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Gilbert and Sullivan refers to the Victorian-era theatrical partnership of the dramatist W. S. Gilbert (1836–1911) and the composer Arthur Sullivan (1842–1900) and to the works they jointly created. The two men collaborated on fourteen comic operas between 1871 and 1896, of which H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado are among the best known.
Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" is typically a collaboration between a composer and a librettist and incorporates a number of the performing arts, such as acting, scenery, costume, and sometimes dance or ballet. The performance is typically given in an opera house, accompanied by an orchestra or smaller musical ensemble, which since the early 19th century has been led by a conductor. Although musical theatre is closely related to opera, the two are considered to be distinct from one another.
Sir Arthur Seymour Sullivan was an English composer. He is best known for 14 operatic collaborations with the dramatist W. S. Gilbert, including H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado. His works include 24 operas, 11 major orchestral works, ten choral works and oratorios, two ballets, incidental music to several plays, and numerous church pieces, songs, and piano and chamber pieces. His hymns and songs include "Onward, Christian Soldiers" and "The Lost Chord".
A modern melodrama is a dramatic work in which the plot, typically sensationalized and for a very strong emotional appeal, takes precedence over detailed characterization. Melodramas typically concentrate on dialogue that is often bombastic or excessively sentimental, rather than action. Characters are often flat, and written to fulfill stereotypes. Melodramas are typically set in the private sphere of the home, focusing on morality and family issues, love, and marriage, often with challenges from an outside source, such as a "temptress", a scoundrel, or an aristocratic villain. A melodrama on stage, filmed, or on television is usually accompanied by dramatic and suggestive music that offers cues to the audience of the drama being presented.
A burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects. The word derives from the Italian burlesco, which, in turn, is derived from the Italian burla – a joke, ridicule or mockery.
A theatrical culture flourished in ancient Greece from 700 BC. At its centre was the city-state of Athens, which became a significant cultural, political, and religious place during this period, and the theatre was institutionalised there as part of a festival called the Dionysia, which honoured the god Dionysus. Tragedy, comedy, and the satyr play were the three dramatic genres emerged there. Athens exported the festival to its numerous colonies. Modern Western theatre comes, in large measure, from the theatre of ancient Greece, from which it borrows technical terminology, classification into genres, and many of its themes, stock characters, and plot elements.
Thespis, or The Gods Grown Old, is an operatic extravaganza that was the first collaboration between dramatist W. S. Gilbert and composer Arthur Sullivan. No musical score of Thespis was ever published, and most of the music has been lost. Gilbert and Sullivan went on to become the most famous and successful artistic partnership in Victorian England, creating a string of enduring comic opera hits, including H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance and The Mikado.
Opéra comique is a genre of French opera that contains spoken dialogue and arias. It emerged from the popular opéras comiques en vaudevilles of the Fair Theatres of St Germain and St Laurent, which combined existing popular tunes with spoken sections. Associated with the Paris theatre of the same name, opéra comique is not necessarily comical or shallow in nature; Carmen, perhaps the most famous opéra comique, is a tragedy.
A solo performance, sometimes referred to as a one-man show, one-woman show, or one-person show, features a single person telling a story for an audience, typically for the purpose of entertainment. This type of performance comes in many varieties, including autobiographical creations, comedy acts, novel adaptations, vaudeville, poetry, music and dance. In 1996, Rob Becker's Defending the Caveman became the longest-running one-person play in the history of Broadway theatre.
W. H. Denny was an English singer and actor in comic operas, operettas and musical theatre. He is best remembered for his portrayal of baritone roles in the Savoy operas.
French opera is both the art of opera in France and opera in the French language. It is one of Europe's most important operatic traditions, containing works by composers of the stature of Rameau, Berlioz, Gounod, Bizet, Massenet, Debussy, Ravel, Poulenc and Messiaen. Many foreign-born composers have played a part in the French tradition, including Lully, Gluck, Salieri, Cherubini, Spontini, Meyerbeer, Rossini, Donizetti, Verdi and Offenbach.
