Classical Era

, to Beethoven’s disapproval; the philosopher Emmanuel Kant dies; Francis II becomes Emperor of Austria 1805 Lord Horatio Nelson defeats Napoleon in the Battle of Trafalgar; the poet Friedrich von Schiller dies 1810 Simon Bolivar leads an uprising in Venezuela 1811 Luddite riots in Britain against new technologies 1812 Napoleon’s army retreats from Moscow 1814 The Congress of Vienna restores a ...

• Styles & Forms
• Classical
• Early Romantic

The early Romantic era was a period that saw a move in all the arts towards greater expression and a loosening of structures and forms. In music this meant an expanding and freeing up of existing classical forms such as the symphony, and the development of newly expressive genres such as the symphonic poem. Opera took on bigger, more ...

• Styles & Forms
• Classical
• Late Romantic

That music has a double history – a social and a stylistic one – is amply proven by its development in the second half of the nineteenth century. Its progress was marked, though not entirely determined, by the revolutions that swept Europe in 1848. There were perceptible changes of emphasis, not only in concert and operatic life from ...

• Influences
• Classical
• Classical Era

‘enlightened’ thinking by emphasizing the emotional, the passionate, the irrational, the terrifying. It belonged initially in the theatre, where it was taken up by Friedrich von Schiller, especially in Die Raüber (‘The Robber’, 1780–81), and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and passed to the graphic arts – the paintings of John Henry Fuseli, and the ...