Gilbert and Sullivan created fourteen
comic operas, including H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance, and The Mikado, many of which are still frequently performed today. However, events around their 1889 collaboration, The Gondoliers, led to an argument and a
lawsuit dividing the two. In 1891, after many failed attempts at reconciliation by the pair and their producer,
Richard D'Oyly Carte, Gilbert and Sullivan's music publisher, Tom Chappell, stepped in to mediate between two of his most profitable artists, and within two weeks he had succeeded. This cartoon in The Entr'acte expresses the magazine's pleasure at the reuniting of D'Oyly Carte (left), Gilbert (centre), and Sullivan (right).
An engraving by D. H. Friston of
Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera Trial by Jury, shortly after its première. A satire of courtroom antics, which invoked "almost boisterous hilarity" in its original audience, Trial by Jury remains a favourite throughout the English-speaking world, and is performed regularly to this day.
The Palais Garnier, also known as the Opéra de Paris or Opéra Garnier, but more commonly as the Paris Opéra, is a 2,200-seat
opera house on the
Place de l'Opéra in Paris, France. A grand landmark designed by
Charles Garnier in the
Neo-Baroque style, it is regarded as one of the architectural masterpieces of its time.
Poster: Otis Lithograph Co; Restoration:
Adam Cuerden
A poster for a 1908 American production of Aida, an
opera by
Giuseppe Verdi that premiered on December 24, 1871, to great acclaim at the
Khedivial Opera House in
Cairo, Egypt. However, Verdi was most dissatisfied that the audience consisted of invited dignitaries and critics, but no members of the general public. He therefore considered the European premiere, held at
La Scala,
Milan, to be its real premiere.
The final scene of Rossini's opera Le comte Ory at its premiere in 1828. The opera contains some of Rossini's most colorful orchestral writing and recounts a farcical tale of Count Ory and his men who attempt to seduce the women of Formoutiers while their husbands are away in the
Crusades.
Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld and his wife, Malwine Schnorr von Carolsfeld, in the original production of
Wagner's Tristan und Isolde in 1865. It was at Wagner's own request that the couple were cast in the title roles. Six weeks, and three performances later, Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld died in Dresden, only days after his 29th birthday. After his death, his widow could not bring herself to continue with her career and retired from the stage.
Valencia's
Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències (City of Arts and Sciences) at night. The building to the left is the city's opera house and cultural centre, the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía. Designed by
Santiago Calatrava, the Palau de les Arts was officially opened in October 2005 and staged its first opera, Beethoven's Fidelio, in October 2006. The opera house suffered a setback in December of that year when the main stage platform collapsed with the complete set of
Jonathan Miller's production of Don Giovanni.
Credit: Metropolitan Job Print, 222 West 26th Street, New York
A poster for the original production of
John Philip Sousa's operetta El Capitan (1896), starring
DeWolf Hopper. Don Enrico Medigua, the
viceroy of
Spain-occupied
Peru, fears
assassination by
rebels. After he secretly has the rebel leader El Capitan killed, he disguises himself as El Capitan. Estrelda, the former viceroy's daughter, impressed by tales of El Capitan's daring, falls in love with the disguised Medigua, who is already married. Meanwhile, Medigua's wife and daughter search for him, and the rebels capture the Lord Chamberlain, mistaking him for the viceroy. Medigua leads the hapless rebels against the Spaniards, taking them in circles until they are too tired to fight. The Spaniards win, the mistaken identities are revealed, the love stories are untangled, and the story ends happily.
The wedding of Don Cæsar and Maritana, in the original 1845 production of
William Vincent Wallace's Maritana. Don Cæsar, facing execution, agrees to marry a mysterious woman (Maritana) in order to have what he sees as a more fitting death. However, the person who arranged this, Don José, has intercepted Don Cæsar's pardon, in order to use him as part of a scheme to change the unwitting Maritana from a mere peasant into the widow of a nobleman: the King has shown an interest in her, and he hopes that if faced with her at court every day, he will get enough evidence to convince the queen that her husband is unfaithful, and can thus convince the queen into an affair. However, a peasant boy, Lazarillo, that Don Cæsar had helped removes all the bullets from the firing squad's guns, and the plot begins to unravel, eventually resulting in a happy ending for Don Cæsar and Maritana, and the death of Don José.
Credit: Auguste Tilly for L'Illustration, 5 December 1885
The climactic event in the first half of
Jules Massenet's Le Cid: Rodrigue's father has obliged his son to defend his honour, but Rodrigue only afterwards learns that the person he has to duel is his beloved Chimène's father, the Comte de Gormas. He is honour-bound to go through with it, and wins the duel, but Chimène now both loves and hates him, and this internal conflict powers the drama of the rest of the opera. From L'Illustration's coverage of the opera's première.
The climax of act 2 in
Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera Princess Ida as illustrated by
William Russell Flint. The opera tells the story of Princess Ida who founds a women's university and teaches that women are superior to men and should rule in their stead. The prince to whom she had been married in infancy sneaks into the university, together with two friends, with the aim of collecting his bride. They disguise themselves as women students, but are discovered, precipitating a war between the sexes. Ida sings...
Italian tenor Enrico Caruso was an opera singer of international renown, and one of the key pioneers of recorded music. His "
Vesti la giubba" (from
Ruggiero Leoncavallo's Pagliacci) was, in its various versions, the first recording to sell a million copies.
The facade of the Concertgebouw concert hall in
Amsterdam. It opened on 11 April 1888, with an inaugural concert in which an orchestra of 120 musicians and a chorus of 500 singers performed works by
Wagner,
Handel,
Bach, and
Beethoven. The hall now hosts 800 performances every year, including concert performances of opera. Its resident orchestra, the
Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, also serves as one of the orchestras for
The Netherlands Opera.
The Austrian city of
Salzburg, the birthplace of
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and the home of the annual Salzburg Festival. In 2006, the festival celebrated the 250th anniversary of Mozart's birth by staging
all 22 of his operatic works (including two unfinished operas). All the productions were filmed and released to the general public in November 2006.
Neuschwanstein Castle, commissioned by
Ludwig II of Bavaria as a retreat and as an homage to
Richard Wagner. The young king was so moved by Wagner's opera Lohengrin, based on the legend of the
Swan Knight, that he named his castle "New Swan Stone," or "Neuschwanstein". It was King Ludwig's patronage that later gave Wagner the means to build a theatre for, compose and stage his epic cycle, The Ring of the Nibelung.
The
Castel Sant'Angelo in
Rome, a
papal fortress and prison until 1901. It serves as the setting for act 3 of
Puccini's opera Tosca. After murdering Rome's chief of police, the evil Baron Scarpia, Floria Tosca goes to the Castel Sant'Angelo, where her lover, Mario Cavaradossi, is to be executed. She has been led to believe that it will be a mock execution and is horrified to see him die in a hail of real bullets. As Scarpia's henchmen arrive to arrest her, she throws herself from the castle's ramparts. Famously dismissed by the musicologist
Joseph Kerman as a "shabby little shocker", Tosca has become one of the most enduring works in the operatic repertoire.
Ilya Repin's 1876 painting, Sadko in the Underwater Kingdom. The Russian legend of
Sadko, the minstrel who charmed the Sea King and his daughter and eventually returned to
Novgorod a wealthy man, was the subject of
Rimsky-Korsakov's 1896 opera Sadko.
The Sydney Opera House at night, as viewed from the
Sydney Harbour Bridge. It is one of the world's most distinctive 20th century buildings, and one of the most famous
performing arts centres in the world. Contrary to its name, the building houses several separate venues rather than a single opera theatre, with the two main venues, the Opera Theatre and the Concert Hall, defined by the two larger shells. The Sydney Opera House is a major performing venue for
Opera Australia,
The Australian Ballet, the
Sydney Theatre Company and the
Sydney Symphony.
Soprano Mignon Nevada as
Ophelia in
Ambroise Thomas's opera, Hamlet. The daughter of American soprano
Emma Nevada, who was also her teacher, and the godchild of Ambroise Thomas, she was named after the title character in Thomas's opera Mignon. She appeared as Ophelia at the opening of the 1910 winter season at London's
Royal Opera House and went on to sing several leading roles there. During her career she also sang at the
Opéra de Paris, the
Opéra-Comique,
La Scala and the
Teatro São Carlos in Lisbon. After her retirement from the stage, she became a voice teacher.
