Santa Fe Opera
Santa Fe Opera is an American opera company, located 7 miles north of Santa Fe, New Mexico. After creating the Opera Association of New Mexico in 1956, its founding director, John Crosby, oversaw the building of the first opera house on a newly acquired former guest ranch of 199 acres; the company has presented operas each summer festival season since July 1957, is internationally known for introducing new operas as well as for its productions of the standard operatic repertoire. Since its inception, Santa Fe Opera has staged 43 American premieres and 15 world premieres, as of 2017. John Crosby, a New York-based conductor, founded the company in 1956 with the financial support of his parents, who helped in the acquisition of the land and the building of the first opera house. One goal was to give American singers the opportunity to learn and perform new roles while having ample time for rehearsal and preparation in the context of a summer festival situation with the presentation of five operas in repertory.
Its first season began on 3 July 1957 with a performance of Puccini's Madama Butterfly. Crosby remained as general director until 2000, the longest general directorship in US opera history. Richard Gaddes served as the company's general director from 2000 through 2008. In November 2007, SFO named Charles MacKay the company's third general director, effective 1 October 2008. In August 2017, the company announced the intention of MacKay to stand down as its general director after the 2018 season. In addition to being the opera company's founding general director, Crosby had served as its de facto first principal conductor. Alan Gilbert became the company's first music director from 2003 to 2006. Kenneth Montgomery, a regular guest conductor starting in 1982, served as interim music director for the 2007 season. In July 2007, Edo de Waart was named as chief conductor, effective 1 October 2007, with an initial contract was of four years, he was the first conductor to hold that title with the company However, in November 2008, the company announced that de Waart stood down from the post before the end of his contract, with de Waart citing health and family reasons for this decision.
In May 2010, the company announced the appointment of Frédéric Chaslin as the company's next chief conductor, effective 1 October 2010, with an initial contract of three years. However, in August 2012, Chaslin resigned as the Opera's chief conductor. In April 2013, the company announced the appointments of Harry Bicket as its next chief conductor, effective 1 October 2013, of Montgomery as conductor laureate for the 2013 season. In November 2016, the company announced the extension of Bicket's contract as chief conductor through 30 September 2020. In February 2018, the company announced the appointments of Robert K. Meya as its next general director and of Alexander Neef as its first-ever artistic director, the elevation of Harry Bicket from chief conductor of the company to its music director, with three appointments effective as of 1 October 2018. In October 2018, the company announced the extension of Bicket's contract as music director through the 2023 season. From the beginning, certain characteristics of what was to become a typical season emerged.
It runs annually from late June or the beginning of July to the third week of August, with five operas presented in rotating repertory. From the time of Crosby's inception of the company, two popular operas opened the season. An American premiere was in the program and these included works commissioned by the company. A lifelong lover of the operas of Richard Strauss, Crosby scheduled one and presented many American premieres of the composer’s work, an example being the 1964 U. S. premiere of the 1938 Daphne. The fifth opera was a performed work; the same philosophy continues to the present day. For modern works, US premiere productions of contemporary operas include Thomas Adès' The Tempest, Tan Dun's Tea: A Mirror of Soul, Kaija Saariaho's Adriana Mater, the July 2009 world premiere of The Letter, by composer Paul Moravec and librettist Terry Teachout, the first full production of Lewis Spratlan's Life Is a Dream in July 2010. World premieres have included Jennifer Higdon's Cold Mountain, and Mason Bates' and Mark Campbell's The evolution of Steve Jobs.
General Directors John Crosby Richard Gaddes Charles MacKay Robert Meya Artistic Directors Alexander Neef Conductors in leadership positions John Crosby Alan Gilbert Kenneth Montgomery Edo de Waart Frédéric Chaslin Kenneth Montgomery Harry Bicket In his first season, Crosby created the Apprentice Singer Program, whereby eight young people were to be given living expenses and paid per performance to be members of the chorus and to cover major roles. Unusual for its time in America in the 1950s, the Apprentice Singers Program helped young singers to make the transition from academic to professional life. To date, over 1,500 aspiring opera singers have participated; as Crosby noted: "In this country young artists have to do something, impossible – gain experience. But with our plan, these young people will be scheduled in small roles and will have the opportunity of working with their older brothers and sisters who have won their spurs. To get such experience now, a young artist has to go to Europe."The Apprentice Program for Technicians was added in 1965.
