Instruct: Given a question, retrieve passages that can help answer the question.
Query: What was Puccini's first opera?
Since its founding, Dicapo has been particularly dedicated to the music of Giacomo Puccini. It gave the first performances anywhere of all three versions of Puccini’s "Madama Butterfly" (Milan, Brescia, and Paris) successively in one weekend. With choreography by Dicapo’s Director of Dance Nilas Martins, Dicapo was the first to present music and dance presentations of Puccini’s "Le Villi" and The Mass, and has also presented settings of a number of Puccini songs and incidental music to dance. By the end of 2008, the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth, Dicapo Opera Theatre will have presented all of his major works, from "Le Villi", the composer’s first opera, and orchestral works through his final opera, "Turandot".
Tristan und Isolde ("Tristan and Isolde", or "Tristan and Isolda", or "Tristran and Ysolt") is an opera, or music drama, in three acts by Richard Wagner to a German libretto by the composer, based largely on the 12th-century romance "Tristan" by Gottfried von Strassburg. It was composed between 1857 and 1859 and premiered at the Königliches Hof- und Nationaltheater in Munich on 10 June 1865 with Hans von Bülow conducting. Wagner referred to the work not as an opera, but called it "eine Handlung" (literally "a drama", "a plot" or "an action"), which was the equivalent of the term used by the Spanish playwright Calderón for his dramas.
The cavatina "" is an aria for baritone or bass from the first act of the opera "The Marriage of Figaro" by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. The libretto was written by Lorenzo Da Ponte based on a stage comedy by Pierre Beaumarchais, La folle journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro (1784). The Italian title means "If you want to dance".
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).
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.
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.
"Dafne" by Jacopo Peri was the earliest composition considered opera, as understood today, although with only five instrumental parts it was much more like a chamber opera than either the preceding intermedi or the operas of Claudio Monteverdi a few years later. It was written around 1597, largely under the inspiration of an elite circle of literate Florentine humanists who gathered as the "Camerata". Significantly, "Dafne" was an attempt to revive the classical Greek drama, part of the wider revival of antiquity characteristic of the Renaissance. The members of the Camerata considered that the "chorus" parts of Greek dramas were originally sung, and possibly even the entire text of all roles; opera was thus conceived as a way of "restoring" this situation. The libretto was by Ottavio Rinuccini, who had written some of the 1587 Medici intermedi, in which Peri had also been involved; Rinuccini appears to have recycled some of the material, at least from the scene illustrated at right. Most of the music for "Dafne" is lost (the libretto was printed and survives), but one of Peri's many later operas, "Euridice", dating from 1600, is the first opera score to have survived to the present day.
In 1733, a second opera company, The Opera of the Nobility was set up to rival Handel's, employing several of Handel's former star singers including the celebrated castrato Senesino. Handel's lease on the King's Theatre in the Haymarket expired at the end of the 1733 - 34 season, and the Opera of the Nobility moved into what had been Handel's artistic home for years. In addition to Senesino, the rival opera company had also hired the renowned castrato Farinelli, who created a sensation. These were considered serious setbacks for Handel as the French author Antoine François Prévost wrote in 1734:He has so suffered great losses and written so many wonderful operas, which proved to be utter failures, that he will be forced to leave London and return to his home country but, undeterred, Handel moved into a new theatre, the Theatre Royal Covent Garden, built by John Rich largely on the proceeds of the extremely successful "The Beggar's Opera" which had parodied Italian opera of the kind Handel supplied for London. Rich had equipped his new theatre with the latest technology in stage machinery and also employed a troupe of dancers, which had not been the case at the King's Theatre in the Haymarket. Handel opened his first season at Covent Garden with a re-working of his earlier "Il Pastor Fido" with an entirely new prologue, "Terpsichore", featuring the internationally famous French dancer Marie Sallé. The pasticcio "Oreste", which followed, also features dances unlike the operas Handel had previously composed for London.
"" (You shall go no more) is an aria for bass from Mozart's 1786 opera "The Marriage of Figaro", K. 492. The Italian libretto was written by Lorenzo Da Ponte based on a stage comedy by Pierre Beaumarchais, "La folle journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro" (1784). It is sung by Figaro at the end of the first act.
Palestrina - Prince of Music is an Italian/German 2009 music film directed by Georg Brintrup. The subject is the life and music of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina (ca.1525-1594), famous Italian Renaissance composer of sacred music. He is the best-known 16th-century composer of the Roman School. Filmed in March 2009 on locations mainly in and around L'Aquila and Rome, most of the ancient buildings and historical interiors in the city of L'Aquila were destroyed by the 2009 L'Aquila earthquake, only a few days after the end of shooting. Palestrina’s music in the film is directed by Flavio Colusso and the Roman Ensemble Seicentonovecento. The film was also titled The Liberation of Music or Die Befreiung der Musik when released in Germany.
