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L'africaine (The African Woman) is a grand opera, the last work of the composer Giacomo Meyerbeer. The French libretto was written by Eugène Scribe. The opera is about fictitious events in the life of the real historical person Vasco da Gama.
The opera was premiered by the Paris Opéra at the Salle Le Peletier on 28 April 1865 in a performing edition undertaken by François-Joseph Fétis, as the composer had not prepared a final version by the time of his death the previous year. It is Fétis who gave the work its present title; Meyerbeer had referred to it as Vasco da Gama. In fact it is clear from the text, with its references to Hinduism, that the heroine Sélika hails not from Africa, but from a region of, or island nearby, India. Madagascar has been suggested as a compromise reconciliation. Gabriela Cruz has published a detailed analysis of the historical context of the events of the opera and the opera setting itself.
Meyerbeer was working on the score from 1854 to 1855, and had intended the role of Sélika for the soprano Sophie Cruvelli, but Cruvelli's abrupt retirement from the public stage in January 1856 interrupted his plans.
The work was first performed at Covent Garden Theatre, London, on 22 July 1865, and in New York on 1 December 1865. It also received its Italian premiere in 1865 in Bologna, conducted by Angelo Mariani and was staged four times at La Fenice between 1868 and 1892.
The opera was enormously successful in the 19th century, but today it is rarely revived. To mark the 150th anniversary of Meyerbeer's death, the work was performed again at La Fenice in November 2013. Most modern performances and recordings are severely cut to give prominence to the parts of da Gama and Sélika, and therefore they cannot give a full idea of the composer's conception, which in any case has been to some extent obscured by the version prepared by Fétis.
The only part of the opera known to most opera lovers is the Act 4 tenor aria "O, paradis!", which has been recorded many times.
Industry:Drama
After All! is a one-act comic opera with a libretto by Frank Desprez and music by Alfred Cellier. It was first performed at the Savoy Theatre under the management of Richard D'Oyly Carte, along with H.M.S. Pinafore and another short piece, Cups and Saucers, from December 1878 to February 1880.
During the original run of After All, in 1879, Richard D'Oyly Carte, Gilbert and Sullivan broke up the "Comedy Opera Company" that they had formed in 1877 to present the Gilbert and Sullivan operas. The former directors of the that company staged a rival version Pinafore, along with After All, but their versions were not as popular as Carte's. Later, After All played with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company children's Pinafore (and In the Sulks), from February to March 1880; with The Mikado from November 1895 to March 1896; with The Grand Duke from April to July 1896; with The Mikado from July to August 1896; and with The Yeomen of the Guard from May to June 1897. The piece was also performed on tour on numerous occasions until at least 1909, including a 1908 touring revival.
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Ages Ago is a musical entertainment with a libretto by W. S. Gilbert and music by Frederic Clay that premiered on 22 November 1869 at the Royal Gallery of Illustration. It marked the beginning of a seven-year collaboration between Gilbert and Clay. The piece was revived many times, including at St. George's Hall, London in 1870 and 1874, and in New York in 1880.
By the 1850s, the London stage had fallen into disrepute. Shakespeare's plays were staged, but most of the entertainments consisted of poorly translated French operettas, risque Victorian burlesques and vulgar broad farces. To bring family-friendly entertainment back to the theatre, Thomas German Reed and his wife Priscilla opened their Gallery of Illustration in 1855 and brought in Gilbert in 1869 as one of their many playwrights. The Gallery of Illustration was a 500-seat theatre with a small stage that only allowed for four or five characters with accompaniment by a piano, harmonium and sometimes a harp.
After Gilbert's first offering for the Gallery of Illustration – No Cards, with music by Reed, Gilbert paired with Clay on Ages Ago, the first of a successful series of collaborations between the author and composer that would continue for the next seven years. In the eight months between the productions of No Cards, and Ages Ago, Gilbert's dramatic style had developed. Ages Ago, with its double-layered plot and its complex relationships among the characters, is more sophisticated than No Cards, which was a simple farce. In addition, the lyrics move the plot forward more than in the earlier work.
Ages Ago earned praise from the critics, outran its companion piece, the popular Cox and Box, and was frequently revived over the next decade. It was Gilbert's and the Gallery's greatest success to that date, running for 350 performances in 1869. It was revived several times thereafter and is still performed occasionally. At the 1874 revival, Mrs. German Reed, Leonora Braham, Alfred Reed, Stanley Betjeman, Corney Grain, and the piece itself all received warm praise from the Era's critic. New York's reopened Broadway Opera House was inaugurated in 1880 with a double bill of Ages Ago and Charity Begins at Home.