The program has for
American Academy of Arts and Letters
The American Academy of Arts and Letters is a 250-member honor society. Located in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan in New York City, it shares Audubon Terrace, a complex on Broadway between West 155th and 156th Streets, with the Hispanic Society of America and Boricua College; the academy's galleries are open to the public on a published schedule. Exhibits include an annual exhibition of paintings, sculptures and works on paper from contemporary artists nominated by its members, an annual exhibition of works by newly elected members and recipients of honors and awards. A permanent exhibit of the recreated studio of composer Charles Ives was opened in 2014; the auditorium is sought out by musicians and engineers wishing to record live because the acoustics are considered among the city's finest. Hundreds of commercial recordings have been made there; the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters was formed from three parent organizations. The first, the American Social Science Association, was founded at Boston.
The second was the National Institute of Arts and Letters, which ASSA's membership created in 1898. The qualification for membership in the NIAL was notable achievement in music, or literature; the number of NIAL members was at first limited to 150. The third organization was the American Academy of Arts, which NIAL's membership created in 1904, as a preeminent national arts institution, styling itself after the French Academy; the AAA's first seven academicians were elected from ballots cast by the entire NIAL membership. They were William Dean Howells, Samuel L. Clemens, Edmund Clarence Stedman, John Hay, representing literature; the number of NIAL members was increased in 1904, by the introduction of a two-tiered structure: 50 academicians and 200 regular members. Academicians were elected over the next several years; the elite group were called the "Academy," and the larger group was called the "Institute." This strict two-tiered system persisted for 72 years. In 1908, poet Julia Ward Howe was elected to the AAA.
In 1976, the NIAL and AAA merged, under Institute of Arts and Letters. The combined Academy/Institute structure had a maximum of 250 living United States citizens as members, plus up to 75 foreign composers and writers as honorary members, it established the annual Witter Bynner Poetry Prize in 1980 to support the work of young poets. The election of foreign honorary members persisted until 1993; the Academy holds a Congressional charter under Title 36 of the United States Code, which means that it is one of the comparatively rare "Title 36" corporations in the United States. The 1916 statute of incorporation established this institution amongst a small number of other patriotic and national organizations which are chartered; the federal incorporation was construed as an honor. The special recognition neither implies nor accords Congress any special control over the Academy, which remains free to function independently. Active sponsors of Congressional action were Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts and former-President Theodore Roosevelt.
The process which led to the creation of this federal charter was accompanied by controversy. Sen. Lodge re-introduced legislation which passed the Senate in 1913; the Academy was incorporated under the laws of the State of New York in 1914, which factors in decision-making which resulted in Congressional approval in 1916. The Academy occupies three buildings on the west end of the Audubon Terrace complex created by Archer M. Huntington, the heir to the Southern Pacific Railroad fortune and a noted philanthropist. To help convince the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the National Institute of Arts and Letters, which were separate but related organizations at the time, to move to the complex, Huntington established building funds and endowments for both; the first building, on the south side of the complex, along West 155th Street, was designed by William M. Kendall of the firm of McKim, Mead & White; this Anglo-Italian Renaissance administration building was designed in 1921 and opened in 1923.
On the north side, another building housing an auditorium and gallery was designed by Cass Gilbert an Academy member, was built from 1928-30. These additions to the complex necessitated considerable alterations to the Audubon Terrace plaza, which were designed by McKim, Mead & White. In 2007, the American Numismatic Society, which had occupied a Charles P. Huntington-designed building to the east of the Academy's original building, vacated that space to move to smaller quarters downtown; this building, which incorporates a 1929 addition designed by H. Brooks Price, has become the Academy's Annex and houses additional gallery space. In 2009, the space between the Annex and the administration building was turned into a new entrance link, designed by Vincent Czajka with Pei Cobb Freed & Partners. Members of the Academy are chosen for life and have included some of the leading figures in the American art scene, they are organized into committees. Although the names of some of the members of this organization may not be well known today, each of these men were well known in their own time.
