Download or read book Backstage at the opera written by Rose Heylbut and published by . This book was released on 1977 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Backstage at the Revolution written by Victoria Johnson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 307 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On July 14, 1789, a crowd of angry French citizens en route to the Bastille broke into the Paris Opera and helped themselves to any sturdy weapon they could find. Yet despite its long association with the royal court, its special privileges, and the splendor of its performances, the Opera itself was spared, even protected, by Revolutionary officials. Victoria Johnson’s Backstage at the Revolution tells the story of how this legendary opera house, despite being a lightning rod for charges of tyranny and waste, weathered the most dramatic political upheaval in European history. Sifting through royal edicts, private letters, and Revolutionary records of all kinds, Johnson uncovers the roots of the Opera’s survival in its identity as a uniquely privileged icon of French culture—an identity established by the conditions of its founding one hundred years earlier under Louis XIV. Johnson’s rich cultural history moves between both epochs, taking readers backstage to see how a motley crew of singers, dancers, royal ministers, poet entrepreneurs, shady managers, and the king of France all played a part in the creation and preservation of one of the world’s most fabled cultural institutions.
Download or read book Backstage at the Opera written by Rose Heylbut and published by Heylbut Press. This book was released on 2007-03 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: PREFACE. THE Author of this very practical treatise on Scotch Loch - Fishing desires clearly that it may be of use to all who had it. He does not pretend to have written anything new, but to have attempted to put what he has to say in as readable a form as possible. Everything in the way of the history and habits of fish has been studiously avoided, and technicalities have been used as sparingly as possible. The writing of this book has afforded him pleasure in his leisure moments, and that pleasure would be much increased if he knew that the perusal of it would create any bond of sympathy between himself and the angling community in general. This section is interleaved with blank shects for the readers notes. The Author need hardly say that any suggestions addressed to the case of the publishers, will meet with consideration in a future edition. We do not pretend to write or enlarge upon a new subject. Much has been said and written-and well said and written too on the art of fishing but loch-fishing has been rather looked upon as a second-rate performance, and to dispel this idea is one of the objects for which this present treatise has been written. Far be it from us to say anything against fishing, lawfully practised in any form but many pent up in our large towns will bear us out when me say that, on the whole, a days loch-fishing is the most convenient. One great matter is, that the loch-fisher is depend- ent on nothing but enough wind to curl the water, -and on a large loch it is very seldom that a dead calm prevails all day, -and can make his arrangements for a day, weeks beforehand whereas the stream- fisher is dependent for a good take on the state of the water and however pleasant and easy it may be for one living near the banks of a good trout stream or river, it is quite another matter to arrange for a days river-fishing, if one is looking forward to a holiday at a date some weeks ahead. Providence may favour the expectant angler with a good day, and the water in order but experience has taught most of us that the good days are in the minority, and that, as is the case with our rapid running streams, -such as many of our northern streams are, -the water is either too large or too small, unless, as previously remarked, you live near at hand, and can catch it at its best. A common belief in regard to loch-fishing is, that the tyro and the experienced angler have nearly the same chance in fishing, -the one from the stern and the other from the bow of the same boat. Of all the absurd beliefs as to loch-fishing, this is one of the most absurd. Try it. Give the tyro either end of the boat he likes give him a cast of ally flies he may fancy, or even a cast similar to those which a crack may be using and if he catches one for every three the other has, he may consider himself very lucky. Of course there are lochs where the fish are not abundant, and a beginner may come across as many as an older fisher but we speak of lochs where there are fish to be caught, and where each has a fair chance. Again, it is said that the boatman has as much to do with catching trout in a loch as the angler. Well, we dont deny that. In an untried loch it is necessary to have the guidance of a good boatman but the same argument holds good as to stream-fishing...