Gilbert produced four more pieces for Reed, including A Sensation Novel in 1871 and Eyes and No Eyes in 1875. He also wrote several comic operas with Clay, the last of which was Princess Toto in 1876. Thomas German Reed played Ebenezer Tare, while his wife played Mrs. MacMotherly. The piece also introduced Fanny Holland, who would play in many pieces for the German Reeds for years to come.
At a rehearsal for Ages Ago, Clay formally introduced the composer Arthur Sullivan to Gilbert. The two later collaborated on fourteen comic operas that became the most enduring pieces of musical theatre from the Victorian era. Gilbert would later reuse many ideas and plot elements from these earlier works in the Gilbert and Sullivan operas.
Industry:Drama
Agrippina is an opera seria in three acts by George Frideric Handel, from a libretto by Cardinal Vincenzo Grimani. Composed for the 1709–10 Venice Carnevale season, the opera tells the story of Agrippina, the mother of Nero, as she plots the downfall of the Roman Emperor Claudius and the installation of her son as emperor. Grimani's libretto, considered one of the best that Handel set, is an "anti-heroic satirical comedy", full of topical political allusions. Some analysts believe that it reflects the rivalry of Grimani with Pope Clement XI.
Handel composed Agrippina at the end of a three-year visit to Italy. It premiered in Venice at the Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo on 26 December 1709, and was an immediate success. From its opening night it was given a then-unprecedented run of 27 consecutive performances, and received much critical acclaim. Observers were full of praise for the quality of the music—much of which, in keeping with the contemporary custom, had been borrowed and adapted from other works, including some from other composers. Despite the evident public enthusiasm for the work, Handel did not promote further stagings. There were occasional productions in the years following its premiere but, when Handel's operas fell out of fashion in the mid-18th century, it and his other dramatic works were generally forgotten.
In the 20th century, Handelian opera began a revival which, after productions in Germany, saw Agrippina premiered in Britain and in America. In recent years performances of the work have become more common, with innovative stagings at the New York City Opera and the London Coliseum in 2007. Modern critical opinion is that Agrippina is Handel's first operatic masterpiece, full of freshness and musical invention which have made it one of the most popular operas of the continuing Handel revival.
Industry:Drama
Die ägyptische Helena (The Egyptian Helen) is an opera in two acts by Richard Strauss to a German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. It premiered at the Dresden Semperoper on 6 June 1928. Strauss had written the title role with Maria Jeritza in mind but, creating quite a sensation at the time, the Dresden opera management refused to pay Jeritza's large fee and cast Elisabeth Rethberg instead as Helen of Troy. Jeritza eventually created the part in Vienna and New York.
As inspiration for the story, Hofmannsthal used sources from Euripides and Stesichorus. Strauss made changes to the opera in 1933, five years after the premiere, working with the director Lothar Wallenstein and the conductor Clemens Krauss.
Industry:Drama
Aida (Italian: ), sometimes spelled Aïda, is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni, based on a scenario often attributed to French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette, although Verdi biographer Mary Jane Phillips-Matz has argued that the scenario was actually written by Temistocle Solera. Aida was first performed at the Khedivial Opera House in Cairo on 24 December 1871, conducted by Giovanni Bottesini.
Isma'il Pasha, Khedive of Egypt, commissioned Verdi to write the opera for performance in January 1871, paying him 150,000 francs, but the premiere was delayed because of the Franco-Prussian War. Contrary to popular belief, the opera was not written to celebrate the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, nor that of the Khedivial Opera House, which opened with Verdi's Rigoletto in the same year. Verdi had been asked to compose an ode for the opening of the Canal, but declined on the grounds that he did not write "occasional pieces".
Industry:Drama
Ainadamar means "Fountain of Tears" in Arabic, and is the first opera by Argentinian composer Osvaldo Golijov. The Spanish-language libretto is by American playwright David Henry Hwang. It premiered in Tanglewood on August 10, 2003. After major revisions, the new version premiered at the Santa Fe Opera on July 30, 2005.
The opera tells the story of playwright Federico García Lorca and his lover and muse, Catalan actress Margarita Xirgu. A unique aspect of this opera is that the part of male Lorca is played by a woman. Subtitled "an Opera in Three Images," Ainadamar is told in reverse in a series of flashbacks, and involves Lorca's opposition to the Falange, accusations of homosexuality, and his subsequent murder.
Ainadamar has features of both an opera and a passion play, as it examines the powerful symbolic role Lorca has embodied after his death, especially among other artists. Lorca becomes a martyr in the name of freedom of artistic expression. The connections with the Baroque passion musical concept also occur structurally, as the work evolves as a series of arias, recurring choruses and dance genres. The symbolic aspect was emphasized visually by Peter Sellars in his staging for Santa Fe Opera.