Greatness and pettiness are demonstrable among the Academy members during
Piano
The piano is an acoustic, stringed musical instrument invented in Italy by Bartolomeo Cristofori around the year 1700, in which the strings are struck by hammers. It is played using a keyboard, a row of keys that the performer presses down or strikes with the fingers and thumbs of both hands to cause the hammers to strike the strings; the word piano is a shortened form of pianoforte, the Italian term for the early 1700s versions of the instrument, which in turn derives from gravicembalo col piano e forte and fortepiano. The Italian musical terms piano and forte indicate "soft" and "loud" in this context referring to the variations in volume produced in response to a pianist's touch or pressure on the keys: the greater the velocity of a key press, the greater the force of the hammer hitting the strings, the louder the sound of the note produced and the stronger the attack; the name was created as a contrast to harpsichord, a musical instrument that doesn't allow variation in volume. The first fortepianos in the 1700s had smaller dynamic range.
An acoustic piano has a protective wooden case surrounding the soundboard and metal strings, which are strung under great tension on a heavy metal frame. Pressing one or more keys on the piano's keyboard causes a padded hammer to strike the strings; the hammer rebounds from the strings, the strings continue to vibrate at their resonant frequency. These vibrations are transmitted through a bridge to a soundboard that amplifies by more efficiently coupling the acoustic energy to the air; when the key is released, a damper stops the strings' vibration, ending the sound. Notes can be sustained when the keys are released by the fingers and thumbs, by the use of pedals at the base of the instrument; the sustain pedal enables pianists to play musical passages that would otherwise be impossible, such as sounding a 10-note chord in the lower register and while this chord is being continued with the sustain pedal, shifting both hands to the treble range to play a melody and arpeggios over the top of this sustained chord.
Unlike the pipe organ and harpsichord, two major keyboard instruments used before the piano, the piano allows gradations of volume and tone according to how forcefully a performer presses or strikes the keys. Most modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys, 52 white keys for the notes of the C major scale and 36 shorter black keys, which are raised above the white keys, set further back on the keyboard; this means that the piano can play 88 different pitches, going from the deepest bass range to the highest treble. The black keys are for the "accidentals". More some pianos have additional keys. Most notes have three strings, except for the bass; the strings are sounded when keys are pressed or struck, silenced by dampers when the hands are lifted from the keyboard. Although an acoustic piano has strings, it is classified as a percussion instrument rather than as a stringed instrument, because the strings are struck rather than plucked. There are two main types of piano: the upright piano.
The grand piano is used for Classical solos, chamber music, art song, it is used in jazz and pop concerts. The upright piano, more compact, is the most popular type, as it is a better size for use in private homes for domestic music-making and practice. During the 1800s, influenced by the musical trends of the Romantic music era, innovations such as the cast iron frame and aliquot stringing gave grand pianos a more powerful sound, with a longer sustain and richer tone. In the nineteenth century, a family's piano played the same role that a radio or phonograph played in the twentieth century. During the nineteenth century, music publishers produced many musical works in arrangements for piano, so that music lovers could play and hear the popular pieces of the day in their home; the piano is employed in classical, jazz and popular music for solo and ensemble performances and for composing and rehearsals. Although the piano is heavy and thus not portable and is expensive, its musical versatility, the large number of musicians and amateurs trained in playing it, its wide availability in performance venues and rehearsal spaces have made it one of the Western world's most familiar musical instruments.
With technological advances, amplified electric pianos, electronic pianos, digital pianos have been developed. The electric piano became a popular instrument in the 1960s and 1970s genres of jazz fusion, funk music and rock music; the piano was founded on earlier technological innovations in keyboard instruments. Pipe organs have been used since Antiquity, as such, the development of pipe organs enabled instrument builders to learn about creating keyboard mechanisms for sounding pitches; the first string instruments with struck strings were the hammered dul
Galápagos Islands
The Galápagos Islands, part of the Republic of Ecuador, are an archipelago of volcanic islands distributed on either side of the equator in the Pacific Ocean surrounding the centre of the Western Hemisphere, 906 km west of continental Ecuador. The islands are known for their large number of endemic species and were studied by Charles Darwin during the second voyage of HMS Beagle, his observations and collections contributed to the inception of Darwin's theory of evolution by means of natural selection. The Galápagos Islands and their surrounding waters form the Galápagos Province of Ecuador, the Galápagos National Park, the Galápagos Marine Reserve; the principal language on the islands is Spanish. The islands have a population of over 25,000; the first recorded visit to the islands happened by chance in 1535, when Fray Tomás de Berlanga, the Bishop of Panamá, was surprised with this undiscovered land during a voyage to Peru to arbitrate in a dispute between Francisco Pizarro and Diego de Almagro.
