Today, The Grandma continues relaxing at home. She has been listening to one of her favourite operas, Hänsel und Gretel, the masterpiece composed but EngelbertHumperdinck that was first performed on a day like today in 1893.
Hansel and Gretel, in German Hänsel und Gretel, is an opera by nineteenth-century composerEngelbert Humperdinck, who described it as a Märchenoper, a fairy-tale opera.
The libretto was written by Humperdinck'ssister, Adelheid Wette, based on the Grimmbrothers' fairy tale Hansel and Gretel. It is much admired for its folk music-inspired themes, one of the most famous being the Abendsegen or Evening Benediction from act 2.
The idea for the opera was proposed to Humperdinck by his sister, who approached him about writing music for songs that she had written for her children for Christmas based on Hansel and Gretel. After several revisions, the musical sketches and the songs were turned into a full-scale opera.
Humperdinck composed Hansel and Gretel in Frankfurt in 1891 and 1892.
The opera was first performed in the Hoftheater in Weimar on 23 December 1893, conducted by Richard Strauss. It has been associated with Christmas since its earliest performances, and today it is still most often performed at Christmastime.
Hansel and Gretel was first conducted in Weimar by Richard Strauss in1893, followed by its Hamburg premiere on 25 September 1894, conducted by Gustav Mahler.
Its first performance outside Germany was in Basel, Switzerland, on 16 November 1894.
The first performance in England was in London on 26 December 1894, at Daly's Theatre and its first United States performance was on 8 October 1895 in New York.
The first performance in Australia was on 6 April 1907, at the Princess Theatre, Melbourne.
In English-speaking countries, Hansel and Gretel is most often performed in English. The long-time standard English translation was by Constance Bache. In the United States, the opera was often performed in a translation by Norman Kelley written for the Metropolitan Opera's 1967 production by Nathaniel Merrill and Robert O'Hearn.
In 1987 a darkly comic new production with English translation by David Pountney was created for the English National Opera in London. Since 2007, the Met has performed the work in a production originally created for the Welsh National Opera using Pountney's translation.
Today, The Grandma is at home. There are some days in which is difficult to go out and enjoy the city because it receives unpleasant visits of people who only want to create disturbs and confrontation. Today is one of these days.
The Grandma has relaxed listening to some classic music. She loves this genre and she likes listening to Luciano Pavarotti, her favourite tenor, the Italian artist who was born on a day like today in 1935.
Before listening to Pavarotti'ssongs, The Grandma has read a new chapter of KatherineMansfield's The Garden Party and Other Stories.
Luciano Pavarotti (12 October 1935-6 September 2007) was an Italianoperatic tenor who also crossed over into popular music, eventually becoming one of the most commercially successful tenors of all time. He made numerous recordings of complete operas and individual arias, gaining worldwide fame for the quality of his tone, and eventually established himself as one of the finest tenors of the 20th century, achieving the honorific title king of the high C's.
Pavarotti became well known for his televised concerts and media appearances. From the beginning of his professional career as a tenor in 1961 in Italy to his final performance of Nessun dorma at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Pavarotti was at his best in bel canto operas, pre-Aida Verdi roles, and Puccini works such as La bohème, Tosca, Turandot and Madama Butterfly.
He sold over 100 million records, and the first Three Tenors recording became the best-selling classical album of all time. Pavarotti was also noted for his charity work on behalf of refugees and the Red Cross, amongst others. He died from pancreatic cancer on 6 September 2007.
Luciano Pavarotti was born in 1935 on the outskirts of Modena in NorthernItaly, the son of Fernando Pavarotti, a baker and amateur tenor, and Adele Venturi, a cigar factory worker.
Luciano Pavarotti
Although he spoke fondly of his childhood, the family had little money; its four members were crowded into a two-room apartment. According to Pavarotti, his father had a fine tenor voice but rejected the possibility of a singing career because of nervousness. World War II forced the family out of the city in 1943. For the following year they rented a single room from a farmer in the neighbouring countryside, where the young Pavarottideveloped an interest in farming.After abandoning the dream of becoming a football goalkeeper, Pavarotti spent seven years in vocal training.
Pavarotti's earliest musical influences were his father's recordings, most of them featuring the popular tenors of the day -Beniamino Gigli, Giovanni Martinelli, Tito Schipa, and Enrico Caruso.