Triple Portrait of Cardinal Richelieu (1585 – 1642) by Philippe de Champaigne. A great patron of the arts as well as a statesman, Richelieu built a private theatre in his palace which was to become an early home of the
Paris Opera. After his death, it was known as the Théâtre du Palais-Royal and saw the premieres of many operas by
Lully including Psyché and Alceste .
Credit: Émile Bertrand (1842–1912) Restoration by
Adam Cuerden
Émile Bertrand's poster of the 1899 world premiere of
Massenet's opera Cendrillon at the
Opéra-Comique in Paris. A re-telling of the
Cinderella fairy tale, the opera was an immediate success, with fifty performances in its first season, and is still performed today. At the premiere, the roles of Cinderella, the Fairy Godmother, and Prince Charming were all sung by
sopranos.
Poster for the world première of Massenet's opéra-comique Sapho. It was first performed on 27 November 1897 at the
Théâtre Lyrique in Paris with
Emma Calvé in the title role. The story, based on
Alphonse Daudet's novel of the same name, concerns the beautiful Sapho, an artist's model of a certain age and notorious life, who begins an ill-fated affair with a younger man.
Napoleon Bonaparte depicted in 1803 as the
First Consul of France. Six years later, he commissioned the opera Pimmalione to show off the talents of two of his favourite singers, his lover
Giuseppina Grassini and the famous castrato
Girolamo Crescentini. It was first given in a private performance at the
Tuileries Palace. Napoleon was delighted with the work and offered its composer,
Luigi Cherubini, a large reward and a commission for another piece. Napoleon himself appears as a character in several operas including Prokofiev's War and Peace and Giordano's Madame Sans-Gêne.
Portrait of the English
soprano, Nancy Storace, circa 1788. The role of Susanna in Mozart's opera The Marriage of Figaro was written for and first performed by her. Mozart also wrote the concert aria "
Ch'io mi scordi di te?" for her, often considered to be one of his greatest compositions in
that genre.
An early advertisement showing the Drawing Room Scene from Utopia, Limited, a
Savoy opera by
Gilbert and Sullivan. The opera premiered in 1893 and satirises
limited liability companies, and particularly the idea that a bankrupt company could leave creditors unpaid without any liability on the part of its owners.
An 1879 poster for
Franz von Suppé's operetta Fatinitza. The operetta's hero, Wladimir Samoiloff, is a young Russian Lieutenant who had an adventure in which he disguised himself as a woman whom he named Fatinitza and met with the hot-tempered elderly General Kantschukoff, who fell in love with "her". Complications ensue when Wladimir and Lydia, the General's niece, fall in love.
Portrait of Noël Coward by the English society-photographer and former actor,
Allan Warren. Coward's 1929 operetta Bitter Sweet was later made into a film starring
Jeanette MacDonald and
Nelson Eddy. The score was so heavily cut that Coward vowed he would never again allow one of plays to be filmed in Hollywood.
The Last Day of Pompeii, Karl Bryullov's 1833 painting depicting the destruction of
Pompeii following the
eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. The painting was inspired in part by
Giovanni Pacini's opera L'ultimo giorno di Pompei which premiered in Naples in 1825 with spectacular special effects. Pacini's young daughters, Amazilia and Giovannina, served as the models for the two children sheltering in the arms of a Pompeian woman. The woman was modelled on
Yuliya Samoylova who was the foster mother of Pacini's daughters and had been the lover of both Pacini and Bryullov.
The Fall of Phaeton painted by Rubens in 1604. The myth of
Phaethon, whose attempt to drive the sun god's chariot led to his death, was the basis of
Lully's 1683 opera Phaëton. Lully's opera was an indirect reference to the fate of
Nicolas Fouquet whose ambitions to imitate the
King Louis XIV (The Sun King) brought about his downfall.
The Theatro Municipal in
São Paulo, Brazil. It is regarded as one of the landmarks of the city, significant both for its architectural value as well as its historical importance. The first production to be staged there was Ambroise Thomas's opera Hamlet with
Titta Ruffo in the title role.
Corbet's portrait of the French tenor
Louis Guéymard depicts him in the title role of
Meyerbeer's opera Robert le diable. In this final scene of act 1, Robert gambles with dice, loses his entire estate, and sings the aria "L'or est une chimère" (Gold is but an illusion). After many further vicissitudes and dabbling in witchcraft, Robert finally marries his beloved Isabelle and his evil father is dragged down to hell.
Gallen-Kallela's 1899 painting Kullervo Cursing depicts a scene from the tormented life of
Kullervo, a character in the Finnish epic Kalevala and the protagonist of
Aulis Sallinen's opera Kullervo. Sallinen's opera was intended for the opening of a new national opera house in Helsinki, but construction delays meant that the work was premiered in Los Angeles as part of the celebrations of the 75th anniversary of Finnish independence. The Finnish baritone
Jorma Hynninen sang the title role in the 1992 premiere with
Matti Salminen as his father.
A self-portrait by
Salvator Rosa, an Italian Baroque painter and poet who was described as "unorthodox and extravagant" and a "perpetual rebel". His life and adventures, along with those of
Masaniello, a Neapolitan fisherman turned rebel leader, formed the basis for
Antônio Carlos Gomes's 1874 opera Salvator Rosa. Its librettist,
Antonio Ghislanzoni, had also written the libretto for Verdi's Aida.
Credit: Roberto Focosi, engraved by Francesco Corbetta, and restored by
Adam Cuerden
Frontispiece to the 1860 vocal score of
Verdi's opera, Un ballo in maschera. Major problems with the censors beset this opera. Originally entitled Gustavo III, it was a fictionalized account of the 1792 assassination of King
Gustav III of Sweden. The censors forbade the portrayal of a real monarch, let alone the assassination of the monarch on stage. Verdi had the setting moved to Germany with all the names changed and the opera retitled Una vendetta. The censors objected again. Verdi gave up, broke his contract with the
Teatro San Carlo, the commissioning opera house, and returned home. The San Carlo sued. Verdi counter-sued. Once the legal issues cleared, Verdi submitted it to the
Teatro Apollo. This time the setting was in Colonial America. It was finally performed in 1859 and proved a hit.
Title page of the libretto for
Verdi's I Lombardi alla prima crociata printed for the opera's premiere season at
La Scala in 1843. Verdi dedicated the score to
Maria Luigia, the Habsburg Duchess of Parma, who died a few weeks after the premiere. I Lombardi was part of a long tradition of operas set against the background of the medieval
Crusades which dates from the 17th century. In 1847 the opera was significantly revised for performances in Paris with the title Jérusalem and became Verdi's first
grand opera.
Credit: Engraved by Luigi Barinetti after Girolamo Magnani; restored by
Adam Cuerden
Title page of the vocal score for
Verdi's 1845 opera, Giovanna d'Arco. Based on the life of
Joan of Arc, the opera takes considerable liberties with history. Unlike the real Joan of Arc who was burnt at the stake, Verdi's heroine dies on the battlefield. The opera premiered at
La Scala, Milan, where it was rapturously received by the audience but dismissed by the critics. For a production in Rome three months later, the Papal censors demanded that all religious connotations be removed from the story. The opera was performed as Orietta di Lesbo and set on the
Isle of Lesbos with an Italian heroine leading the Lesbians into battle against the Turks.
Credit: Antoine Barbizet; restored by
Adam Cuerden
Cover of the entire vocal score to
Hector Berlioz's opera Les Troyens published by the Parisian music editors Choudens et Cie in 1863. In this score, Berlioz introduced a number of optional cuts which have often been adopted in subsequent productions. He complained bitterly of the cuts that he was more-or-less forced to allow at the 1863
Théâtre Lyrique première, and his letters and memoirs are filled with the indignation that it caused him to "mutilate" his score. In the early 20th century, the lack of accurate parts led musicologists
W. J. Turner and
Cecil Gray to plan a raid on the Choudens office, even approaching the Parisian
underworld for help.