De Berlanga returned to the Spanish Empire and described the conditions of the islands and the animals that inhabited them. The group of islands was shown and named in Abraham Ortelius's atlas published in 1570; the first crude map of the islands was made in 1684 by the buccaneer Ambrose Cowley, who named the individual islands after some of his fellow pirates or after British royalty and noblemen. These names were used in the authoritative navigation charts of the islands prepared during the Beagle survey under captain Robert FitzRoy, in Darwin's popular book The Voyage of the Beagle; the new Republic of Ecuador took the islands from Spanish ownership in 1832, subsequently gave them official Spanish names. The older names remained in use in English-language publications, including Herman Melville's The Encantadas of 1854. Volcanism has been continuous on the Galápagos Islands for at least 20 myr, even longer; the mantle plume beneath the east-ward moving Nazca Plate has given rise to a 3-kilometre-thick platform under the island chain and seamounts.
Besides the Galápagos Archipelago, other key tectonic features in the region include the Northern Galápagos Volcanic Province between the archipelago and the Galápagos Spreading Center 200 km to the north at the boundary of the Nazca Plate and the Cocos Plate. This spreading center truncates into the East Pacific Rise on the west and is bounded by the Cocos Ridge and Carnegie Ridge in the east. Furthermore, the Galápagos Hotspot is at the northern boundary of the Pacific Large Low Shear Velocity Province while the Easter Hotspot is on the southern boundary; the Galápagos Archipelago is characterized by numerous contemporaneous volcanoes, some with plume magma sources, others from the asthenosphere due to the young and thin oceanic crust. The GSC caused structural weaknesses in this thin lithosphere leading to eruptions forming the Galápagos Platform. Fernandina and Isabela in particular are aligned along these weaknesses. Lacking a well-defined rift zone, the islands have a high rate of inflation prior to eruption.
Sierra Negra on Isabela Island experienced a 240 cm uplift between 1992 and 1998, most recent eruption in 2005, while Fernandina on Fernandina Island indicated an uplift of 90 cm, most recent eruption in 2009. Alcedo on Isabela Island had an uplift of greater than 90 cm, most recent eruption in 1993. Additional characteristics of the Galápagos Archipelago are closer volcano spacing, smaller volcano sizes, larger calderas. For instance, Isabela Island includes 6 major volcanoes, Wolf, Alcedo, Sierra Negraa and Cerro Azul, with most recent eruptions ranging from 1813 to 2008; the neighboring islands of Santiago and Fernandina last erupted in 2009, respectively. Overall, the 9 active volcanoes in the archipelago have erupted 24 times between 1961 and 2011; the shape of these volcanoes is that of an "overturned soup bowl" as opposed to the "overturned saucer plate" of the Hawaiian Islands. The Galápagos's shape is due to the pattern of radial and circumferential fissure, radial on the flanks, but circumferential near the caldera summits.
It is the circumferential fissures. The volcanoes at the west end of the archipelago are in general, younger, have well developed calderas, are composed of tholeiitic basalt, while those on the east are shorter, lack calderas, have a more diverse composition; the ages of the islands, from west to east are 0.05 Ma for Fernandina, 0.65 Ma for Isabela, 1.10 Ma for Santiago, 1.7 Ma for Santa Cruz, 2.90 Ma for Santa Fe, 3.2 Ma for San Cristobal. The calderas on Sierra Negra and Alcedo have active fault systems; the Sierra Negra fault is associated with a sill 2 km below the caldera. The caldera on Fernandina experienced the largest basaltic volcano collapse in history, with the 1968 phreatomagmatic eruption. Fernandina has been the most active volcano since 1790, with recent eruptions in 1991, 1995, 2005, 2009, the entire surface has been covered in numerous flows since 4.3 Ka. The western volcanoes have numerous tuff cones; the islands are located in the eastern Pacific Ocean, 973 km off the west coast of South America.
