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Amahl and the Night Visitors is an opera in one act by Gian Carlo Menotti with an original English libretto by the composer. It was commissioned by NBC and first performed by the NBC Opera Theatre on December 24, 1951, in New York City at NBC studio 8H in Rockefeller Center, the same studio where it was broadcast live on television from that venue as the debut production of the Hallmark Hall of Fame. It was the first opera specifically composed for television in America.
Menotti was commissioned by Peter Herman Adler, director of NBC's new opera programming, to write the first opera for television. The composer had trouble settling on a subject for the opera, but took his inspiration from Hieronymus Bosch's The Adoration of the Magi hanging in The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
As the airdate neared, Menotti had yet to finish the score. The singers had little time to rehearse, and received the final passages of the score just days before the broadcast. The composer's companion Samuel Barber was brought in to complete the orchestrations. After the dress rehearsal, NBC Symphony conductor Arturo Toscanini told Menotti, "This is the best you've ever done."
Menotti distinctly wanted Amahl to be performed by a boy. In the Production Notes contained in the Piano-Vocal score he wrote: "It is the express wish of the composer that the role of Amahl should always be performed by a boy. Neither the musical nor the dramatic concept of the opera permits the substitution of a woman costumed as a child."
Industry:Drama
Amelia is an opera in two acts by Daron Hagen to a libretto in English by Gardner McFall based on a story by Stephen Wadsworth. It had its world premiere at the Seattle Opera on May 8, 2010.
In 2007 Amelia became Seattle Opera's first new commission in 25 years. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation issued a grant of $500,000 in 2009 to underwrite the first two revivals of the world premiere production.
Industry:Drama
L'amico Fritz is an opera in three acts by Pietro Mascagni, premiered in 1891 from a libretto by P. Suardon (Nicola Daspuro) (with additions by Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti), based on the French novel L'ami Fritz by Émile Erckmann and Pierre-Alexandre Chatrian.
While the opera enjoyed some success in its day and is probably Mascagni's most famous work after Cavalleria rusticana, today it is performed far more rarely than Cavalleria, which remains Mascagni's only enduringly popular work in America (though in Italy, L'amico Fritz and Iris are still in the active repertoire). The "Cherry Duet" between Fritz and Suzel in Act 2 is the best known piece in the opera and has never left the duet repertoire.
The opera was first performed in Rome at the Teatro Costanzi, on 31 October 1891. Other first performances include those in Hamburg on 16 January 1892 with Gustav Mahler conducting; in London on 23 May 1892 at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden; and in Australia on 19 October 1893 at the Princess's Theatre in Melbourne.
Industry:Drama
Andrea Chénier is a verismo opera in four acts by the composer Umberto Giordano, set to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica. It is based loosely on the life of the French poet, André Chénier (1762-1794), who was executed during the French Revolution. The character Carlo Gérard is partly based on Jean-Lambert Tallien, a leader of the Revolution.
Andrea Chénier remains popular with audiences, though it is now less frequently performed than it was during the first half of the 20th Century. One reason that the opera has stayed in the repertoire is due to the magnificent lyric-dramatic music provided by Giordano for the tenor lead, which gives a talented singer many opportunities to demonstrate his histrionic skill and flaunt his voice. Indeed, Giuseppe Borgatti's triumph in the title part at the first performance immediately propelled him to the front rank of Italian opera singers. Borgatti went on to become Italy's greatest Wagnerian tenor rather than a verismo-opera specialist.
The work was first performed at the Teatro alla Scala, Milan, on 28 March 1896 with Evelina Carrera, Giuseppe Borgatti (who replaced Alfonso Garulli at the eleventh hour) and Mario Sammarco in the leading parts of soprano, tenor and baritone respectively. Rodolfo Ferrari conducted.
Other notable first performances include those in New York at the Academy of Music on 13 November 1896; in Hamburg on 3 February 1897 under the baton of Gustav Mahler; and in London's Camden Theatre on 16 April 1903 (sung in English).
Apart from Borgatti, famous Cheniers in the period between the opera's premiere and the outbreak of World War II included Francesco Tamagno (who studied the work with Giordano), Giovanni Zenatello, Giovanni Martinelli, Aureliano Pertile, Francesco Merli, Beniamino Gigli, Giacomo Lauri-Volpi and Antonio Cortis. Enrico Caruso also gave a few performances as Chenier in London in 1907. All of these tenors with the exception of Borgatti have left 78-rpm recordings of one or more of the part's showpiece solos.
