Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that answer the question.
Query: Where was Tristan und Isolde first performed?
This is an audio and video discography of Tristan und Isolde, an opera by Richard Wagner which was first performed on 10 June 1865 in Munich.
Wagner's composition of "Tristan und Isolde" was inspired by the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer (particularly "The World as Will and Representation"), as well as by Wagner's affair with Mathilde Wesendonck. Widely acknowledged as one of the peaks of the operatic repertoire, "Tristan" was notable for Wagner's unprecedented use of chromaticism, tonal ambiguity, orchestral colour and harmonic suspension.
Another composer to rework material from "Tristan" was Emmanuel Chabrier in his humorous "Souvenirs de Munich – quadrilles on themes from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde". These were augmented and orchestrated by Markus Lehmann in 1988. Leopold Stokowski made a series of purely orchestral "Symphonic Syntheses" of Wagner's operas during his time as conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, bringing to concert audiences of the 1920s and '30s music they might not otherwise have heard. He made a 'long version' of music from "Tristan and Isolde" which consisted mainly of the act 1 prelude, the from act 2 and the from act 3. A shorter version of music from the 2nd and 3rd acts was called "Love Music from "Tristan and Isolde"". He made recordings of both versions on 78s and again on LP.
Although Voigt's Fach is that of the "dramatischer" soprano, she has recently—overlooking the 2003 Vienna performances as Isolde—made the transition into singing the "" soprano with her interpretation of Isolde from Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde". She sang the role in the 2007/08 season at the Metropolitan Opera and in the 2008/09 season at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. During one of the performances at the Met, Voigt took ill and had to leave the stage. She returned at the next performance of "Tristan und Isolde" and finished the run to acclaim by most reviewers, including "The New York Times". However, some critics, including "The New York Sun", panned her performance.
Wagner began composing the music for "Das Rheingold" between November 1853 and September 1854, following it immediately with "Die Walküre" (written between June 1854 and March 1856). He began work on the third "Ring" opera, which he now called simply "Siegfried," probably in September 1856, but by June 1857 he had completed only the first two acts. He decided to put the work aside to concentrate on a new idea: "Tristan und Isolde," based on the Arthurian love story "Tristan and Iseult."
One source of inspiration for "Tristan und Isolde" was the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, notably his "The World as Will and Representation," to which Wagner had been introduced in 1854 by his poet friend Georg Herwegh. Wagner later called this the most important event of his life. His personal circumstances certainly made him an easy convert to what he understood to be Schopenhauer's philosophy, a deeply pessimistic view of the human condition. He remained an adherent of Schopenhauer for the rest of his life.
The world's first opera was "Dafne" by Jacopo Peri, which appeared in Florence in 1598. Three decades later Heinrich Schütz set the same libretto in a translation by the poet Martin Opitz, thus creating the first ever German-language opera. The music to Schütz's "Dafne" is now lost and details of the performance are sketchy, but it is known to have been written to celebrate the marriage of Landgrave Georg II of Hessen-Darmstadt to Princess Sophia Eleonora of Saxony in Torgau in 1627. As in Italy, the first patrons of opera in Germany and Austria were royalty and the nobility, and they tended to favour composers and singers from south of the Alps. Antonio Cesti was particularly successful, providing the huge operatic extravaganza "Il pomo d'oro" for the imperial court in Vienna in 1668. Opera in Italian would continue to exercise a considerable sway over German-speaking lands throughout the Baroque and Classical periods. Nevertheless, native forms were developing too. In Nuremberg in 1644, Sigmund Staden produced the "spiritual pastorale", "Seelewig", which foreshadows the "Singspiel", a genre of German-language opera in which arias alternate with spoken dialogue. "Seelewig" was a moral allegory inspired by the example of contemporary school dramas and is the first German opera whose music has survived.
In 1984, Austrian culture minister Helmut Zilk designated Drese as director of the Vienna State Opera in Vienna. Drese began his tenure in 1986 and chose Claudio Abbado as the State Opera's music director. In the following five years, the State Opera experienced a very fruitful period. Abbado conducted both new productions and revivals, among them "Un ballo in maschera" (staged by Gianfranco de Bosio, designed by Emmanuele Luzzati), "L'Italiana in Algeri" (staged and designed by Ponnelle), "Carmen" (revival of the 1978 Franco Zeffirelli-production), "Pelléas et Mélisande" (staged by Antoine Vitez and designed by Yannis Kokkos), "Il viaggio a Reims" (staged by Luca Ronconi and designed by Gae Aulenti), "Don Carlo" (staged and designed by Pier Luigi Pizzi), "Don Giovanni" (staged by Luc Bondy, with Ruggero Raimondi as the Don), "Le nozze di Figaro" (staged by Jonathan Miller). Drese initiated cycle of all the major Mozart-operas.