Download or read book Cinderella and Company written by Manuela Hoelterhoff and published by Vintage. This book was released on 1999-10-05 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wickedly funny look at opera today--the feuds and deals, maestros and managers, divine voices and outsized egos--and a portrait of the opera world's newest superstar at a formative point in her life and career. In Cinderella & Company, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Manuela Hoelterhoff takes us on a two-year trip on the circuit with Cecilia Bartoli, the young mezzo-soprano who has captured an adoring public around the world. Rossini's Cenerentola is Bartoli's signature role, and Cinderella & Company tells the fairy-tale story of her life, which started on a modest street in Rome where the Fiat was the coach of choice. The lucky break, the meteoric rise, the starlit nights and nail-chewing days are all part of a narrative that shows Bartoli rehearsing, playing, traveling, eating, and charming us with her vivacity and dazzling virtuosity. Along the way, Hoelterhoff gives us an unusually vivid, behind-the-scenes look at the opera world. The first stop is Houston, where Bartoli brightens a droopy Cenerentola production; later scenes follow her to Disney World and to the Metropolitan Opera, where a fidgety cast awaits the flight-phobic mezzo's arrival for Mozart's Cosi fan tutte. Traveling to Santa Fe, Paris, Rome, Venice, and London, Hoelterhoff drops in on opening nights and boardroom meetings, talks to managers and agents, describes where the money comes from, and survives one of the longest galas in history. Here too are tantalizing glimpses of divinities large and small: Kathleen Battle's famously chilly limousine ride; Plácido Domingo flying through three time zones to step into the boots of an ailing Otello; Luciano Pavarotti aiming for high C in his twilight years. And we meet the present players in Bartoli's world: Roberto Alagna and Angela Gheorghiu, a.k.a. the Love Couple; Jane Eaglen, the Wagnerian web potato monitoring her cyberspace fan mail; the appealing soprano Renée Fleming, finally on the brink of stardom. At once informed and accessible, Cinderella & Company brings the world of grand opera into sharp focus--right up to the last glimpse of Cecilia Bartoli waving triumphantly from Cinderella's wedding cake.
Download or read book Backstage at the Opera written by Joan Chatfield-Taylor and published by Chronicle Books (CA). This book was released on 1982 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a glimpse backstage into one of the world's great opera houses: San Francisco Opera House. It is also and insider's look at the process of creating what is probably the world's most complicated art form. Behind each superstar on stage is a support staff of hundreds, even thousands of people, most of whom are highly specialized. In following the process, the authors watched productions grow from telephone negotiations through intensive rehearslas into the full-scale extravaganza the audience sees. --from Preface.
Download or read book Fortissimo written by William Murray and published by Crown Publishing Group (NY). This book was released on 2005 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This insider look at what it takes to make it in the world of opera is unveiled through the lives of 12 young singers at the Lyric Opera of Chicago.
Download or read book Haunted Theaters written by Tom Ogden and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2009-08-25 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Haunted Theaters comprises more than two dozen suspenseful stories of spooky happenings and ghostly tales in historic theaters, opera houses, and other stages in the United States (Broadway and beyond), Canada, and England.
Download or read book Backstage at the Metropolitan Opera written by Rose Heylbut and published by . This book was released on 1977 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Behind the Scenes at the Opera written by Mary Watkins Cushing and published by . This book was released on 1925 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Timing is Everything written by Moffatt Oxenbould and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 728 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Moffatt Oxenbould has lived and breathed opera for more than forty years. And from the first, his career has been linked with what would eventually become Australia's national opera company. From stage manager to artistic director, Oxenbould's career has been an outstanding one, growing in tandem with the Opera as it developed into the prestigious and renowned company it is today. Genial, deeply knowledgeable and thoroughly entertaining, Moffat Oxenbould's memoirs are filled with riveting backstage stories of divas and disasters, outback tours and stunning triumphs, of all the international and local stars and productions for which the Opera is justly renowned, as well as the significant struggles for survival that the company has faced in the last five decades. Having worked with everyone from Pavarotti to Sutherland, Luhrmann to Kosky, David Hobson to Simone Young, Oxenbould's story is fascinating both in its retelling of a life spent backstage and as the story of the life of an opera company. Timing Is Everything is essential reading for anyone with a drop of greasepaint in their blood and a song in their heart.