Credit: Antoine Barbizet; restored by
Adam Cuerden
Cover of a first edition of the vocal score for La Prise de Troie (The Fall of Troy), the first two acts from Hector Berlioz's opera Les Troyens. Berlioz himself wrote the libretto based on Virgil's epic poem the Aeneid. The opera originally premiered with only its last three acts, under the title Les Troyens à Carthage (The Trojans at Carthage). The complete Les Troyens was Berlioz's most ambitious work, the summation of his entire artistic career, but he did not live to see it performed in its entirety.
Credit: Antoine Barbizet; restored by
Adam Cuerden
Cover of the 1863 vocal score for Les Troyens à Carthage (The Trojans at Carthage), the title given to last three acts from Hector Berlioz's opera Les Troyens. The opera originally premiered under this title. The first two acts were later performed under the title La prise de Troie (The Fall of Troy). The complete Les Troyens with a libretto by Berlioz himself based on Virgil's epic poem the Aeneid was his most ambitious work and the summation of his entire artistic career, but he did not live to see the opera performed in its entirety.
Credit: Leopoldo Ratti (1821-1874); restoration by
Adam Cuerden
Cover of an early vocal score for
Verdi's 1853 opera La traviata. The scene depicted is from the final act where the Parisian courtesan Violetta dies in the arms of her lover Alfredo while his father looks on. The opera's story, adapted from the 1852 play La dame aux Camélias]] by
Alexandre Dumas fils, was meant to set in mid-19th century France as a contemporary drama. However, the Italian censors insisted that such a scandalous story be set in the distant past. Hence, the 17th-century costumes worn in this illustration. It was not until the 1880s that the composer and librettist's original wishes for the opera's setting were carried out.
Cover to an 1867 vocal score of Jacques Offenbach's operetta Robinson Crusoé. Although loosely based on
Defoe's novel Robinson Crusoe, the work owes more to British
pantomime than to the book itself.
Célestine Galli-Marié who sang the role of Man Friday in the premiere production would later to achieve fame as the first
Carmen.
Title page of Rigoletto, an opera by
Giuseppe Verdi with a libretto by
Francesco Maria Piave based on
Victor Hugo's play Le roi s'amuse. Despite serious initial problems with the censors, the opera had a triumphant premiere at
La Fenice in Venice on 11 March 1851 and is considered by many to be the first of the operatic masterpieces of Verdi's middle-to-late career. Its tragic story revolves around the licentious Duke of Mantua, his hunch-backed
court jester Rigoletto, and Rigoletto's beautiful daughter Gilda. The opera's original title, La maledizione (The Curse), refers to the curse placed on both the Duke and Rigoletto by a courtier whose daughter had been seduced by the Duke with Rigoletto's encouragement. The curse comes to fruition when Gilda likewise falls in love with the Duke and eventually sacrifices her life to save him from the assassins hired by her father.
Front page of The Illustrated London News depicting the elopement scene from Haddon Hall, an 1892 opera by
Arthur Sullivan and
Sydney Grundy. The opera dramatises the legend of
Dorothy Vernon's elopement with John Manners in 1563. The legend came to prominence in the 19th century and was the subject of numerous plays and novels.
A scene depicting the ballet of Moorish dancers in act 3 of
Massenet's 1885 opera Le Cid. The story is based on the exploits of
El Cid, a Castilian nobleman and military leader in medieval Spain. After the premiere, the Paris Opéra continued to revive Le Cid until 1919 reaching over 150 performances at the theatre by that date. A new production was mounted there in the 2014–15 season with
Roberto Alagna in the title role.
Title page to an early vocal score of L'éclair (The Lightning Flash), an
opéra comique in 3 acts by
Fromental Halévy which was premièred by the Paris
Opéra-Comique on 16 December 1835. It recounts the amours of the Englishman George and the American Lyonel for two sisters, Henriette and the widow Mme. Darbel, who are rather indecisive about who they should pair up with at the start. This indecisiveness is complicated further by the temporary blindness suffered by Lyonel when he is struck by lightning during a thunderstorm. The opera was well received which placed Halévy in the unusual position of having two simultaneous successes on the Paris stage (the other being his
grand opera masterpiece, La Juive).
Credit: Uncertain attribution; restoration by
Adam Cuerden
Vocal score to the 1916 version of Ariadne auf Naxos (Ariadne on
Naxos) an opera by
Richard Strauss with a German libretto by
Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Bringing together slapstick comedy and consummately beautiful music, the opera's theme is the competition between high and low art for the public's attention. Music critic and author Matt Dobkin wrote that, while Ariadne auf Naxos is "not as well loved as Der Rosenkavalier or as important as Salome, it is nevertheless staged all the time, thanks in large part to sopranos' attraction to the vocal and dramatic grandeur of the title role and to the compelling spitfire Zerbinetta character."
Credit: Philippe Chaperon, restored by
Adam Cuerden
Philippe Chaperon's set design for act 4, scene 2 of
Verdi's opera Aida as first performed at the
Khedivial Opera House in Cairo on 24 December 1871. The costumes and accessories for the premiere were designed by
Auguste Mariette, who also oversaw the design and construction of the sets, which were made in Paris by the
Opéra's scene painters Auguste Rubé and Philippe Chaperon (acts 1 and 4) and Edouard Despléchin and Jean-Baptiste Lavastre (acts 2 and 3), and shipped to Cairo. Although Verdi did not attend the premiere in Cairo, he was most dissatisfied with the fact that the audience consisted of invited dignitaries, politicians and critics, but no members of the general public. He therefore considered the Italian (and European) premiere, held at
La Scala, Milan, on 8 February 1872, and a performance in which he was heavily involved at every stage, to be its real premiere.
Giuseppe Verdi conducting Aida at its first
Paris Opera performance in 1880. Aida quickly rose to popularity after its première in 1871 in Cairo.
Isma'il Pasha,
Khedive of
Egypt, commissioned Verdi to write an opera for performance to celebrate the opening of the
Khedivial Opera House, paying him 150,000 francs, but the premiere was delayed because of the
Siege of Paris (1870–71), during the
Franco-Prussian War, when the scenery and costumes were stuck in the French capital, and Verdi's Rigoletto was performed instead for the opening ceremony. Aida eventually premièred in Cairo in late 1871.
Metastasio's libretto La Nitteti (1756) was a major source of the plot.
Credit: Giuseppe Palanti; restored by
Adam Cuerden
Title page to a 1909 vocal score of
Luigi Cherubini's opera Médée. Based on
Euripides' tragedy Medea and
Pierre Corneille's play Médée, the opera premièred on 13 March 1797, but was not a huge success. Cherubini created a shortened, Italian translation, but the never rose to popularity until around the mid-19th century. Originally with spoken dialogue between the arias, a German version of 1855 changed this dialogue into sung recitatives written by
Franz Lachner. It was not until these recitatives were translated into Italian and added to Cherubini's Italian version in 1909 that the opera reached what would be its standard form throughout the 20th century, and one that remains a popular version to this day. The vocal score seen here is either the first or a very early publication of this hybrid version.
Poster for
Verdi's La forza del destino. Based on a Spanish drama, Don Álvaro o la fuerza del sino (1835), by
Ángel de Saavedra, 3rd Duke of Rivas, La forza del destino tells the story of two star-crossed lovers who fate turns against at every turn. The man attempting to throw a gun away as a sign of good faith causes it to shoot the woman's father. The woman's brother, having joined the army under an assumed name, gets given papers to destroy by the man, also under an assumed name – and thus learns his identity and goes on a mad quest to destroy him. And, in the end, when forced to duel the brother and winning, an attempt to save the brother's life results in the man finding the woman... and when they go to help him, the brother stabs the woman in the heart.
Credit: Émile Desmaisons after François-Gabriel Lépaulle; restored by
Adam Cuerden
Frontispiece to the first edition vocal score of
Gaetano Donizetti's La favorite which premiered in 1840. The opera's story unfolds against the background of the
Moorish invasions of Spain and power struggles between church and state. At its centre is a love triangle involving the King of Castile, Alfonso XI, his mistress ('the
favourite') Léonor, and her lover Fernand. The frontispiece shows
Rosine Stoltz and
Gilbert Duprez, the original Léonor and Fernand.
