#Vincenzo Nightingale

[opera-ghosts]

March 6. 1853 the Verdi Opera „La Traviata” premiered in Teatro La Fenice. Here we see the original castlist from the first performances at The Metropolitan Opera 1883 short after the opening of the MET in the same year.

Marcella Sembrich (1858-1935) was the first Violetta in this Opera House. Until today this opera was played in 1051 performances with the MET Company.

[formulax]

A Few Thoughts on Family -- Simon Nightingale

I have a “worrying” issue.

I've always had this problem. It was much worse when I was younger, and that’s when I started to keep a personal journal. Even if I wasn't completely honest with myself back then, putting my worries onto paper helped. I was writing them into a book that could be closed and put away. And... it helped me to work through my worries, in a way. Process them and organize them when they came to be too much. Thought is hardly ever simple, after all.

I've been Simon Nightingale for a month now— been myself for a month now. This quaint house has proven to be smaller than what I am used to from a home on land, of course, but the crew gave me more money than I can handle in this small town, and anyway, I’m more than happy with the decision I've chosen. It’s quiet and cozy here, and I'm living comfortably compared to life on a pirate ship.

I’m becoming part of the community. I take my walks to the library, to the market, to the Marigold household, and I've been recognized, been waved to. The librarians know me, and smile when I walk in. There is even a black cat I now feed that follows me to and from my home; company that is much appreciated.

I’ve missed this... but it's not quite the same, of course. I do not hold much social standing here, aside from being “a friend of Angel's,” which admittedly has gotten me a long way in gaining my own friends. But... well that's just it. I am a friend! Not a soldier, or a son of a naval officer. The townsfolk here dislike such people, anyhow, and I’m beginning to think I do as well.

With my newfound free time I've cataloged my experiences in the pirate world and written as much as I could about its wonders, and I’ve hit a bit of a block with it. Overwhelming myself with writing, I suppose. So I've been taking a few days to just exist in my new world, and look inwards at myself (which is something I am not accustomed to one bit).

I mention my “worrying” issue because I've been having a bit of trouble sleeping lately. When I think about Angel, Kipp, and Ezra, I start to feel that dreadful fear. They have not visited yet, and I know that they’re quite busy, but when you see someone every day for so long and then suddenly separate, it’s just... difficult. So, I am nervous. Terribly nervous. Afraid that they will never visit, that they will never return because something tragic has happened. I did ask them to send me a letter every time they stopped at a port.

It’s getting late, and I should rest, but I need to get this written down. Last night, as I was trying to sleep, I had a thought that disturbed me. I wondered if this is how my mother felt when I was away.

I did not send her many letters.

I’ve been spending time at the Marigolds’ place in the market, running errands and putting fresh fish on display for some extra money.

They told me a little bit about Angel.

They did not name him; he was left at an orphanage by his alleged parents, who we now know were Vincenzo Cielo and the (former) Guardian Mariah, with a note and the infamous amulet. The note had a vague explanation, a command to keep the baby loved and cared for, and Angel's name. The Marigolds took the child and heeded the note.

“You two’re good parents,” I said. “You care so much. How do you handle him being away? On dangerous quests, no less.”

Mrs. Marigold looked at her husband and smiled. “Our son is much too stubborn to die,” she said. They both chuckled. (They at times can be a little morbid.) “But anyway, he was in good hands with you, and he is now with Ezra and Kipp. You boys have good souls, you do.”

“He writes,” Mr. Marigold added. “When he’s able. He’ll write you. And it will be pages and pages long.”

It is past midnight, judging by the moon. I can’t sleep, and I need to get some things off my chest.

I am guilty. I will always be guilty, for the rest of my life, about leaving my mother behind as she died. I did not want to see her sick... but I did not want to see her sad either. She was often sad and it hurt my heart and I thought that there was nothing I could do to cheer her up. But somewhere deep down I knew that coming home as a Captain would make her even sadder, and that means that somewhere deep down I knew that she wanted me to quit. She was sad because of what I had become. It all seems so obvious now and it makes me so upset that I sometimes need to cry. It was a mistake to be away for so long. It was a mistake not to write her and tell her about the stars in the sky where I was. It was a mistake to disregard her just as everyone else in my family did.

She was SICK and she was SAD and she was ALONE. I feel like I KILLED her. And now I can never tell her I’m sorry, or show her how much I've changed for the better.

The black cat that has been following me around town is meowing at the window. I’m going to let her in and try again to sleep.

It’s the morning— I feel calmer than I did last night. Talking to the Marigolds about Angel got me thinking about my own parents, and... awful things just seem so much worse late at night. My thoughts got out of hand.

I... well. I did not have a tight knit family. My parents did not love each other— at least not while I was around— and my extended family was as cold as my father was. We did not talk about feelings; my parents hardly spoke to each other at all. I had no siblings, and I did not relate much to my younger cousins.

There was my mother and I, of course, but our relationship was often sabotaged, either by my father or by myself. I think he was jealous of her, of my similarities to her, and so grew to resent her. As I sought to impress my father, I began to resent her too, though I was never conscious of it, and never would have admitted it.

We were closer when I was younger. She held her ground on just a few things, one of them being my physical safety, and as a result I did not go on long trips with my father when I was a young child. I spent more time with her, then; she was my teacher, and I loved to hear her talk about her passions. She read me stories, she showed me local wildlife. We watched the stars for hours on end, and she would help me trace constellations with my finger. The world was so big, and we were so small, and she found that so magnificent.

She was the closest thing I had to a family. And I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I had done things differently, but in the spirit of improving myself I know I have to own up to my mistakes, and accept them, no matter how terrible they make me feel. Life would have been so different if it had just been her and I— but that was never a possibility, and lingering in the past isn’t ideal, I know.

The thing is, I have a family now— it’s not conventional in the slightest, that’s for certain— but Angel, Kipp, even Ezra... I consider them family. I have been through so much with them, have watched them grow so much as people; and they have helped me grow, as well. They supported me at my worst, and helped me come to the decision to live like I do now. I miss them all, and it’s frightening to think that they’re out there without me, without my extra protection and guidance.

I don’t mean to sound self-centered. They can take care of themselves. It's just a matter of family. I just want to do things better this time.

I was helping the Marigolds at their shop today, and thank the Lord, a letter from Angel arrived! I just about hugged Mrs. Marigold when she handed over the one meant for me... Pages and pages long, like Mr. Marigold said.

Angel says things have been going well, but everyone is missing me. They’re headed off on another mission— Ezra reportedly had another Eye-induced dream— and they’ll head back in my direction after they’ve done that. He says he’s dying to know how I’ve been doing, and I better be missing them just as much. This is, of course, very condensed.

It is such a relief to hear from them, and I haven’t been able to stop re-reading the letter since I got it. It’s midday, and I’m in bed, the black cat sitting at my side. (She lingers in my house more often than outside now, and I don’t mind.)

Angel's last sentence to me was, “Don’t get too lost in your thoughts, Simon Nightingale— your mother would be so happy for you right now.”

I’ve never understood how he always knows exactly what to say.

[harry-leroy]

2020: Year of Opera

So, in order to expand my cultural horizons (and do this because I’ve been wanting to do this), I’m going to be trying to get through some operas this year! I’ll definitely be listening to these, and I’m going to try and find staged versions if I can - because opera is a form of theatre and performance is an important part of it. This list is based off of The Guardian’s List of Top 50 Operas, but if there’s one that you don’t see on here and recommend, let me know!

Crossed out titles will be the ones I’ve already listened to/watched, and ones with asterisks (*) by them will be ones that I’ve listened to parts of, but need to listen to the whole thing.