The musical style which developed from these early experiments was called monody. In the 1590s, monody developed into a vehicle capable of extended dramatic expression through the work of composers such as Jacopo Peri, working in conjunction with poet Ottavio Rinuccini. In 1598, Peri and Rinuccini produced "Dafne", an entire drama sung in monodic style: this was the first creation of a new form called "opera". Though Peri's Dafne was the first performed opera, its music has been lost to the centuries. Instead, L'Euridice, his second opera is most-often heralded as the history-making work. The new form of opera also borrowed, especially for the librettos, from an existing pastoral poetic form called the intermedio; it was mainly the musical style that was new. The instrumentation for an opera from the Camerata composers (Caccini and Peri) was written for a handful of gambas, lutes, and harpsichord or organ for continuo.
Die Herzogin von Chicago ("The Duchess of Chicago") is an operetta in two acts, a prologue, and an epilogue. The music was composed by Hungarian composer Emmerich Kálmán with a libretto by Julius Brammer and Alfred Grünwald. It premiered in Vienna at the Theater an der Wien, on April 5, 1928 and played for 372 performances. The work was presented in out-of-town tryouts in Newark, New Jersey and Springfield, Massachusetts by the Shuberts in 1929, but it did not make it to Broadway. The piece was forgotten until 1997, when the Lubo Opera Company performed it in concert in New York, after which Light Opera Works of Illinois performed the work in 1998 in a fully staged version with a new translation by Philip Kraus and Gregory Opelka. In 1999, Richard Bonynge made a recording of the work, which revived international interest in it.
"Ballet des Polonais" was one of the first works to be recognized as a true court ballet. The spectacle was commissioned by Catherine de’ Medici in 1573 to celebrate the election of her second son, Henry of Anjou, as King of Poland. Performed at the Tuileries Palace and organized by the Italian dancing master, Balthasar de Beaujoyeulx, the hour-long ballet consisted of sixteen amateur French ladies representing the sixteen provinces of France. Describing it as the most beautiful ballet ever made on earth, the court observer Brantome recounted that they “danced their ballet so curiously designed, with so many turns, swerves, and sinuosities, interlacings and minglings, confrontations and withdrawals, that [it was surprising that] no lady ever failed to be at her appointed turn or place.” Although its combination of verse, song and dance had been used before, the intricate figure dancing involved in the "Ballet des Polonais" marked the beginning of the French style that would become the dominant continental school over the next century.
Ballet was further shaped by the French "ballet de cour", which consisted of social dances performed by the nobility in tandem with music, speech, verse, song, pageant, decor and costume. When Catherine de' Medici, an Italian aristocrat with an interest in the arts, married the French crown heir Henry II, she brought her enthusiasm for dance to France and provided financial support. Catherine's glittering entertainments supported the aims of court politics and usually were organized around mythological themes. The first "ballet de cour" was the "Ballet de Polonais." This Ballet was performed in 1573 on the occasion of the visit of the Polish Ambassador. It was choreographed by Balthasar de Beaaujoyeulx and featured an hour-long dance for sixteen women, each representing a French province. "Ballet Comique de la Reine" (1581), which was also choreographed and directed by Balthasar de Beaujoyeulx, was commissioned by Louise of Lorraine, queen consort of King Henry III, son of Catherine, to celebrate the marriage of Henry's favorite the Duke de Joyeuse to Marguerite de Lorraine, the sister of Queen Louise. The ballet lasted for more than five hours and was danced by twenty four dancers: twelve naiades and twelve pages.
The first performance of "Manon Lescaut" took place in the Teatro Regio in Turin on 1 February 1893; it was Puccini's third opera and his first great success. The opera was first performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York on 18 January 1907 in the presence of the composer with Lina Cavalieri in the title role, Enrico Caruso as des Grieux, Antonio Scotti as Lescaut, and Arturo Vigna conducting.
