La donna serpente is a fable by Carlo Gozzi which premiered at the Teatro Sant'Angelo, Venice, in 1762. The play was adapted as a children's TV film, broadcast Rete 1, 26 March 1976, directed by it:Alessandro Brissoni, starring Ave Ninchi, Carlo Bagno, Enrico Osterman and Gianni Bortolotto. [1]
The plot concerns a fairy princess, Cherestani, whose marriage to a mortal Farruscad was opposed and given a curse-like condition by her father the fairy king Demogorgon. Farruscad is made to swear never to curse his wife Cherestani, no matter what she does. If he does, she will be transformed into a snake for 200 years. [2]
The fable was the basis for Wagner's Die Feen (1833) and Casella's La donna serpente (1932), but not—as sometimes incorrectly reported—Friedrich Heinrich Himmel's 1806 opera Die Sylphen, which is based on another Gozzi fable, La Zobeide. [3]
Wagner's interest in Gozzi was probably influenced by his uncle Adolph Wagner's translation of another Gozzi fable Il corvo in 1804. Wagner altered and selected from Gozzi's plot, changing the names of Princess Cherestani and Farruscad to Ada and Arindal. The influence of other sections of La donna serpente not used by Wagner in Die Feen on the second act of Wagner's Parsifal has been noted. [4]
Casella likewise changed the names of the protagonists to Miranda and Altidòr.
Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas. Unlike most opera composers, Wagner wrote both the libretto and the music for each of his stage works. Initially establishing his reputation as a composer of works in the romantic vein of Carl Maria von Weber and Giacomo Meyerbeer, Wagner revolutionised opera through his concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk, by which he sought to synthesise the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, with music subsidiary to drama. He described this vision in a series of essays published between 1849 and 1852. Wagner realised these ideas most fully in the first half of the four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen.
Parsifal is an opera or a music drama in three acts by the German composer Richard Wagner and his last composition. Wagner's own libretto for the work is loosely based on the 13th-century Middle High German epic poem Parzival of the Minnesänger Wolfram von Eschenbach, recounting the story of the Arthurian knight Parzival (Percival) and his quest for the Holy Grail.
Tristan und Isolde, WWV 90, is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner to a German libretto by the composer, based largely on the 12th-century romance Tristan and Iseult by Gottfried von Strassburg. It was composed between 1857 and 1859 and premiered at the Königliches Hoftheater und Nationaltheater in Munich on 10 June 1865 with Hans von Bülow conducting. Wagner referred to the work not as an opera, but called it "eine Handlung".
Carlo, Count Gozzi was an Italian (Venetian) playwright and champion of Commedia dell'arte.
Alfredo Casella was an Italian composer, pianist and conductor.
Die Hochzeit is an unfinished opera by Richard Wagner which predates his completed works in the genre. Wagner completed the libretto, then started composing the music in the second half of 1832 when he was just nineteen. He abandoned the project and destroyed the libretto after his sister Rosalie, who was the main supporter and the spokesman of the family, expressed her disgust at the story. Today, only three pieces survive from the opera.
Die Feen is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner. The German libretto was written by the composer after Carlo Gozzi's La donna serpente. Die Feen was Wagner's first completed opera, but remained unperformed in his lifetime. It has never established itself firmly in the operatic repertory although it receives occasional performances, on stage or in concert, most often in Germany. The opera is available on CD and in a heavily cut, adapted-for-children version, DVD.
Gerhard Stolze was a German operatic tenor.
Turandot (1762) is a commedia dell'arte play by Count Carlo Gozzi after a supposedly Persian story from the collection Les Mille et un jours (1710–1712) by François Pétis de la Croix. Gozzi's Turandot was first performed at the Teatro San Samuele, Venice, on 22 January 1762.
Pauline Maria de Ahna (also known as Pauline Strauss was a German operatic soprano and the wife of composer Richard Strauss. Her singing career was closely tied to her husband's career as a conductor and composer. From 1890 until 1894 she was committed to the Staatskapelle Weimar and from 1894 until 1897 she was committed to the Bavarian State Opera, during which times her husband was the principal conductor of those theaters. She also sang with her husband conducting at the Bayreuth Festival and in the world premiere of his first opera Guntram. Other houses at which performed included the Berlin State Opera, La Monnaie, and the Liceu. Her repertoire included leading roles in the operas of Beethoven, Humperdinck, Mozart, von Weber, and Wagner. After she gave birth to their son Franz Strauss in 1897 she retired from the opera stage. She thereafter continued to periodically perform in concerts of her husband's music, particularly Lieder. Strauss credited her as his muse for many of his compositions, including the title role in Salome, the Countess Madeleine in Capriccio, and the Four Last Songs among others.
Dunja Vejzović is an operatic mezzo-soprano and soprano from Croatia.
The Bayreuth canon consists of those operas by the German composer Richard Wagner (1813–1883) that have been performed at the Bayreuth Festival. The festival, which is dedicated to the staging of these works, was founded by Wagner in 1876 in the Bavarian town of Bayreuth, and has continued under the directorship of his family since his death. Although it was not originally held annually, it has taken place in July and August every year since the 75th anniversary season in 1951. Its venue is the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, which was built for the first festival. Attendance at the festival is often thought of as a pilgrimage made by Wagner aficionados.
Linda Esther Gray is a retired Scottish soprano and an operatic singing teacher.
Lyric Opera of Los Angeles is a small non-profit opera company in Los Angeles, California. It was founded in 2002 by Laura Sage and features lesser known opera works that have rarely been made into staged productions. LOLA has since put on several premiere productions including Heinrich Marschner's Der Vampyr and Daniel Auber's Manon Lescaut. As part of their 2010/2011 season, Lyric Opera of Los Angeles presented the U.S. staged premiere of Wagner’s Die Feen.
Ada Adini was an American operatic soprano who had an active international career from 1876 up into the first decade of the 20th century. She possessed a large, expressive voice which enabled her to sing a broad range of roles that extended from the coloratura soprano repertoire to dramatic soprano parts. She made five recordings with Fonotipia Records in Paris in 1905.
Tamara Wilson is an American operatic soprano who has had an active international opera career since 2007. She has performed leading roles at the Canadian Opera Company, the English National Opera, the Houston Grand Opera, the Liceu, the Metropolitan Opera, and the Sydney Opera House among others. She is particularly known for her performances of heroines in the operas of Giuseppe Verdi. In 2016 she was nominated for the Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Opera and was awarded the Richard Tucker Award, an award described by Opera News as "one of the most prestigious prizes in opera".
La donna serpente is a 1932 opera by Alfredo Casella to a libretto by Cesare Vico Lodovici based on the fable, La donna serpente, by Carlo Gozzi. The same fable was the basis of Wagner's first opera, Die Feen. The plot concerns a king, Altidòr, who falls in love with a fairy, Miranda. The fairy's father curses Altidòr that if he curses Miranda, she shall turn into a snake.
Endrik Wottrich was a German operatic tenor.
Claus Guth is a German theatre director, focused on opera. He has directed operas at major houses and festivals, including world premieres such as works of the Munich Biennale, and Berio's Cronaca del luogo at the Salzburg Festival in 1999. Guth is particularly known for his opera productions of the works of Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss. He has received two Faust awards, for Daphne by Richard Strauss in 2010, and for Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, both at the Oper Frankfurt.