Composers and performers

Edita Gruberová

Jovan Stosic October 3, 2019

Edita Gruberová (born 23 December 1946), is a Slovak coloratura soprano. She is noted for her great tonal clarity, agility, dramatic power, endurance, and ability to sing high notes with great power and sustained vocal consistency, which made her an ideal Queen of the Night in her early years. In recent years, she has enjoyed huge success with a number of the most important bel canto roles.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edita_Gruberov%C3%A1

Yannick Nézet-Séguin

Jovan Stosic August 9, 2019

Yannick Nézet-Séguin, CC (French pronunciation: [ja.nik ne.zɛ se.ɡɛ̃]; born Yannick Séguin; 6 March 1975) is a Canadian conductor and pianist. He is currently music director of the Orchestre Métropolitain (Montréal), the Metropolitan Opera, and the Philadelphia Orchestra. He was also principal conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra from 2008 to 2018.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yannick_N%C3%A9zet-S%C3%A9guin

Erik Satie – Wikipedia

Jovan Stosic August 8, 2019

Éric Alfred Leslie Satie (French: [eʁik sati];[1] 17 May 1866 – 1 July 1925), who signed his name Erik Satie after 1884, was a French composer and pianist. Satie was an influential artist in the late 19th- and early 20th-century Parisian avant-garde. His work was a precursor to later artistic movements such as minimalism, repetitive music, and the Theatre of the Absurd.[2]

An eccentric, Satie was introduced as a “gymnopedist” in 1887, shortly before writing his most famous compositions, the Gymnopédies. Later, he also referred to himself as a “phonometrician” (meaning “someone who measures sounds”), preferring this designation to that of “musician”,[3] after having been called “a clumsy but subtle technician” in a book on contemporary French composers published in 1911.[4]

In addition to his body of music, Satie was “a thinker with a gift of eloquence”[5] who left a remarkable set of writings, having contributed work for a range of publications, from the dadaist 391[6] to the American culture chronicle Vanity Fair.[7] Although in later life he prided himself on publishing his work under his own name, in the late 19th century he appears to have used pseudonyms such as Virginie Lebeau[8] and François de Paule[9] in some of his published writings.

Source: Erik Satie – Wikipedia

Renata Scotto

Jovan Stosic July 31, 2019

Renata Scotto (born 24 February 1934) is an Italian soprano and opera director.

Recognized for her sense of style, her musicality, and as a remarkable singer-actress, Scotto is considered one of the preeminent singers of her generation, specializing in the bel canto repertoire with excursions into the verismo and Verdi repertoires.

Since retiring from the stage as a singer in 2002, she has turned successfully to directing opera as well as teaching in Italy and America, along with academic posts at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome and the Juilliard School in New York. She lives in Armonk, New York with her husband Lorenzo Anselmi.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renata_Scotto

Christian Gottlob Neefe

Jovan Stosic July 29, 2019

Christian Gottlob Neefe (German: [ˈneːfə]; 5 February 1748 – 28 January 1798) was a German opera composer and conductor.

Neefe was born in Chemnitz, Saxony. He received a musical education and started to compose at the age of 12. He studied law at Leipzig University, but subsequently returned to music to become a pupil of the composer Johann Adam Hiller under whose guidance he wrote his first comic operas.

In 1776 Neefe joined the Seyler theatrical company of Abel Seyler (then) in Dresden, and inherited the position of musical director from his mentor, Hiller. He later became court organist in Bonn and was the principal piano teacher of Ludwig van Beethoven. He helped Beethoven produce some of his first works. His best known work was a Singspiel called Adelheit von Veltheim (1780). In Bonn, Neefe became prefect of the local chapter of the Illuminati, the Minervalkirche Stagira [de]. He died in Dessau.

Source: Christian Gottlob Neefe – Wikipedia

Giacomo Meyerbeer

Jovan Stosic July 25, 2019

Giacomo Meyerbeer[n 1] (born Jacob Liebmann Beer; 5 September 1791 – 2 May 1864) was a German opera composer of Jewish birth who has been described as perhaps the most successful stage composer of the nineteenth century.[1] With his 1831 opera Robert le diable and its successors, he gave the genre of grand opera ‘decisive character’.[2] Meyerbeer’s grand opera style was achieved by his merging of German orchestra style with Italian vocal tradition. These were employed in the context of sensational and melodramatic libretti created by Eugène Scribe and were enhanced by the up-to-date theatre technology of the Paris Opéra. They set a standard which helped to maintain Paris as the opera capital of the nineteenth century.
Born to a very wealthy Berlin family, Meyerbeer began his musical career as a pianist but soon decided to devote himself to opera, spending several years in Italy studying and composing. His 1824 opera Il crociato in Egitto was the first to bring him Europe-wide reputation, but it was Robert le diable (1831) which raised his status to great celebrity. His public career, lasting from then until his death, during which he remained a dominating figure in the world of opera, was summarized by his contemporary Hector Berlioz, who claimed that he ‘has not only the luck to be talented, but the talent to be lucky.'[3] He was at his peak with his operas Les Huguenots (1836) and Le prophète (1849); his last opera (L’Africaine) was performed posthumously. His operas made him the most frequently performed composer at the world’s leading opera houses in the nineteenth century.
At the same time as his successes in Paris, Meyerbeer, as a Prussian Court Kapellmeister (Director of Music) from 1832, and from 1843 as Prussian General Music Director, was also influential in opera in Berlin and throughout Germany. He was an early supporter of Richard Wagner, enabling the first production of the latter’s opera Rienzi. He was commissioned to write the patriotic opera Ein Feldlager in Schlesien to celebrate the reopening of the Berlin Royal Opera House in 1844 and wrote music for certain Prussian state occasions.
Apart from around 50 songs, Meyerbeer wrote little except for the stage. The critical assaults of Wagner and his supporters, especially after Meyerbeer’s death, led to a decline in the popularity of his works; his operas were suppressed by the Nazi regime in Germany, and were neglected by opera houses through most of the twentieth century. In the 21st century, however, the composer’s major French grand operas have begun to reappear in the repertory of numerous European opera houses.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giacomo_Meyerbeer