The Israeli Opera performance of Aida in 2011. The Israeli Opera is the principal opera company of Israel. It was founded in 1985 after lack of Israeli government funding led to the demise of the
Israel National Opera. The company also founded the Israeli Opera Festival which has performed large-scale outdoor productions, originally at
Caesarea, and from 2010 in
Masada, as with this production of Aida.
Credit: Antoine Barbizet; restored by
Adam Cuerden
Title page of the first edition vocal score of
Hector Berlioz's 1862 opera Béatrice et Bénédict, based on Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing. It is the first notable version of Shakespeare's play in operatic form, and was followed by works by among others Árpád Doppler, Paul Puget and
Reynaldo Hahn. Berlioz biographer
David Cairns wrote: "Listening to the score's exuberant gaiety, only momentarily touched by sadness, one would never guess that its composer was in pain when he wrote it and impatient for death."
Portrait of Ambroise Thomas (1811–1896). He was a French composer known for his operas Mignon (1866) and Hamlet (1868) and as Director of the
Conservatoire de Paris from 1871 till his death.
Emmanuel Chabrier said of him, "There is good music, there is bad music, and then there is Ambroise Thomas."
Depiction in The Illustrated London News of the final scene of Attila, an opera in a prologue and three acts by
Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian
libretto by
Temistocle Solera, based on the 1809 play Attila, König der Hunnen (Attila, King of the Huns) by
Zacharias Werner, in which Odabella, a woman who fought the Huns, and thus so impressed Attila that he wished to marry her, shows her true, hidden hatred for the man who killed her father by stabbing Attila in the heart.
Ezio's act 2 aria of heroic resolution "È gettata la mia sorte" ("My lot is cast, I am prepared for any warfare") is a fine example of a characteristic Verdian genre, and it achieved fame in its own time with audiences in the context of the adoption of a liberal constitution by Ferdinand II. Other contemporary comment praised the work as suitable for the "political education of the people", while, in contrast, others criticised the opera as "Teutonic" in nature.
Credit: Giuseppe Barberis and Carlo Cornaglia; restored by
Adam Cuerden
Poster for
Verdi's opera Don Carlo from the première of the 1884 four-act Italian version at La Scala. Based on the dramatic play Don Carlos, Infant von Spanien by
Friedrich Schiller, the opera's story is based on conflicts in the life of
Carlos, Prince of Asturias (1545–1568), after his betrothed
Elisabeth of Valois was married instead to his father
Philip II of Spain as part of the peace treaty ending the
Italian War of 1551–1559 between the Houses of
Habsburg and
Valois. It was commissioned and produced by the Théâtre Impérial de l'Opéra (
Paris Opera) and given its premiere at the
Salle Le Peletier as Don Carlos on 11 March 1867. Many productions after that removed the first act, however, and Verdi eventually produced an official Italian-language abridgement, which removed the ballet and the first act, at Milan in 1884 (from whence this image derives). There also exists a full five-act Italian version from 1886.
Set design for act 1 in an 1895 Paris production of
Verdi's opera Otello. With the composer's reluctance to write anything new after the success of Aida in 1871 and his retreat into retirement, it took his Milan publisher
Giulio Ricordi the next ten years, first to persuade him to write anything, then to encourage the revision of Verdi's 1857 Simon Boccanegra by introducing
Arrigo Boito as librettist, and finally to begin the arduous process of persuading and cajoling Verdi to see Boito's completed libretto for Otello in July/August 1881. However, the process of writing the first drafts of the libretto and the years of their revision, with Verdi all along not promising anything, dragged on, and it was not until 1884, five years after the first drafts of the libretto, that composition began, with most of the work finishing in late 1885. When it finally premièred in Milan on 5 February 1887, it proved to be a resounding success, and further stagings of Otello soon followed at leading theatres throughout Europe and America.
Photograph of Albert Reiss at the stage entrance of the Metropolitan Opera circa 1910 . Reiss was a
Germanoperatictenor who had a prolific career in Europe and the United States during the first third of the twentieth century. He spent much of his career performing at the
Metropolitan Opera where he sang in more than 1,000 performances, including several
premieres, between 1901-1919. Excelling in the
tenor buffo repertoire, Reiss was particularly associated with the roles of David in
Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and Mime in Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, two roles he sang in numerous houses internationally.
Credit: Alexandre Lacauchie, restored by
Adam Cuerden
Gilbert Duprez as Gaston in Giuseppe Verdi's Jérusalem. A French
tenor, singing teacher and minor composer who famously pioneered the delivery of the operatic
high C from the chest, and who created roles for such major composers as
Gaetano Donizetti,
Hector Berlioz, and, as seen here,
Giuseppe Verdi. Jérusalem was Verdi's first French grand opera, rearranging and heavily reworking one of his previous Italian operas, I Lombardi alla prima crociata, making the opera more coherent, tighter, and through-composed.
Portrsit of Christoph Willibald Gluck, a composer of
Italian and
French opera in the early
classical period. Born in the
Upper Palatinate (now part of Germany) and raised in
Bohemia, he gained prominence at the
Habsburg court at Vienna, where he brought about the practical reform of opera's dramaturgical practices that many intellectuals had been campaigning for over the years. With a series of radical new works in the 1760s, among them Orfeo ed Euridice and Alceste, he broke the stranglehold that
Metastasianopera seria had enjoyed for much of the century.
The strong influence of French opera in these works encouraged Gluck to move to Paris, which he did in November 1773. Fusing the traditions of Italian opera and the French national genre into a new synthesis, Gluck wrote eight operas for the Parisian stages. One of the last of these, Iphigénie en Tauride, was a great success and is generally acknowledged to be his finest work. Though he was extremely popular and widely credited with bringing about a revolution in French opera, Gluck's mastery of the Parisian operatic scene was never absolute, and after the poor reception of his Echo et Narcisse he left Paris in disgust and returned to Vienna to live out the remainder of his life.
Credit: Pierre-Auguste Lamy (?), restored by
Adam Cuerden
Illustration to
Jacques Offenbach's last composition Les contes d'Hoffmann, showing the prologue. Based on the stories of
E. T. A. Hoffmann, it features three doomed romances, with his friend Nicklausse – actually Hoffmann's muse in disguise – following him around, attempting to protect him, even as tragedies befall all around him. However, in the end he explains the three women he described are actually elements of his fourth love, whom he then rejects, and the muse reveals herself and embraces him.
Credit: Pierre-Auguste Lamy (?), restored by
Adam Cuerden
Illustration for
Jacques Offenbach's last composition Les contes d'Hoffmann, showing the Olympia act. In this act, Hoffmann falls in love with an
automaton, Olympia, created by the scientist Spalanzani. To warn Hoffmann, Nicklausse, who knows the truth about Olympia, sings a story of a mechanical doll who looked like a human, but Hoffmann ignores him. Coppélius, Olympia's co-creator and this act's incarnation of
Nemesis, sells Hoffmann magic glasses that make Olympia appear as a real woman.
Olympia sings one of the opera's most famous
arias, "Les oiseaux dans la charmille" (The birds in the arbor, nicknamed "The Doll Song"), during which she periodically runs down and needs to be wound up before she can continue. Hoffmann is tricked into believing that his affections are returned, to the bemusement of Nicklausse, who subtly tries to warn his friend. While dancing with Olympia, Hoffmann falls on the ground and his glasses break. At the same time, Coppélius appears and tears Olympia apart to retaliate against Spalanzani, who tricked him out of his fees. With the crowd laughing at him, Hoffmann realizes that he was in love with an automaton.