Pavarotti's favourite tenor and idol was Giuseppe Di Stefano and he was also deeply influenced by Mario Lanza, saying: In my teens I used to go to Mario Lanza movies and then come home and imitate him in the mirror. At around the age of nine he began singing with his father in a small local church choir.
After what appears to have been a normal childhood with a typical interest in sports -in Pavarotti's case football above all, he graduated from the Scuola Magistrale and faced the dilemma of a career choice. He was interested in pursuing a career as a professional football goalkeeper, but his mother convinced him to train as a teacher. He subsequently taught in an elementary school for two years but finally allowed his interest in music to win out. Recognising the risk involved, his father gave his consent only reluctantly.
Pavarotti began the serious study of music in 1954 at the age of 19 with Arrigo Pola, a respected teacher and professional tenor in Modena who offered to teach him without remuneration. According to conductor Richard Bonynge, Pavarotti never learned to read music.
In 1955, he experienced his first singing success when he was a member of the Corale Rossini, a male voice choir from Modena that also included his father, which won first prize at the International Eisteddfod in Llangollen, Wales. He later said that this was the most important experience of his life, and that it inspired him to become a professional singer. At about this time Pavarotti first met Adua Veroni. They married in 1961.
Luciano Pavarotti
When his teacher Arrigo Pola moved to Japan, Pavarotti became a student of Ettore Campogalliani, who at that time was also teaching Pavarotti's childhood friend, Mirella Freni, whose mother worked with Luciano's mother in the cigar factory.
Like Pavarotti, Freni went on to become a successful opera singer; they would go on to collaborate in various stage performances and recordings together. During his years of musical study, Pavarotti held part-time jobs in order to sustain himself -first as an elementary school teacher and then as an insurance salesman. The first six years of study resulted in only a few recitals, all in small towns and without pay. When a nodule developed on his vocal cords, causing a disastrous concert in Ferrara, he decided to give up singing.
Pavarotti attributed his immediate improvement to the psychological release connected with this decision. Whatever the reason, the nodule not only disappeared but, as he related in his autobiography: Everything I had learned came together with my natural voice to make the sound I had been struggling so hard to achieve.
Pavarotti began his career as a tenor in smaller regional Italian opera houses, making his debut as Rodolfo in La bohème at the Teatro Municipale inReggio Emilia in April 1961.
He made his first international appearance in La traviata in Belgrade,Yugoslavia. Very early in his career, on 23 February 1963, he debuted at the Vienna State Opera in the same role. In March and April 1963 Vienna saw Pavarotti again as Rodolfo and as Duca di Mantova in Rigoletto. The same year saw his first concert outside Italy when he sang in Dundalk, Ireland for the St Cecilia's Gramophone Society and his Royal Opera House debut, where he replaced an indisposed Giuseppe Di Stefano as Rodolfo.
At the beginning of the 1980s, he set up The Pavarotti International Voice Competition for young singers, performing with the winners in 1982 in excerpts of La bohème and L'elisir d'amore. The second competition, in 1986, staged excerpts of La bohème and Un ballo in maschera.
Luciano Pavarotti
To celebrate the 25th anniversary of his career, he brought the winners of the competition to Italy for gala performances of La bohèmeinModena and Genoa, and then to China where they staged performances of La bohèmeinBeijing (Peking).
To conclude the visit, Pavarotti performed the inaugural concert in the Great Hall of the People before 10,000 people, receiving a standing ovation for nine effortless high Cs. The third competition in 1989 again staged performances of L'elisir d'amore and Un ballo in maschera. The winners of the fifth competition accompanied Pavarotti in performances in Philadelphia in 1997.
Pavarotti became even better known throughout the world in 1990 when his rendition of the aria Nessun dorma from Giacomo Puccini's Turandot was taken as the theme song of BBC's coverage of the 1990 FIFA World Cup in Italy. The aria achieved pop status, became the World Cup soundtrack, and it remained his trademark song.
Pavarotti's rise to stardom was not without occasional difficulties, however. He earned a reputation as The King of Cancellations by frequently backing out of performances, and his unreliable nature led to poor relationships with some opera houses.