1) L’Orfeo - Claudio Monteverdi (1607)

2) Dido and Aeneas* - Henry Purcell (1689)

3) Guilio Cesare (Julius Caesar) - George Frideric Handel (1724)

4) Serse (Xerxes) - Handel (1738)

5) Orfeo ed Euridice (Orpheus and Eurydice)* - Christoph Willibald Gluck (1762)

6) Idomeneo - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1781)

7) Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro) - Mozart (1786)

8) Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute)* - Mozart (1791)

9) Il Barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville)* - Gioachino Rossini (1816)

10) Guillaume Tell (William Tell)* - Rossini (1829)

11) Norma - Vincenzo Bellini (1831)

12) L’Elisir d’Amore (The Exilir of Love) - Gaetano Donizetti (1832)

13) Lucia di Lammermoor - Donizetti (1835)

14) Rigoletto - Giuseppe Verdi (1851)

15) La Traviata - Verdi (1853)

16) Don Carlos/Don Carlo - Verdi (1867)

17) Falstaff* - Verdi (1893)

18) Pagliacci - Ruggero Leoncavallo (1892)

19) La Bohème - Giacomo Puccini (1896)

20) Tosca* - Puccini (1900)

21) Madama Butterfly - Puccini (1904)

22) Turandot* - Puccini (1926)

23) Fidelio - Ludwig van Beethoven (1805)

24) Der Freischütz - Carl Maria von Weber (1821)

25) Lohengrin* - Richard Wagner (1850)

26) Tristan und Isolde* - Wagner (1865)

27) Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg - Wagner (1868)

28) Der Ring des Nibelungen - Wagner (1876)

29) Die Lustige Witwe (The Merry Widow) - Franz Lehár (1905)

30) Salome* - Richard Strauss (1905)

31) Der Rosenkavalier* - Strauss (1911)

32) Les Troyens - Hector Berlioz (1863/1890)

33) Carmen* - Georges Bizet (1875)

34) Manon* - Jules Massenet (1884)

35) Pelléas et Mélisande - Claude Debussy (1902)

36) The Bartered Bride - Bedrich Smetana (1866)

37) Boris Godunov - Modest Mussorgsky (1874)

38) Eugene Onegin - Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1879)

39) The Queen of Spades - Tchaikovsky (1890)

40) Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk - Dmitri Shostakovich (1934)

41) War and Peace - Sergei Prokofiev (1944)

42) The Rake’s Progress - Igor Stravinsky (1951)

43) Jenufa - Leoš Janáček (1904)

44) Bluebeard’s Castle - Béla Bartók (1918)

45) Wozzeck - Alban Berg (1925)

46) Porgy and Bess - George Gershwin (1935)

47) Peter Grimes - Benjamin Britten (1945)

48) The Turn of the Screw* - Britten (1954)

49) King Priam - Michael Tippett (1962)

50) Le Grand Macabre - György Ligeti (1978)

Some Additional Operas not on that list that I want to listen to/finish listening to:

51) Armide - Jean Baptiste Lully (1686)

52) Proserpine (Proserpina) - Lully (1680)

53) Phaëton - Lully (1683)

54) Roland - Lully (1685)

55) Aida* - Verdi (1871)

56) Otello* - Verdi (1887)

57) Così fan tutte - Mozart (1790)

58) Parsifal - Wagner (1878)

59) Faust - Charles Gounod (1859)  

60) Les contes d’Hoffmann* - Offenbach (1881)

61) Elektra - Strauss (1909)

62) Rusalka* - Antonin Dvorák (1901)

63) La clemenza di Tito* - Mozart (1791)

64) Lakmé* - Léo Dilibes (1883)

65) La sonnambula - Bellini (1831)

66) Die Fledermaus - Johann Strauss II (1874)

67) Roméo et Juliette* - Gounod (1867)

68) Andrea Chénier - Umberto Giodano (1896)

69) Semiramide - Rossini (1823)

70) Dialogues of the Carmelites - Francis Poulenc (1956)

71) Anna Bolena - Donizetti (1830)

72) Les Huguenots - Giacomo Meyerbeer (1836)

73) Peer Gynt* - Edvard Grieg (1876)

74) Ariadne auf Naxos - Richard Strauss (1912)

75) Billy Budd - Britten (1951)

76) HMS Pinafore - Arthur Sullivan (1878)

77) Béatrice et Bénédict* - Berlioz (1862)

78) Edgar - Puccini (1889)

79) Hippolyte et Aricie - Jean-Philippe Rameau (1733)

80) The Merry Wives of Windsor - Otto Nicolai (1849)

81) Alceste - Gluck (1767)

82) Amahl and the Night Visitors - Gian Carlo Menotti (1951)

83) King Arthur* - Purcell (1691)

84) The Nose - Shostakovich (1929)

85) Castor et Pollux - Rameau (1737)

86) The Tempest - Thomas Adès (2004)

87) Die tote Stadt - Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1920)

88) Alfonso und Estrella - Franz Schubert (1822)

89) L’étoile - Emmanuel Chabrier (1877)

90) The Fairy Queen - Purcell (1692)

91) Where the Wild Things Are - Oliver Knussen (1983)

92) The Nightingale - Igor Stravinsky (1914)

93) L’enfant et les sortilèges* - Maurice Ravel (1925)

94) Punch and Judy - Harrison Birtwistle (1968)

95) Death in Venice - Britten (1973)

96) We Come to the River - Hans Werner Henze (1984)

97) Einstein on the Beach - Philip Glass (1976)

98) Taverner - Peter Maxwell Davies (1972)

99) A Midsummer Night’s Dream - Britten (1960)

100) The Prodigal Son - Britten (1968)

[lboogie1906]

Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield (1809 – March 31, 1876), dubbed "The Black Swan" (a play on Jenny Lind's sobriquet, "The Swedish Nightingale), was a singer considered the best-known black concert artist of her time. She was born into slavery in Natchez, Mississippi. She studied music as a child, although musical education was not generally provided by the Quakers with whom she associated. She began to sing at private parties, debuting at the Buffalo Musical Association. She debuted at Metropolitan Hall, which held an audience of 4,000—white patrons only. After the concert, she apologized to her people for their exclusion from the performance and gave a concert to benefit the Home of Aged Colored Persons and the Colored Orphan Asylum. She went to London under the patronage of the Duchess of Sutherland and Harriet Beecher Stowe. She was taught by Queen Victoria's Chapel Royal organist, George Smart. She gave a command performance for the queen at Buckingham Palace; she was the first African American performer to perform before British royalty. Known for her performances of the music of George Frideric Handel, Vincenzo Bellini, and Gaetano Donizetti, she performed sentimental American songs such as "Home! Sweet Home!" and "Old Folks at Home". She toured and conducted a Philadelphia music studio. Among her voice pupils was Thomas Bowers, who became known as "The Colored Mario". She created an opera troupe with Bowers which she directed. She was a member of the Philadelphia Shiloh Baptist Church. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence #womenhistorymonth https://www.instagram.com/p/CbxHm6xLi0RW94xEjIMWcuMz_ITyYDs2DVI2r80/?utm_medium=tumblr

[loosealcina]

VINCENZO BELLINI’S I CAPULETI E I MONTECCHI AT LA SCALA, FEBRUARY 2, 2022

…it’s Shakespeare again! This one comes with a caveat, though; every single conversation on I Capuleti e i Montecchi (1830) seems to share a mandatory beginning like, don’t forget they (I mean: Vincenzo Bellini and Felice Romani) didn’t even consider William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, it’s just a completely independent/unrelated version of the same ancient tale, so don’t expect anything Shakespeare, etc. What can I say? After a live encounter with this work (back at La Scala after a pretty robust thirty-five-year hiatus), I’m all but resolved to enter a caveat against the caveat. Make no mistake: I’m aware it’s severely stripped down, and a lot has been left out. No Mercutio (or Queen Mab), no bal masqué. No balcony! No «You kiss by the book», no «O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?». And no «It was the nightingale, and not the lark,/That pierced the fearful hollow of thine ear» either. Still, the spirit is there. The secret weapon (OK, It’s not that secret) has to be Vincenzo Bellini’s music. The orchestra—discreet, graceful, and pragmatic—sort of generates an empty space, a perfectly blank page; then, a handful of tunes put at the dead center of the scene two actual human beings. They fall in love, they discover obstacles, and they learn those obstacles are growing more and more into full-scale, terrifying monsters. In other words: even if Felice Romani’s libretto only covers the second, hopelessly grim part of the story we all know, I Capuleti e i Montecchi the opera does give you the whole experience.

The new production created by Adrian Noble—who was at the helm of the Royal Shakespeare Company from 1990 to 2003—did that through a rightfully dark, strong narrative. Out of several turning points that were especially marked by simplicity and elegance, I’ll cite Giulietta’s first appearance («Eccomi in lieta vesta... eccomi adorna…»): some genuinely beautiful (and telling) lights—designed by Jean Kalman and Marco Filibeck—coupled with a smart treatment/exploitation of the depth of the stage made my eyes widen in admiration. (It also originated a crucial narration loop that was to be closed some time later). A clean portrait of a miniature dream within a way bigger, virtually limitless nightmare, this iteration of I Capuleti e i Montecchi was ultimately great at letting a remarkable duo—Marianne Crebassa as Romeo and Lisette Oropesa as Giulietta—do their own thing. Two pleasant timbres, two measured singing styles, and many exquisite fluctuations between tenderness and melancholia. The orchestra conducted by Speranza Scappucci provided the voices with a soft, somewhat cozy environment that seemed to be meant to disappear—with the exception of the occasional, positively arresting solos (French horn, clarinet, cello, harp…) surfacing—and quickly vanishing—here and there, mostly in the middle of relatively slow/reflective passages: it’s not like melody can get much better than this. (Given Richard Wagner and Fryderyk Chopin were fans, who am I to disagree? [And I wouldn’t, anyway]).