The closest land mass is that of mainland Ecuador, the country to which they belong, 926 km to the east. The islands are found at the coordinates 1°40'N–1°36'S, 89°16'–92°01'W. Straddling the equator, islands in the chain are located in both the northern and southern hemispheres, with Volcán Wolf and Volcán Ecuador on Isla Isabela being directly on the equator. Española Island, the southernmost islet of the archipelago, Darwin Island, the northernmost
Orchestra
An orchestra is a large instrumental ensemble typical of classical music, which combines instruments from different families, including bowed string instruments such as the violin, viola and double bass, brass instruments such as the horn, trumpet and tuba, woodwinds such as the flute, oboe and bassoon, percussion instruments such as the timpani, bass drum, snare drum and cymbals, each grouped in sections. Other instruments such as the piano and celesta may sometimes appear in a fifth keyboard section or may stand alone, as may the concert harp and, for performances of some modern compositions, electronic instruments. A full-size orchestra may sometimes be called philharmonic orchestra; the actual number of musicians employed in a given performance may vary from seventy to over one hundred musicians, depending on the work being played and the size of the venue. The term chamber orchestra refers to smaller-sized ensembles of about fifty musicians or fewer. Orchestras that specialize in the Baroque music of, for example, Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel, or Classical repertoire, such as that of Haydn and Mozart, tend to be smaller than orchestras performing a Romantic music repertoire, such as the symphonies of Johannes Brahms.
The typical orchestra grew in size throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, reaching a peak with the large orchestras called for in the works of Richard Wagner, Gustav Mahler. Orchestras are led by a conductor who directs the performance with movements of the hands and arms made easier for the musicians to see by use of a conductor's baton; the conductor sets the tempo and shapes the sound of the ensemble. The conductor prepares the orchestra by leading rehearsals before the public concert, in which the conductor provides instructions to the musicians on their interpretation of the music being performed; the leader of the first violin section called the concertmaster plays an important role in leading the musicians. In the Baroque music era, orchestras were led by the concertmaster or by a chord-playing musician performing the basso continuo parts on a harpsichord or pipe organ, a tradition that some 20th century and 21st century early music ensembles continue. Orchestras play a wide range of repertoire, including symphonies and ballet overtures, concertos for solo instruments, as pit ensembles for operas and some types of musical theatre.
Amateur orchestras include those made up of students from an elementary school or a high school, youth orchestras, community orchestras. The term orchestra derives from the Greek ὀρχήστρα, the name for the area in front of a stage in ancient Greek theatre reserved for the Greek chorus; the typical symphony orchestra consists of four groups of related musical instruments called the woodwinds, brass and strings. Other instruments such as the piano and celesta may sometimes be grouped into a fifth section such as a keyboard section or may stand alone, as may the concert harp and electric and electronic instruments; the orchestra, depending on the size, contains all of the standard instruments in each group. In the history of the orchestra, its instrumentation has been expanded over time agreed to have been standardized by the classical period and Ludwig van Beethoven's influence on the classical model. In the 20th and 21st century, new repertory demands expanded the instrumentation of the orchestra, resulting in a flexible use of the classical-model instruments and newly developed electric and electronic instruments in various combinations.
The terms symphony orchestra and philharmonic orchestra may be used to distinguish different ensembles from the same locality, such as the London Symphony Orchestra and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. A symphony orchestra will have over eighty musicians on its roster, in some cases over a hundred, but the actual number of musicians employed in a particular performance may vary according to the work being played and the size of the venue. Chamber orchestra refers to smaller-sized ensembles; the term concert orchestra may be used, as in the BBC Concert Orchestra and the RTÉ Concert Orchestra. The so-called "standard complement" of doubled winds and brass in the orchestra from the first half of the 19th century is attributed to the forces called for by Beethoven; the composer's instrumentation always included paired flutes, clarinets, bassoons and trumpets. The exceptions to this are his Symphony No. 4, Violin Concerto, Piano Concerto No. 4, which each specify a single flute. Beethoven calculated the expansion of this particular timbral "palette" in Symphonies 3, 5, 6, 9 for an innovative effect.
The third horn in the "Eroica" Symphony arrives to provide not only some harmonic flexibility, but the effect of "choral" brass in the Trio movement. Piccolo and trombones add to the triumphal finale of his Symphony No. 5. A piccolo and a pair of trombones help deliver the effect of storm and sunshine in the Sixth known as the Pastoral Symphony; the Ninth asks for a second pair of horns, for reasons similar to the "Eroica".