Antigone, also known as "The Antigone of Sophocles", is an adaptation by the German dramatist Bertolt Brecht of Hölderlin's translation of Sophocles' tragedy. It was first performed at the Chur Stadttheater in Switzerland in 1948, with Brecht's second wife Helene Weigel, in the lead role. This was Brecht's first directorial collaboration with Caspar Neher.
In 1760, one year after Voltaire published "Candide", a sequel was published with the name . This work is attributed both to Thorel de Campigneulles, a writer unknown today, and Henri Joseph Du Laurens, who is suspected of having habitually plagiarised Voltaire. The story continues in this sequel with Candide having new adventures in the Ottoman Empire, Persia, and Denmark. "Part II" has potential use in studies of the popular and literary receptions of "Candide", but is almost certainly apocryphal. In total, by the year 1803, at least ten imitations of "Candide" or continuations of its story were published by authors other than Voltaire.
The operetta "Candide" was originally conceived by playwright Lillian Hellman, as a play with incidental music. Leonard Bernstein, the American composer and conductor who wrote the music, was so excited about the project that he convinced Hellman to do it as a "comic operetta". Many lyricists worked on the show, including James Agee, Dorothy Parker, John Latouche, Richard Wilbur, Leonard and Felicia Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim and Hellman. Hershy Kay orchestrated all the pieces except for the overture, which Bernstein did himself. "Candide" first opened on Broadway as a musical on 1 December 1956. The premier production was directed by Tyrone Guthrie and conducted by Samuel Krachmalnick. While this production was a box office flop, the music was highly praised, and an original cast album was made. The album gradually became a cult hit, but Hellman's libretto was criticised as being too serious an adaptation of Voltaire's novel. "Candide" would be more popular seventeen years later with a new libretto by Hugh Wheeler.
A few months after its United States release, "The Sound of Music" opened in 261 theaters overseas—the first American movie to be completely dubbed in a foreign language, both dialogue "and" music. The German, French, Italian, and Spanish versions were completely dubbed, the Japanese version had Japanese dialogue with English songs, and other versions were released with foreign subtitles. The film was a popular success in every country it opened, except the two countries where the story originated, Austria and Germany. In these countries, the film had to compete with the much-loved "Die Trapp-Familie" (1956), which provided the original inspiration for the Broadway musical, and its sequel "Die Trapp-Familie in Amerika" (1958)—both films still widely popular in German-speaking Europe and considered the authoritative von Trapp story. Austrians took exception to the liberties taken by the filmmakers with regard to the costumes, which did not reflect traditional style, and the replacement of traditional Austrian folk songs with Broadway show tunes. The film's Nazi theme was especially unpopular in Germany, where the Munich branch manager for 20th Century Fox approved the unauthorized cutting of the entire third act of the film following the wedding sequence—the scenes showing Salzburg following the "Anschluss". Robert Wise and the studio intervened, the original film was restored, and the branch manager was fired.
The Festival of Flanders has its roots in Tongeren, Limburg, where Jan Briers organized the Basilica-concerts from 1958 in the basilica of Tongeren. At first there was played religiously inspired choral music, but soon it was extended to other classical music, instrumental music; and other locations. Often, historical sites such as abbeys and castles are used, with an occasional transfer to Maastricht.
George Frideric Handel's operas comprise 42 musical dramas that were written between 1705 and 1741 in various genres. He began composing operas in Germany and then for a brief time in Italy to modest success. It was not until he moved to England that he found great success in the genre. His first opera in England, "Rinaldo" (1711), was met with enthusiasm, and several more Italian operas soon followed. However, Handel's place as the central figure of opera in England during the eighteenth century was not solidified until, under the influence of Thomas Arne, he began composing large-scale works with English language texts. Though almost all his English language works are technically oratorios and not operas, several of them, such as "Semele" (1743), have become an important part of the opera repertoire. Handel's first opera (opera seria - serious Italian opera) was "Almira" (1705).
Bizet's first opera, the one-act ', was written in 1856 when the 18-year-old composer was a student at the Conservatoire de Paris. It was Bizet's winning entry in a competition organised by the celebrated composer Jacques Offenbach, and gained him a cash award, a gold medal, and a performance of the prize work at the . In 1857 Bizet was awarded the prestigious Prix de Rome, and as a result spent most of the following three years in Italy, where he wrote "Don Procopio", a short opera buffa in the style of Donizetti. By this time Bizet had written several non-stage works, including his Symphony in C, but the poor reception accorded to his 1858 ', a religious work he composed in Rome, helped convince him that his future lay primarily with the musical theatre. He planned and possibly began several operatic works before his return to Paris in 1860, but none of these projects came to fruition.