[angel-princess-anna]

Downton Abbey - References to Historical Figures + References to Other Fictional Characters and Works

The following are two lists; one are real people who where mentioned on Downton Abbey, and the other is fictional characters and works that were also mentioned in the show. I complied these two lists together (because sometimes I had to research what was indeed being referenced!). As I didn’t know if I’d ever been sharing these lists, I don’t have the episode numbers listed out, but they do go in order by mention.

Real Historical Figures Mentioned in Downton

* means that the person was not contemporary of the characters and there for famous or well-known to them. Others without it may not be known personally by them, but are their contemporaries. Some of these have made it to the character list, if for sure they did indeed know the Crawleys, or other any other major character.

- Lucy Rothes (Titanic survivor, friend of the Crawleys) - John Jacob "JJ" Astor (business man who died on Titanic, friend of the Crawleys) - Madeleine Astor (not mentioned by name, but as JJ's wife, Titanic survivor, Cora did not like her) - Sir Christopher Wren* (architect, designed the Dower House) - David Lloyd George (politician and Prime Minister starting in 1916) - William the Conqueror* - Mark Twain* (author) - Queen Mary (wife of King George V) [mentioned in S1, appears in S4CS] - Queen Catherine of Aragon* - Oliver Cromwell* - Bishop Richard de Warren* - Anthony Trollope* (author; he would have been somewhat contemporary, died in 1882) - Piero della Francesca* (painter) - Franz Anton Mesmer* (scientist) - Thomas Jefferson* (politician, inventor, third president of the United States) - Léon Bakst (Russian painter and scene- and costume designer) - Sergei Diaghilev (another Russian artist) - Edith Vane-Tempest-Stewart, Marchioness of Londonderry (sounds like the Crawleys did attend her parties from time to time) - Emily Davison (suffragist) - Herbert Henry "H.H." Asquith (politician and Prime Minister until 1916) - Kaiser Wilheim (ruler of Germany; Sir Anthony personally visited him a few times) - Vincenzo Bellini* (composer) - Gioachino Rossini* (composer) - Giacomo Puccini* (composer) - Karl Marx* (philosopher) - John Ruskin*  (social thinker and artist; he would have been somewhat contemporary, died in 1900) - John Stuart Mill* (philosopher) - Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria - Guy Fawkes* - Gavrilo Princip (member of the Black Hand and Franz Ferdinand's assassin) - H.G. Wells (author) - Major General B. Burton - Heinrich Schliemann* (German businessman archaeologist, died in 1890; deleted scene mention) - General Douglas Haig (later a field marshal) - Belshazzar* (King of Babylon) - Mabel Normand (actress) - Plantagenets* - Eugene Suter (hair stylist) - Alexander Kerensky (Russian political leader) - Vladimir Lenin (Russian communist revolutionary) - Florence Nightingale* (nurse; died 1910) - Czar Nicholas II and the Romanov family (ruler of Russia) - Jack Robinson (footballer; he stopped playing in 1912) - Frederick Marryat* (author) - George Alfred "G.A." Henty* (author; he would have been somewhat contemporary, died in 1902) - Maximilien Robespierre* (French revolutionary) - Marie Antoinette* (French queen) - Erich Lundendorff (German commander) - Sylvia Pankhurst (suffragist) - Jack Johnson (boxer) - Commander Harold Lowe (Fifth Officer of the Titanic; if P. Gordon was really Patrick, he would have known him personally) - Theda Bara (actress) - Robert Burns* (poet, read by Bates; name is not uttered on screen, but it is clear on book cover) - Jules Verne* (author; he would have been somewhat contemporary, died in 1905) - Marion Harris (singer of "Look for the Silver Lining"; name is not uttered on screen) - Edward Shortt (Home Secretary from 1919-1922) - Cosmo Gordon Lang, Archbishop of York (one of the first actual historical figures in the show; married Matthew and Mary, visited Downton Abbey for dinner) - King George V (king of England) [mentioned in S3E1, appears in S4CS] - Charles Melville Hays (president of the Grand Trunk Railway that Robert invested in; died on the Titanic) - Robert Baden-Powell (founder of the Boy Scouts) - Lady Maureen Dufferin (socialite, friend of the Crawleys) - Georges Auguste Escoffier (famous chef and restaurateur) - Marie-Antoine Carême* (famous chef) - Queen of Sheba* - Napoleon Bonaparte* - The Bourbons* - The Buffs* (famous army regiment; "steady the Buffs" popularized by Kipling) - Croesus* (king of ancient Lydia; mention several times starting in S3 and through S4) - Thomas Edwin "Tom" Mix (Wild West picture star) - Dr. Samuel Johnson* (English writer; quote paraphrased by Carson) - Jean Patou (dress designer; maker of Edith's S3 wedding dress in-show) - Lucy Christiana, Lady Duff-Gordon (dress designer of "Lucille"; a survivor of the Titanic) - The Marlboroughs (famous family; mentioned like the Crawleys knew them personally, Sir Anthony did) - The Hapburgs* (rulers of the Holy Roman Empire) - Maud Gonne (English-born Irish revolutionary) - Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory (Irish revolutionary) - Constance Georgine Markievicz, Countess Markievicz (Irish revolutionary and politician) - Lady Sarah Wilson (née Churchill) (female war correspondent) - Gwendolen Fitzalan-Howard, Duchess of Norfolk  (real person and friend of Violet's) - Pope Benedict XV - Lillian Gish (actress) - Ivy Close (actress) - Alfred the Great* (9th century ruler of England) - Oscar Wilde* (author; he would have been somewhat contemporary, died in 1900) - Nathaniel Hawthorne* (author) - Charles Ponzi - Walter Scott* (author) - Charles Dickens* (author) - Virgina Woolf (author, one of the first actual historical figures in the show, was not actually mentioned though, just a background guest at Gregson's party) - Roger Fry (artist, one of the first actual historical figures in the show, was not actually mentioned though, just a background guest at Gregson's party) - Sir Garnet Wolseley* - Phyllis Dare (singer and actress) - Zena Dare (singer and actress, sister to Phyllis) - Maurice Vyner Baliol Brett (the second son of the 2nd Viscount Esher, Zena Dare's husband) - King Canute* (Cnut the Great, norse king) - Nellie Melba (opera singer, one of the few actual historical figures in the show) - Al Jolson (singer) - Christina Rossetti* (poet) - Marie Stopes (feminist doctor and author of Married Love) - George III* (ruler of England) - Lord Byron* - Arsène Avignon (chef at Ritz in London, actual historical figure in the show) - Louis Diat (chef at Ritz in New York) - Jules Gouffé* (famous chef) - King of Sweden (whoever it was when Violet's husband was alive) - Rudolph Valentino (actor) - Agnes Ayres (actress) - Lord Robert Henley, 1st Earl of Northington* (Lord Chancellor and abolitionist) - Albert B. Fall (US senator and Secretary of the Interior) - King Ludwig* (I’m assuming of Bavaria) - John Ward MP (liberal politician, actual historical figure in the show) - Admiral John Jellicoe, 1st Earl Jellicoe (Royal Navy, Blake and Tony served under him) - Benjamin Baruch Ambrose (bandleader at the Embassy Club, his band appears on-screen but it's not pointed out who he is) - The Prince of Wales (David, who became Edward VIII when King) - Freda Dudley Ward (socialite and mistress of the above) - The Queen of Naples* - Wat Tyler* (leader of the 1381 Peasants' Revolt in England) - Edmond Hoyle* (writer of card rules) - Ramsay MacDonald (Prime Minister Jan-Nov 1924) - Archimedes* - Boudicca* (Queen of the British Iceni tribe) - Rosa Luxemburg (Revolutionary) - Charles I* - Douglas Fairbanks (movie star) - Jack Hylton (English band leader) - Edward Molyneux (fashion designer; Cora has a fitting with him in S5E3) - The Brontë Sisters* (Charlotte, Emily, and Anne, all authors. Anne's work The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was the charade answer in S2CS.) - Leo Tolstoy* (author) - Nikolai Gogol* (author) - Elinor Glyn (author of romantic fiction) - Czar Alexander II - Prince Alfred (son of Queen Victoria) - Grand Duchess Maria (wife of Alfred, daughter of the czar) - Peter Carl Fabergé (Russian jeweller) - Ralph Kerr (officer in the Royal Navy; Mabel mentions a man by this name as a friend) - Keir Hardie (Scottish socialist, died in 1915) - The Moonella Group (formed a nudist colony in 1924 in Wickford, Essex) - John Singer Sargent (American painter, died in 1925) - Rudyard Kipling (author and poet - often quoted starting in S1, but first mentioned by name in S5) - Mary Augusta Ward (Mrs. Humphrey Ward - author; I'm not adding her to the character list, died in 1920) - Adolf Hitler - Pola Negri (film star) - John Barrymore (actor [Drew Barrymore's grandfather]) - King Richard the III (of England)* - Hannah Rothschild and Lord Rosebery (British socialites Violet knew; Hannah died in 1890) - General Reginald Dyer - Lytton Strachey (supposedly was at Gregson's party) - Niccolo Machiavelli* - Adrienne Bolland (aviatrix) - The Fife Princesses (as listed by Sir Michael Reresby) - Duke of Arygll (as listed by Sir Michael Reresby) - The Queen of Spain (as listed by Sir Michael Reresby) - Lady Eltham (Dorothy Isabel Westenra Hastings) - King John* - Neville Chamberlain (Minister of Health in 1925, later Prime Minister; appears on-screen in S6E5) - Anne de Vere Cole (Neville Chamberlain's wife. Fictitiously, she is Robert's father's goddaughter. Her father is mentioned has having served in the Crimean War with Robert's) - Horace de Vere Cole (Anne de Vere Cole's brother) - Joshua Reynolds* (painter) - George Romney* (painter) - Franz Xaver Winterhalter* (painter) - Sir Charles Barry* (real architect of Highclere, cited here as one as Downton Abbey) - Tsar Nicholas I* - Teo (or Tiaa)* - Amenhotep II* - Tuthmosis IV* - King Charles* - Clara Bow (actress) [To my knowledge, the Ripon election candidates in S1E6 were not real people, as were not always the case for military personnel Robert referred to.] Fictional Characters and Works Mentioned in Downton - Long John Silver (referenced by Thomas) - Andromeda, Perseus, Cepheus (Greek mythology) (referenced by Mary) - Sydney Carton (A Tale of Two Cities) (referenced by Robert) - Princess Aurora, and later Sleeping Beauty (the ballet I presume) (referenced by Robert) - Horatio (Hamlet; Thomas quotes a line in a deleted scene) - "Gunga Din" (poem by Kipling; quoted by Bates and later quoted by Isobel) - Little Women (referenced by Cora) - The Lost World - Elizabeth and her German Garden (book given to Anna by Molesley) - Wind in the Willows (referenced by Violet) - "If You Were the Only Girl in the World" (sung by Mary, Matthew and cast) - "The Cat That Walked By Itself" (short story by Kipling; quoted by Matthew) - Iphigenia (Greek mythology, may be referenced in The Iliad but I cannot confirm) - Uncle Tom Cobley ("Widecombe Fair") (referenced by Sybil) - Alice and the Looking Glass - "The Rose of Picardy" (only a few strains played, possibly the John McCormack version which was out in 1919) - Zip Goes a Million and "Look for the Silver Lining" (song played by Matthew) - The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (title used in The Game) - Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Angel Clare (referenced by Mary) - Lochinvar (from Sir Walter Scott) (referenced by Martha) - "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" (played at Mary and Matthew's wedding) - "Let Me Call You Sweetheart" (sung by Martha and cast) - "Dashing Away with the Smoothing Iron" (English folk song sung by Carson) - Way Down East (film) - The Worldings (film) - "Molly Malone" (Irish song) - The Scarlet Letter (referenced by Isobel) - Lady of the Rose (musical) - The Lady of Shalott (ballad) - The Puccini pieces from S4E3 - The jazz pieces from S4E4 sung by Jack Ross ("A Rose By Any Other Name") - The Sheik (film) - The jazz pieces from S4E6 sung by Jack Ross ("Wild About Harry") - "The Second Mrs Tanqueray" (play and films) (referenced by Edith) - "The Sword of Damocles" (Greek myth) - Dr. Fu Manchu - Mrs. Bennett (Pride and Prejudice) - A vague allusion to Wuthering Heights (talking about the Brontë sisters and moors) (referenced by Rose) - Vanity Fair and Becky Sharp (Molesley reads this with Daisy) - "It's a Long Way to Tipperary" (sung by Denker) - "The Fall of the House of Usher" (short story by Edgar Allen Poe) - Madame Defarge (A Tale of Two Cities) - Ariadne (Greek mythology) - "Cockles and Mussels" (Spratt sings a few bars in S6E5; this is also called "Molly Malone") - Elizabeth Bennett and Pemberley (Pride and Prejudice) (referenced by Violet) - Mr Squeers (Nicholas Nickleby) (referenced by Bertie) - The Prisoner of Zenda (adventure novel by Anthony Hope) (referenced by Tom) - "The course of true love never did run smooth" (quote from A Midsummer Night's Dream) Not included are proverbs or sayings (which Anna says a lot of), nor Biblical references. Do note that there's a lot of scenes with the characters reading, but we don't know exactly what.