Post-war, Franco Corelli, Richard Tucker and Mario del Monaco were the most famous interpreters of the title role during the 1950s and 1960s, while Plácido Domingo became its foremost interpreter among the next generation of tenors, although Domingo's contemporary Luciano Pavarotti also successfully sang and recorded the work. The Wagnerian tenor Ben Heppner tackled the role in New York City at a 2007 Metropolitan Opera revival with mixed success; his voice was impressively powerful but did not fit the style, critics alleged.
The Keith Warner-directed production was performed in 2011 and 2012 in Bregenz, Austria, under the name of "André Chénier", using an almost 78-foot high statue of a dying Jean-Paul Marat sinking in the water, an ode to the 1793 Jacques-Louis David painting, "The Death of Marat," which depicts the murdered revolutionary slumped over in his bathtub.
In addition to four arias and ariosos for the principal tenor (Un di all'azzuro spazio; Io non amato ancor; Si, fui soldato; and, Come un bel di di maggio), the opera contains a well-known aria (La mamma morta) for the soprano heroine, which was featured in the film Philadelphia (the Maria Callas version is used on the soundtrack). Also worth noting are the baritone's expressive monologue Nemico della Patria and the final, rousing, soprano-tenor duet for the two leads as they prepare to face the guillotine.
Industry:Drama
L'ange de Nisida (The Angel of Nisida) is an opera semiseria in four acts by Italian composer Gaetano Donizetti, from a libretto by Alphonse Royer and Gustave Vaëz.
Parts of the libretto are considered analogous with the libretto for Giovanni Pacini's Adelaide e Comingio, and the final scene is based on the François-Thomas-Marie de Baculard d'Arnaud play Les Amants malheureux, ou le comte de Comminges. Donizetti worked on the opera in late 1839—its final page is dated 27 December 1839. Because the subject matter involved the mistress of a Neapolitan king, and may thus have caused difficulties with the Italian censors, Donizetti decided that the opera should be presented in France. The theater company Donizetti contracted went bankrupt; L'ange was never performed and was reworked as La favorite in September 1840.
L'ange de Nisida incorporated many of the manuscript pages from Adelaide, an unfinished score that Italian composer Gaetano Donizetti was probably working on in 1834, from a libretto of unknown origin. This libretto contained elements from the 1790 Parisian play Les Amants malheureux, ou le comte de Comminges by François-Thomas-Marie de Baculard d'Arnaud. In his book Donizetti and his Operas, musicologist William Ashbrook states that the Adelaide libretto has similarities to that of the Giovanni Pacini opera Adelaide e Comingio, whose libretto was written by Gaetano Rossi. Donizetti is believed to have taken the manuscript for Adelaide to Paris in 1838. Because the subject matter of L'ange involved the mistress of a Neapolitan king, and may thus have caused difficulties with the Italian censors, Donizetti decided that the opera should be presented in France. Additionally, in September 1839, the French press had announced La Fiancée du Tyrol, a translation of Donizetti's 1833 opera Il furioso all'isola di San Domingo. In October 1839, he wrote to a friend in Naples: "La Fiancée du Tyrol will be Il furioso amplified, L'ange de Nisida will be new." Donizetti began work on L'ange shortly thereafter; La Fiancée du Tyrol never materialized.
Industry:Drama
Angelo (Анджело in Cyrillic; Andželo in transliteration) is an opera in four acts by César Cui, composed during 1871-1875, with a libretto by Viktor Burenin based on Victor Hugo's prose play, Angelo, tyran de Padoue. This same play formed the basis of Saverio Mercadante's Il giuramento of 1837, Amilcare Ponchielli's La Gioconda, which premiered in the same year as Cui's opera (1876), and Alfred Bruneau's Angelo, tyran de Padoue of 1928.
Angelo was premiered on 1 February 1876 in Saint Petersburg at the Mariinsky Theatre. The conductor was Eduard Nápravník. Apparently it did not survive that particular season, and was removed from the repertory.
A new production of Angelo was staged twenty-five years after the original premiere in 1901 at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, with Feodor Chaliapin in the role of Galeofa. The Mariinsky staged Angelo again in 1910.
Industry:Drama
Aniara is an opera in two acts by Karl-Birger Blomdahl, with a libretto by Erik Lindegren based on the poem Aniara by Harry Martinson, that was premiered in 1959. The opera was described by the composer as a "review about Man in Time and Space".