Herman Melville
Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, poet of the American Renaissance period. Among his best known works are Typee, a romantic account of his experiences of Polynesian life, his whaling novel Moby-Dick. Melville was born in New York City, the third child of a merchant who dealt in French dry goods and his wife. Years as a common sailor from 1839 to 1844 were the basis of his early writings, his first book was Typee, a romanticized account of his life among Polynesians. It became such a best-seller; these successes gave him the financial basis to marry Elizabeth Shaw, daughter of a prominent Boston family, but the success proved hard to sustain. His first novel, not based on his own experiences was Mardi, a sea narrative that develops into a philosophical allegory—but it was not well received, he received warmer reviews for Redburn, a story of life on a merchant ship, his 1850 description of the harsh life aboard a man-of-war in White-Jacket, but they did not provide financial security.
Moby-Dick, although now considered one of the great American novels, was not well received, critics scorned his psychological novel, Pierre: or, The Ambiguities. From 1853 to 1856, Melville published short fiction in magazines, most notably "Bartleby, the Scrivener", "The Encantadas", "Benito Cereno"; these and three other stories were collected in 1856 as The Piazza Tales. In 1857, he traveled to England and toured the Near East; the Confidence-Man was the last prose work. He turned to poetry. Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War was his poetic reflection on the moral questions of the American Civil War. In 1867, his oldest child Malcolm died at home from a self-inflicted gunshot. Clarel: A Poem and Pilgrimage in the Holy Land was published in 1876, a metaphysical epic. In 1886, his son Stanwix died, Melville retired. During his last years, he published two volumes of poetry, left one volume unpublished, returned to prose of the sea; the novella Billy Budd was left unfinished at his death but was published in 1924.
Melville's death from cardiovascular disease in 1891 subdued a reviving interest in his work. The 1919 centennial of his birth became the starting point of the "Melville Revival". Critics discovered his work, scholars explored his life. Born Herman Melvill in New York City on August 1, 1819, to Allan Melvill and Maria Melvill into a family of Dutch extraction. Herman was the third of eight children, his siblings, who played important roles in his career as well as in his emotional life, were Gansevoort. Part of a well-established and colorful Boston family, Melville's father spent much time out of New York and in Europe as a commission merchant and an importer of French dry goods. Both of Melville's grandfathers were heroes of the Revolutionary War. Major Thomas Melvill had taken part in the Boston Tea Party, his maternal grandfather, General Peter Gansevoort, was famous for having commanded the defense of Fort Stanwix in New York in 1777. Melville found satisfaction in his "double revolutionary descent."
Major Melvill sent his son Allan not to college but to France at the turn of the nineteenth century, where he spent two years in Paris and learned to speak and write French fluently. He subscribed to his father's Unitarianism. In 1814, Allan married Maria Gansevoort, committed to the Dutch Reformed version of the Calvinist creed of her family; the severe Protestantism of the Gansevoort's tradition ensured that she knew her Bible well, in English as well as in Dutch, the language she had grown up speaking with her parents. Three weeks after his birth, on August 19, Herman Melville was baptized at home by a minister of the South Reformed Dutch Church. During the 1820s, Melville lived a privileged, opulent life, in a household with three or more servants at a time. At four-year intervals, the family would move to more spacious and elegant quarters settling on Broadway in 1828. Allan Melvill lived beyond his means and on large sums he borrowed from both his father and his wife's widowed mother, his wife's opinion of his financial conduct is unknown.
Biographer Hershel Parker suggests Maria "thought her mother's money was infinite and that she was entitled to much of her portion now, while she had small children." How well, biographer Delbanco adds, the parents managed to hide the truth from their children is "impossible to know."In 1830, Maria's family lost patience and their support came to a halt, at which point Allan's total debt to both families exceeded $20,000. The felicity of Melville's early childhood, biographer Newton Arvin writes, depended not so much on wealth as on the "exceptionally tender and affectionate spirit in all the family relationships in the immediate circle." Arvin describes Allan as "a man of real sensibility and a warm and loving father," while Maria was "warmly maternal, simple and affectionately devoted to her husband and her brood."Melville's education began when he was five, around the time the Melvills moved to a newly built house at 33 Bleecker Street in Manhattan. In 1826, the same year that Melville contracted scarlet fever, Allan
Cleveland Orchestra
The Cleveland Orchestra, based in Cleveland, is one of the five American orchestras informally referred to as the "Big Five". Founded in 1918 by the pianist and impresario Adella Prentiss Hughes, the orchestra plays most of its concerts at Severance Hall; as of 2017, the incumbent music director is Franz Welser-Möst. In 2012 Gramophone Magazine ranked the Cleveland Orchestra number 7 on its list of the world's greatest orchestras, The New York Times referred to the orchestra in 2018 as "America's most understatedly amazing orchestra." The orchestra was founded in 1918 by Adella Prentiss Hughes, with Nikolai Sokoloff as its principal conductor. From early in its existence, it toured throughout the eastern United States, made radio broadcasts, recorded many albums. Subsequent principal conductors, with the title of Music Director, were Artur Rodziński, Erich Leinsdorf, George Szell. From 1964 to 1965, James Levine served as an apprentice to Szell with the Cleveland Orchestra, served as its assistant conductor until 1970.