[2manyfandoms2count]

What is up with the name recycling on this show 😂

Excellent analysis of the André situation, he probably feels less lonely on the Pont des Arts/that random Canal St Martin bridge than in his big office/the Hotel

I'll forgive the Claras because it turns out that her French voice actress is called Clara, and the reporter has a pun in her name (she appeared before Nightingale I believe so even though they could have gone for Lara/Laura to achieve the same effect, it would've been odd to change her name)

The Vincents, though? They could have made an effort to at least use Vincente or Vincenzo for the Italian photographer... (I think the lesson here is that apparently all photographers in Paris are named Vincent)

Not to go all @is-nino-actually-luka​ on y’all but don’t you think it’s a weird coincidence that there are two characters named André in Miraculous? I mean surely given the relatively limited number of characters, they should have been able to find other male names ending in “é/ée” that could have been used to satisfy the whole Bourgeois family having names that end with that sound AND the André le Glacier rhyme in French (Aimé could have been a good one for the ice cream man because he sells love ice creams, but there’s also René, Amédée, Timothée…)

Anyway, all of this to say that the only shot I could find of them being in a room together is this one, in Partycrasher:

(And that party was wild so who knows if the images can be trusted) 

So new theory: Mayor Bourgeois and André the ice cream man are actually the same person. Mayor André escapes from his life by disguising himself as ice cream André, and distributes love around (as a coping mechanism for the lack of love from his wife)

[allbestnet]

