Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian composer best known for his operas. He was born near Busseto to a provincial family of moderate means, receiving a musical education with the help of a local patron. Verdi came to dominate the Italian opera scene after the era of Gioachino Rossini, Vincenzo Bellini, and Gaetano Donizetti, whose works significantly influenced him.
Das Rheingold, WWV 86A, is the first of the four epic music dramas that constitute Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen. It was performed, as a single opera, at the National Theatre Munich on 22 September 1869, and received its first performance as part of the Ring cycle at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, on 13 August 1876.
Dame Ethel Mary Smyth was an English composer and a member of the women's suffrage movement. Her compositions include songs, works for piano, chamber music, orchestral works, choral works and operas.
Sir Roger Vernon Scruton, was an English philosopher, writer, and social critic who specialised in aesthetics and political philosophy, particularly in the furtherance of traditionalist conservative views.
Jake Heggie is an American composer of opera, vocal, orchestral, and chamber music. He is best known for his operas and art songs as well as for his collaborations with internationally renowned performers and writers.
John Charles Eaton was an American composer.
Allan Havis is an American playwright whose dramas have pronounced political themes and probe colliding cultures. His works range from minimal-language texts to ambiguous, ironic narratives that delineate the genesis, paradoxes, and seduction of evil. Several of his stories involve Jewish identity, cultural alienation, and universal problems of racism. He has been influenced by August Strindberg and Harold Pinter.
Juliette is an opera by Bohuslav Martinů, who also wrote the libretto, in French, based on the play Juliette, ou La clé des songes by the French author Georges Neveux. A libretto in Czech was later prepared for its premiere which took place at the Prague National Theatre on 16 March 1938. Juliette has become widely considered as Martinů's masterpiece.
Violet Gordon-Woodhouse was a British keyboard player. She specialised in the harpsichord and clavichord, and was influential in bringing both instruments back into fashion. She was the first person to record the harpsichord, and the first to broadcast harpsichord music.
Matthew King is a British composer, pianist, and educator. His works include opera, piano and chamber music, and choral and orchestral pieces. He has been described by Judith Weir, Master of the Queen’s Music, as “one of Britain's most adventurous composers, utterly skilled, imaginative, and resourceful."
Liza Lehmann was an English soprano and composer, known for her vocal compositions.
Gordon Paul Scruton was the Bishop of Western Massachusetts from 1996 till 2012.
Cevanne Horrocks-Hopayian is a British composer, singer, and harper. She is considered one of today's leading emerging composers.
Amanda Juliet Holden was a British pianist, librettist, translator, editor and academic teacher. She is known for translating opera librettos to more contemporary English for the English National Opera, and for writing new librettos, especially in collaboration with Brett Dean. She contributed to encyclopedias such as the New Penguin Opera Guide.
This is a summary of 1956 in music in the United Kingdom, including the official charts from that year.
Der Wald(The Forest) is an opera in one act by Ethel Smyth to a German libretto by Henry Brewster and Smyth, written between 1899 and 1901. It was Smyth's second opera and it was first performed on 2 April 1902 at the Königliches Opernhaus in Berlin.
This is a summary of 1948 in music in the United Kingdom.
Die heilige Ente: ein Spiel mit Göttern und Menschen is an opera with a prelude and three acts by the composer Hans Gál, to a libretto by Karl Michael Leventzow and Leo Feld. Written in 1920–21, it was premiered in Düsseldorf on 29 April 1923 under the baton of Georg Szell.
José Melchor Gomis y Colomer was a Spanish Romantic composer.
A Dinner Engagement is a one-act comic opera by Lennox Berkeley, to a libretto by Paul Dehn.
