CLScapades http://cls.posterous.com City of London Sinfonia blog posterous.com Wed, 11 Jul 2012 03:52:09 -0700 Zany for Zanetto http://cls.posterous.com/zany-for-zanetto http://cls.posterous.com/zany-for-zanetto

As the Gianni Schicchi/Zanetto double bill at Opera Holland Park comes to an end this week, we focus on Mascagni's lesser known one act opera Zanetto.

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1.    Mascagni had so many devoted fans during his lifetime that 'mascagnano' was recognised as a common noun in the Italian dictionary.

2.    The premiere of Zanetto in 1896 featured as part of the annual celebrations for Rossini’s birthday.

3.    A private performance of Zanetto was held in London shortly after the Italian premiere, with Italian sisters Sofia and Giulia Ravogli.

4.    Five years ago in June 2007, Zanetto was performed in New York for the first time since its US premiere in October 1902.

5.    Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti, the librettist for Zanetto (along with Guido Menasci), was a lifelong friend of Mascagni’s, born in the same year and city.

 

The remaining performances of the Gianni Schicchi/Zanetto double bill are on July 12 & 14 at 7.30pm, as well as The Christine Collins Young Artists' performance on July 14 at 2pm.

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Thu, 05 Jul 2012 03:40:00 -0700 Retrospect - June in pictures http://cls.posterous.com/retrospect-june-2012 http://cls.posterous.com/retrospect-june-2012

June was a busy month for us with the start of our ninth season at Opera Holland Park, a UK premiere of Gluck's Il trionfo di Clelia at the Royal Opera House and several education projects inbetween. We started the month in good spirits celebrating the Queen's Diamond Jubilee in style with our friends at Piano House and finished by humming along to Donizetti, Mozart and Puccini.

Here's a few pictures from the past month...

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Gillian and Alex raise their cups for the Diamond Jubilee

 

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Watching Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor which opened this year's Opera Holland Park 2012 season

 

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Gillian, our Education Manager, received a new instrument to add to her collection

 

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A few of our players performing at Great Ormond Street Hospital

 

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Preparing the set for Clelia at the Linbury Studio Theatre, downstairs at the Royal Opera House

 

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Rehearsing for Il Trionfo di Clelia

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Fri, 29 Jun 2012 03:06:18 -0700 Gen up on your Gianni http://cls.posterous.com/gen-up-on-your-gianni http://cls.posterous.com/gen-up-on-your-gianni

For the next edition in our trivia opera guide for novices and opera buffs alike, we take a look at  Puccini's one-act opera Gianni Schicchi.

  • The work is the third and final part of Puccini's Il trittico (The Triptych)—three one-act operas. When Il trittico premiered in New York, Rome and London, Gianni Schicchi was an immediate hit and by 1920 Puccini had given his reluctant consent to separate performances. Gianni Schicchi has subsequently become the most-performed part of Il trittico and has been widely recorded
  • The libretto is based on an incident mentioned in Dante's The Divine Comedy

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  • The world premiere took place at the Metropolitan Opera (above image) in New York unusually without Puccini being there
  • Woody Allen directed Gianni Schicchi for Los Angeles Opera in 2008
  • Gianni Schicchi was to be the last opera Puccini ever completed


Gianni Schicchi is in rep at Opera Holland Park until 14 July.

Check out our Opera Holland Park Pinterest Board for more interesting facts on this year's season.

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Fri, 21 Oct 2011 03:38:50 -0700 Concert Focus - Nicholas Maw http://cls.posterous.com/concert-focus-nicholas-maw http://cls.posterous.com/concert-focus-nicholas-maw

A former student of Lennox Berkeley and Nadia Boulanger, Nicholas Maw was one of the great British composers to emerge in the late 1950s/early 1960s. A contemporary of Sir Peter Maxwell Davies and Sir Harrison Birtwistle, he came to prominence with the premiere of his Scenes and Arias at the BBC Proms in 1962. He is famous for his attempts to reconnect with the Romantic tradition and its preoccupation with sweeping melodies, which he believed had been broken by the onset of Modernism. His repertoire includes orchestral, chamber, solo instrumental, choral and operatic works, and our concert on Sunday 30 October includes some of the biggest milestones of his career.

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His sumptuous Violin Concerto, an expansive piece composed in a Brahmsian manner for a typical nineteenth century orchestra, jointly commissioned by the Philharmonia Orchestra and the Orchestra of St Luke's, New York, will be performed by international violin superstar Tasmin Little.

Sophie's Choice was Maw's final opera, based on William Styron's eponymous novel on the tragic subject of Auschwitz and a mother's choice as to which of her two children to send to the gas chambers. The suite will receive its UK premiere at the concert and was drawn from the opera a year after its world premiere at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in 2002. The Suite does not follow the sequence of the opera, but includes the sumptuous orchestral writing (one of the most highly praised facets of the opera).

The concert closes with two beautiful choral pieces, featuring the Holst Singers: One Foot in Eden Still, I Stand, based on a poem by Edwin Muir on the subject of mankind's Fall in the Garden of Eden, and Hymnus, Maw's sole work for mixed chorus and orchestra based on two early Christian texts.

Royal Academy of Music students
Holst Singers
Stephen Layton conductor
Christopher Austin conductor*
Tasmin Little violin

Violin Concerto*
Sophie's Choice Suite
One Foot in Eden Still, I Stand
Hymnus

Nicholas Maw: The Master
Queen Elizabeth Hall
Southbank Centre

Sunday 30 October 7.00pm
FREE pre concert activities from 4.00pm

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