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Opera: Opera Stars & Voices

Reference

Perspectives

Maria Callas

Maria Callas was almost as famous for her personal life her jet-setting, her staggering weight loss, her tigress-like temperament as she was for her singing. Of Greek parentage, the New York-born, internationally famous Callas was the most influential soprano of the 20th century, reviving a school of singing bel canto that had been forgotten for 75 years. Unlike most of her generation of sopranos, she was a superb actress both vocally and physically: her voice encompassed many colors and she embodied each character she portrayed. After seeing or hearing her in a role, it was said, it was difficult to imagine another singer attempting it, so fierce was her individual stamp. Her status went beyond cult; her triumphs and failures appeared on the front page of newspapers all over the world. This profusely illustrated musical biography covers Callas's life and career. A final third of the book analyzes the tracks on the two CDs, describing what made Callas unique, what made Callas Callas. Listen for yourselves to La Divina ("the divine one"), as the Italians dubbed her, and be amazed.

Gilded Stage

From Opera¹s beginnings in the courts of northern Italy to its spread across Europe and the world, The Gilded Stage is an operatic Grand Tour of opera houses, monarchs, artists, and audiences.

The Inner Voice

Blessed with one of the most beautiful voices of her generation, soprano Renée Fleming is one of the most celebrated talents on today's music scene. In The Inner Voice, this great singer shares what she has learned from her experience as an inspiration for those contemplating a career in the arts. From struggling to get a career under way to dealing with her own personal doubts, Fleming is wonderfully candid and articulate about her art--especially the little discussed heart-throat-mind connection--and childhood influences, formal education, mentors, preparation, and mental and physical discipline. Here is a look at the real life of an artist today, a life confronted by the loneliness of touring, the need for resilience, the desire for creativity in the face of overwhelming commercial pressures, coping with business issues, and, most important, balancing personal and professional fulfillment. The Inner Voiceadds its distinctive voice to works such as Eudora Welty's One Writer's Beginnings and Uta Hagen's Respect for Acting, teaching by example and the hard-won human lessons all artists must learn. It will be eagerly awaited not only by her legion of fans, but will also be required reading for anyone contemplating a career in the arts.

Musical Women in England, 1870-1914

Musical Women in England, 1870-1914 delineates the roles women played in the flourishing music world of late-Victorian and early twentieth-century England and shows how contemporary challenges to restrictive gender roles inspired them to move into new areas of musical expression, both in composition and performance. Their ambiguous social reception notwithstanding, the extraordinary ability and striking self-confidence of these women inspired fiction-writers to feature musician heroines and motivated unprecedented numbers ofgirls and women to pursue advanced musical study.

Black Diva of the Thirties

While undergoing routine surgery to remove a benign tumor, Ruby Elzy died. She was only thirty-five. Had she lived, she would have been one of the first black artists to appear in grand opera. Although now in the shadows, she was a shining star in her day. She entertained Eleanor Roosevelt in the White House. She was Paul Robeson's leading lady in the movie version of The Emperor Jones. She co-starred in Birth of the Blues opposite Bing Crosby and Mary Martin. She sang at Harlem's Apollo Theater and in the Hollywood Bowl. Her remarkable soprano voice was known to millions over the radio. She was personally chosen by George Gershwin to create one of the leading roles in his masterpiece, that of Serena in the original production of Porgy and Bess. Her signature song was the vocally demanding ""My Man's Gone Now."" From obscurity she had risen to great heights. Ruby Pearl Elzy (1908-1943) was born in abject poverty in Pontotoc, Mississippi. Her father abandoned the family when she was five, leaving her mother, a strong, devout woman, to raise four small children. Ruby first sang publicly at the age of four and even in childhood dreamed of a career on the stage. Good fortune struck when a visiting professor, overwhelmed upon hearing her beautiful voice at Rust College in Mississippi, arranged for her to study music at Ohio State University. Later, on a Rosenwald Fellowship, she enrolled at the Juilliard School in New York City. After more than 800 performances in Porgy and Bess, she set her sights on a huge goal, to sing in grand opera. She was at the peak of her form. While she was preparing for her debut in the title role of Verdi's Aida, tragedy struck. During her brief career, Ruby Elzy was in the top tier of American sopranos and a precursor who paved a way for Leontyne Price, Jessye Norman, Kathleen Battle, and other black divas of the operatic stage. This biography acknowledges her exceptional talent, recognizes her contribution to American music, and tells her tragic yet inspiring story.

The Castrato and His Wife

The opera singer Giusto Ferdinando Tenducci was one of the most famous celebrities of the eighteenth century. In collaboration with the English composer Thomas Arne, he popularized Italian opera, translating it for English audiences and making it accessible with his own compositions which heperformed in London's pleasure gardens. Mozart and J. C. Bach both composed for him. He was a rock star of his day, with a massive female following. He was also a castrato.Women flocked to his concerts and found him irresistible. His singing pupil, Dorothea Maunsell, a teenage girl from a genteel Irish family, eloped with him. There was a huge scandal; her father persecuted them mercilessly. Tenducci's wife joined him at his concerts, achieving a status as a performershe could never have dreamed of as a respectable girl. She also wrote a sensational account of their love affair, an early example of a teenage novel. Embroiled in debt, the Tenduccis fled to Italy, and the marriage collapsed when she fell in love with another man. There followed a highly publicizedand unique marriage annulment case in the London courts. Everything hinged on the status of the marriage; whether the husband was capable of consummation, and what exactly had happened to him as a small boy in a remote Italian hill village decades before.Ranging from the salons of princes and the grand opera houses of Europe to the remote hill towns of Tuscany, the unconventional love story of the castrato and his wife affords a fascinating insight into the world of opera and the history of sex and marriage in Georgian Britain, while also exploringquestions about the meaning of marriage that continue to resonate in our own time.

