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opera company in Paris, France
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2024-03-19
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2024-03-13 08:05:00
Little short of a revelation: Michael Spyres, Les Talens Lyriques & Christophe Rousset explore Wagner's influences with In the Shadows
In the Shadows: Auber, Bellini, Berlioz, Halévy, Méhul, Meyerbeer, Rossini, Spontini, Weber, Wagner; Michael Spyres, Les Talens Lyriques, Christophe Rousset; EratoReviewed 12 March 2024A wonderfully imaginative recital, showcasing both the wide range and variety of Wagner's musical influences as well as Spyres' own virtuosity and adaptabilityThe mature Richard Wagner would have wanted you to think that his art sprang directly from his imagination, without the influence of other composers, but the reality was more complex. The young Richard was something of a sponge, soaking up influences from all over. For instance, in 1833 Würzburg Theatre staged Giacomo Meyerbeer's Robert le Diable (premiered in Paris in 1831), it was the operatic event of the year. Richard Wagner's brother Albert was singing the title role and had managed to get Richard a job as chorus master at the theatre. 20-year-old Richard rehearsed the choruses of Meyerbeer's opera and this first exposure to the […]
2024-03-03 11:00:41
On this day in 1875 Bizet‘s Carmen has its disastrous premiere at the Opéra Comique in Paris
2024-03-02 09:03:00
Shamus O'Brien: withdrawn by the composer for political reasons, Stanford's most popular opera languished in the 20th century but all that seems set to change
Retrospect Opera's recording of Stanford's Shamus O'Brien in rehearsalCharles Villiers Stanford’s opera Shamus O'Brien premiered in 1896 in London. It was easily his most popular opera, running for over 80 performances in the West End before going on an extensive tour in Britain and Ireland, then in 1897 it also enjoyed a two-month run in New York. An explicitly Irish work, set against the backdrop of the Irish Rebellion of 1798, Stanford withdrew the opera shortly before the First World War. As the politics of Home Rule intensified in the 1910s, Stanford, an ardent Unionist, worried that the opera might foment Irish nationalism and anti-English sentiment; the ban effectively remained in place until his death in March 1924.King Baggot and Vivian Prescott in the 1912 silent film Shamus O'BrienBut after that, the opera returned to the stage and was broadcast by the BBC in the 1930s. Since then the work has […]
2024-02-13 08:15:00
Pierre Loti's writings inspired Léo Delibes' opera Lakmé and a whole genre of Orientalist operas
Loti (right) with Chrysanthème and Pierre le Cor in Japan, 1885.Pierre Loti has a lot to answer for. Whilst he certainly did not invent Orientalisme, his exotic novels and short stories, inspired by his travels as a French naval office, fed into the Western European fascinating for the perceived exoticism of life in the East, and gave rise to a whole operatic genre. His 1880 book, Le Mariage de Loti (about his romantic liaison with an exotic Tahitian girl), inspired both the 1883 opera Lakmé by Léo Delibes, and an 1898 opera by Reynaldo Hahn, L'île du rêve.His 1887 novel Madame Chrysanthème (about a naval officer temporarily married to a Japanese woman while he was stationed in Nagasaki, Japan) would be one of the inspirations behind André Messager's 1893 opera of the same name, Mascagni's Iris (1898) and Puccini's Madama Butterfly (1904). The fashion for things Japanese, Japonisme, had developed from the mid-1850s with opening up of […]
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