Category: Biographies
The year 1600 marked the beginning of a new era in musical history, for in that year the first public performance of regular opera took place in Florence, when the "Eurydice" of Rinuccini and Peri was given in honor of the wedding of Marie de' Medici and Henry IV. of France. T...
The contralto in an opera company has a somewhat thankless task. Her fate is to be either a boy, or else a nurse, duenna, or some character which implies age. She frequently is...
5. CHAPTER V.At the middle of the century critics began to cry out about the decadence of the vocal art, much as they have done at intervals during the past two centuries, and with as little...
7. CHAPTER VII.To every opera-goer of the past ten years the name of Nordica has become almost as familiar as that of Patti was during the last generation. Nordica, or rather, Giglia Nordica,...
2. CHAPTER II.It is impossible in these chapters to make more than a passing sketch of many famous singers, and we must therefore be content with the mere mention of such as Fodor, Camporese,...
8. CHAPTER VIII.The operatic tenor is frequently as much of a trial to the impresario as the soprano. Brignoli would feel hurt unless he received what he considered the proper amount of applaus...
6. CHAPTER VI.The decade beginning with the year 1860 was remarkably prolific in singers, producing not only the prima donnas whose careers we have reviewed in the previous chapters, but also...
3. CHAPTER III.Contemporary with Sontag, Malibran, and Grisi, was Madame Schroeder-Devrient, who was one of the earliest and greatest interpreters of German opera. Though others have surpassed...
4. CHAPTER IV.The years immediately following 1850 were rather barren of stars of the first magnitude in the line of sopranos, although Stockhausen, Faure, Wachtel, and Nicolini all belong to...
1. CHAPTER I.The year 1600 marked the beginning of a new era in musical history, for in that year the first public performance of regular opera took place in Florence, when the "Eurydice" of...