Predrag Miletić,, is a Serbian film, television, and theatre actor. Since 1981, Predrag Miletić has been a full-time member of the National Theatre in Belgrade, where he has appeared in more than 50 plays. Since 2014 he is the chairman of the board of the Puppet Theatre "Pinocchio" and since 2015 is the President of the Program Committee of the International Festival of Monodrama and Mime in Zemun.
Pip Utton is a British actor and playwright. Utton was born 15 February 1952, raised and educated in Cannock. He authored the award-winning Adolf, Chaplin and Only The Lonely. As one of the leading solo performers in the United Kingdom, most of his plays are monodramas, performable by a single actor. Utton won the top award at the 2006 Thespis 5th International Monodrama Festival performing Bacon written by Utton and Jeremy Towler.
Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance: a play, opera, mime, ballet, etc., performed in a theatre, or on radio or television. Considered as a genre of poetry in general, the dramatic mode has been contrasted with the epic and the lyrical modes ever since Aristotle's Poetics —the earliest work of dramatic theory.
Ian Belsey is a lyric baritone specialising in opera of the bel canto period, but is best known for his performances in light music and operetta, particularly the works of Gilbert and Sullivan.
The Stronger is an opera in one act by composer Hugo Weisgall. The English-language libretto by Richard Henry Hart is based on August Strindberg's 1889 play of the same name. It premiered at the White Barn Theatre in Westport, Connecticut, on August 9, 1952 and was dedicated to that theatre's founder, the actress Lucille Lortel.
Trial by Jury is a comic opera in one act, with music by Arthur Sullivan and libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It was first produced on 25 March 1875, at London's Royalty Theatre, where it initially ran for 131 performances and was considered a hit, receiving critical praise and outrunning its popular companion piece, Jacques Offenbach's La Périchole. The story concerns a "breach of promise of marriage" lawsuit in which the judge and legal system are the objects of lighthearted satire. Gilbert based the libretto of Trial by Jury on an operetta parody that he had written in 1868.
A monologist, or interchangeably monologuist, is a solo artist who recites or gives dramatic readings from a monologue, soliloquy, poetry, or work of literature, for the entertainment of an audience. The term can also refer to a person who monopolizes a conversation; and, in an obsolete sense, could describe a bird with an unchanging, repetitive song.
Gian Carlo Menotti was an Italian-American composer, librettist, director, and playwright who is primarily known for his output of 25 operas. Although he often referred to himself as an American composer, he kept his Italian citizenship. One of the most frequently performed opera composers of the 20th century, his most successful works were written in the 1940s and 1950s. Highly influenced by Giacomo Puccini and Modest Mussorgsky, Menotti further developed the verismo tradition of opera in the post-World War II era. Rejecting atonality and the aesthetic of the Second Viennese School, Menotti's music is characterized by expressive lyricism which carefully sets language to natural rhythms in ways that highlight textual meaning and underscore dramatic intent.
La Passion selon Sade is an opera by Sylvano Bussotti who also wrote the libretto, and was the set designer and director. The subtitle is "mistero da camera", describing it as a chamber mystery play. It was Bussotti's first work for the stage. The opera premiered in 1965 in Palermo with soprano Cathy Berberian, who portrayed the titular characters from two novels by the Marquis de Sade, Justine and Juliette. It has been regarded as experimental musical theatre in several respects.
References
- ↑ Lucio Tufano, La ricezione italiana del melologo à la Rousseau, in D’un scène à l’autre, Mardaga 2009, p.134
- ↑ Carrie J. Preston, Modernism's Mythic Pose, Oxford University 2011, note 18, p.262
- ↑ George Taylor, The French Revolution and the London Stage, Cambridge University 2000, pp.110-12
- ↑ Christopher Ricks, Tennyson: a selected edition, Routledge 2014, p.512
- ↑ Forgotten Books
- ↑ Playbill, Oct. 3, 2013
- ↑ "Thespis International Monodrama Festival". Archived from the original on 2010-11-03. Retrieved 2007-05-18.