Popular 19th Century Books

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll | Faust by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe | Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson | Carmen by Georges Bizet | Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain | Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain | Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens | Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens | La Traviata by Giuseppe Verdi | Uncle Tom’s Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe | David Copperfield by Charles Dickens | Symphony №9 in D Minor by Ludwig van Beethoven | Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens | Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë | Symphony №5 in C Minor by Ludwig van Beethoven | Symphony №3 in E-flat Major by Ludwig van Beethoven | Les Misérables by Victor Hugo | Aida by Giuseppe Verdi | Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë | Night Before Christmas by Clement Clarke Moore | La Bohème by Giacomo Puccini | Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen | Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott | Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas | Rigoletto by Giuseppe Verdi | Il Trovatore by Giuseppe Verdi | Barber of Seville by Gioacchino Rossini | Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens | Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi | Little Women by Louisa May Alcott | Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne | Symphony №9 in E Minor by Antonín Dvořák | Black Beauty by Anna Sewell | Symphony №6 in B Minor by Peter Tchaikovsky | Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert | Faust by Charles Gounod | Great Expectations by Charles Dickens | Symphony №7 in A Major by Ludwig van Beethoven | Symphony №6 in F Major by Ludwig van Beethoven | Tosca by Giacomo Puccini | Moby Dick by Herman Melville | Symphony in B Minor (“Unfinished”) by Franz Schubert | Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy | Symphonie Fantastique by Hector Berlioz | Symphony №1 in C Minor by Johannes Brahms | Lucia di Lammermoor by Gaetano Donizetti | Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper | Scheherazade by Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov | Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman | Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas | Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo | Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire | Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky | Symphony №5 in E Minor by Peter Tchaikovsky | Fairy Tales by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm | Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne | Tristan and Isolde by Richard Wagner | Piano Concerto №1 in B-flat Minor by Peter Tchaikovsky | Piano Concerto №5 in E-flat Major by Ludwig van Beethoven | Norma by Vincenzo Bellini | Cavalleria Rusticana by Pietro Mascagni | Lohengrin by Richard Wagner | Martín Fierro by José Hernández | Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray | Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson | Tannhäuser by Richard Wagner | Tales from Shakespeare by Charles Lamb | Heidi by Johanna Spyri | Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley | Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens | Symphony in C Major by Franz Schubert | Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx | Capital by Karl Marx | War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy | Parsifal by Richard Wagner | Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson | Symphony №4 in F Minor by Peter Tchaikovsky | Emma by Jane Austen | Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson | Ballo in Maschera by Giuseppe Verdi | Otello by Giuseppe Verdi | Symphony №1 in D Major by Gustav Mahler | Symphony №4 in E Minor by Johannes Brahms | Freischütz by Carl Maria von Weber | Symphony №2 in D Major by Johannes Brahms | Red and the Black by Stendhal | Walden by Henry David Thoreau | Requiem by Giuseppe Verdi | Silas Marner by George Eliot | Père Goriot by Honoré de Balzac | German Requiem by Johannes Brahms | Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane | Piano Concerto №1 in E Minor by Frédéric Chopin | Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle | Swan Lake by Peter Tchaikovsky | Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling | Valkyrie by Richard Wagner | Swiss Family Robinson by Johann Wyss | Flying Dutchman by Richard Wagner | Martin Chuzzlewit by Charles Dickens | Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand | Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde | Lady of the Lake by Sir Walter Scott | Symphony №3 in F Major by Johannes Brahms | Violin Concerto in D Major by Peter Tchaikovsky | Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen | Quo Vadis by Henryk Sienkiewicz | Child’s Garden of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson | Violin Concerto in E Minor by Felix Mendelssohn | Prince and the Pauper by Mark Twain | Twilight of the Gods by Richard Wagner | Last Days of Pompeii by Edward Bulwer-Lytton | Bleak House by Charles Dickens | Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll | Midsummer Night’s Dream by Felix Mendelssohn | Dracula by Bram Stoker | Quintet in A Major by Franz Schubert | Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens | Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky | Mill on the Floss by George Eliot | Pagliacci by Ruggiero Leoncavallo | Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens | Fledermaus by Johann Strauss | Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy | Ring of the Niebelung by Richard Wagner | Little Dorrit by Charles Dickens | Winter Journey by Franz Schubert | Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne | Symphony in D Minor by César Franck | Ben-Hur by Lew Wallace | Eugénie Grandet by Honoré de Balzac | Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens | Rheingold by Richard Wagner | Symphony №4 in E-flat Major by Anton Bruckner | Van Gogh by Vincent Van Gogh | Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche | Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad | Siegfried by Richard Wagner | Barnaby Rudge by Charles Dickens | Adam Bede by George Eliot | Fidelio by Ludwig van Beethoven | Lorna Doone by R.D. Blackmore | Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev | Piano Concerto No 1 in D Minor by Johannes Brahms | Mikado by Arthur Sullivan and W. S. Gilbert | Elijah by Felix Mendelssohn | Middlemarch by George Eliot | History of Henry Esmond by William Makepeace Thackeray | Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville | Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow | Alhambra by Washington Irving | Mansfield Park by Jane Austen | Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky | Hansel and Gretel by Engelbert Humperdinck | Missa Solemnis by Ludwig van Beethoven | Sketch Book by Washington Irving | Falstaff by Giuseppe Verdi | Origin of Species by Charles Darwin | Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen | Time Machine by H. G. Wells | Voyage to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne | Nana by Émile Zola | Hard Times by Charles Dickens | French Revolution by Thomas Carlyle | Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy | Oregon Trail by Francis Parkman | Charterhouse of Parma by Stendhal | Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy | Grammatical Institute of the English Language by Noah Webster | Eugene Onegin by Aleksandr Pushkin | Symphony №3 in C Minor by Camille Saint-Saëns | Rip Van Winkle by Washington Irving | Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain | Hans Brinker by Mary Mapes Dodge | Persuasion by Jane Austen | Idylls of the King by Alfred Lord Tennyson | Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy | War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells | Manon Lescaut by Giacomo Puccini | Moonstone by Wilkie Collins | Germinal by Émile Zola | Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde | Peer Gynt by Henrik Ibsen | Requiem by Gabriel Fauré | On Liberty by John Stuart Mill | Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning | Twice-Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne | Black Arrow by Robert Louis Stevenson | Villette by Charlotte Brontë | House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne | Captains Courageous by Rudyard Kipling | Mysterious Island by Jules Verne | Life on the Mississippi by Mark Twain | Mystery of Edwin Drood by Charles Dickens | Invisible Man by H. G. Wells | Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol | Turn of the Screw by Henry James | Ugly Duckling by Hans Christian Andersen | Portrait of a Lady by Henry James | Shropshire Lad by A. E. Housman | Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy | Innocents Abroad by Mark Twain | Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving | Barchester Towers by Anthony Trollope | Warden by Anthony Trollope | Typee by Herman Melville | Old Mother Hubbard by Sarah Catherine Martin | Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser | Golden Bough by Sir James George Frazer | Emperor’s New Clothes by Hans Christian Andersen | Roughing It by Mark Twain | Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin | Possessed by Fyodor Dostoevsky | On War by Carl Von Clausewitz | Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud | Three Little Pigs by Unknown | Washington Square by Henry James | Pudd’nhead Wilson by Mark Twain | Thumbelina by Hans Christian Andersen | Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy by Jacob Burckhardt | Apologia Pro Vita Sua by John Henry Newman | Age of Fable by Thomas Bulfinch | Billy Budd by Herman Melville | Nightingale by Hans Christian Andersen | Birds of America by John James Audubon | Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle | Familiar Quotations by John Bartlett | American by Henry James | Looking Backward: 2000–1887 by Edward Bellamy | Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass An American Slave by Frederick Douglass | Owl and the Pussycat by Edward Lear | Steadfast Tin Soldier by Hans Christian Andersen | Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant by Ulysses S. Grant | Rise of Silas Lapham by William Dean Howells | Mythology by Thomas Bulfinch | Awakening by Kate Chopin | Hansel and Gretel by Unknown | Anatomy Descriptive and Surgical by Henry Gray | Casey at the Bat by Ernest Lawrence Thayer | Principles of Psychology by William James | Autobiography by Mark Twain | Paul Revere’s Ride by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow | Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition by Meriwether Lewis |

[daffodilias]

NoseriouslyandyouwonderwhyIdon'tupdatethisblogasoften--

Anyway, I finally got my butt to upload some of my more recent works~ c: I hope you like them! I've been having a bit of a hard time getting to requests/commissions/art trades, but at least by getting some styles down, I can just finish them up smoothly~ x3

[opera-ghosts]

Grace Moore sings Casta Diva from Bellini's opera Norma. From A Lady's Morals movie.

Remembering Grace Moore on her birthday:

b. December 5, 1898, Del Rio, Tennessee d. January 26, 1947, Copenhagen, Denmark

[harry-leroy]

2020: Year of Opera (Update March 2020) 

So, in order to expand my cultural horizons (and do this because I’ve been wanting to do this), I’m going to be trying to get through some operas this year! I’ll definitely be listening to these, and I’m going to try and find staged versions if I can - because opera is a form of theatre and performance is an important part of it. This list is based off of The Guardian’s List of Top 50 Operas, but if there’s one that you don’t see on here and recommend, let me know!

Crossed out titles will be the ones I’ve already listened to/watched, and ones with asterisks (*) by them will be ones that I’ve listened to parts of, but need to listen to the whole thing.

Also: (as of March) - I decided to switch out two of the Wagner operas for other pieces I felt that I would enjoy more. I’ve decided to keep Die Meistersinger and Lohengrin (and Parsifal - but I might end up replacing it later, I’m not sure) - the other two we’re replacing with Alma Deutscher’s Cinderella and Mozart’s Zaide. I also replaced Niccolai’s Merry Wives with Prokofiev’s Love for Three Oranges - due to being unable to find a performance I could watch. 