The score of Aniara is varied and makes full use of a range of musical idioms, including jazz, serial writing and an electronic tape. The narrative is sung primarily by Mimaroben, a bass-baritone, who operates the electronic tape, Mima, the computer, and by the chorus. In essence the opera (and poem) deal with the relationship between the individual and the group through time.
Many representatives of the international press were in Stockholm for the premiere in 1959 at a time when the space age was beginning. Blomdahl said in interview that the opera (in common with his next opera Herr von Hancken) was founded on "modern man's complexity and his basically impossible situation"; Aniara dealt with "the downfall of the group". A production was mounted in Gothenburg in 1994.
Industry:Drama
Anna Bolena is a tragedia lirica, or opera, in two acts by Gaetano Donizetti. Felice Romani wrote the Italian libretto after Ippolito Pindemonte's Enrico VIII ossia Anna Bolena and Alessandro Pepoli's Anna Bolena, both telling of the life of Anne Boleyn, the second wife of England's King Henry VIII.
It is one of a number of operas by Donizetti which deal with the Tudor period in English history, including (in composition order) Il castello di Kenilworth in 1829, which was then followed by Anna Bolena. Maria Stuarda (named for Mary, Queen of Scots) appeared in different forms in 1834 and 1835. Finally, in 1837, Roberto Devereux (named for a putative lover of Queen Elizabeth I of England) was presented. The leading female characters of the operas Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda, and Roberto Devereux are often referred to as the "Three Donizetti Queens."
The duet "Sul suo capo aggravi un Dio" between Anna (soprano) and Jane Seymour (mezzo soprano) (and, historically, who later became Henry VIII's third wife) is considered one of the finest in the entire operatic repertoire.
It premiered on 26 December 1830 at the Teatro Carcano in Milan to "overwhelming success". Thus the composer had begun "to emerge as one of three most luminous names in the world of Italian opera", joining Bellini and Rossini.
Industry:Drama
Anna Nicole is an opera in 2 acts by Mark-Anthony Turnage to an English libretto by Richard Thomas. It received its première on 17 February 2011 at the Royal Opera House, London, directed by Richard Jones. The story is based on the life of Anna Nicole Smith. A recording of the opera was broadcast on BBC Four and BBC iPlayer on 25 March 2011. The broadcast drew in 67,700 viewers. A special introduction and intermission was filmed - hosted by Clemency Burton-Hill. The opera received its European continental premiere at Theater Dortmund (Germany) in April 2013 with American soprano Emily Newton in the title role.
Anna Nicole received its U.S. premiere on September 17, 2013, in a production by the New York City Opera at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Anna Nicole was the last work to be staged by the City Opera, which ceased operations on October 1, 2013.
Industry:Drama
Antigonae (Antigone), written by Carl Orff, was first presented on 9 August 1949 under the direction of Ferenc Fricsay in the Felsenreitschule, Salzburg, Austria. Antigonae is in Orff's words a "musical setting" for the Greek tragedy by Sophocles of the same name. However, it functions as an opera.
Orff used the German translation of Sophocles' play by Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843). The original play was written in 442 BC and the German translation copies faithfully the mood and movement of Greek tragedy.
With this work Orff drew a line in his musical output, setting up a demarcation between pre-Antigonae and post-Antigonae style. Hölderlin's translation into lines of ecstatic German inspired the declamatory technique Orff uses for the first time in much of Antigonae. It pre-dates a similar style of the minimalist school by about 50 years. In this way Orff creates unusual sound effects that captures both the dramatic and psychological setting of the original Greek tragedy with emotional color ranging from the ecstatic to the orgiastic. Much of the singing is performed a cappella.
Frequently an ostinato in the orchestra builds up an almost unbearable tension which is resolved only in the final bars of the piece. Orff frequently uses the technique called Singstimmen, which is half way between singing and speaking, somewhat like Schönberg's Sprechgesang, but still within the tonal language of work.
The sense of antiquity is often enhanced when the text is treated psalmodically in a manner resembling Gregorian Chant. Another early device found in Antigone is the melisma, where many notes are assigned to a single syllable, which is found as well in the music of other ancient and modern cultures.
The structure of the work, its heavy emotional content, its novel fabrics of sound, all demand more of the listener than required in the usual opera performance. While Antigone has never been very popular, it has set new standards for the orchestra, the singers and the committed listener.
Industry:Drama
