Baritone
A baritone is a type of classical male singing voice whose vocal range lies between the bass and the tenor voice types. From the Greek βαρύτονος, meaning heavy sounding, music for this voice is written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C in choral music, from the second A below middle C to the A above middle C in operatic music, but can be extended at either end; the baritone voice type is divided into the baryton-Martin baritone, lyric baritone, Verdi baritone, dramatic baritone, baryton-noble baritone, the bass-baritone. The first use of the term "baritone" emerged as baritonans, late in the 15th century in French sacred polyphonic music. At this early stage it was used as the lowest of the voices, but in 17th-century Italy the term was all-encompassing and used to describe the average male choral voice. Baritones took the range as it is known today at the beginning of the 18th century, but they were still lumped in with their bass colleagues until well into the 19th century.
Indeed, many operatic works of the 18th century have roles marked as bass that in reality are low baritone roles. Examples of this are to be found, for instance, in the operas and oratorios of George Frideric Handel; the greatest and most enduring parts for baritones in 18th-century operatic music were composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. They include Count Almaviva in The Marriage of Figaro, Guglielmo in Così fan tutte, Papageno in The Magic Flute and the lead in Don Giovanni. In theatrical documents, cast lists, journalistic dispatches that from the beginning of the 19th century till the mid 1820s, the terms primo basso, basse chantante, basse-taille were used for men who would be called baritones; these included the likes of Filippo Galli, Giovanni Inchindi, Henri-Bernard Dabadie. The basse-taille and the proper bass were confused because their roles were sometimes sung by singers of either actual voice part; the bel canto style of vocalism which arose in Italy in the early 19th century supplanted the castrato-dominated opera seria of the previous century.
It led to the baritone being viewed as a separate voice category from the bass. Traditionally, basses in operas had been cast as authority figures such as high priest. More than not, baritones found themselves portraying villains; the principal composers of bel canto opera are considered to be: Gioachino Rossini. The prolific operas of these composers, plus the works of Verdi's maturity, such as Un ballo in maschera, La forza del destino, Don Carlos/Don Carlo, the revised Simon Boccanegra, Aida and Falstaff, blazed many new and rewarding performance pathways for baritones. Figaro in Il barbiere is called the first true baritone role; however and Verdi in their vocal writing went on to emphasize the top fifth of the baritone voice, rather than its lower notes—thus generating a more brilliant sound. Further pathways opened up when the musically complex and physically demanding operas of Richard Wagner began to enter the mainstream repertory of the world's opera houses during the second half of the 19th century.
The major international baritone of the first half of the 19th century was the Italian Antonio Tamburini. He was a famous Don Giovanni in Mozart's eponymous opera as well as being a Bellini and Donizetti specialist. Commentators praised his voice for its beauty and smooth tonal emission, which are the hallmarks of a bel canto singer. Tamburini's range, was closer to that of a bass-baritone than to that of a modern "Verdi baritone", his French equivalent was Henri-Bernard Dabadie, a mainstay of the Paris Opera between 1819 and 1836 and the creator of several major Rossinian baritone roles, including Guillaume Tell. Dabadie sang in Italy, where he originated the role of Belcore in L'elisir d'amore in 1832; the most important of Tamburini's Italianate successors were all Verdians. They included: Giorgio Ronconi, who created the title role in Verdi's Nabucco Felice Varesi, who created the title roles in Macbeth and Rigoletto as well as Germont in La traviata Antonio Superchi, the originator of Don Carlo in Ernani Francesco Graziani, the original Don Carlo di Vargas in La forza del destino Leone Giraldoni, the creator of Renato in Un ballo in maschera and the first Simon Boccanegra Enrico Delle Sedie, London's first Renato Adriano Pantaleoni, renowned for his performances as Amonasro in Aida as well as other Verdi roles at La Scala, Milan Francesco Pandolfini, whose singing at La Scala during the 1870s was praised by Verdi Antonio Cotogni, a much lauded singer in Milan and Saint Petersburg, the first Italian Posa in Don Carlos and a great vocal pedagogue, too Filippo Coletti, creator of Verdi's Gusmano in Alzira, Francesco in I masnadieri, Germont in the second version of La traviata and for whom Verdi considered writing the opera'Lear'.
