Showing results for "Opera" in Music

Opera is the fastest growing of all the performing arts, attracting audiences of all ages who are enthralled by the gorgeous music, vivid drama, and magnificent production values. If you've decided that the time has finally come to learn about opera and discover for yourself what it is about opera that sends your normally reserved friends into states of ecstatic abandon, this is the book for you.

Immerse yourself in more than 400 years of the world's most celebrated operas and discover the fascinating stories behind them. Explore the lives of singers such as Maria Callas, Luciano Pavarotti, and Jonas Kaufmann. Meet composers like Mozart, Wagner, and Britten, and the librettists with whom they collaborated to create the magical blend of words and music that make up opera.

To watch any opera lover listen to a favorite work, eyes clenched tight in concentration and passion, often betraying a tear, is to be almost envious. What must it be like, you might think, to love a piece of music so much?And now one of music's most gifted teachers is offering you the opportunity to answer that very question, in a spellbinding series of 32 lectures that will introduce you to the transcendentally beautiful performing art that has enthralled audiences for more than 400 years.

When Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart died in 1791 at the age of just 35, he nonetheless left behind the defining composition in every available musical genre of his time: symphony, chamber music, masses, and above all - opera. Opera was the prestige genre of the era, and the thought of it, Mozart wrote, made him, "beside myself at once." It was a form he loved dearly, depending on it heavily for personal, professional, artistic, and financial reasons of the greatest weight.

Here is the colorful story of sometimes temperamental composers and even more temperamental singers working in an art form which has produced some of man's noblest artistic creations. This absorbing history is illustrated by over 100 musical examples by Naxos artists as well as some of the greatest singers of the 20th century, including Enrico Caruso and Fyodor Chaliapin.

Known as opera’s “disrupter-in-residence,” director Yuval Sharon has never adhered to the art form’s conventions. In his many productions in both the United States and Europe, he constantly challenges the perception of opera as aloof by urging, among other things: performing operas in “non-places,” such as parking lots; encouraging the use of amplification; and shuffling the traditional structure of classic works, like performing Puccini’s La bohème in reverse order, ending not with the tubercular heroine Mimi’s death but with her first falling in love.

Read by the author, acclaimed conductor Jane Glover. 'You don’t have to be able to hum Mozart to find this book utterly engrossing . . . I couldn’t put it down' - Joanna Lumley An expertly researched and vividly written account of Mozart’s formative trips to Italy. At thirteen years old...

Through a deft compilation of primary sources—letters, memoirs, and personal accounts from composers, librettists, and performers—Michael Rose re-creates for his readers the circumstances that gave rise to fifteen operatic milestones. From Monteverdi and Mozart to Puccini and Berg, each chapter focuses on a well-known opera and tells the story that lies behind its creation.

Blunt, irreverent, and at times delightfully subversive, Opera Wars spotlights opera’s colorful and sometimes warring personalities, increasingly fierce controversies over content, and the battles being waged for its economic future—a “colorful, witty look behind the velvet curtain”...

For anyone who has been intimidated, overwhelmed, or just plain confused by what they think opera is, Who’s Afraid of Opera? offers a lively, easy-to-follow guide to what author Michael Walsh describes as “the greatest art form yet invented by humankind.” From opera’s origins in Renaissance Italy to the Who’s rock odyssey “Tommy”, and Stephen Sondheim’s “Into the Woods”, Walsh explores what opera is and what it’s not, what makes a great singer, and why it takes Tristan so long to die.

Wagner’s Ring cycle is the most ambitious work in the history of music: four operas that combine to tell a single epic story. Based in legend, it has become a legend in its own right: a supreme challenge for conductors, singers, opera producers, and indeed for audiences. But for all its grandeur and complexity, The Ring is far more accessible than many music lovers think.

"Wagner's Ring Motifs" is aimed in the first instance at listeners new to the Ring and is intended to convey the fascination of Wagner's music...

Rigoletto gilt als das erste Meisterwerk von Giuseppe Verdi und begründet seinen Weltruhm. Bereits bei der Uraufführung, im Jahr 1851 am Teatro La Fenice in Venedig, feierte sie einen überwältigenden Erfolg und wurde in den folgenden Jahren in ganz Europa aufgeführt. Das Libretto stammt von Francesco Maria Piave und beruht auf dem Melodrama Le roi s’amuse von Victor Hugo. Die Oper steht bis heute im Programm zahlreicher Opernhäuser und ist nach wie vor eine der meistgespielten italienischen Opern.

Take a captivating journey into the world of opera—from its dramatic origins and legendary voices to its grand spectacles and modern reinventions. Whether you're a lifelong aficionado or a curious newcomer, this six-part series hits every high note. For more fascinating and engaging podcasts, visit: https://www.quietperiodplease.com/ Click here to browse handpicked Amazon finds inspired by this podcast series! https://amzn.to/4iH8F6y This content was created in partnership and with the help of Artificial Intelligence AI.

La Traviata owes its enduring popularity to a superb story of young love and fatal sacrifice, set to music by Italy’s master melodist at the peak of his powers. Interest and poignancy are added by the fact that this is a true story - the baritone ‘heavy’ is Alexander Dumas who wrote The Count of Monte Cristo. But it is the central figure, the heroine Violetta, the archetypal ‘whore with the heart of gold’ who dominates the piece. It is her opera and we love her for it.

La storia dell'Opera Russa dalla nascita agli splendori curata da Giovanni Giammarino

New opera enthusiasts and seasoned aficionados alike will delight in Dale Harris' witty and insightful analyses of The Barber of Seville, Madame Butterfly, Aida, and Lucia de Lammermoor. The notable music critic, whose lectures at the Metropolitan used to be sell-out events, examines these operas in terms of libretto, plot, music, performance history, and cultural background, amply illustrated with musical examples.

The Flying Dutchman is the perfect opera with which to approach the operatic mountain that is Richard Wagner. It is short, has a great story (the legend of the Dutch captain doomed to sail forever unless redeemed through love), and the striking score has many pre-echoes of Wagner's later great music dramas. It contains wonderful tunes in its arias, ensembles, and big choruses, and the orchestral writing - from the gale that blows out of the Overture to the final theme of "Redemption through Love" - will "blow you away".

With war clouds gathering and harassment increasing, the stars of Continental opera, many of whom are Jewish, face dark futures under the boot heel of the Nazis. What can two middle-aged British spinsters do about such matters? They can form a secret cabal right under Hitler’s nose and get to work saving lives. The sisters conspire to bring together worldwide opera aficionados and insiders in an international operation to rescue Jews in the opera from the horrific fate that everyone intuits is coming.  

DIE ZAUBERFLÖTE ist eine der bekanntesten Opern und ein zeitloses Meisterwerk. DIE HOCHZEIT DES FIGARO des Genies Mozart begründet die Zusammenarbeit zweier Meister ihres Fachs: des Komponisten Mozarts mit dem Librettisten Lorenzo da Ponte. RIGOLETTO gilt als das erste Meisterwerk von Giuseppe Verdi und begründet seinen Weltruhm. Bereits bei der Uraufführung im Jahr 1851 am Teatro La Fenice in Venedig feierte sie einen überwältigenden Erfolg und wurde in den folgenden Jahren in ganz Europa aufgeführt.