Progress as of March 6th, 2020: 13/100

1) L’Orfeo - Claudio Monteverdi (1607)

2) Dido and Aeneas* - Henry Purcell (1689)

3) Guilio Cesare (Julius Caesar) - George Frideric Handel (1724)

4) Serse (Xerxes) - Handel (1738)

5) Orfeo ed Euridice (Orpheus and Eurydice)* - Christoph Willibald Gluck (1762)

6) Idomeneo - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1781)

7) Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro) - Mozart (1786)

8) Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute)* - Mozart (1791)

9) Il Barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville)* - Gioachino Rossini (1816)

10) Guillaume Tell (William Tell)* - Rossini (1829)

11) Norma - Vincenzo Bellini (1831)

12) L’Elisir d’Amore (The Exilir of Love) - Gaetano Donizetti (1832)

13) Lucia di Lammermoor - Donizetti (1835)

14) Rigoletto - Giuseppe Verdi (1851)

15) La Traviata - Verdi (1853)

16) Don Carlos/Don Carlo - Verdi (1867)

17) Falstaff* - Verdi (1893)

18) Pagliacci - Ruggero Leoncavallo (1892)

19) La Bohème - Giacomo Puccini (1896)

20) Tosca* - Puccini (1900)

21) Madama Butterfly - Puccini (1904)

22) Turandot - Puccini (1926)

23) Fidelio - Ludwig van Beethoven (1805)

24) Der Freischütz - Carl Maria von Weber (1821)

25) Lohengrin* - Richard Wagner (1850)

26) Zaide - Mozart  (1780)

27) Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg - Wagner (1868)

28) Cinderella - Alma Deutscher (2017) 

29) Die Lustige Witwe (The Merry Widow) - Franz Lehár (1905)

30) Salome* - Richard Strauss (1905)

31) Der Rosenkavalier* - Strauss (1911)

32) Les Troyens - Hector Berlioz (1863/1890)

33) Carmen* - Georges Bizet (1875)

34) Manon* - Jules Massenet (1884)

35) Pelléas et Mélisande - Claude Debussy (1902)

36) The Bartered Bride - Bedrich Smetana (1866)

37) Boris Godunov - Modest Mussorgsky (1874)

38) Eugene Onegin - Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1879)

39) The Queen of Spades - Tchaikovsky (1890)

40) Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk - Dmitri Shostakovich (1934)

41) War and Peace - Sergei Prokofiev (1944)

42) The Rake’s Progress - Igor Stravinsky (1951)

43) Jenufa - Leoš Janáček (1904)

44) Bluebeard’s Castle - Béla Bartók (1918)

45) Wozzeck - Alban Berg (1925)

46) Porgy and Bess - George Gershwin (1935)

47) Peter Grimes - Benjamin Britten (1945)

48) The Turn of the Screw* - Britten (1954)

49) King Priam - Michael Tippett (1962)

50) Le Grand Macabre - György Ligeti (1978)

Some Additional Operas not on that list that I want to listen to/finish listening to:

51) Armide - Jean Baptiste Lully (1686)

52) Proserpine (Proserpina) - Lully (1680)

53) Phaëton - Lully (1683)

54) Roland - Lully (1685)

55) Aida* - Verdi (1871)

56) Otello* - Verdi (1887)

57) Così fan tutte - Mozart (1790)

58) Parsifal - Wagner (1878)

59) Faust - Charles Gounod (1859)  

60) Les contes d’Hoffmann* - Offenbach (1881)

61) Elektra - Strauss (1909)

62) Rusalka - Antonin Dvorák (1901)

63) La clemenza di Tito* - Mozart (1791)

64) Lakmé* - Léo Dilibes (1883)

65) La sonnambula - Bellini (1831)

66) Die Fledermaus - Johann Strauss II (1874)

67) Roméo et Juliette* - Gounod (1867)

68) Andrea Chénier - Umberto Giodano (1896)

69) Semiramide - Rossini (1823)

70) Dialogues of the Carmelites - Francis Poulenc (1956)

71) Anna Bolena - Donizetti (1830)

72) Les Huguenots - Giacomo Meyerbeer (1836)

73) Peer Gynt* - Edvard Grieg (1876)

74) Ariadne auf Naxos - Richard Strauss (1912)

75) Billy Budd - Britten (1951)

76) HMS Pinafore - Arthur Sullivan (1878)

77) Béatrice et Bénédict* - Berlioz (1862)

78) Edgar - Puccini (1889)

79) Hippolyte et Aricie - Jean-Philippe Rameau (1733)

80) The Love for Three Oranges - Sergei Prokofiev (1919)

81) Alceste - Gluck (1767)

82) Amahl and the Night Visitors - Gian Carlo Menotti (1951)

83) King Arthur* - Purcell (1691)

84) The Nose - Shostakovich (1929)

85) Castor et Pollux - Rameau (1737)

86) The Tempest - Thomas Adès (2004)

87) Die tote Stadt - Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1920)

88) Alfonso und Estrella - Franz Schubert (1822)

89) L’étoile - Emmanuel Chabrier (1877)

90) The Fairy Queen - Purcell (1692)

91) Where the Wild Things Are - Oliver Knussen (1983)

92) The Nightingale - Igor Stravinsky (1914)

93) L’enfant et les sortilèges* - Maurice Ravel (1925)

94) Punch and Judy - Harrison Birtwistle (1968)

95) Death in Venice - Britten (1973)

96) We Come to the River - Hans Werner Henze (1984)

97) Einstein on the Beach - Philip Glass (1976)

98) Taverner - Peter Maxwell Davies (1972)

99) A Midsummer Night’s Dream - Britten (1960)

100) The Prodigal Son - Britten (1968)

[harry-leroy]

2020: Year of Opera

So, in order to expand my cultural horizons (and do this because I’ve been wanting to do this), I’m going to be trying to get through some operas this year! I’ll definitely be listening to these, and I’m going to try and find staged versions if I can - because opera is a form of theatre and performance is an important part of it. This list is based off of The Guardian’s List of Top 50 Operas, but if there’s one that you don’t see on here and recommend, let me know!

Crossed out titles will be the ones I’ve already listened to/watched, and ones with asterisks (*) by them will be ones that I’ve listened to parts of, but need to listen to the whole thing.

1) L’Orfeo - Claudio Monteverdi (1607)

2) Dido and Aeneas* - Henry Purcell (1689)

3) Guilio Cesare (Julius Caesar) - George Frideric Handel (1724)

4) Serse (Xerxes) - Handel (1738)

5) Orfeo ed Euridice (Orpheus and Eurydice)* - Christoph Willibald Gluck (1762)

6) Idomeneo - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1781)

7) Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro)* - Mozart (1786)

8) Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute)* - Mozart (1791)

9) Il Barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville)* - Gioachino Rossini (1816)

10) Guillaume Tell (William Tell)* - Rossini (1829)

11) Norma - Vincenzo Bellini (1831)

12) L’Elisir d’Amore (The Exilir of Love) - Gaetano Donizetti (1832)

13) Lucia di Lammermoor - Donizetti (1835)

14) Rigoletto - Giuseppe Verdi (1851)

15) La Traviata - Verdi (1853)

16) Don Carlos/Don Carlo - Verdi (1867)

17) Falstaff* - Verdi (1893)

18) Pagliacci - Ruggero Leoncavallo (1892)

19) La Bohème - Giacomo Puccini (1896)

20) Tosca* - Puccini (1900)

21) Madama Butterfly - Puccini (1904)

22) Turandot* - Puccini (1926)

23) Fidelio - Ludwig van Beethoven (1805)

24) Der Freischütz - Carl Maria von Weber (1821)

25) Lohengrin* - Richard Wagner (1850)

26) Tristan und Isolde* - Wagner (1865)

27) Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg - Wagner (1868)

28) Der Ring des Nibelungen - Wagner (1876)

29) Die Lustige Witwe (The Merry Widow) - Franz Lehár (1905)

30) Salome* - Richard Strauss (1905)

31) Der Rosenkavalier* - Strauss (1911)

32) Les Troyens - Hector Berlioz (1863/1890)

33) Carmen* - Georges Bizet (1875)

34) Manon* - Jules Massenet (1884)

35) Pelléas et Mélisande - Claude Debussy (1902)

36) The Bartered Bride - Bedrich Smetana (1866)

37) Boris Godunov - Modest Mussorgsky (1874)

38) Eugene Onegin - Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1879)

39) The Queen of Spades - Tchaikovsky (1890)

40) Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk - Dmitri Shostakovich (1934)

41) War and Peace - Sergei Prokofiev (1944)

42) The Rake’s Progress - Igor Stravinsky (1951)

43) Jenufa - Leoš Janáček (1904)

44) Bluebeard’s Castle - Béla Bartók (1918)

45) Wozzeck - Alban Berg (1925)

46) Porgy and Bess - George Gershwin (1935)

47) Peter Grimes - Benjamin Britten (1945)