The first and longest movement is a slow movement in rough sonata form. As in his Fifth Symphony, Shostakovich quotes from one of his settings of Pushkin: in the first movement, from the second of his "Op. 91: Four Monologues on Verses by Pushkin for bass and piano" (1952), entitled "What is in My Name?". This theme of personal identity is picked up again in the third and fourth movements.
The "Prelude and Liebestod" is a concert version of the overture and Isolde's act 3 aria, "Mild und leise". The arrangement was by Wagner himself, and it was first performed in 1862, several years before the premiere of the complete opera in 1865. The "Liebestod" can be performed either in a purely orchestral version, or with a soprano singing Isolde's vision of Tristan resurrected.
The Pesaro Manuscript, from the mid-16th century, an important document in the history of the Lira, records a Passemezzo Moderno, (contemporary dance measure) written in lira tablature. Discovered in the town of Pesaro, on the Adriatic coast, this strange, mutilated script is the sole surviving example of written music for the Lira. It suggests at least the possibility that the instrument was being used as a dance instrument by this time. Its harmonic character, and useful range of home keys would have been ideally suited to render the fashionable dance music of the day.
In Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro", which premiered in 1786 with a libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte, the comic plot revolves around the successful efforts of the young bride and groom, Figaro and Susanna, to block the efforts of the unfaithful Count Almaviva to seduce Susanna. To achieve his aim, the frustrated Count threatens to reinstitute "droit du seigneur". It was based on a play by Pierre Beaumarchais.
After the death of Joseph Stalin, the company toured internationally and became an important source of cultural prestige, as well as foreign currency earnings. As a result, the "Bolshoi Ballet" became a well-known name in the West. However, the Bolshoi suffered from losses through a series of defections of its dancers. The first occurrence was on 23 August 1979, with Alexander Godunov; followed by Leonid Kozlov and Valentina Kozlova on 16 September 1979; and other cases in the following years. Bolshoi continues to tour regularly with opera and ballet productions in the post-Soviet era. 
The opera company specializes in the classics of Russian opera such as Mussorgsky's "Boris Godunov", Glinka's "A Life for the Tsar", and Rimsky-Korsakov's "The Tsar's Bride", as well as the operas of Tchaikovsky. Many operas by western composers are also performed, especially works of Italian composers such as Rossini, Verdi, and Puccini. Until the mid-1990s, most foreign operas were sung in Russian, but Italian and other languages have been heard more frequently on the Bolshoi stage in recent years.
The Bolshoi premiered "Carmen Suite" in 1967 but the fact Bizet's music was so well known actually worked against its favor at first. Soviet Minister of Culture Yekaterina Furtseva, was repelled by the modernist flavor given to the music and the sexual overtones of both the story and the title character. She banned the work immediately following its premiere as "insulting" to Bizet's masterpiece. Explaining this, Furtseva commented to Soviet media, "We cannot allow them to make a whore out of Carmen, the heroine of the Spanish people." (Unfortunately for Furtseva, her words were taken as a joke among the Moscow public following the controversy.) When she met privately at the Bolshoi with Plisetskaya and other members, Furtseva called "Carmen Suite" "a great failure," the production "raw. Nothing but eroticism. The opera's music has been mutilated. The concept has to be rethought. I have grave doubts as to whether the ballet can be redone."
Rimsky-Korsakov and Belsky first became interested in writing an opera on the Kitezh legend during the winter of 1898-1899, while they were working on the libretto to "The Tale of Tsar Saltan". The idea of combining the legend of St. Fevroniya into the story was part of the project from the beginning. The project remained in the minds of both composer and the librettist, but would have to wait until 1903 until serious work could begin. During the period between 1898 and the beginning of 1903, the composer was occupied with the composition of the operas "The Tale of Tsar Saltan", "Servilia", "Kashchey the Immortal" and "Pan Voyevoda". In his "My Musical Life", Rimsky-Korsakov mentions "In the midst of work on "Pan Voyevoda" Belsky and I pondered intensively the subject of "The Tale of the Invisible City of Kityezh and of the Maiden Fyevroniya"." Rimsky-Korsakov had written a rough draft of the first act by the end of summer, and Belsky had completed the libretto by spring. By summer of 1904, Rimsky-Korsakov had finished the composition of the second tableau of Act III and was orchestrating the opera. During the summer of 1905, while writing his "Principles of Orchestration", Rimsky-Korsakov also polished the orchestral score to "Kitezh", and made a clean final copy to send to the printers.