Josip Kašman
Joseph Kaschmann, known as Giuseppe Kaschmann and Josip Kašman, was a noted Austrian operatic baritone of partial Croatian descent. He sang in Europe and America during the latter decades of the 19th century and the early years of the 20th century. Born on Mali Lošinj, Josip Kašman was said to be the youngest of 14 children born to an Austrian father and a local mother, Eugenia Ivancich. Possessed of a fine natural voice and a facility with languages, he abandoned a planned career in the law, to study singing instead with Ivan Zajc in Zagreb, his first public performance occurred in Zagreb during 1869. He was cast in the lead role in a production of the first full scale Croatian opera, Mislav, on October 2, 1870. Six years he made his Italian operatic debut at Turin. Engagements in Venice, Rome and Trieste followed. Before long, he had established himself as one of the best baritones in Italy, making an impressive debut at La Scala, Milan, in 1878 in Don Carlo, it was during this phase of his career that he seems to have altered his name from Joseph Kaschmann to Giuseppe Kaschmann for theatrical purposes.
He reached the peak of his success as a singer in the 1880s and 1890s, building an international reputation and performing at such important venues as the Bayreuth Festspielhaus in Germany and the Metropolitan Opera in New York City, as well as continuing to appear at La Scala. Audiences in Spain, Russia, Egypt and Argentina had an opportunity to hear him perform during his prime but he never sang in England. In 1907, he was granted permission to go back to Zagreb by the Austrian government, which in those days controlled Croatia. For many years he had been prevented from returning to Croatia because, as a young man, he had deserted from the Austrian army following the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina; this ban was lifted only after papal intervention on his behalf. He was renowned for his performances in operas by Giuseppe Verdi and Richard Wagner. Towards the end of his stage career however, as the quality of his voice began to deteriorate due to age, he switched to the buffo repertoire of Rossini and other composers of comic operas.
In 1903, he made a number of recordings in Milan for the British Typewriter Company. As late as the 1920s, he was still singing roles in comic operas such as Don Pasquale and Il barbiere di Siviglia, his last public performance was in 1921, in Domenico Cimarosa's opera Le astuzie femminili, staged in Rome. Kašman taught singing, his finest student was a celebrated Italian buffo bass. Rome became his final home and he died there in 1925, aged 74. "Dizionario di musica", di A. Della Corte e G. M. Gatti, Paravia, 1956, pag.320 "Giuseppe Kaschmann Signore delle scene", di Giusy Criscione, ed. Comunità di Lussinpiccolo 2012 Kašman, Josip at lzmk.hr
Metropolitan Opera House (Philadelphia)
The Metropolitan Opera House is a historic opera house located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at 858 North Broad Street. It has been used for many different purposes over its history. Now known as the Met Philadelphia, the theatre reopened in December 2018, after a complete renovation, as a concert venue, it is managed by Live Nation. Built over the course of just a few months in 1908, it was the ninth opera house built by impresario Oscar Hammerstein I, it was the home of Hammerstein's Philadelphia Opera Company, called the Philadelphia Opera House. Hammerstein sold the house to the Metropolitan Opera of New York City in 1910; the Met used the MOH through 1920, after which various opera companies used the house through 1934. For over five more decades it remained in constant use in turn as a movie theater, a ballroom, a sports venue, a church; the MOH fell into serious disrepair and was unused and vacant from 1988 until 1995, when it became the "Holy Ghost Headquarters Revival Center at the Met".
The church stabilized much of the building paving the way for the latest renovation of the opera house in 2017-2018. The MOH has been included in the National Register of Historic Places since 1972; the Metropolitan Opera House was built by Hammerstein to be the home of his new opera company, the Philadelphia Opera Company. Hammerstein hired architect William H. McElfatrick of the firm J. B. McElfatrick & Son to design the opera house in 1907, construction began the following year; when it opened as the Philadelphia Opera House in 1908, it was the largest theater of its kind in the world, seating more than 4,000 people. The opera house opened on November 17, 1908 with a production of Georges Bizet's Carmen for the opening of the POC's first season; the cast included Maria Labia in the title role, Charles Dalmorès as Don José, Andrés de Segurola as Escamillo, Alice Zeppilli as Micaëla, Cleofonte Campanini conducting. The POC continued to use the house for its productions through March 1910; the company's last performance at the house was of Giuseppe Verdi's Rigoletto on March 23, 1910 with Giovanni Polese in the title role, Lalla Miranda as Gilda, Orville Harrold as the Duke of Mantua, Giuseppe Sturani conducting.