48) The Turn of the Screw* - Britten (1954)

49) King Priam - Michael Tippett (1962)

50) Le Grand Macabre - György Ligeti (1978)

Some Additional Operas not on that list that I want to listen to/finish listening to:

51) Armide* - Jean Baptiste Lully (1686)

52) Proserpine (Proserpina) - Lully (1680)

53) Phaëton - Lully (1683)

54) Roland - Lully (1685)

55) Aida* - Verdi (1871)

56) Otello* - Verdi (1887)

57) Così fan tutte - Mozart (1790)

58) Parsifal - Wagner (1878)

59) Faust - Charles Gounod (1859)  

60) Les contes d’Hoffmann* - Offenbach (1881)

61) Elektra - Strauss (1909)

62) Rusalka* - Antonin Dvorák (1901)

63) La clemenza di Tito* - Mozart (1791)

64) Lakmé* - Léo Dilibes (1883)

65) La sonnambula - Bellini (1831)

66) Die Fledermaus - Johann Strauss II (1874)

67) Roméo et Juliette* - Gounod (1867)

68) Andrea Chénier - Umberto Giodano (1896)

69) Semiramide - Rossini (1823)

70) Dialogues of the Carmelites - Francis Poulenc (1956)

71) Anna Bolena - Donizetti (1830)

72) Les Huguenots - Giacomo Meyerbeer (1836)

73) Peer Gynt* - Edvard Grieg (1876)

74) Ariadne auf Naxos - Richard Strauss (1912)

75) Billy Budd - Britten (1951)

76) HMS Pinafore - Arthur Sullivan (1878)

77) Béatrice et Bénédict* - Berlioz (1862)

78) Edgar - Puccini (1889)

79) Hippolyte et Aricie - Jean-Philippe Rameau (1733)

80) The Merry Wives of Windsor - Otto Nicolai (1849)

81) Alceste - Gluck (1767)

82) Amahl and the Night Visitors - Gian Carlo Menotti (1951)

83) King Arthur* - Purcell (1691)

84) The Nose - Shostakovich (1929)

85) Castor et Pollux - Rameau (1737)

86) The Tempest - Thomas Adès (2004)

87) Die tote Stadt - Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1920)

88) Alfonso und Estrella - Franz Schubert (1822)

89) L’étoile - Emmanuel Chabrier (1877)

90) The Fairy Queen - Purcell (1692)

91) Where the Wild Things Are - Oliver Knussen (1983)

92) The Nightingale - Igor Stravinsky (1914)

93) L’enfant et les sortilèges* - Maurice Ravel (1925)

94) Punch and Judy - Harrison Birtwistle (1968)

95) Death in Venice - Britten (1973)

96) We Come to the River - Hans Werner Henze (1984)

97) Einstein on the Beach - Philip Glass (1976)

98) Taverner - Peter Maxwell Davies (1972)

99) A Midsummer Night’s Dream - Britten (1960)

100) The Prodigal Son - Britten (1968)

[harry-leroy]

2020: Year of Opera 

So, in order to expand my cultural horizons (and do this because I’ve been wanting to do this), I’m going to be trying to get through some operas this year! I’ll definitely be listening to these, and I’m going to try and find staged versions if I can - because opera is a form of theatre and performance is an important part of it. This list is based off of The Guardian’s List of Top 50 Operas, but if there’s one that you don’t see on here and recommend, let me know! 

Crossed out titles will be the ones I’ve already listened to/watched, and ones with asterisks (*) by them will be ones that I’ve listened to parts of, but need to listen to the whole thing. 

1) L’Orfeo - Claudio Monteverdi (1607) 

2) Dido and Aeneas* - Henry Purcell (1689) 

3) Guilio Cesare (Julius Caesar) - George Frideric Handel (1724) 

4) Serse (Xerxes) - Handel (1738) 

5) Orfeo ed Euridice (Orpheus and Eurydice)* - Christoph Willibald Gluck (1762) 

6) Idomeneo - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1781) 

7) Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro)* - Mozart (1786) 

8) Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute)* - Mozart (1791) 

9) Il Barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville)* - Gioachino Rossini (1816) 

10) Guillaume Tell (William Tell)* - Rossini (1829) 

11) Norma - Vincenzo Bellini (1831) 

12) L’Elisir d’Amore (The Exilir of Love) - Gaetano Donizetti (1832) 

13) Lucia di Lammermoor - Donizetti (1835) 

14) Rigoletto - Giuseppe Verdi (1851) 

15) La Traviata - Verdi (1853) 

16) Don Carlos/Don Carlo - Verdi (1867) 

17) Falstaff* - Verdi (1893) 

18) Pagliacci - Ruggero Leoncavallo (1892) 

19) La Bohème - Giacomo Puccini (1896) 

20) Tosca* - Puccini (1900) 

21) Madama Butterfly* - Puccini (1904) 

22) Turandot* - Puccini (1926) 

23) Fidelio - Ludwig van Beethoven (1805) 

24) Der Freischütz - Carl Maria von Weber (1821) 

25) Lohengrin* - Richard Wagner (1850) 

26) Tristan und Isolde* - Wagner (1865) 

27) Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg - Wagner (1868) 

28) Der Ring des Nibelungen - Wagner (1876) 

29) Die Lustige Witwe (The Merry Widow) - Franz Lehár (1905) 

30) Salome* - Richard Strauss (1905) 

31) Der Rosenkavalier* - Strauss (1911) 

32) Les Troyens - Hector Berlioz (1863/1890) 

33) Carmen* - Georges Bizet (1875) 

34) Manon* - Jules Massenet (1884) 

35) Pelléas et Mélisande - Claude Debussy (1902) 

36) The Bartered Bride - Bedrich Smetana (1866) 

37) Boris Godunov - Modest Mussorgsky (1874) 

38) Eugene Onegin - Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1879) 

39) The Queen of Spades - Tchaikovsky (1890) 

40) Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk - Dmitri Shostakovich (1934) 

41) War and Peace - Sergei Prokofiev (1944) 

42) The Rake’s Progress - Igor Stravinsky (1951) 

43) Jenufa - Leoš Janáček (1904) 

44) Bluebeard’s Castle - Béla Bartók (1918) 

45) Wozzeck - Alban Berg (1925) 

46) Porgy and Bess - George Gershwin (1935) 

47) Peter Grimes - Benjamin Britten (1945) 

48) The Turn of the Screw* - Britten (1954) 

49) King Priam - Michael Tippett (1962) 

50) Le Grand Macabre - György Ligeti (1978) 

Some Additional Operas not on that list that I want to listen to/finish listening to: 

51) Armide* - Jean Baptiste Lully (1686) 

52) Proserpine (Proserpina) - Lully (1680) 

53) Phaëton - Lully (1683) 

54) Roland - Lully (1685) 

55) Aida* - Verdi (1871) 

56) Otello* - Verdi (1887) 

57) Così fan tutte - Mozart (1790) 

58) Parsifal - Wagner (1878)

59) Faust - Charles Gounod (1859)  

60) Les contes d’Hoffmann* - Offenbach (1881) 

61) Elektra - Strauss (1909) 

62) Rusalka* - Antonin Dvorák (1901) 

63) La clemenza di Tito* - Mozart (1791) 

64) Lakmé* - Léo Dilibes (1883) 

65) La sonnambula - Bellini (1831) 

66) Die Fledermaus - Johann Strauss II (1874) 

67) Roméo et Juliette* - Gounod (1867) 

68) Andrea Chénier - Umberto Giodano (1896) 

69) Semiramide - Rossini (1823)

70) Dialogues of the Carmelites - Francis Poulenc (1956) 

71) Anna Bolena - Donizetti (1830) 

72) Les Huguenots - Giacomo Meyerbeer (1836) 

73) Peer Gynt* - Edvard Grieg (1876) 

74) Ariadne auf Naxos - Richard Strauss (1912) 

75) Billy Budd - Britten (1951) 

76) HMS Pinafore - Arthur Sullivan (1878) 

77) Béatrice et Bénédict* - Berlioz (1862) 

78) Edgar - Puccini (1889) 

79) Hippolyte et Aricie - Jean-Philippe Rameau (1733) 

80) The Merry Wives of Windsor - Otto Nicolai (1849) 

81) Alceste - Gluck (1767) 

82) Amahl and the Night Visitors - Gian Carlo Menotti (1951) 

83) King Arthur* - Purcell (1691) 

84) The Nose - Shostakovich (1929) 

85) Castor et Pollux - Rameau (1737) 

86) The Tempest - Thomas Adès (2004) 

87) Die tote Stadt - Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1920) 

88) Alfonso und Estrella - Franz Schubert (1822) 

89) L’étoile - Emmanuel Chabrier (1877) 

90) The Fairy Queen - Purcell (1692) 

91) Where the Wild Things Are - Oliver Knussen (1983) 

92) The Nightingale - Igor Stravinsky (1914) 

93) L’enfant et les sortilèges* - Maurice Ravel (1925) 

94) Punch and Judy - Harrison Birtwistle (1968) 

95) Death in Venice - Britten (1973) 

96) We Come to the River - Hans Werner Henze (1984) 

97) Einstein on the Beach - Philip Glass (1976) 

98) Taverner - Peter Maxwell Davies (1972) 

99) A Midsummer Night’s Dream - Britten (1960) 

100) The Prodigal Son - Britten (1968) 

[harry-leroy]

2020: Year of Opera

So, in order to expand my cultural horizons (and do this because I’ve been wanting to do this), I’m going to be trying to get through some operas this year! I’ll definitely be listening to these, and I’m going to try and find staged versions if I can - because opera is a form of theatre and performance is an important part of it. This list is based off of The Guardian’s List of Top 50 Operas, but if there’s one that you don’t see on here and recommend, let me know!