Over an eight-year period, Pavarotti had cancelled 26 out of 41 scheduled appearances at the Lyric, and the decisive move by Krainik to ban him for life was well noted throughout the opera world, after the performer walked away from a season premiere less than two weeks before rehearsals began, saying pain from a sciatic nerve required two months of treatment.
Pavarotti began his farewell tour in 2004, at the age of 69, performing one last time in old and new locations, after more than four decades on the stage. On 13 March 2004, Pavarotti gave his last performance in an opera at the New York Metropolitan Opera, for which he received a long standing ovation for his role as the painter Mario Cavaradossi in Giacomo Puccini's Tosca.
On 1 December 2004, he announced a 40-city farewell tour. Pavarotti and his manager, Terri Robson, commissioned impresario Harvey Goldsmith to produce the Worldwide Farewell Tour. His last full-scale performance was at the end of a two-month Australasian tour in Taiwan in December 2005.
Luciano Pavarotti
In March 2005, Pavarotti underwent neck surgery to repair two vertebrae. In early 2006, he underwent further back surgery and contracted an infection while in the hospital in New York, forcing cancellation of concerts in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K.
On 10 February 2006, Pavarotti sang Nessun dorma at the 2006 Winter Olympics opening ceremony in Turin, Italy, at his final performance. In the last act of the opening ceremony, his performance received the longest and loudest ovation of the night from the international crowd.
Pavarotti annually hosted the Pavarotti & Friends charity concerts in his home town of Modena, joining with singers from all parts of the music industry to raise money for several UN causes. Concerts were held for War Child, and victims of war and civil unrest in Bosnia, Guatemala, Kosovo and Iraq.
After the war in Bosnia, he financed and established the Pavarotti Music Centre in the southern city of Mostar to offer Bosnia's artists the opportunity to develop their skills. For these contributions, the city of Sarajevo named him an honorary citizen in 2006.
He performed at benefit concerts to raise money for victims of tragedies such as the Spitak earthquake that killed 25,000 people in northern Armenia in December 1988, and sang Gounod's Ave Maria with legendary French pop music star and ethnic Armenian Charles Aznavour.
He was a close friend of Diana, Princess of Wales. They raised money for the elimination of land mines worldwide. He was invited to sing at her funeral service, but declined to sing, as he felt he could not sing well with his grief in his throat. Nonetheless, he attended the service.
In 1998, he was appointed the United Nations Messenger of Peace, using his fame to raise awareness of UN issues, including the Millennium Development Goals, HIV/AIDS, child rights, urban slums and poverty.
Luciano Pavarotti
In 1999, Pavarotti performed a charity benefit concert in Beirut, to mark Lebanon's re-emergence on the world stage after a brutal 15 year civil war. The largest concert held in Beirut since the end of the war, it was attended by 20,000 people who travelled from countries as distant as Saudi Arabia and Bulgaria.
In 1999 he also hosted a charity benefit concert to build a school in Guatemala, for Guatemalan civil war orphans. It was named after him Centro Educativo Pavarotti. Now the foundation of nobel prize winner Rigoberta Menchú Tum is running the school.
In 2001, Pavarotti received the Nansen Medal from the UN High Commission for Refugees for his efforts raising money on behalf of refugees worldwide. Through benefit concerts and volunteer work, he has raised more than any other individual.
Also in 2001, Pavarotti was chosen one of that year's five recipients by the President and First Lady as an honoree for their lifetime achievements in the arts at the White House, followed by the Kennedy Center; the Kennedy Center Honors, He was surprised by the appearance of Secretary-General of the United Nations and that year's winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Kofi Annan, who lauded him for his contribution to humankind. Six months prior, Pavarotti had held a large charity concert for Afghan refugees, particularly children in his home town of Modena.
Other honours he received include the Freedom of London Award and The Red Cross Award for Services to Humanity, for his work in raising money for that organisation, and the 1998 MusiCares Person of the Year, given to humanitarian heroes by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.
While proceeding with an international farewell tour, Pavarotti was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in July 2006. The tenor fought back against the implications of this diagnosis, undergoing major abdominal surgery and making plans for the resumption and conclusion of his singing commitments, but he died at his home in Modena on 6 September 2007.