"Romeo and Juliet" belongs to a tradition of tragic romances stretching back to antiquity. The plot is based on an Italian tale translated into verse as "The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet" by Arthur Brooke in 1562 and retold in prose in "Palace of Pleasure" by William Painter in 1567. Shakespeare borrowed heavily from both but expanded the plot by developing a number of supporting characters, particularly Mercutio and Paris. Believed to have been written between 1591 and 1595, the play was first published in a quarto version in 1597. The text of the first quarto version was of poor quality, however, and later editions corrected the text to conform more closely with Shakespeare's original.
It was premiered in March 1807 at a private concert of the home of Prince Franz Joseph von Lobkowitz. The "Coriolan Overture" and the Fourth Symphony were premiered in that same concert. However, the public premiere was not until a concert on 22 December 1808 at Vienna's Theater an der Wien. Beethoven again took the stage as soloist. The marathon concert saw Beethoven's last appearance as a soloist with orchestra, as well as the premieres of the "Choral Fantasy" and the Fifth and Sixth symphonies. Beethoven dedicated the concerto to his friend, student, and patron, the Archduke Rudolph.
Giacomo Puccini wrote a trio of operas named "Il trittico" comprising "Il tabarro", "Suor Angelica" and "Gianni Schicchi". Florence created the role of Lauretta at the world premiere of Puccini¹s "Gianni Schicchi" on 14 December 1918 at the Metropolitan Opera, New York; she was the first to sing the famous aria "O mio babbino caro" ("O My Beloved Papa"). Puccini could not get to New York for the premiere, so the Met's general manager Giulio Gatti-Casazza sent a telegram to Puccini after the performance of the Trittico:
From his arrival in Paris and debut at the Concerts Lamoureux in the first act of Tristan und Isolde he studied with Chabrier and became a close friend of the composer. The singer repaid Chabrier by advocating for performances of his operas in Karlsruhe and other places where he appeared. During the years appearing at the Lamoureux concerts, Van Dyck sang in "La Damnation de Faust", fragments from "Sigurd", "Tristan und Isolde", "Die Walkyrie", "Les Sept péchés capitaux" of Goldschmidt, and the premiere of "le Chant de la Cloche" by Vincent d'Indy.
Following the war, another classic recording is the 1952 performance at the Bayreuth Festival with Martha Mödl and Ramón Vinay under Herbert von Karajan, which is noted for its strong, vivid characterizations and is now available as a live recording. In the 1960s, the soprano Birgit Nilsson was considered the major Isolde interpreter, and she was often partnered with the Tristan of Wolfgang Windgassen. Their performance at Bayreuth in 1966 under the baton of Karl Böhm was captured by Deutsche Grammophon – a performance often hailed as one of the best "Tristan" recordings.
The conductor Bruno Walter heard his first "Tristan und Isolde" in 1889 as a student:
Arnold Schoenberg referred to Wagner's technique of shifting chords in "Tristan" as "phenomena of incredible adaptability and nonindependence roaming, homeless, among the spheres of keys; spies reconnoitering weaknesses; to exploit them in order to create confusion, deserters for whom surrender of their own personality is an end in itself".
Although "Tristan und Isolde" is now widely performed in major opera houses around the world, critical opinion of the opera was initially unfavourable. The 5 July 1865 edition of the "Allgemeine musikalische Zeitung" reported:
Eduard Hanslick's reaction in 1868 to the prelude to "Tristan" was that it "reminds one of the old Italian painting of a martyr whose intestines are slowly unwound from his body on a reel." The first performance in London's Drury Lane Theatre drew the following response from "The Era" in 1882:
Mark Twain, on a visit to Germany, heard "Tristan" at Bayreuth and commented: "I know of some, and have heard of many, who could not sleep after it, but cried the night away. I feel strongly out of place here. Sometimes I feel like the one sane person in the community of the mad; sometimes I feel like the one blind man where all others see; the one groping savage in the college of the learned, and always, during service, I feel like a heretic in heaven."