Crossed out titles will be the ones I’ve already listened to/watched, and ones with asterisks (*) by them will be ones that I’ve listened to parts of, but need to listen to the whole thing.

1) L’Orfeo - Claudio Monteverdi (1607)

2) Dido and Aeneas* - Henry Purcell (1689)

3) Guilio Cesare (Julius Caesar) - George Frideric Handel (1724)

4) Serse (Xerxes) - Handel (1738)

5) Orfeo ed Euridice (Orpheus and Eurydice)* - Christoph Willibald Gluck (1762)

6) Idomeneo - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1781)

7) Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro)* - Mozart (1786)

8) Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute)* - Mozart (1791)

9) Il Barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville)* - Gioachino Rossini (1816)

10) Guillaume Tell (William Tell)* - Rossini (1829)

11) Norma - Vincenzo Bellini (1831)

12) L’Elisir d’Amore (The Exilir of Love) - Gaetano Donizetti (1832)

13) Lucia di Lammermoor - Donizetti (1835)

14) Rigoletto - Giuseppe Verdi (1851)

15) La Traviata - Verdi (1853)

16) Don Carlos/Don Carlo - Verdi (1867)

17) Falstaff* - Verdi (1893)

18) Pagliacci - Ruggero Leoncavallo (1892)

19) La Bohème - Giacomo Puccini (1896)

20) Tosca* - Puccini (1900)

21) Madama Butterfly - Puccini (1904)

22) Turandot* - Puccini (1926)

23) Fidelio - Ludwig van Beethoven (1805)

24) Der Freischütz - Carl Maria von Weber (1821)

25) Lohengrin* - Richard Wagner (1850)

26) Tristan und Isolde* - Wagner (1865)

27) Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg - Wagner (1868)

28) Der Ring des Nibelungen - Wagner (1876)

29) Die Lustige Witwe (The Merry Widow) - Franz Lehár (1905)

30) Salome* - Richard Strauss (1905)

31) Der Rosenkavalier* - Strauss (1911)

32) Les Troyens - Hector Berlioz (1863/1890)

33) Carmen* - Georges Bizet (1875)

34) Manon* - Jules Massenet (1884)

35) Pelléas et Mélisande - Claude Debussy (1902)

36) The Bartered Bride - Bedrich Smetana (1866)

37) Boris Godunov - Modest Mussorgsky (1874)

38) Eugene Onegin - Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1879)

39) The Queen of Spades - Tchaikovsky (1890)

40) Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk - Dmitri Shostakovich (1934)

41) War and Peace - Sergei Prokofiev (1944)

42) The Rake’s Progress - Igor Stravinsky (1951)

43) Jenufa - Leoš Janáček (1904)

44) Bluebeard’s Castle - Béla Bartók (1918)

45) Wozzeck - Alban Berg (1925)

46) Porgy and Bess - George Gershwin (1935)

47) Peter Grimes - Benjamin Britten (1945)

48) The Turn of the Screw* - Britten (1954)

49) King Priam - Michael Tippett (1962)

50) Le Grand Macabre - György Ligeti (1978)

Some Additional Operas not on that list that I want to listen to/finish listening to:

51) Armide* - Jean Baptiste Lully (1686)

52) Proserpine (Proserpina) - Lully (1680)

53) Phaëton - Lully (1683)

54) Roland - Lully (1685)

55) Aida* - Verdi (1871)

56) Otello* - Verdi (1887)

57) Così fan tutte - Mozart (1790)

58) Parsifal - Wagner (1878)

59) Faust - Charles Gounod (1859)  

60) Les contes d’Hoffmann* - Offenbach (1881)

61) Elektra - Strauss (1909)

62) Rusalka* - Antonin Dvorák (1901)

63) La clemenza di Tito* - Mozart (1791)

64) Lakmé* - Léo Dilibes (1883)

65) La sonnambula - Bellini (1831)

66) Die Fledermaus - Johann Strauss II (1874)

67) Roméo et Juliette* - Gounod (1867)

68) Andrea Chénier - Umberto Giodano (1896)

69) Semiramide - Rossini (1823)

70) Dialogues of the Carmelites - Francis Poulenc (1956)

71) Anna Bolena - Donizetti (1830)

72) Les Huguenots - Giacomo Meyerbeer (1836)

73) Peer Gynt* - Edvard Grieg (1876)

74) Ariadne auf Naxos - Richard Strauss (1912)

75) Billy Budd - Britten (1951)

76) HMS Pinafore - Arthur Sullivan (1878)

77) Béatrice et Bénédict* - Berlioz (1862)

78) Edgar - Puccini (1889)

79) Hippolyte et Aricie - Jean-Philippe Rameau (1733)

80) The Merry Wives of Windsor - Otto Nicolai (1849)

81) Alceste - Gluck (1767)

82) Amahl and the Night Visitors - Gian Carlo Menotti (1951)

83) King Arthur* - Purcell (1691)

84) The Nose - Shostakovich (1929)

85) Castor et Pollux - Rameau (1737)

86) The Tempest - Thomas Adès (2004)

87) Die tote Stadt - Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1920)

88) Alfonso und Estrella - Franz Schubert (1822)

89) L’étoile - Emmanuel Chabrier (1877)

90) The Fairy Queen - Purcell (1692)

91) Where the Wild Things Are - Oliver Knussen (1983)

92) The Nightingale - Igor Stravinsky (1914)

93) L’enfant et les sortilèges* - Maurice Ravel (1925)

94) Punch and Judy - Harrison Birtwistle (1968)

95) Death in Venice - Britten (1973)

96) We Come to the River - Hans Werner Henze (1984)

97) Einstein on the Beach - Philip Glass (1976)

98) Taverner - Peter Maxwell Davies (1972)

99) A Midsummer Night’s Dream - Britten (1960)

100) The Prodigal Son - Britten (1968)

[lboogie1906]

Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield (1809 – March 31, 1876), dubbed "The Black Swan" (a play on Jenny Lind's sobriquet, "The Swedish Nightingale), was a singer considered the best-known black concert artist of her time. Greenfield was born into slavery in Natchez, Mississippi. She studied music as a child, although musical education was not generally provided by the Quakers with whom she associated. She began to sing at private parties, debuting at the Buffalo Musical Association. She debuted at Metropolitan Hall, which held an audience of 4,000—white patrons only. After the concert, she apologized to her people for their exclusion from the performance and gave a concert to benefit the Home of Aged Colored Persons and the Colored Orphan Asylum. She went to London under the patronage of the Duchess of Sutherland and Harriet Beecher Stowe. She was taught by Queen Victoria's Chapel Royal organist, George Smart. She gave a command performance for the queen at Buckingham Palace; she was the first African American performer to perform before British royalty. Best known for her performances of the music of George Frideric Handel, Vincenzo Bellini, and Gaetano Donizetti, she also performed sentimental American songs such as "Home! Sweet Home!" and "Old Folks at Home". She toured and conducted a Philadelphia music studio. Among her voice pupils was Thomas Bowers, who became known as "The Colored Mario". She created an opera troupe with Bowers which she directed. She was a member of the Philadelphia Shiloh Baptist Church. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence #womenhistorymonth https://www.instagram.com/p/CNE9JBhrKy1KvfV_365lK9U4dpxkcelwnLbxTA0/?igshid=dvz2t2sxhu10