Today, The Grandma starts a new English course. This time, she is going to offer an Elementary one. It's a rainy day after Halloween. Rainy days are the best to listen to opera and because of this TheGrandma has decided to read about one of her favourite sopranos of all times, Victòria dels Àngels. She and Maria Callas are, in The Grandma's opinion, the two most beautiful opera voices in history.
Victòria dels Àngels aka Victória de los Ángeles (1 November 1923-15 January 2005) was a Catalan operatic lyric soprano and recitalist whose career began after the Second World War and reached its height in the years from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s.
She was born Victoria de los Ángeles López García in the porter's lodge of the University of Barcelona to Bernardo Lopez Gómez, a university caretaker, and Victoria García. She studied voice under Dolores Frau and guitar with Graciano Tarragó at the Barcelona Conservatory, graduating in just three years in 1941 at age 18.
Victòria dels Àngels
She died on 15 January 2005 of heart failure in her native Barcelona, aged 81 and was buried in the Montjuïc Cemetery, Barcelona. She had been hospitalised for a bronchial infection since 31 December 2004.
In 1941, while still a student, she made her operatic debut as Mimì in La bohème at the Liceu, afterwards resuming her musical studies. In 1945, she returned to the Liceu to make her professional debut as the Countess in The Marriage of Figaro.
After winning first prize in the Geneva International Music Competition in 1947, she sang Salud in Falla's La vida breve with the BBC in London in 1948. She was accompanied on many of her early recordings by both Graciano Tarragó and his daughter, the guitarist Renata Tarragó.
In her early years in particular, she also sang a lot of florid music. While she later made fewer appearances in opera, she continued to give recitals focusing on mostly French, German Lieder and Spanish art songs or songs with Nahuatl texts by Mexican composer Salvador Moreno Manzano into the 1990s.
In 1949, she made her first appearance in the Paris Opéra as Marguerite. The following year, she made her debut in Salzburg and at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden as Mimì, and in the United States with a recital at Carnegie Hall.
In March 1951, she made her Metropolitan Opera debut in New York as Marguérite, and she went on to sing with the company for ten years. In 1952, she became an instant favourite in Buenos Aires at the Teatro Colón as the title role in Madamme Butterfly. She returned to Buenos Aires many times until 1979. She sang at La Scala in Milan from 1950 to 1956 and, in 1957, she sang at the Vienna State Opera.
Victòria dels Àngels in Madamme Butterfly
After making her debut at the Bayreuth Festival as Elisabeth in Tannhäuser in 1961, she devoted herself principally to a concert career. However, for the next twenty years, she continued to make occasional appearances in one of her favourite operatic roles, Bizet's Carmen.
She was among the first Catalan-born operatic singers to record the complete opera, having done so in 1958 in a recording conducted by Sir Thomas Beecham, using the recitatives added by Ernest Guiraud after Bizet's death.
Though Carmen lay comfortably in her range, she nevertheless also sang major soprano roles, the best known of which were Donna Anna, Manon, Nedda, Desdemona, Cio-Cio-San, Mimi, Violetta and Mélisande.
Victòria Dels Àngels performed regularly in song recitals with pianists Gerald Moore and Geoffrey Parsons, occasionally appearing with other eminent singers, such as Elisabeth Schwarzkopf and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. Her recitals of Catalan and Spanish songs with the pianist Alicia de Larrocha were also legendary. She sang at the Barcelona Olympic Games in 1992, aged 68.
She made many widely acclaimed recordings, including those of La vida breve, La bohème, Pagliacci, and Madamme Butterfly. The last three paired her with the outstanding tenor Jussi Björling. She was particularly appreciative of Björling's unique talent. In her biography by Peter Roberts, Dels Àngels noted that in despite of technical developments, none of the Jussi Björling recordings give you the true sound of his voice. It was a far, far more beautiful voice than you can hear on the recordings he left.
The government of France named her a Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur in 1994.
Her obituary in The Times (UK) noted that she must be counted among the finest singers of the second half of the 20th century. James Hinton, Jr. praised her meltingly lovely middle voice. Elizabeth Forbes, writing in UK's The Independent also noted that It is impossible to imagine a more purely beautiful voice than that of Victoria de los Ángeles at the height of her career in the 1950s and early 1960s.
She was ranked number 3, after Maria Callas and Dame Joan Sutherland, in the BBC Music Magazine 's List of The Top Twenty Sopranos of All Time in 2007.