On April 26, 1910, Arthur Hammerstein, with his father's power of attorney, sold the Philadelphia Opera House to the New York Metropolitan Opera. The theater was renamed the Metropolitan Opera House; the Met, which had annually toured to Philadelphia with performances at the Academy of Music, had been the POC's biggest competition for opera audiences. In spite of two sold-out seasons of grand opera for the POC, Hammerstein ran into debt and had to sell his popular opera house to his competitor; the Met's first production at the renamed theater was on December 13, 1910. The Met performed at the MOH for the next decade, giving well over a hundred performances at the house; the Metropolitan Opera's last performance at the MOH was Eugene Onegin on April 20, 1920, with Giuseppe de Luca in the title role and Claudia Muzio as Tatyana. While the Met owned the MOH, it rented the venue to other opera companies for their performances; the theater was the home of the Philadelphia-Chicago Grand Opera Company between 1911 and 1914.
The Philadelphia Operatic Society used the house during and after the Met's tenure, through 1924. After the Met returned to performing at the Academy of Music for the 1920-1921 opera season, the MOH became the home of the Philadelphia Civic Opera Company until 1928; the Philadelphia Grand Opera Company and the Philadelphia La Scala Opera Company, two companies that performed at the Academy of Music occasionally performed there during the 1920s and 1930s. The MOH was host to many traveling productions by opera companies from other cities; the last opera production mounted at the MOH was a double billing of Cavalleria rusticana and Pagliacci under the baton of Aldo Franchetti, presented by the Chicago Grand Opera Company on May 5, 1934. By 1920, while still being used as a performing venue for operas, the house began presenting silent films to the public, it remained a cinema venue. In April 1922, J. F Rutherford gave the first radio broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera House to an estimated 50,000 people on the discourse "Millions Now Living Will never Die".
In the late 1930s, the MOH became a ballroom and in the 1940s a sports promoter bought the venue, covered the orchestra pit with flooring so basketball and boxing could take place. This venture closed after attendance waned following a decline in the quality of the surrounding neighborhood. In 1954, the building became a church. In 1954 the building was purchased by the Rev. Theo Jones who had a large congregation. During this time the Philadelphia Orchestra chose the superior acoustics of the Met for several of its recordings. After 1988 however church membership decreased and the building began to deteriorate; the building would be declared imminently dangerous by city building authorities but was saved from demolition in 1996 when it was purchased by the Reverend Mark Hatcher for his Holy Ghost Headquarters Revival Center. Between 1997 and 2013 the church spent $5M USD to stabilize the building. In October 2012, Holy Ghost Headquarters Church and developer Eric Blumenfeld entered into a development partnership with Blumenfeld purchasing the building for $1.
Some interior demolition work began in September 2013 but was halted because the developer had not obtained necessary permits. In February 2015, the church filed a lawsuit against the developer over the lack of progress on the building, alleging that Blumenfeld misled the congregation regarding his finances and "
Spain
Spain the Kingdom of Spain, is a country located in Europe. Its continental European territory is situated on the Iberian Peninsula, its territory includes two archipelagoes: the Canary Islands off the coast of Africa, the Balearic Islands in the Mediterranean Sea. The African enclaves of Ceuta, Peñón de Vélez de la Gomera make Spain the only European country to have a physical border with an African country. Several small islands in the Alboran Sea are part of Spanish territory; the country's mainland is bordered to the south and east by the Mediterranean Sea except for a small land boundary with Gibraltar. With an area of 505,990 km2, Spain is the largest country in Southern Europe, the second largest country in Western Europe and the European Union, the fourth largest country in the European continent. By population, Spain is the fifth in the European Union. Spain's capital and largest city is Madrid. Modern humans first arrived in the Iberian Peninsula around 35,000 years ago. Iberian cultures along with ancient Phoenician, Greek and Carthaginian settlements developed on the peninsula until it came under Roman rule around 200 BCE, after which the region was named Hispania, based on the earlier Phoenician name Spn or Spania.