Lina Cavalieri: the Life of Opera's Greatest Beauty, 1874-1944

A prominent star in both pre-Revolutionary Russia and New York, Lina Cavalieri, described as "the most beautiful woman in the world," was one of the most frequently photographed personalities of her time. The cabaret performer, courtesan, and international star is documented in this, her first English-language biography. Researched from Russian archive sources, the book details her career from her early experiences in cafe-chantant and variety theatre in Paris, London, and St. Petersburg, through a highly successful operatic career in which she sang in many of the world's leading opera houses with such celebrities as Caruso and Ruffo. In 1914, Cavalieri became the first great opera singer to appear in silent movies, making her debut in Manon Lescaut and continuing with a series of successful films. Her life was ended by an Allied air raid in World War II. The book includes excerpts from period reviews, programmes, posters, and many previously unseen photographs. Appendices include a bibliography, filmography, discography, and chronology of stage performances (dates, venues, work, cast, conductor).

John Charles Thomas

Buoyant, irrepressible and hot-tempered, John Charles Thomas captivated audiences worldwide with his incredible voice. The son of a farmer, his earliest singing experience was at church revivals. He attended the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore and in 1910, as Thomas began his second year of study, he was taken under the tutelage of Adelin Fermin, one of the few voice coaches in America capable of truly training Thomas' voice. This good fortune virtually made Thomas' career. By 1915, he was working on Broadway and less than a decade later he embarked on a trans - Atlantic life with bases in Paris, Brussels, London, New York and Palm Beach. The height of his popularity came from 1934 to 1946. Thomas was always a favorite with his audiences even though critics condemned him for his practice of including popular music in his concerts. By the mid - 1940s, this tendency had earned Thomas a reputation as a popular singer rather than a serious artist. The changing face of the music industry during the early 1950s and the ensuing sharp decline in audiences for concert singers such as Thomas resulted in slow, painful end to his career as he gradually faded into the background of the musical world. This biography details the life and career of John Charles Thomas, from operatic performances to concerts and radio broadcasts. Beginning with his school days at the Peabody, it follows Thomas to his work on Broadway, where he appeared in productions such as ""Alone at Last"" and ""Step This Way"". Additional topics include Thomas' movement to an intercontinental operatic career, his unprecedented success at the Metropolitan Opera, and the lifelong encouragement given him by his voice coach. Thomas' constant challenge of critics through his inclusion of popular music is also discussed. Appendices provide a discography of initial releases, a list of operatic appearances in Brussels and the United States and detailed information on his Westinghouse radio series.

The Castrato

The Castrato is a nuanced exploration of why innumerable boys were castrated for singing between the mid-sixteenth and late-nineteenth centuries. It shows that the entire foundation of Western classical singing, culminating in bel canto, was birthed from an unlikely and historically unique set of desires, public and private, aesthetic, economic, and political. In Italy, castration for singing was understood through the lens of Catholic blood sacrifice as expressed in idioms of offering and renunciation and, paradoxically, in satire, verbal abuse, and even the symbolism of the castrato's comic cousin Pulcinella. Sacrifice in turn was inseparable from the system of patriarchy--involving teachers, patrons, colleagues, and relatives--whereby castrated males were produced not as nonmen, as often thought nowadays, but as idealized males. Yet what captivated audiences and composers--from Cavalli and Pergolesi to Handel, Mozart, and Rossini--were the extraordinary capacities of castrato voices, a phenomenon ultimately unsettled by Enlightenment morality. Although the castrati failed to survive, their musicality and vocality have persisted long past their literal demise.

The Countess Von Rudolstadt

The first translation of The Countess von Rudolstadt in more than a century brings to contemporary readers one of George Sand's most ambitious and engaging novels, hailed by many scholars of French literature as her masterpiece. Consuelo, or the Countess von Rudolstadt, born the penniless daughter of a Spanish gypsy, is transformed into an opera star by the great maestro Porpora. Her peregrinations throughout Europe (especially Vienna, Berlin, and the Bohemian forest), become a quest undertaken on a number of levels: as a singer, as a woman, and as an unwilling subject of alienation and oppression. Sand's heroine moves through a mid-eighteenth-century Europe where absolute rulers mingle with Enlightenment philosophers and gender-bending members of secret societies plot moral and political revolution. As the old order breaks down, she undergoes a series of grueling initiations into radically redefined notions of marriage and social organization. In a novel by equal measures philosophical and lurid, nothing is what it seems. Written some fifty years after the French Revolution, the book taps into many of the political and religious currents that contributed to that social upheaval--and aims to channel their potential for future change. Fed by Sand's rich imagination and bold aspirations for social reform, The Countess von Rudolstadt is a sinuous novel of initiation, continuing the coming of age tale of the titular heroine of Sand's earlier Consuelo and drawing on such diverse models as Ann Radcliffe's Gothic tales and Goethe's Wilhelm Meister.

Introduction: Maria Callas

Websites

Opera Stars at Teatro Farnese

Pavarotti: Career Beginnings

Famous Figures

An introduction to opera's voice types (The Royal Opera)

Introduction: Plácido Domingo