Cecilia BartoliOMRI is an Italian coloratura mezzo-soprano opera singer and recitalist. She is best known for her interpretations of the music of Bellini, Handel, Mozart, Rossini and Vivaldi, as well as for her performances of lesser-known music from the Baroque and Classical period. She is known for singing both soprano and mezzo roles.
The Theatre Royal Stratford East is a 460 seat Victorian producing theatre in Stratford in the London Borough of Newham. Since 1953, it has been the home of the Theatre Workshop company, famously associated with director Joan Littlewood, whose statue is outside the theatre.
Savonlinna Opera Festival is held annually in the city of Savonlinna in Finland. The Festival takes place at the medieval Olavinlinna, built in 1475. The castle is located amid spectacular lake scenery.
Garsington Opera is an annual summer opera festival founded in 1989 by Leonard Ingrams. The Philharmonia Orchestra and The English Concert are its two resident orchestras. For 21 years it was held in the gardens of Ingrams's home at Garsington Manor in Oxfordshire. Since 2011 the festival is held in Wormsley Park, the home of the Getty family near Stokenchurch in Buckinghamshire, England. After Ingrams's death in 2005 Anthony Whitworth-Jones became its General Director until 2013 when Douglas Boyd became artistic director.
Derek Hammond-Stroud was an English baritone opera singer best known for his performances of German lieder and his international performances in opera, particularly the roles of Alberich in Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, Herr Faninal in Der Rosenkavalier and Beckmesser in Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. He also made recordings, including a series of recordings of the Gilbert and Sullivan patter roles.
John Newport Caird is an English stage director and writer of plays, musicals and operas. He is an honorary associate director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, was for many years a regular director with the Royal National Theatre of Great Britain and is the principal guest director of the Royal Dramatic Theatre, Stockholm (Dramaten).
Libuše is a "festival opera" in three acts, with music by Bedřich Smetana. The libretto was originally written in German by Josef Wenzig, and was then translated into Czech by Ervín Špindler. In Czech historical myth, Libuše, the title character, prophesied the founding of Prague. The opera was composed in 1871–72 for the coronation of Franz Josef as King of Bohemia. This did not happen and Smetana saved Libuše for the opening of the National Theatre in Prague, which took place nine years later on 11 June 1881. After the destruction of the National Theatre in a fire, the same opera opened the reconstructed theatre in 1883. The first US performance was reported to have occurred March 1986, in a concert version at Carnegie Hall with Eve Queler and the Opera Orchestra of New York. In the UK, it was first staged by University College Opera in 2019.
L'anima del filosofo, ossia Orfeo ed Euridice, Hob. 28/13, is an opera in Italian in four acts by Joseph Haydn and is one of the last two operas written during his life, the other being Armida (1783).The libretto, by Carlo Francesco Badini, is based on the myth of Orpheus and Euridice as told in Ovid's Metamorphoses. Composed in 1791 for His Majesty's Theatre during his first visit to England, the opera was never performed during Haydn's lifetime and only given its formal premiere in 1951.
Fiesque is an opera in three acts by the French composer Édouard Lalo. The libretto, by Charles Beauquier, is based on Schiller's 1784 play, Die Verschwörung des Fiesco zu Genua, an account of the conspiracy in 1547 led by Giovanni Luigi Fieschi against the ruling Doria family. Although completed in 1868, it was not staged until 16 June 2007 when it premiered at the Nationaltheater in Mannheim.
Gotham Chamber Opera was a professional opera company located in New York City. The company was founded in 2000 under the name of the Henry Street Chamber Opera by Artistic Director Neal Goren and specialized in producing rarely performed chamber operas from the Baroque era to the present. In 2003, it changed its name to the Gotham Chamber Opera (GCO) after incorporating as an independent 501(c)(3) organization. Its Executive Director was Edward Barnes, who took over from David Bennett. It closed in 2015.
Polyeucte is an opera in five acts by Charles Gounod. The libretto was by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré, after the play of the same name (1643) by Pierre Corneille, about Saint Polyeuctus, an early Roman martyr in Armenia. Originally intended for the Salle Le Peletier in Paris, the premiere was delayed when that theatre was destroyed by fire in October 1873. The work eventually premiered in the new Palais Garnier on 7 October 1878.
Paul Curran is a Scottish opera director. He was General Manager of the opera company of the Norwegian National Opera and Ballet (2007–2011), and artistic consultant to Central City Opera of Denver, Colorado.
Hulda is an opera by César Franck to a French libretto by Charles Grandmougin. It is set in 11th-century Norway, and is based on the play Lame Hulda (1858) by Norwegian writer Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson. The complete opera contains a prologue, three acts and an epilogue, albeit the world premier recording by Naxos has five acts. It was composed between 1879 and 1885.
Whittington is an opera with music by Jacques Offenbach, based on the legend of Dick Whittington and His Cat. It was premiered in a spectacular production at the Alhambra Theatre, London, on 26 December 1874. Whittington is the only major work of Offenbach to have received its premiere in London, and came between the incidental music for La Haine and his third version of Geneviève de Brabant.
Kullervo is an opera in two acts, Op. 61, composed by Aulis Sallinen to his own libretto based on the story of Kullervo in the Finnish epic Kalevala. The opera premiered on 25 February 1992 at the Los Angeles Music Center.
Ulf Arne Söderblom was a Finnish conductor and music professor. He was the principal conductor of the Finnish National Opera from 1973 to 1993 and was a key figure in the revival of the Savonlinna Opera Festival. A champion of Finnish music, he has conducted the world premieres of several works by Finnish composers including Kokkonen's The Last Temptations and Sallinen's Kullervo and The Horseman.
The London Handel Festival is an annual music festival centred on the compositions of George Frideric Handel which was founded in 1978. The festival also features other composers, but its main purpose is to showcase a range of Handel's work. It includes a Handel Singing Competition, which gives the finalists opportunities to develop their careers.
Simon Gilbert is an English actor and tenor. At the age of twenty one he took singing lessons with the teachers of the Australian soprano Joan Sutherland. Gilbert gradually gravitated towards Opera and The Edinburgh Festival, where sang with Sutherland and Luciano Pavarotti. In 1967, he sang with Scottish Opera, for example appearing in L'anima del filosofo. Joining The Adelphi Theatre's company for the musical Show Boat, he played lead man to the show's star, Cleo Laine.
Roberto Saccà is a German operatic tenor. He was a member of the Hessisches Staatstheater Wiesbaden and the Zürich Opera House, and has appeared in major European opera houses and festivals, first with a focus on roles such as Mozart's Ferrando and Rossini's Lindoro. He performed in world premieres such as Boesman's Reigen and Herbert Willi's Schlafes Bruder.