Download or read book Introduction to Production written by Robert I. Sutherland-Cohen and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-09-01 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction to Production: Creating Theatre Onstage, Backstage, & Offstage defines the collaborative art of making theatre and the various job positions that go into realizing a production. Beginning with an overview of the art and industry of theatre, the book shows how theatre has evolved through history. The book then breaks down the nuts and bolts of the industry by looking at each professional role within it: from the topmost position of the producer down to the gopher, or production assistant. Each of these positions are defined along with their respective duties, rules, and resources that figure in obtaining these jobs. Each chapter offers exercises, links to videos and websites, review quizzes, and suggested readings to learn more about the creation and production of theatre.
Download or read book Backstage at the Opera written by Sarah Lenton and published by Robson Books Limited. This book was released on 1998 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chronicles the production of Handel's Xerxes at the English National Opera.
Download or read book Molto Agitato written by Johanna Fiedler and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2003-09-09 with total page 445 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If the opera world is full of “intrigue, double meanings, and devious dramatics,” then no place exemplifies this more than the world-famous Metropolitan Opera, where politics, ambition, and oversized egos have traditionally taken center stage along with some of the world’s richest music. Drawing on her fifteen years as its press representative, Johanna Fiedler explodes the traditional secrecy that surrounds the Met in this wonderfully entertaining account of its tumuluous history. Fiedler chronicles the Met’s early days as a home for legends like Toscanini, Mahler, and Caruso, and gives a fascinating account of the middle years when haughty blue-bloods battled stubborn adminstrators for control of a company that would emerge as America’s premiere opera house. She takes us behind the grand gold-curtain stage in more recent years as well, showing how musical superstars like Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo, and Kathleen Battle have electrified performances and scandalized the public. But most revelatory are Fiedler’s portrayals of James Levine and Joseph Volpe and their practically parallel ascendancies—Levine rising from prodigy to artistic director, Volpe advancing from stagehand to general manager—and their once strained relationship. Weaving together the personal, economic, and artistic struggles that characterize the Met’s long and vibrant history, Molto Agitato is a must-read saga of power, wealth, and, above all, great music.
Download or read book From the Score to the Stage written by Evan Baker (Opera historian) and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Without scenery, costumes, and stage action, an opera would be little more than a concert. But in the audience, we know little (and think less) about the enormous efforts of those involved in bringing an opera to life--by the stagehands who shift scenery, the scenic artists who create beautiful backdrops, the electricians who focus the spotlights, and the stage manager who calls them and the singers to their places during the performance. The first comprehensive history of the behind-the-scenes world of opera production and staging, From the Score to the Stage follows the evolution of visual style and set design in continental Europe from its birth in the seventeenth century up to today. In clear, witty prose, Evan Baker covers all the major players and pieces involved in getting an opera onto the stage, from the stage director who creates the artistic concept for the production and guides the singers' interpretation of their roles to the blocking of singers and placement of scenery. He concentrates on the people--composers, librettists, designers, and technicians--as well as the theaters and events that generated developments in opera production. Additional topics include the many difficulties in performing an opera, the functions of impresarios, and the business of music publishing. Delving into the absorbing and often neglected history of stage directing, theater architecture and technology, and scenic and lighting design, Baker nimbly links these technical aspects of opera to actual performances and performers, and the social context in which they appeared. Out of these details arise illuminating discussions of individual productions that cast new light on the operas of Wagner, Verdi, and others. Packed with nearly two hundred color illustrations, From the Score to the Stage is a revealing, always entertaining look at what happens before the curtain goes up on opening night at the opera house.