At the end of the Western Roman Empire the Germanic tribal confederations migrated from Central Europe, invaded the Iberian peninsula and established independent realms in its western provinces, including the Suebi and Vandals. The Visigoths would forcibly integrate all remaining independent territories in the peninsula, including Byzantine provinces, into the Kingdom of Toledo, which more or less unified politically and all the former Roman provinces or successor kingdoms of what was documented as Hispania. In the early eighth century the Visigothic Kingdom fell to the Moors of the Umayyad Islamic Caliphate, who arrived to rule most of the peninsula in the year 726, leaving only a handful of small Christian realms in the north and lasting up to seven centuries in the Kingdom of Granada; this led to many wars during a long reconquering period across the Iberian Peninsula, which led to the creation of the Kingdom of Leon, Kingdom of Castile, Kingdom of Aragon and Kingdom of Navarre as the main Christian kingdoms to face the invasion.
Following the Moorish conquest, Europeans began a gradual process of retaking the region known as the Reconquista, which by the late 15th century culminated in the emergence of Spain as a unified country under the Catholic Monarchs. Until Aragon had been an independent kingdom, which had expanded toward the eastern Mediterranean, incorporating Sicily and Naples, had competed with Genoa and Venice. In the early modern period, Spain became the world's first global empire and the most powerful country in the world, leaving a large cultural and linguistic legacy that includes more than 570 million Hispanophones, making Spanish the world's second-most spoken native language, after Mandarin Chinese. During the Golden Age there were many advancements in the arts, with world-famous painters such as Diego Velázquez; the most famous Spanish literary work, Don Quixote, was published during the Golden Age. Spain hosts the world's third-largest number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. Spain is a secular parliamentary democracy and a parliamentary monarchy, with King Felipe VI as head of state.
It is a major developed country and a high income country, with the world's fourteenth largest economy by nominal GDP and sixteenth largest by purchasing power parity. It is a member of the United Nations, the European Union, the Eurozone, the Council of Europe, the Organization of Ibero-American States, the Union for the Mediterranean, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the Schengen Area, the World Trade Organization and many other international organisations. While not an official member, Spain has a "Permanent Invitation" to the G20 summits, participating in every summit, which makes Spain a de facto member of the group; the origins of the Roman name Hispania, from which the modern name España was derived, are uncertain due to inadequate evidence, although it is documented that the Phoenicians and Carthaginians referred to the region as Spania, therefore the most accepted etymology is a Semitic-Phoenician one.
Down the centuries there have been a number of accounts and hypotheses: The Renaissance scholar Antonio de Nebrija proposed that the word Hispania evolved from the Iberian word Hispalis, meaning "city of the western world". Jesús Luis Cunchillos argues that the root of the term span is the Phoenician word spy, meaning "to forge metals". Therefore, i-spn-ya would mean "the land where metals are forged", it may be a derivation of the Phoenician I-Shpania, meaning "island of rabbits", "land of rabbits" or "edge", a reference to Spain's location at the end of the Mediterranean. The word in question means "Hyrax" due to Phoenicians confusing the two animals. Hispania may derive from the poetic use of the term Hesperia, reflecting the Greek perception of Italy as a "western land" or "land of the setting sun" (Hesperia
La Scala
La Scala is an opera house in Milan, Italy. The theatre was inaugurated on 3 August 1778 and was known as the Nuovo Regio Ducale Teatro alla Scala; the premiere performance was Antonio Salieri's Europa riconosciuta. Most of Italy's greatest operatic artists, many of the finest singers from around the world, have appeared at La Scala; the theatre is regarded as one of the leading opera and ballet theatres in the world and is home to the La Scala Theatre Chorus, La Scala Theatre Ballet and La Scala Theatre Orchestra. The theatre has an associate school, known as the La Scala Theatre Academy, which offers professional training in music, stage craft and stage management. La Scala's season opens on Saint Ambrose's Day, the feast day of Milan's patron saint. All performances must end before midnight, long operas start earlier in the evening when necessary; the Museo Teatrale alla Scala, accessible from the theatre's foyer and a part of the house, contains a collection of paintings, statues and other documents regarding La Scala's and opera history in general.
