Tag Archives: Opera

Classical Music Month~ September 17

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Mona Lisa (opera) by Max von Schillings

“Mona Lisa was composed in 1914, apparently in a matter of weeks, following an earlier meeting in 1911 with the poet Beatrice Dovsky, whose play on the life of Lady Godiva Schillings had intended to set for the opera stage. When she handed him her poem Mona Lisa he was immediately inspired by the romantic, albeit entirely fictional, story of the woman with the most famously enigmatic smile in history, her husband and her lover – a classic operatic ménage a trois.”
~ https://www.momh.org.uk/exhibitions-detail.php?cat_id=5&prod_id=319

Portrait of Lisa Gherardini, wife of Francesco del Giocondo
by Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci

c.1503-19 / Oil on poplar panel / 30″x21″ / The Louvre Museum, Paris, France

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January 19, 1853~ Giuseppe Verdi’s opera “Il Trovatore” premieres

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Costume sketch by Alfred Edel

for the role of Manrico, performed at La Scala Theater in Milan, 1883

1883 / Tempera and watercolor on cardboard / 12 4/5”x8” / Casa Ricordi Publishing Co. Archives

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Previous January 19 posts:

Winter~ January 19

January 19 (music)~

Artist Birthday Quiz for 1/19~

December 24, 1951~ Gian-Carlo Menotti’s “Amahl and the Night Visitors” premieres

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The Adoration of the Magi by Hieronymus Bosch

c.1475 / Oil and gold on oak / 28”x22 1/4” / The Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC

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“One November afternoon as I was walking rather gloomily through the rooms of the Metropolitan Museum, I chanced to stop in front of the Adoration of the Kings by Hieronymus Bosch, and as I was looking at it, suddenly I heard again, coming from the distant blue hills, the weird song of the Three Kings. I then realized they had come back to me and had brought me a gift.”
https://www.cpr.org/2013/12/19/the-500-year-old-painting-that-inspired-amahl-and-the-night-visitors/

How Amahl and the Night Visitors Established ‘Television Opera’~
http://www.playbill.com/article/how-amahl-and-the-night-visitors-established-television-opera
The original 1951 telecast~ https://youtu.be/xlg81twKXbY

Previous December 24 posts:

December 24: CHRISTMAS EVE

December 24~ Animals in Art

December 24~

October 10, 1935~ Porgy and Bess opens at the Alvin Theatre in NYC

Posted in African American Visual Artists, On This Date, Women Artists by

Porgy and Bess, Embracing (detail)  by Kara Walker

2013 / Lithograph on Somerset paper / 15”x18” / Various, incl. Gibbes Museum of Art, Charleston, SC / Published by The Arion Press, San Francisco, as part of an additional suite of 4 lithographs to accompany the book “Porgy & Bess, The Libretto” by DuBose Heyward and Ira Gershwin with 16 lithographs by Kara Walker

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Previous October 10 posts:

Autumn~ October 10

Artist Birthday Quiz for 10/10~

February 20, 1816~ Rossini’s “Barber of Seville” premieres

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Portrait of Gioacchino Rossini by Francesco Hayez, after a photograph by Étienne Carjat

1870 / Oil on canvas / 42 9/10”x34 1/5” / Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, Italy

The premiere of Gioachino Rossini’s opera buffa The Barber of Seville on 20 February 1816 at the Teatro Argentina in Rome was a verifiable disaster! …
http://www.interlude.hk/front/rossini-barber-sevillepremiered-today-1816/

Previous February 20 posts:

February 20~ African-American visual artists

February 20, 1872: The Met opens its doors to the public

Nancy Wilson: Born February 20, 1937

Artist Birthday Quiz for 2/20~