Credit: Pierre-Auguste Lamy (?), restored by
Adam Cuerden
Illustration to
Jacques Offenbach's last composition Les contes d'Hoffmann, showing the Giulietta act, set in
Venice. In this act, Hoffmann falls in love with the
courtesan Giulietta and thinks she returns his affections. Giulietta is not in love with Hoffmann but only seducing him under the orders of Captain Dapertutto, who has promised to give her a diamond if she steals Hoffmann's reflection from a mirror. The jealous
Schlemil, a previous victim of Giulietta and Dapertutto (he gave Giulietta his shadow), challenges the poet to a duel, but is killed. Nicklausse wants to take Hoffmann away from Venice and goes looking for horses. Meanwhile, Hoffmann meets Giulietta and cannot resist her, giving her his reflection, only to be abandoned by the courtesan, to Dapertutto's great pleasure. Hoffmann tells Dapertutto that his friend Nicklausse will come and save him. Dapertutto prepares a poison to get rid of Nicklausse, but Giulietta drinks it by mistake and drops dead in the poet's arms.
Pierre Gaveaux, a
French operatic
tenor and
composer, notable for creating the role of Jason in Cherubini's Médée and for composing Leonore ou l'amour conjugal, the first operatic version of the story that later found fame as Fidelio.
English composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor whose opera Thelma, long thought to have been lost, was given its posthumous premiere in 2012, the centenary year of his death
The French composer Jules Massenet (1842 – 1912), best known for his operas, of which he wrote more than thirty. By the time of his death, Massenet was regarded by many critics as old-fashioned and unadventurous although his two best-known operas, Manon and Werther, remained popular in France and abroad. After a few decades of neglect, his works began to be favourably reassessed during the mid-20th century, and many of them have since been staged and recorded.
The American composer William Grant Still (1895 – 1978) whose 150 works included five symphonies and eight operas. His opera Troubled Island, set in Haiti and based on the life of
Jean Jacques Dessalines, was premiered by
New York City Opera in 1949 and became the first opera by an African American composer to be performed by a major company.
The French composer Charles Gounod (1818 – 1893) whose twelve operas include Faust and Roméo et Juliette. His fourth opera, Faust, premiered in 1859 and was his first commercial success. It became one of the most frequently staged operas of all time. By 1975 it had been given no fewer than 2,000 performances at the
Paris Opéra alone.
Jacques Offenbach (1819 – 1880), a German-born French composer, cellist and impresario of the
romantic period. He is remembered for his nearly 100
operettas and his opera The Tales of Hoffmann. His Orpheus in the Underworld, first performed in 1858, is said to be the first full-length classical operetta. Offenbach was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly
Johann Strauss, Jr. and
Arthur Sullivan. His best-known works were continually revived during the 20th century, and many of his operettas as well as The Tales of Hoffmann continue to be staged in the 21st.
Credit: Philippe Chaperon (1823–1906) Restoration by
Adam Cuerden
Philippe Chaperon's set design for the final act of
Verdi's Rigoletto in an 1885 production at the
Palais Garnier. The scene depicts the house of the assassin Sparafucile who has been paid by Rigoletto to kill the licentious Duke of Mantua who is seen sleeping in the upstairs room. In the end, it is not the Duke whom Sparafucile murders, but Rigoletto's daughter Gilda who disguised herself as a man.
Haydée is an opéra comique by the French composer
Daniel Auber, first performed by the
Théâtre Royal de l'Opéra-Comique at the Salle Favart in Paris on 28 December 1847. The
libretto, based on a short story by
Prosper Mérimée, was written by
Eugène Scribe. The plot is set during the 16th-century wars between the
Republic of Venice and the
Ottoman Empire, and involves a naval commander with a guilty secret, his ward, his slave girl, a handsome captain and a villainous spy. After much confusion and intrigue, everything ends happily for the main protagonists. This illustration shows
Philippe Chaperon's set design for the second act of a 1891 Opéra-Comique performance of Haydée at the
Théâtre de la Ville in Paris.
Credit: Jean-Baptiste Singry, restored by
Adam Cuerden
The French soprano Joséphine Fodor who made her debut in 1810 in Fioravanti's, Le cantatrici villane at the Impérial Opera of Saint Petersburg singing in both Russian and French. Rossini wrote a special aria for her when she sang Rosina in The Barber of Seville at the
Théâtre-Italien in Paris in 1820.
Credit: Paul Maurou (1848–1931), restored by
Adam Cuerden
Poster for the original production of
Edmond Audran's opera Gillette de Narbonne. The opera recounts the tale of the beautiful but penniless Gillette and her reluctant bridegroom, the philandering Roger. At one point in the intrigue, she disguises herself as her own twin brother.
Costume designs for the première of
Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots featuring
Julie Dorus-Gras as Marguerite, Adolphe Nourrit as Raoul, and
Cornélie Falcon as Valentine. Three years after the premiere, Nouritt, beset with physical and mental illness, committed suicide in Naples.
A depiction of Gioachino Rossini's meeting with
King George IV at the
Brighton Pavilion in 1823. George IV made much of Rossini when he arrived in England with his wife
Isabella Colbran. He and Colbran had signed contracts for an opera season at the
King's Theatre in London. However, Colbran's vocal shortcomings were a serious liability, and she reluctantly retired from performing. Public opinion was not improved by Rossini's failure to provide a new opera for the theatre, as promised.
A depiction of the storm scene from the final act of Gioachino Rossini's opera The Barber of Seville in which Count Almaviva and Figaro climb through the window to foil the plans of Rosina's guardian Bartolo.
Set design for act 3, scene 2 of
Louise Bertin's 1838 opera La Esmeralda. Based on The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, and with a libretto by
Victor Hugo himself, it would be the last of Bertin's operas after it was hounded off stage by those that opposed Hugo's politics, and those that claimed that it was produced solely due to Bertin's family connections, in the end, causing a near-riot in the theatre on the last of its six performances, as the anti-Bertin factions succeeded in shutting it down. It would not be produced again until 2002.
Fervaal is an opera with a prologue and three acts by the French composer
Vincent d'Indy. Fervaal is the son of a Celtic king and is destined to be the last advocate of the old gods. His mission is to save his homeland from invasion and pillage, but in doing so he must renounce love. This illustration, by the Swiss painter
Carlos Schwabe, relates to the 10 May 1898 premiere of the opera at the
Théâtre de l'Opéra-Comique in Paris. Here, Fervaal is depicted ascending a mountain while carrying the body of his beloved Guilhen at the end of the opera, as the pagan gods and their worshippers fade out of existence with the dawn of Christianity.
Credit: Unknown, sometimes attributed to Rauzzini. Restoration by
Adam Cuerden
A scene from
Mascagni's opera Cavalleria rusticana in which Santuzza begs Turiddu not to join his lover Lola inside the village church. His angry refusal leads Santuzza betray him to Lola's husband who ultimately kills Turiddu in a knife duel. Cavalleria rusticana, which premiered in 1890, was Mascagni's first and most popular opera. There have been over 100 full-length recordings of the work since it was first recorded in Germany in 1909.
Credit: Unknown, sometimes attributed to Rauzzini; restored by
Adam Cuerden
A scene from
Mascagni's opera Cavalleria rusticana in which Alfio challenges Turiddu to a duel after learning that he has seduced his wife. Following Sicilian custom, the two men embrace, and Turiddu, in a token of acceptance, bites Alfio's ear, drawing blood which signifies a fight to the death. Cavalleria rusticana, which premiered in 1890, was Mascagni's first and most popular opera. There have been over 100 full-length recordings of the work since it was first recorded in Germany in 1909.
Design for a poster for the Paris première of
Massenet's opera Thérèse, showing
Lucy Arbell in the title role. Set in the
French Revolution, the opera concerns Thérèse, who is torn between duty and affection, between her husband André Thorel, a
Girondist, and her lover, the nobleman Armand de Clerval. Although she had decided to follow her lover into exile, when her husband is being led to execution she shouts "Vive le roi!" (Long live the king!) amid the frenzied crowd and is dragged to her husband's side and marched to the
guillotine.
Credit: Henri C. R. Presseq, published by Imp. P. Dupont. Restored by
Adam Cuerden.
Poster for the 1900 première of
Camille Erlanger's opera Le Juif polonais starring
Victor Maurel as the innkeeper Mathias. A melodramatic climax occurs in act 2 when the sound of sleigh bells at his daughter's wedding reminds Mathias of the Jew he had murdered 15 years ago.
Credit: Reutlinger photographers. Restoration by
Adam Cuerden.
