Louise Angelique Bertin was born in Les Roches, France in 1805 and embarked on a career as an opera composer in nineteenth-century Paris. Her work was closely tied to composer Hector Berlioz and author Victor Hugo. She is best remembered as the composer of “La Esmeralda,” an opera based on Hugo’s famous novel “The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.” Though Hugo, one {…}
Francesca Caccini, also nicknamed “La Cecchina,” was a Florentine composer and music teacher who distinguished herself as an important figure of the early Baroque era in Italy. Though Caccini is credited with many compositions throughout her career, only one opera—a comedy called “La liberazione di Ruggerio,” or “The Liberation of Ruggiero from the island of Alcina”—survived to the present day. {…}
American conductor and composer Victoria Bond is one of the most popular artists of opera and classical music today. Over a long career that has included conducting stints around the world and dozens of original compositions, Bond is also notable for her distinction as the first woman to receive a doctorate in orchestral conducting from the Juilliard School. Bond was {…}
(Credit: Bryan Sheffield) Scottish-American composer Thea Musgrave has distinguished herself over the course of a long and prolific career. Many of her works have emerged as some of the most important operas of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Musgrave was born outside of Edinburgh in 1928 and later studied at the University of Edinburgh. As a burgeoning music {…}
Though more famous for works such as “Doctor Atomic” and “Nixon in China,” John Adams also composed the memorable Christmas-themed opera, “El Niño” or “The Baby,” which tells the story of the birth of Jesus Christmas. The opera-oratorio premiered on December 15, 2000 in Paris and has been performed many times since as holiday entertainment. The first performance featured soloists {…}
(Photo: Karen Almond/Houston Grand Opera) Jake Heggie’s “It’s a Wonderful Life” serves as an operatic successor to the beloved 1946 Frank Capra film of the same name. The libretto, written by Gene Scheer, tells the familiar holiday story of George Bailey’s life crisis and redemption as based on the original text, a short story called “The Greatest Gift” by Philip {…}
While Zumaya’s “Partenope” is recognized by music historians as the first opera created by a New World-born composer, Tomas de Torrejon y Velasco’s “La purpura de la rosa” (in English, “The Blood of the Rose”) was the first opera both composed and performed in the western hemisphere. Velasco’s work premiered in Lima, Peru on December 1701. It is the composer’s {…}
One of the first composers born in the western hemisphere, Manuel de Zumaya (1678-1744) combined Baroque music with the sounds of colonial Spain. His lost opera, “Partenope,” was the first written in Italian to premiere in the New World. The work was first shown to audiences in Mexico City at the viceroy palace on May 1, 1711, making it the {…}
“X, The Life and Times of Malcolm X,” an opera by Pulitzer Prize-winner Anthony Davis, premiered at the American Music Theater Festival in Philadelphia on October 9, 1985. The work, which tells the story of the life of the minister and human rights activist Malcolm X in collaboration with the composer’s cousin, librettist, and writer Thulani Davis, was built upon {…}
Born in 1858, the life of composer Ethel Smyth coincided with the vastly changing social landscape of Britain. Smyth is best remembered as an active contributor to the suffragette movement and as one of the most notable female composers of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Smyth was born in Sidcup, Kent to a large family on April 22, 1858. She {…}
(Photo: Keith Ian Polakoff) The Pulitzer Prize-winning opera “The Central Park Five” recounts the harrowing story of five teenagers falsely accused and imprisoned for years before their exoneration in 2002. Composer Anthony Davis and librettist Richard Wesley bring the infamous story to life, offering an operatic commentary on racial bias in the United States. The work premiered June 15, 2019 {…}