Download or read book Cinderella and Company written by Manuela Hoelterhoff and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2010-12-15 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wickedly funny look at opera today--the feuds and deals, maestros and managers, divine voices and outsized egos--and a portrait of the opera world's newest superstar at a formative point in her life and career. In Cinderella & Company, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Manuela Hoelterhoff takes us on a two-year trip on the circuit with Cecilia Bartoli, the young mezzo-soprano who has captured an adoring public around the world. Rossini's Cenerentola is Bartoli's signature role, and Cinderella & Company tells the fairy-tale story of her life, which started on a modest street in Rome where the Fiat was the coach of choice. The lucky break, the meteoric rise, the starlit nights and nail-chewing days are all part of a narrative that shows Bartoli rehearsing, playing, traveling, eating, and charming us with her vivacity and dazzling virtuosity. Along the way, Hoelterhoff gives us an unusually vivid, behind-the-scenes look at the opera world. The first stop is Houston, where Bartoli brightens a droopy Cenerentola production; later scenes follow her to Disney World and to the Metropolitan Opera, where a fidgety cast awaits the flight-phobic mezzo's arrival for Mozart's Cosi fan tutte. Traveling to Santa Fe, Paris, Rome, Venice, and London, Hoelterhoff drops in on opening nights and boardroom meetings, talks to managers and agents, describes where the money comes from, and survives one of the longest galas in history. Here too are tantalizing glimpses of divinities large and small: Kathleen Battle's famously chilly limousine ride; Plácido Domingo flying through three time zones to step into the boots of an ailing Otello; Luciano Pavarotti aiming for high C in his twilight years. And we meet the present players in Bartoli's world: Roberto Alagna and Angela Gheorghiu, a.k.a. the Love Couple; Jane Eaglen, the Wagnerian web potato monitoring her cyberspace fan mail; the appealing soprano Renée Fleming, finally on the brink of stardom. At once informed and accessible, Cinderella & Company brings the world of grand opera into sharp focus--right up to the last glimpse of Cecilia Bartoli waving triumphantly from Cinderella's wedding cake.
Download or read book The Phantom of the Opera the First Year Backstage written by Marcus Tylor and published by Lulu Enterprises Uk Limited. This book was released on 2008-01-29 with total page 244 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a catalogue of photographs taken behind the scenes during the first year of the musical 'Phantom of the Opera'. The photographs contained give a unique insight into life backstage at Her Majesty's theatre, London, and include images of the original cast members, from the principals, Michael Crawford, Sarah Brightman and Steve Barton, to the chorus. These photos capture the ambiance, and eeriness, of a production that takes the audience back to 19th century Paris, as well as including many shots of real life backstage. Over 80 million people have seen 'Phantom' worldwide, but it is this original London cast which made the only available recording of the show, so it is this cast that is known best to the worldwide audience. Few of these photos have even been seen by others, although Hal Prince, the original director of the show, said these were the best photographs of the show he had ever seen. This publication is intended primarily as a source of the prints. But is a valuable archive in itself.
Download or read book Fortissimo written by William Murray and published by Crown Archetype. This book was released on 2010-04-28 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: H. L. Mencken declared that “the opera is to music what a bawdy house is to a cathedral.” It was not meant as a compliment, but to William Murray, former New Yorker staff writer and aspiring opera singer, a bawdy house is an apt metaphor for the opera: a place of confusion, high and low drama, fleshly pleasures and raucous song. In Fortissimo, Murray follows twelve young singers in the Lyric Opera of Chicago’s training program, the prestigious Opera Center for American Artists, through the 2003–2004 season. In the course of the year, these singers attend countless coaching sessions, inspiring master classes, nerve-racking auditions and grueling rehearsals—and finally perform with some of the most celebrated names (and spectacular egos) in opera, from Samuel Ramey to José Cura and Natalie Dessay. While chronicling their progress, Murray offers an insider’s look at the different aspects of the opera world that influence a young singer’s success, a world filled with temperamental maestros, ambitious directors, old-world tradition and sacred monsters. Weaving recollections of his own days training in New York, Rome and Milan in the 1950s with the personal and artistic struggles of the young singers in Chicago today, Murray lays bare the staggering ambition and relentless will required to achieve a career in the arts. As he writes, “Becoming a successful opera singer—stepping out on a huge stage to try to fill the house with your voice, to bring an audience of thirty-six hundred people to its feet—is as risky in its own peculiar way as embarking on a career as a matador. You can triumph, you can struggle to survive or you can perish from your wounds.” Fortissimo is a delicious tale of rising talents, angst and heartache and small triumphs, and the music that inspires it all.