Poster for
Massenet's opera La Navarraise, showing
Emma Calvé in the role of Anita. La Navarraise was Massenet's answer to Italian
verismo and was very popular in its day, often being performed on a double bill with Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana.
Poster for the premiere of
Meyerbeer's opera Le pardon de Ploërmel (later renamed Dinorah), presented by the
Opéra-Comique in Paris on 4 April 1859. Set near the rural town of
Ploërmel, the opera is based on two
Breton tales by
Émile Souvestre.
Credit: Prudent-Louis Leray. Restoration by
Adam Cuerden
Poster from the 1875 première of
Bizet's opera Carmen. Set in southern Spain, the opera tells the story of the downfall of Don José, a naïve soldier who is seduced by the wiles of the fiery
gypsy Carmen. José abandons his childhood sweetheart and deserts from his military duties, yet loses Carmen's love to the glamorous
toreador, Escamillo, after which José kills her in a jealous rage. The depictions of proletarian life, immorality, and lawlessness, and the tragic death of the main character on stage, broke new ground in French opera and were highly controversial. Carmen has since become one of the most popular and frequently performed operas in the classical
canon; the "
Habanera" from act 1 and the "
Toreador Song" from act 2 are among the best known of all operatic arias. Bizet died suddenly after the 33rd performance, unaware that the work would achieve international acclaim within the following ten years.
Nadar's photograph of Célestine Galli-Marié (1837–1905), a French
mezzo-soprano most famous for creating the title role in Bizet's opera Carmen. She is wearing Carmen's costume in Nadar's photograph. It was said that at the 33rd performance of Carmen on 2 June 1875, Galli-Marié had a premonition of Bizet's death while singing the cards scene in Act III, and fainted when she left the stage. The composer in fact died that night, and the next performance was cancelled due to her indisposition.
Carte-de-visite of Lucy Arbell, a French
mezzo-soprano who was particularly associated with the late operas of
Jules Massenet. She was described as having a strong, vibrant 'mezzo-contralto' and a vivacious personality. Arbell made her stage debut as
Dalila at the Paris Opéra on 23 October 1903. She had a close relationship with the late operas of Massenet, creating roles in Ariane (Perséphone), Thérèse (title role), Bacchus (Queen Amahelli), Don Quichotte (Dulcinée) in Monte-Carlo and Paris, Roma (Postumia), and Panurge (Colombe).
Credit: Unknown artist. Restoration by
Adam Cuerden
The stage setting for Part 1 of
Maurice Ravel's opera, L'enfant et les sortilèges. The libretto by
Colette tells the story of a rude child whose destructive behaviour is ultimately transformed when the objects and animals he has harmed come to life and reprimand him.
Marie-Thérèse Gauley sang the role of the child at both the 1925 world premiere in Monte-Carlo and the opera's first performance at the
Opéra-Comique in 1926.
Credit: Unknown artist. Restoration by
Adam Cuerden
The stage setting for part 2 of
Maurice Ravel's opera, L'enfant et les sortilèges. The libretto by
Colette tells the story of a rude child whose destructive behaviour is ultimately transformed when the objects and animals he has harmed come to life and reprimand him. In this final scene, the child wanders outside to a garden filled with singing animals and plants. After being offered the opportunity to write a musical work, Colette wrote the text of L'enfant et les sortilèges in eight days. Several composers were proposed to her but she was only excited by the prospect of Ravel.
Poster for the world premiere of
Massenet's opera Le Mage on 16 March 1891 at the
Paris Opéra. The libretto by
Jean Richepin recounts the fraught love story of Zarastra, a Persian general and
magus, and Anahita, a captive
Touranian queen. The French tenor
Edmond Vergnet sang the title role at the premiere.
Credit: Luigi Verardi after Dominico Ferri, restored by
Adam Cuerden
The Hall of Arms (act 1, scene 3) in the original 1835 production of
Vincenzo Bellini's opera I puritani. The libretto by Count
Carlo Pepoli, recounts the love story of Arturo, a
Royalist, and Elvira, the daughter of a
Puritan. Their roles were sung at the premiere by
Giovanni Battista Rubini and
Giulia Grisi. Bellini took three months between the completion of the score and start of rehearsals to polish the work, which proved an immense and enduring success. I puritani was Bellini's last opera. He died nine months after its premiere at the age of 33.
Lucy Arbell as Queen Amahelli in
Massenet's opera Bacchus. The story is based on the mythology surrounding
Bacchus and
Ariadne (Ariane). The Gods, among them demi-god Bacchus, appear in human form in ancient
India to attempt to persuade the people away from the pervading Buddhist influence. Ariane has followed them, convinced that Bacchus is in fact
Theseus, her unrequited love. In the end, Ariane sacrifices herself to save humanity and in doing so, Bacchus becomes a God.
Julie d'Aubigny, (1670/1673–1707), better known as Mademoiselle Maupin or La Maupin, was a 17th-century
opera singer. Little is known for certain about her life; her tumultuous career and flamboyant lifestyle were the subject of gossip, rumor, and colourful stories in her own time, and inspired numerous fictional and semi-fictional portrayals afterwards.
Théophile Gautier loosely based the title character, Madeleine de Maupin, of his novel Mademoiselle de Maupin (1835) on her. The part written for her in Tancrède, Clorinde, is considered the first example of writing for the
contralto voice in French opera.
The world premiere of La bohème was in
Turin on 1 February 1896. Since then, La bohème has become part of the standard Italian opera repertory and is one of the most frequently performed operas worldwide.
Credit: Célestin Deshayes, restored by
Adam Cuerden
Set design for act 2 of
Giacomo Meyerbeer's opera Les Huguenots for its première performance in 1836. Les Huguenots tells the story of the love between a
Huguenot (Protestant) man and a Catholic woman, while religious hatred sweeps across France, culminating in the historical
St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, during which the woman's father, finding the Huguenots, realises only after killing them that his daughter was with them, and has now died at his hand.
Poster for Gismonda, a 1919 French-language
grand opera by
Henry Février to a libretto by
Henri Caïn and
Louis Payen. Based on the play Gismonda by
Victorien Sardou, it tells the story of the widow of the Duke of Athens, Gismonda, who has to deal with conspiracies to kill her child and the man she grows to love. The planned premiere in Paris was halted by the outbreak of World War I but the composer was given leave from the French army to premiere the opera with
Mary Garden in the title role at the
Chicago Opera on 14 January 1919, before being performed in Paris at the
Opéra-Comique on 15 October of the same year.
Poster for Ariane, an
opera in five acts by
Jules Massenet to a French
libretto by
Catulle Mendès after the tale of
Ariadne from
Greek mythology. First performed at the
Palais Garnier in Paris on 31 October 1906, with
Lucienne Bréval in the title role, the story is based on the mythology surrounding
Theseus and the sisters
Ariane and
Phèdre. Both sisters are in love with Theseus, yet he chooses Phèdre over Ariane. When Phèdre is killed by the toppled statue of
Adonis, Ariane travels to the underworld to beg
Perséphone for her sister's resurrection. Softened by Ariane's offering of roses, Perséphone complies and Phèdre returns to earth. Theseus is then made to choose among the sisters again and once more chooses Phèdre, abandoning Ariane on the banks of
Naxos. Distraught, she is lured into the sea by the voices of the beckoning
sirens.
Credit: George Grantham Bain Collection; Restored by
Adam Cuerden
Dame Ethel Mary Smyth,
DBE 22 April 1858 – 8 May 1944) 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.
She first studied privately with
Alexander Ewing when she was seventeen. He introduced her to the music of
Wagner and
Berlioz. After a major battle with her father about her plans to devote her life to music, Smyth was allowed to advance her musical education at the
Leipzig Conservatory, where she studied composition with
Carl Reinecke. She left after a year, however, disillusioned with the low standard of teaching, and continued her music studies privately with
Heinrich von Herzogenberg. While she was at the Leipzig Conservatory, she met
Dvořák,
Grieg and
Tchaikovsky. Through Herzogenberg, she also met
Clara Schumann and
Brahms.
