Operetta, from its beginnings with Jacques Offenbach (1819–80) in France during the 1850s, had reached a high point by the turn of the century. When Johann Strauss II (1825–99) moved from the dance hall to the opera theatre, the Austrians had found an equal to the famous Frenchman. The English played their part with the inseparable (if often ...
was the gramophone. The piano had been used throughout the nineteenth century to play not simply the recognized piano repertory, but also arrangements of popular tunes from opera and operetta, and reductions of orchestral works. As such, it had acted as the standard private window on to the world of art music, matched in the public arena ...
Turn of the Century Major Operas | The Gondoliers by Arthur Sullivan | Turn of the Century Personalities | Giovanni Verga | Turn of the Century | Opera Techniques | Operetta | Turn of the Century | Opera ...
princesse jaune (‘The Yellow Princess’, 1872), his masterpiece and chief contribution to the present-day operatic repertoire, Samson et Dalila, and Henri VIII (1883). La princesse jaune was an operetta, a style Saint-Saëns did not subsequently pursue. Henri VIII, which dealt with the second, fated, marriage of the English King Henry VIII to Anne Boleyn, ...
on his health and he died in 1894. Introduction | Turn of the Century | Opera Personalities | Fyodor Ivanovich Chaliapin | Turn of the Century | Opera Techniques | Operetta | Turn of the Century | Opera ...
Companies | La Scala, Milan | High Romantic | Opera Houses & Companies | The Birth of the Metropolitan Opera | Turn of the Century | Opera Techniques | Operetta | Turn of the Century | Opera ...
(Frantz La’-här) 1870–1948 Austrian composer Of Hungarian ancestry and Czech training (his contemporary Dvořák helped him as a young man), Lehár began his career as an army bandmaster, while also writing waltzes in his spare time. These were so successful that he was able to leave the army in his early thirties to begin a long career composing operettas. Welcomed ...
to an extraordinary reception. The work is remarkable for its energy and inventiveness, its subtlety in character portrayal and its imaginative orchestration. The premiere heralded a new dawn for operetta, paving the way for other composers and whetting the public appetite. Lehár was unwilling to remain static and in his ensuing work, he pushed back the barriers of ...
inspired many of the finest songs of 1817–19, among them ‘Memnon’ and ‘Der Schiffer’ (‘The Boatman’). Meanwhile, Vogl had secured Schubert’s first major paid commission, for the operetta Die Zwillingsbrüder (‘The Twin Brothers’), which was finally given in the summer of 1820. In the summer of 1819, Schubert and Vogl undertook the first of several walking tours ...
teens he completed several one-act comedies and the ‘magic opera’, Des Teufels Lustschloss (‘The Devil’s Pleasure Palace’, 1814). Thanks to his friend, the baritone Johann Michael Vogl, his operetta Die Zwillingsbrüder (‘The Twin Brothers’, 1818–19) was professionally staged in Vienna in June 1820. Though only a moderate success, it was followed by the melodrama Die Zauberharfe (‘The Magic ...
(Frants fun Zoo-pa’) 1819–95 Austrian composer Suppé’s full name was Francesco Ezechiele Ermenegildo Cavaliere Suppé-Demelli. He came from Dalmatia, but received his musical education with Ignaz Xaver Seyfried (a pupil of Haydn) in Vienna, in whose famous theatres (an der Wien, Carl and Leopoldstadt) he conducted operetta. He composed over 150 operettas, including Boccaccio (1879), highly popular in ...
1898–1937 American composer As a teenager, Gershwin played the latest hit songs to potential customers in a sheet-music store, and by the age of 21 (with his ‘Swanee’, made popular by Al Jolson) he had become a successful songwriter himself. After a visit to Europe, when he heard the latest musical shows and operettas that London, Berlin ...
10. He was taught composition by Fromental Halévy, the uncle of Ludovic Halévy (1834–1908), who was the co-librettist both of his first performed work for the stage, the operetta Le Docteur Miracle, and of his last: Carmen itself. Operatic Beginnings Le Docteur Miracle, written when the composer was 20, had been preceded by a one-act opéra ...
was accepted into the Paris Conservatoire of Music. There he was influenced by Gounod, the future composer of Faust. At the age of 19, Bizet wrote a one-act operetta, Le Docteur Miracle, which won joint first prize in a competition organized by Offenbach, who produced it at his own theatre, the Bouffes-Parisiens. At the end ...
settled upon as his next opera. The first performance of La fanciulla del West took place at the Metropolitan in 1910. In 1913, Puccini was asked to write an operetta for the Carl Theatre in Vienna. He accepted, but World War I broke out in 1914, with Italy and Austria on opposite sides. La rondine (‘The Swallow’), now ...
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