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.
In the course of his life Beethoven composed five sonatas for cello and piano. The Op. 69 was the first he had written since his Op. 5 over a decade earlier. Mark Kaplan writes: "In general, the writing in op. 69 is thinner than in the early cello sonatas ... greater compositional technique allowed Beethoven the possibility of using fewer notes with confidence." The contemporary cellist Steven Isserlis describes it as the first cello sonata in history to give the two instruments equal importance.
Ludwig van Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 3 in C major, Op. 2, No. 3, is a sonata written for solo piano, composed in 1795. It is dedicated to Joseph Haydn and is often referred to as Beethoven's first virtuosic piano sonata. The three Op. 2 sonatas all contain four movements each, an unusual length which seems to show that Beethoven was aspiring towards composing a symphony. It is both the weightiest and longest of the three Op. 2 sonatas, lasting over 25 minutes, presenting many difficulties, including difficult trills, awkward hand movements, and forearm rotation. It is Beethoven's second longest piano sonata in his early period, only to Beethoven's Grand Sonata in E Major, Op. 7, published a year later.
By 1827, the family had returned to Leipzig. Wagner's first lessons in harmony were taken during 1828–31 with Christian Gottlieb Müller. In January 1828 he first heard Beethoven's 7th Symphony and then, in March, the same composer's 9th Symphony (both at the Gewandhaus). Beethoven became a major inspiration, and Wagner wrote a piano transcription of the 9th Symphony. He was also greatly impressed by a performance of Mozart's "Requiem." Wagner's early piano sonatas and his first attempts at orchestral overtures date from this period.
"Manon Lescaut" premiered at the Teatro Regio in Turin on 2 February 1893. By coincidence, Puccini's first enduringly popular opera appeared within a week of the premiere of Verdi's last opera, "Falstaff", which was first performed on 9 February 1893. In anticipation of the premiere, "La Stampa" wrote that Puccini was a young man concerning whom "great hopes" had a real basis (""). Because of the failure of "Edgar", however, a failure of "Manon Lescaut" could have jeopardized Puccini's future as a composer. Although Giulio Ricordi, head of Casa Ricordi, was supportive of Puccini while "Manon Lescaut" was still in development, the Casa Ricordi board of directors was considering cutting off Puccini's financial support. In any event, ""Manon Lescaut" was Puccini's first and only uncontested triumph, acclaimed by critics and public alike." After the London premiere in 1894, George Bernard Shaw pronounced: "Puccini looks to me more like the heir of Verdi than any of his rivals."
The original version of "Madama Butterfly", premiered at La Scala on 17 February 1904 with Rosina Storchio in the title role. It was initially greeted with great hostility (probably largely owing to inadequate rehearsals). When Storchio's kimono accidentally lifted during the performance, some in the audience started shouting: "The butterfly is pregnant" and "There is the little Toscanini". The latter comment referred to her well publicised affair with Arturo Toscanini. This version was in two acts; after its disastrous premiere, Puccini withdrew the opera, revising it for what was virtually a second premiere at Brescia in May 1904 and performances in Buenos Aires, London, the USA and Paris. In 1907, Puccini made his final revisions to the opera in a fifth version, which has become known as the "standard version". Today, the standard version of the opera is the version most often performed around the world. However, the original 1904 version is occasionally performed as well, and has been recorded.
In fact, Puccini was at first less than enthusiastic about the idea for this comic opera – Florence as a setting did not appeal to him, and he feared the public would have little interest in the subject. However, he soon became interested, and did some work on the piece even while composing "Suor Angelica". The religious-themed opera was completed in September 1917, and Puccini turned his full attention to "Gianni Schicchi", although the war news and the 1918 influenza pandemic, in which Puccini lost a sister, distracted him from his work. The first draft was completed on 20 April 1918, and Puccini continued to refine and orchestrate it through the summer of 1918.
Nevertheless, on 24 August 1930, together with Pietro Mascagni, who had been fellow student of Puccini's, Forzano produced the first performances of a Puccini opera on the lake shore, in front of the Maestro's house. In a provisional theatre, the "Carro di Tespi Lirico" with its stage built on piles stuck in the lake, a travelling opera company performed "La bohème" directed by Forzano and conducted by Mascagni. The same company came back in 1931 when Beniamino Gigli and Adelaide Saraceni performed in "La bohème", while Rosetta Pampanini and Angelo Michetti performed "Madama Butterfly". This was the beginning of what was to become a major opera festival.