Smyth's extensive body of work includes the Concerto for Violin, Horn and Orchestra and the
Mass in D. Her opera The Wreckers is considered by some critics to be the "most important English opera composed during the period between Purcell and Britten." Another of her operas, Der Wald, mounted in 1903, was for more than a century the only opera by a woman composer ever produced at New York's
Metropolitan Opera until
Kaija Saariaho'sL'Amour de loin in December 2016.
Set design for act 3, scene 1 of
Louise Bertin's 1838 opera La Esmeralda. Based on The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, and with a libretto by
Victor Hugo himself, it would be the last of Bertin's operas after it was hounded off stage by those that opposed Hugo's politics, and those that claimed that it was produced solely due to Bertin's family connections, in the end, causing a near-riot in the theatre on the last of its six performances, as the anti-Bertin factions succeeded in shutting it down. It wouldn't be produced again until 2002.
La reine de Chypre, first performed at the
Salle Le Peletier of the
Paris Opéra on 22 December 1841, was regarded in its time as one of the composer's greatest achievements.
Joseph Mazilier was the choreographer, and the ballet starred
Adéle Dumilâtre, Natalie Fitzjames, and
Pauline Leroux with
Marius Petipa and Auguste Mabile. The publisher
Maurice Schlesinger was reputed to have paid the enormous sum of 30,000 francs for the rights to the opera.
The opera prompted an extended eulogy from
Richard Wagner, who was present at the first night, in the Dresdner Abend-Zeitung, for which he was a correspondent. However, since the 19th century it has been rarely revived.
The fly duet from the 1887 revival of
Jacques Offenbach's Orphée aux enfers (Orpheus in the Underworld) with
Jeanne Granier as
Eurydice and Eugène Vauthier as
Jupiter. In this raucous retelling of Greek myth,
Orpheus and Eurydice hate each other (but the embodiment of Public Opinion will ruin
Orpheus' reputation if he does not try and rescue her),
Pluto is in love with Eurydice, but life in
Hades is too boring for her, and Jupiter takes all the gods down below to party – and to try to seduce Eurydice. In the form of a fly.
Set design for act 3 of the première of the French revised version of
Gluck's opera Alceste, which had a largely rewritten third act. Based on the play Alcestis by
Euripides, it tells the tale of a wife willing to sacrifice herself to save her husband, and her husband's unwillingness to let her die on his behalf. Hercules, wearing the
Nemean lion's skin can be seen in the foreground.
Robert le diable was one of the defining works of the genre of
grand opera, and helped rocket its composer,
Giacomo Meyerbeer to fame. "
The Ballet of the Nuns" from the third act, pictured here in an illustration of the original production, was additionally greatly influential on the development of ballet.
Giacomo Puccini (22 December 1858 – 29 November 1924) photographed in 1924. Called "the greatest composer of Italian opera after
Verdi", his works include standards of the operatic repertoire such as La bohème (1896), Tosca (1900), Madama Butterfly (1904), and Turandot (1924, premiered 1926).
Puccini's early work was rooted in traditional late-19th-century romantic Italian opera, but he later successfully developed his work in the realistic verismo style, of which he became one of the leading exponents.
He died of smoking-related lung cancer shortly before finishing his last opera, Turandot, which was finished based on his sketches.
Rosa Raisa (30 May 1893 – 28 September 1963) was a Polish-born and Italian-trained Russian-Jewish dramatic operatic
soprano who became a naturalized American. She possessed a voice of remarkable power and was the creator of the title role of Puccini's last opera, Turandot, at
La Scala, Milan.
Design for act 3 of
Richard Wagner's opera Tannhäuser (1845) by Max and Otthold Brückner for the
Bayreuth Festival. Tannhäuser is based on two German legends:
Tannhäuser, the mythologized medieval German
Minnesänger and poet, and the tale of the
WartburgSong Contest. The story centers on the struggle between sacred and profane love, and redemption through love, a theme running through much of Wagner's mature work. The opera remains a staple of major opera house repertoire in the 21st century.
Act 1 costume for Wally as seen in the original production of
Alfredo Catalani's opera La Wally (1892).
The opera is best known for its
aria "Ebben? Ne andrò lontana" ("Well, then? I'll go far away") from act 1, in which Wally decides to leave her home forever).
It also features a memorable death scene in which the heroine throws herself into the
avalanche that has just killed her lover after he called out to her. It is seldom performed, partly because of the difficulty of staging this scene, but Wally's principal aria is still sung frequently.
Act 3 set design for Edgar, an
operaticdramma lirico in three acts (originally four acts) by
Giacomo Puccini to an Italian
libretto by
Ferdinando Fontana, freely based on the play in verse La Coupe et les lèvres by
Alfred de Musset.
The first performance was given at the
Teatro alla Scala in Milan on 21 April 1889. The opera was not a success. Puccini repeatedly revised it, before eventually giving up in frustration, declaring the work irredeemable.
Set design for act 1 of Madama Butterfly, an
opera in three acts (originally two) by
Giacomo Puccini, with an Italian
libretto by
Luigi Illica and
Giuseppe Giacosa, based on the short story "
Madame Butterfly" (1898) by
John Luther Long, which in turn was based on stories told to Long by his sister Jennie Correll and on the semi-autobiographical 1887 French novel Madame Chrysanthème by
Pierre Loti. Long's version was dramatized by
David Belasco as the one-act play Madame Butterfly: A Tragedy of Japan, which, after premiering in New York in 1900, moved to London, where Puccini saw it in the summer of that year.
The original version of the opera, in two acts, had its premiere on 17 February 1904 at
La Scala in Milan. It was poorly received, despite having such notable singers as soprano
Rosina Storchio, tenor
Giovanni Zenatello and baritone
Giuseppe De Luca in lead roles. This was due in part to a late completion by Puccini, which gave inadequate time for rehearsals. Puccini revised the opera, splitting the second act in two, with the Humming Chorus as a bridge to what became act 3, and making other changes. Success ensued, starting with the first performance on 28 May 1904 in
Brescia.
Set design for act 1 of A basso porto ( "At the lower harbour"), a three-act opera by composer
Niccola Spinelli. The opera uses an Italian language
libretto by Eugene Checchi which is based on Goffredo Cognetti's 1889 play O voto. The opera premiered to critical success at the
Cologne Opera on April 18, 1894, sung in a German translation by
Ludwig Hartmann and Otto Hess. The work is widely considered Spinelli's greatest composition, and the prelude to the opera's third act has been programmed by numerous orchestras for performances in concert.
Giuseppe Verdi depicted with his friends and family at the Villa Verdi in 1900. Standing:
Teresa Stolz, Umberto Campanari (one of Verdi's estate lawyers),
Giulio Ricordi, and
Leopoldo Metlicovitz (a poster artist for Ricordi). Seated: Maria Carrara Verdi (Verdi's adopted daughter), Barberina Strepponi (Verdi's sister-in-law), Giuseppe Verdi, and Giuditta Ricordi (Giulio's wife).
Herbert wrote his sixth operetta for prima donna
Alice Nielsen and her newly formed Alice Nielsen Opera Company. Nielsen, having earned widespread praise in The Serenade, requested and received not one but three roles in The Fortune Teller. The story is set in Hungary and involves Irma, an heiress from Budapest, who is studying for the ballet. Irma is in love with a young
Hussar captain but is being forced to marry the silly Count Barezowski. When a gypsy fortune teller, Musette, arrives, she is mistaken for Irma, a case of mistaken identity that fosters many complications.
Songs include the "Gypsy Love Song" ("Slumber on, my little gypsy sweetheart") and "Romany Life".
Credit: Robert Jacob Hamerton, restored by
Adam Cuerden
The Contrabandista, or The Law of the Ladrones, is a two-act
comic opera by
Arthur Sullivan and
F. C. Burnand. It premiered at
St. George's Hall, London, on 18 December 1867 under the management of
Thomas German Reed, for a run of 72 performances. There were brief revivals in
Manchester in 1874 and America in 1880. In 1894, it was revised into a new opera, The Chieftain, with a completely different second act.