Subsequent Music Directors were Pierre Boulez, Lorin Maazel, Christoph von Dohnányi. Franz Welser-Möst has been Music Director since 2002 and is contracted to remain through the 2021-2022 season. Szell's long reign as Music Director has been credited for the orchestra's rise to eminence, he reformed the orchestra in the late-1940s, firing a dozen musicians in the process with a dozen more leaving of their own volition. Szell is credited with giving the orchestra its distinct, European sound, he pushed an ambitious recording schedule with the orchestra, bringing its music to millions worldwide. Szell's influence has continued decades after his death. Cleveland is the smallest city amongst the traditional "Big Five" orchestras. However, musicians in Cleveland are treated as local celebrities, much like sports heroes elsewhere, fans seek autographs after performances and greet musicians on the street. Clevelanders are proud that their city boasts an orchestra that has several times been touted as America's finest, compared favorably to many of the great orchestras in Central Europe.
In the 1960s fans were known to "have airport rallies when the orchestra comes home from tour chant,'We're the best! We're the best!' and carry placards reading'Bravo!'" In addition to a vast catalog of recordings created with the ensemble's music directors, the orchestra has made many recordings with guest conductors Vladimir Ashkenazy, Oliver Knussen, Kurt Sanderling, Yoel Levi, Riccardo Chailly, Michael Tilson Thomas, Louis Lane. Past assistant conductors of the Cleveland Orchestra include Matthias Bamert, James Levine, Alan Gilbert, James Judd and Michael Stern. Severance Hall is the Cleveland Orchestra's home, it was built for the orchestra in 1931. The orchestra performs the majority of its concerts at Severance and uses the hall for rehearsals and to house their administrative offices; the concert organ there is by Ernest M. Skinner IV-94. During the summer months, the orchestra presents their annual Blossom Festival at the Blossom Music Center in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio; until 2005, the Blossom Festival had its own music director.
The last person to serve in that capacity was Jahja Ling. After he stepped down from that position, the orchestra eliminated the post, now has current music director Franz Welser-Möst in charge of the classical music concerts at the Blossom Festival; the orchestra has long-term performing relationships in Lucerne, New York City, a residency in Miami, has conducted multi-concert tours on the West Coast off and on since the 1960s. 1918-1933 Nikolai Sokoloff 1933-1943 Artur Rodziński 1943-1946 Erich Leinsdorf 1946-1970 George Szell 1970-1972 Pierre Boulez 1972-1982 Lorin Maazel 1984-2002 Christoph von Dohnányi 2002–present Franz Welser-Möst 1999-2000 Marc-André Dalbavie 2001-2003 Matthias Pintscher 2003-2005 Susan Botti 2005-2007 Julian Anderson 2007-2009 Johannes Maria Staud 2009-2011 Jörg Widmann 2011-2013 Sean Shepherd 2013-2015 Ryan Wigglesworth 2015-2017 Anthony Cheung 2018–present Bernd Richard Deutsch Cleveland Orchestra Discography Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra Cleveland Philharmonic Orchestra Cleveland Women's Orchestra Cleveland Chamber Symphony CityMusic Cleveland Red The Contemporary Youth Orchestra Big Five Rosenberg, Donald.
The Cleveland Orchestra Story. Cleveland: Gray & Company. ISBN 1-886228-24-8; the Cleveland Orchestra Official website Cleveland Orchestra history at the Wayback Machine from the Telarc website. Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra Cleveland Orchestra Musicians
