Salle Favart I News
former theatre in Paris, France, also known as "Salle Favart", the 1st of that name (1783-1838)
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2024-03-28
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2020-12-28 09:36:32
Berlioz and the creation of Gluck's Orphée et Eurydice as a 19th century masterpiece
Kathleen Ferrier as Gluck's Orfeo in the Netherlands in 1949 Whilst the versions of Gluck's operatic re-telling of the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice with a male counter-tenor or tenor as the hero have been explored quite extensively in the last 25 years, the abiding image of the opera remains, at least in English speaking countries, that of a female mezzo-soprano as Orpheus thanks to the powerful performances of singers such as Kathleen Ferrier and Janet Baker. In fact, this standard version of the opera is one that Gluck never knew, and both the opera and the idea of the mezzo-soprano as hero are very much 19th-century creations, the result of a combination of circumstances in 1820s Paris, a story which includes pitch inflation, the composer Berlioz' hero-worship of an unfashionable composer, and a great operatic dynasty, as well as a walk-on role for the painter Eugene Delacroix. […]
2020-10-26 14:53:57
Giuditta Pasta and Senesino, 2020
This Week in Classical Music: October 26, 2020. Singers of the past. Two Italian singers, Giuditta Pasta, possibly the greatest soprano of the first half of the 19th century, and a legendary contralto castrato and Handel’s favorite, Senesino, were born this week. Giuditta Pasta was born in Saronno, near Milan, on October 26th of 1797. She made her debut in Milan at the age of 19, and soon after appeared in Paris’s Théâtre Italien; she sung Donna Elvira in Mozart’s Don Giovanni and several contemporary Italian operas. Her greatest Paris triumph was the role of Desdemona in Rossini’s Otello; she later repeated that success in London. She was Rossini’s favorite singer, making his operas Tancredi and Elisabetta, regina d'Inghilterra famous around Europe. Both Donizetti and Bellini wrote their greatest operas for Pasta: she premiered as Imogene in Il pirate, Amina in La sonnambula and Norma for Bellini; and for Donizetti she […]
2020-08-05 13:00:00
Wagner and August Röckel
(Article first published in The Cambridge Wagner Encycopedia, ed. Nicholas Vazsonyi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013) Röckel, (Karl) August (born 1 December 1814, Graz; died 18 July 1876, Budapest.) Conductor, composer, pamphleteer; son of tenor, Joseph Röckel. Assisted Rossini at the Paris Théâtre Italien, before assuming positions in Bamberg, Weimar, and finally Dresden (1843-9) as assistant to Wagner. Röckel withdrew his 1839 opera, Farinelli, accepted for Dresden performance, as unworthy compared to Wagner’s work. Dismissed for subversion, Röckel edited the socialist Volksblätter, to which Wagner contributed. Following the Dresden uprising (account published in 1865), Röckel received a death sentence, commuted; prison correspondence adds greatly to understanding of the Ring. In a letter of 25/26 January 1854, Wagner presents Wotan (Wodan) rising to the tragic heights of willing his own destruction, summarising a fundamental ‘pessimistic’ shift in his conception. Following release from prison in 1862, Röckel edited newspapers in Coburg, […]
2020-04-20 07:52:48
I need a subject that is grandiose, impassioned & original: the influence of Meyerbeer & French Grand Opera on the operas of Verdi
'Auto da fe scene' - Verdi: Don Carlos - Michele Pertusi, Sally Matthews, Stephane Degout - Opera de Lyon, 2018(Photo Jean Louis Fernandez) The influence of Giacomo Meyerbeer on the operas of Giuseppe Verdi was significant, an opera like Aida would be unthinkable without French Grand Opera. In this third essay, I look at Verdi's developing relationship with French Grand Opera, how the operas of Meyerbeer fared in Italy and what Verdi thought of Meyerbeer's operas. This is the third, and final, essay in a series which has looked at the development of Meyerbeer's operas, and the complex relationship between Meyerbeer and Wagner.French Grand Opera in Italy Meyerbeer’s final Italian opera, Il crociato in Egitto premiered at La Fenice, Venice in 1824, but it would not be until 1840 when the first of his French Grand Operas was performed in Italy. These were all given in Italian versions with […]
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