Ainadamar also connects with previous operatic traditions, as in the casting of Lorca as a trouser role, in a manner parallel to other impetuous youths of opera, such as Cherubino (The Marriage of Figaro) or Octavian (Der Rosenkavalier). These characteristics have allowed Ainadamar to begin a successful performance run as a non-staged or semi-staged concert work.
Crucially, it appears that performances by a younger generation of singers may prompt an assimilation into the canon — and with it, an integration of the Ibero-American musical languages it espouses into Classical music.
It met its Chicago premiere at the Ravinia Festival on June 14, 2006, and was staged by Opera Boston in November 2007. Cincinnati Opera presented the opera July 9 and 11, 2009.
Industry:Drama
Akhnaten is an opera in three acts based on the life and religious convictions of the pharaoh Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV), written by the American minimalist composer Philip Glass in 1983. Akhnaten had its world premiere on March 24, 1984 at the Stuttgart State Opera, under the German title Echnaton. Paul Esswood sang the title role, German director Achim Freyer staged the opera in an abstract style with highly ritualistic movements. The American premiere was held on October 12, 1984 at the Houston Grand Opera, where Glass's opera The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 also premiered.
According to the composer, this work is the culmination of his two other biographical operas, Einstein on the Beach and Satyagraha (about Mohandas Gandhi). These three people — Akhenaten, Einstein and Gandhi — were all driven by an inner vision which altered the age in which they lived, in particular Akhenaten in religion, Einstein in science, and Gandhi in politics.
The text, taken from original sources, is sung in the original languages, linked together with the commentary of a narrator in a modern language, such as English or German. Egyptian texts of the period are taken from a poem of Akhenaten himself, from the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and from extracts of decrees and letters from the Amarna period, the seventeen-year period of Akhenaten's rule. Other portions are in Akkadian and Biblical Hebrew. Akhnaten's Hymn to the Sun is sung in the language of the audience.
Industry:Drama
Alahor in Granata is an opera in two acts by Gaetano Donizetti to an anonymous Italian libretto (indicated only with the initials "M.A.") after Jean-Pierre Claris de Florian's text Gonzalve de Cordoue, ou Granade reconquise (1793). However, it seems that the original basis of the libretto goes back to one by Felice Romani written for Meyerbeer in 1821, which in turn can be traced back through another iteration to begin with the De Florian version.
While Donizetti was spending most of 1825-26 in Palermo as musical director of the Teatro Carolino, Alahor in Granata was written to be presented in December 1825, but the premiere was delayed until 7 January 1826 and given at the Teatro Carolino with critical and popular success.
The score was eventually lost, but a copy - "not in the composer's hand" - was subsequently discovered in Boston in 1970. Finally, the autograph score came to light a few years later in Palermo. Some of the music was recycled into Emilia di Liverpool in 1828 and L'Elisir d'amore in 1832.
Industry:Drama
Albert Herring, Op. 39, is a chamber opera in three acts by Benjamin Britten. Composed in the winter of 1946 and the spring of 1947, this comic opera was a successor to his serious opera The Rape of Lucretia. The libretto, by Eric Crozier, was based on Guy de Maupassant's novella Le Rosier de Madame Husson, but it was transposed entirely to an English setting.
The opera was premiered on 20 June 1947 at Glyndebourne, conducted by the composer. According to one writer the owner and founder of Glyndebourne, John Christie, "disliked it intensely and is said to have greeted members of the first night audience with the words: 'This isn't our kind of thing, you know'." Just 38 years later Glyndebourne's 1985 production was "one of the most successful the opera has had".
The opera was given its US premiere on 8 August 1949 as part of the Tanglewood Music Festival. In 1949, Britten's English Opera Group toured with both Rape of Lucretia and Albert Herring, giving ten performances between 12–23 September in Copenhagen and Oslo: an almost complete recording of one of their Copenhagen performances has been commercially released.
Sviatoslav Richter called it "the greatest comic opera of the century", and in 1983 staged Albert Herring as part of the December Nights Festival at Moscow's Pushkin Museum.
The opera was performed at Buenos Aires's Teatro Colón in 1972. In 2008–2010, over 55 performances were given by companies such as those at Glyndebourne and the Portland Opera in Oregon (2008 season); the Opéra-Comique in Paris and the Opéra de Normandie in Rouen (2009); and, for 2010, at the Landestheater in Linz, the Finnish National Opera in Helsinki and the Santa Fe Opera. The Santa Fe production was given by the Los Angeles Opera in 2011. Vancouver Opera presented the work, in a co-production with Pacific Opera Victoria, in 2013.
Industry:Drama