The piece was the first of Sullivan's full-length operas that was produced. Although it was not a great success, it exhibits many of the qualities and techniques that Sullivan would employ in composing his twenty further comic operas, including the famous series of fourteen
Gilbert and Sullivan operas produced between 1871 and 1896.
William Grant Still (1895–1978) was an American
composer of nearly 200 works, including five
symphonies and nine
operas. Often referred to as the "Dean of Afro-American Composers", Still was the first American composer to have an opera produced by the
New York City Opera. His first symphony, entitled Afro-American Symphony, was until 1950 the most widely performed symphony composed by an American. Born in Mississippi, he grew up in
Little Rock, Arkansas, attended
Wilberforce University and
Oberlin Conservatory of Music, and was a student of
George Whitefield Chadwick and later
Edgard Varèse. Still was the first African American to conduct a major American symphony
orchestra and the first to have an opera performed on national television. Due to his close association and collaboration with prominent African-American literary and cultural figures, he is considered to be part of the
Harlem Renaissance movement.
This picture of Still was taken by
Carl Van Vechten in 1949; the photograph is in the collection of the
Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.
Pénélope is an
opera in three acts by
Gabriel Fauré and
René Fauchois based on the end of
Homer's Odyssey. The premiere at Monte Carlo was not a great success, partly because the director of the theatre,
Raoul Gunsbourg, was more concerned with promoting his own opera, Vénise. Fauré regarded the Monte Carlo production as "a rehearsal for Paris" where it was rapturously received at the
Théâtre des Champs-Elysées two months later on 10 May 1913. However, less than three weeks after the premiere of the opera the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées was the venue for the first performance of The Rite of Spring. The scandal at and after the ballet's premiere preoccupied the French press, and Fauré's opera left the discourse, followed by financial collapse and near bankruptcy of the theatre six months after the première, forcing the sets and costumes to be sold.
The plot concerns a
love triangle. Prince Golaud finds Mélisande, a mysterious young woman, lost in a forest. He marries her and brings her back to the castle of his grandfather, King Arkel of Allemonde. Here Mélisande becomes increasingly attached to Golaud's younger half-brother Pelléas, arousing Golaud's jealousy. Golaud goes to excessive lengths to find out the truth about Pelléas and Mélisande's relationship, even forcing his own child, Yniold, to spy on the couple. Pelléas decides to leave the castle but arranges to meet Mélisande one last time and the two finally confess their love for one another. Golaud, who has been eavesdropping, rushes out and kills Pelléas. Mélisande dies shortly after, having given birth to a daughter, with Golaud still begging her to tell him “the truth.”
Despite its initial controversy, Pelléas et Mélisande has remained regularly staged and recorded throughout the 20th- and into the 21st-century.
Marian Anderson (February 27, 1897 – April 8, 1993)' was an American
contralto who performed a wide range of music, from
opera to
spirituals with renowned orchestras in major concert and recital venues throughout the United States and Europe between 1925 and 1965.
Anderson was an important figure in the struggle for African-American artists to overcome racial prejudice in the United States during the mid-twentieth century. In 1939 during the era of
racial segregation, the
Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) refused to allow Anderson to sing to an integrated audience in
Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. The incident placed Anderson in the spotlight of the international community on a level unusual for a classical musician. With the aid of First Lady
Eleanor Roosevelt and her husband President
Franklin D. Roosevelt, Anderson performed a critically acclaimed open-air concert on
Easter Sunday, April 9, 1939, on the
Lincoln Memorial steps in the capital before an integrated crowd of more than 75,000 people and a radio audience in the millions.
On January 7, 1955, Anderson became the first African-American to sing with the
Metropolitan Opera in New York. At the invitation of director
Rudolf Bing, she sang the part of Ulrica in
Giuseppe Verdi's Un ballo in maschera. Anderson later said about the evening, "The curtain rose on the second scene and I was there on stage, mixing the witch's brew. I trembled, and when the audience applauded and applauded before I could sing a note, I felt myself tightening into a knot." Although she never appeared with the company again, Anderson was named a permanent member of the Metropolitan Opera company.
Credit: Metropolitan Printing Co., restored by
Adam Cuerden
Poster advertising performances by
Matilda Sissieretta Joyner Jones (January 5, 1868 or 1869 – June 24, 1933), an African-American
soprano. She sometimes was called "The Black Patti" in reference to
Italianopera singer
Adelina Patti. Jones' repertoire included
grand opera,
light opera, and
popular music. Trained at the Providence Academy of Music and the
New England Conservatory of Music, Jones made her
New York debut in 1888 at
Steinway Hall, and four years later she performed at the
White House for
PresidentBenjamin Harrison. She eventually sang for four consecutive presidents and the
British royal family, and met with international success. Besides the United States and the West Indies, Jones toured in
South America,
Australia,
India, southern
Africa, and
Europe.
The highest-paid African-American performer of her time, later in her career she founded the Black Patti Troubadours (later renamed the Black Patti Musical Comedy Company), a musical and acrobatic act made up of 40
jugglers,
comedians,
dancers and a chorus of 40 trained singers. She remained the star of the Famous Troubadours for around two decades while they established their popularity in the principal cities of the United States and Canada, Jones retired from performing in 1915. In 2013, she was inducted into the Rhode Island Music Hall of Fame.
Credit: Alexandre Quinet, restored by
Adam Cuerden
Marguerite-Marie-Sophie Polliart or Poliart, generally known by her stage name Priola, (1849–1876) was a French
operatic soprano. She made her début on 6 April 1869 in Paris as The Messenger of Peace in the first French production of Wagner's Rienzi at the
Théâtre Lyrique. She enjoyed a successful career at the
Opéra-Comique until 1874, performing mainly
coloratura soprano roles. There she created several roles, including Princess Elsbeth in Offenbach's Fantasio, Maritana in Massenet's Don César de Bazan, and Javotte in Le Roi l'a dit by Delibes. In 1876, on joining the
Opéra de Marseille, she appeared as Philine in Mignon by Ambroise Thomas although she was ill. She was booed throughout the performance, and died three weeks later.
Lilly Walleni, the stage name of Sanna Klara Vallentin (1875–1920), was a Swedish
mezzo-soprano. Thanks to her powerful voice and her dramatic temperament, she is remembered in particular for the Wagner roles she performed in Germany's principal opera houses as well as in
Stockholm. From 1911 to 1916, she was engaged by the
Court Opera in Hannover where she was honoured with two Lippe awards.
The first night was not altogether a success, as critics and the audience felt that Ruddygore (as it was originally spelled) did not measure up to its predecessor, The Mikado. After some changes, including respelling the title, it achieved a run of 288 performances. The Illustrated London News praised the work of both Gilbert and, especially, Sullivan: "Sir Arthur Sullivan has eminently succeeded alike in the expression of refined sentiment and comic humour. In the former respect, the charm of graceful melody prevails; while, in the latter, the music of the most grotesque situations is redolent of fun."
There were further changes and cuts, including a new overture, when
Rupert D'Oyly Carte revived Ruddigore for the first time since its original run for a 1920 tour that turned into a London run in 1921 (pictured here). This caused the opera to enter the repertory, which it has never left since.
Louise-Rosalie Lefebvre (18 June 1755 – 22 September 1821), also known as Madame Dugazon, was a French
operaticmezzo-soprano, actress and
dancer.
Born in Berlin as the daughter of a dancing master at the court of
Frederick II of Prussia, she returned to Paris with her parents in 1765. She made her stage debut at the age of twelve as a dancer, but it was as an actress "with songs" that she made her debut at the Comédie Italienne in 1774 in
Grétry's Sylvain. She was at once admitted pensionnaire and in 1775 sociétaire. She became a star of the Comédie Italienne (which became the
Opéra-Comique), where she created over 60 roles, including the title rôle of
Nicolas Dalayrac's Nina, seen here, in which Nina is in love with Germeuil but her father, Count Lindoro, favours another suitor. After Germeuil and his rival fight a duel, Nina believes that Germeuil has been killed and goes mad, forgetting aspects of the traumatic incident, and sings the opera's most famous song, "Quand le bien-aimé reviendra" ("When my sweetheart returns to me"). She only regains her reason when Germeuil reappears unharmed and her father finally allows him to marry her.
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