La Scala hosts the Accademia d'Arti e Mestieri dello Spettacolo. Its goal is to train a new generation of young musicians, technical staff, dancers. A fire destroyed the previous theatre, the Teatro Regio Ducale, on 25 February 1776, after a carnival gala. A group of ninety wealthy Milanese, who owned private boxes in the theatre, wrote to Archduke Ferdinand of Austria-Este asking for a new theatre and a provisional one to be used while completing the new one; the neoclassical architect Giuseppe Piermarini produced an initial design but it was rejected by Count Firmian. A second plan was accepted in 1776 by Empress Maria Theresa; the new theatre was built on the former location of the church of Santa Maria alla Scala, from which the theatre gets its name. The church was deconsecrated and demolished and, over a period of two years, the theatre was completed by Pietro Marliani, Pietro Nosetti and Antonio and Giuseppe Fe; the theatre had a total of "3,000 or so" seats organized into 678 pit-stalls, arranged in six tiers of boxes above, the'loggione' or two galleries.
Its stage is one of the largest in Italy. Building expenses were covered by the sale of boxes, which were lavishly decorated by their owners, impressing observers such as Stendhal. La Scala soon became the preeminent meeting place for wealthy Milanese people. In the tradition of the times, the main floor had no chairs and spectators watched the shows standing up; the orchestra was in full sight. Above the boxes, La Scala has a gallery—called the loggione—where the less wealthy can watch the performances; the gallery is crowded with the most critical opera aficionados, known as the loggionisti, who can be ecstatic or merciless towards singers' perceived successes or failures. For their failures, artists receive a "baptism of fire" from these aficionados, fiascos are long remembered. For example, in 2006, tenor Roberto Alagna was booed off the stage during a performance of Aida; this forced his understudy, Antonello Palombi, to replace him mid-scene without time to change into a costume. As with most of the theatres at that time, La Scala was a casino, with gamblers sitting in the foyer.
Conditions in the auditorium, could be frustrating for the opera lover, as Mary Shelley discovered in September 1840: At the Opera they were giving Otto Nicolai's Templario. As is well known, the theatre of La Scala serves, not only as the universal drawing-room for all the society of Milan, but every sort of trading transaction, from horse-dealing to stock-jobbing, is carried on in the pit. La Scala was illuminated with 84 oil lamps mounted on the stage and another thousand in the rest of theatre. To prevent the risks of fire, several rooms were filled with hundreds of water buckets. In time, oil lamps were replaced by gas lamps, these in turn were replaced by electric lights in 1883; the original structure was renovated in 1907. In 1943, during World War II, La Scala was damaged by bombing, it was rebuilt and reopened on 11 May 1946, with a memorable concert conducted by Arturo Toscanini—twice La Scala's principal conductor and an associate of the composers Giuseppe Verdi and Giacomo Puccini—with a soprano solo by Renata Tebaldi, which created a sensation.
La Scala hosted the first productions of many famous operas, had a special relationship with Verdi. For several years, Verdi did not allow his work to be played here, as some of his music had been modified by the orchestra; this dispute originated in a disagreement over the production of his Giovanna d'Arco in 1845. The premiere of his last opera, Falstaff was given in the theatre. In 1982, the Filarmonica della Scala was established, drawing its members from the larger pool of musicians that comprise the Orchestra della Scala; the theatre underwent a major renovation from early 2002 to late 2004. The theatre closed following the traditional 7 December 2001 se
Elvira Colonnese
Elvira Colonnese was an Italian soprano opera singer. Colonnese was from the niece of Luigi Colonnese, an operatic baritone. Colonnese's first stage appearance came in 1880, in Naples, when she sang in Alpigianina at the conservatory in San Sebastiano. Soon after, she made her professional debut in La Sonnambula at the Liceu in Barcelona. In 1882 she was a member of the Italian Opera Company at St. Petersburg, she maintained a steady career in opera for 25 years, through 1905, performing in both Europe and South America, with regular appearances in Buenos Aires and Montevideo. Some of her typical roles were Micaela in Carmen, Elsa in Lohengrin, Desdemona in Otello, the title role in Aida. In 1890, she sang in the inaugural performance at the Teatro Argentino de La Plata, she played both Queen Isabella and Iguamota in the 1892 premiere cast of Alberto Franchetti's Cristoforo Colombo in Genoa, staged to mark the 400th anniversary of Columbus's famous voyage. She taught voice classes in Buenos Aires.
