Turn of the Century

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The early nineteenth century was a period of insurgence in Europe, from the French Revolution in 1789 to the uprisings of around 1848. The Industrial Revolution, which began in Britain before spreading south to the rest of Europe, was also making its mark. These two strands of revolution transformed society, with a growing awareness of national identity, social development, growth of cities and important technological advances. All of these were ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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In 1880 a meeting was held between a group of wealthy businessmen in New York. Their uniting cause was the limited number of box seats available at the Academy of Music, the city’s primary venue for opera. The solution they posited was to build an entirely new opera house. A design was commissioned from J. Cleaveland Cady that included boxes on every level of the auditorium. Henry Abbey, an impresario ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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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 and Luigi Capuana. The characteristically veristic traits of strong local colour, ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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Composed: 1902 Premiered: 1902, Milan Libretto by Arturo Colautti, after Eugène Scribe and Ernest Legouvé’s play Adrienne Lecouvreur Act I Backstage at the Comédie-Française, the stage manager Michonnet tries to propose to the actress Adriana Lecouvreur, but she loves Maurizio, who is the Count of Saxony in disguise. She gives Maurizio some violets. An intercepted letter of assignation, believed to be from another actress, is actually with Maurizio’s former lover, the Principessa di Bouillon. ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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Composed: 1896 Premiered: 1896, Milan Libretto by Luigi Illica Act I During the early days of the French Revolution, Gérard, a servant, is secretly in love with Maddalena, daughter of the Contessa de Coigny. Among the guests at the contessa’s soirée is the poet Andrea Chénier. The other guests are offended by his call for liberty, but Maddalena is intrigued. The soirée is broken up by a mob of peasants led by Gérard, who ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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‘Ariadne on Naxos’ Strauss may not have been the out-and-out modernist many have wanted him to be, but neither was he one to sit back and reproduce carbon copies of past successes. Strauss and Hofmannsthal decided to follow up Der Rosenkavalier with an altogether different proposition. Ariadne auf Naxos, in its original version, is a curious amalgam of play and opera. Its conception was troubled and led the two collaborators into their ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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Strauss’s final opera marked a belated return to form. He had suffered since the end of his collaboration with Hofmannsthal and jettisoned his original librettist, Joseph Gregor, in favour of the conductor Clemens Krauss. The conception was a simple but subtle one in which the characters in the piece decide to write an opera. Only at the end is it finally clear that we have been listening to their own ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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‘Rustic Chivalry’ Composed: 1888 Premiered: 1890, Rome Libretto by Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti and Guido Menasci after Giovanni Verga’s play Early on Easter Day, Turiddu is heard offstage serenading Lola. The villagers start arriving for church. Santuzza stops Mamma Lucia, Turiddu’s mother, and asks where she may find him. He is supposed to have gone to another village to buy wine, but Santuzza has heard that he is still here. Alfio enters, extolling his life as ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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‘The Knight of the Rose’ For the follow-up to Elektra, Strauss declared he wanted to write a Mozart opera. Despite Hofmannsthal’s protests about a light, Renaissance subject set in the past, the librettist soon came up with a scenario that delighted Strauss. The correspondence between librettist and composer was good-natured and respectful. Each made suggestions to the other and the work gradually took shape between 1908 and 1910. The result was ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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‘The Woman Without a Shadow’ Like Ariadne auf Naxos, Die Frau ohne Schatten had a tempestuous genesis. The idea itself stemmed from the period immediately after the premiere of Der Rosenkavalier, but Hofmannsthal’s continual flood of ideas compounded by Strauss’s curmudgeonliness ensured the project stalled regularly. The start of the First World War did nothing to help, and it was not until 1917 that the opera was completed and 1919 before it ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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‘The Merry Widow’ Composed: 1905 Premiered: 1905, Vienna Libretto by Victor Léon and Leo Stein, after Henri Meilhac’s L’attaché d’ambassade Act I Baron Zeta, the Pontevedrin ambassador in Paris, must ensure that only a Pontevedrin marries Hanna Glawari, a rich, glamorous widow. All the French guests swoon over her at an embassy reception. Zeta thinks that his attaché, Count Danilo Danilowitsch, would be a suitable match. He is summoned from his usual haunt, Maxim’s. Hanna ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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Following Salome was no easy task, and Strauss felt strongly that he needed to tackle an entirely different subject – by preference a light, comic work. He had been in correspondence with the playwright Hofmannsthal and approached him with an idea for such a work. Hofmannsthal had other ideas, and was insistent that Strauss should take up his adaptation of Sophocles’ play Electra. Like Salome, Elektra has a one-act structure and ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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‘The Triptych’ In constructing an operatic triple-bill, Puccini followed no precedent. He had nursed the idea for some time, to the despair of Giulio Ricordi, who felt it would be a box-office disaster. With the publisher’s death in 1912, Puccini soon felt able to work on the project. His librettist for La rondine, Giuseppe Adami, provided Puccini with the text for the first one-acter, Il tabarro. As usual, though, Puccini did ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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‘The Bohemian Life’ Puccini’s first work following the overwhelming triumph of Manon Lescaut was immediately beset by problems. Leoncavallo had already begun preparations on the same scenario and, on hearing of Puccini’s choice of subject, publicly berated his rival and friend and claimed priority over the project. Puccini responded calmly by declaring that both composers should go to work and allow the public to be the final arbiters. In dealing with characters ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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Puccini visited the Metropolitan Opera in New York during 1907 to see the US premieres of Manon Lescaut and Madama Butterfly. While there he saw David Belasco’s play The Girl of the Golden West and his next opera began to take shape. La fanciulla del West is notable particularly for the vital part the vast orchestra plays in depicting the characters’ emotions. As well as having Wagnerian traits, the opera ...

Source: Definitive Opera Encyclopedia, founding editor Stanley Sadie
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