Elvira Colonnese died in Naples in 1949, aged 89 years
Alberto Franchetti
Alberto Franchetti was an Italian opera composer. Alberto Franchetti was born in a Jewish nobleman of independent means, he studied first in Venice at the Munich Conservatory under Josef Rheinberger, in Dresden under Felix Draeseke. His first major success occurred in 1888 with his opera Asrael, his operatic style combined the traits of Meyerbeer with Italian verismo. During his life, critics sometimes referred to him as the "Meyerbeer of modern Italy." The words of music critic G. B. Nappi sum up Franchetti's primary talents: "His character is unsuitable for passionate dramas, but rather for those subjects, where the fantastic and epic are required in the symphonic texture and large choral pictures. In this regard Alberto Franchetti knows that he has no rival". Grove considers Cristoforo Colombo Franchetti's best work. However, his most popular opera was Germania, it clung to the general operatic repertoire until the First World War. Caruso included a few of the arias in his first commercial recording session in 1902 and repeated one piece the following year for the Zonophone company, two pieces with orchestra in 1910 when he appeared in a revival of the work in New York.
But by the war, Germania had lapsed into obscurity. Mosco Carner notes that Illica's libretto of Tosca, or at least the sketch for a libretto, was first offered to Franchetti, too busy with other projects at the time, passed it on to his friend Puccini. Other authors have stated that Franchetti was working on the opera but Puccini asked Ricordi to let him have it and that Franchetti was persuaded that the violence in the story made it unsuitable for an opera. Another version is that Franchetti waived his rights to the opera because he felt that Puccini would make a better job of it - this is believed to have been stated by the Franchetti family. Of Franchetti's last opera Glauco only the third act finale No piange ancora with its haunting melody, seems to have survived. Among the reasons for Franchetti's descent into obscurity is the fact that, after the promulgation of the Fascist Racial Laws of 1938, which disenfranchised Italy's Jewish population, Franchetti's works were banned from performance.
This was despite a plea for tolerance on his behalf from Pietro Mascagni to Benito Mussolini, rejected, just before Franchetti's death. Recent revivals and recordings of Cristoforo Colombo and Germania show his work to be of genuine quality with a fine ability in orchestration and use of the chorus, symphonic in style; these traits, along with an unfortunate tendency for two-dimensional characters, were recognised early. He wrote a Symphony in E minor, he was the director of the Florence College of Music from 1926 to 1928: it was the only musical post he held. He died in Viareggio in 1942, aged 81. Franchetti's main residence the substantial Villa Franchetti - in Florence was accepted as a "Historical Residence of Italy" in 1991 and in 2009 it became a hotel as well as a home, preserving much of its historical fabric; the villa, with its numerous outbuildings, was rescued from near dereliction by its current owner Gustavo Nardi, who writes of the villa's connections with Franchetti His son Arnold Franchetti became a composer after emigrating to the United States in 1949.
Before coming to the US, he studied physics at the University of Florence, music at the Salzburg Mozarteum, moved to Munich where he studied composition and orchestration with Richard Strauss for three years. He was a member of the World War 2 Italian Resistance Underground movement from 1946 to 1948. Arnold Franchetti was Professor of Composition at the Hartt School of Music, University of Hartford, Connecticut from 1950 until his retirement in 1979. Asrael Cristoforo Colombo, libretto by Luigi Illica Fior d'Alpe Il signor di Pourceaugnac Germania, libretto by Luigi Illica La figlia di Iorio, libretto by Gabriele D'Annunzio Notte di leggenda Giove a Pompei, joint composition with Umberto Giordano Glauco Rosenthal and John Warrack.. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Opera. London, New York and Melbourne: Oxford University Press. P. 178. ISBN 0-19-311318-X. Works by or about Alberto Franchetti at Internet Archive Alberto Franchetti at www.albertofranchetti.it Free scores by Alberto Franchetti at the International Music Score Library Project http://www.freundefranchettis.com
