Soprano Giuditta Pasta and tenor Giovanni Battista Rubini, the original leads in Bellini’s La Sonnambula. (ca. 1831)
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Caricature of Gaetano Majorano a.k.a Caffarelli by Pier Leone Ghezzi.
(ca. 1740)
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A young Giuditta Pasta as Rossini’s Desdemona (Otello) when she sang this role in Paris in the early 1820s. By David Pradier.
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5Joyce DiDonato as Maria Stuarda, April 21st, 2012.
A minute of Joyce DiDonato as Maria Stuarda, April 21st, 2012.
Oh God, I NEED to see this! I don’t know how, where and when! I just… NEED! Joyce sounds PERFECT… as usual!
“Maria Malibran as Leonora cross-dressed as Fidelio in the prison scene of Beethoven’s Fidelio. London, October 10th, 1836”.
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“This is a caricature on the public taste of the 1720s when Londoners flocked to popular entertainment and the fashionable opera rather than legitimate drama. At the right, crowds queue for the pantomime while masqueraders pour into the theatre on the left, overlooked by J.J.Heidegger, who devised this lucrative craze. The sign above is based on a caricature of the singers Senesino, Cuzzoni and Berenstadt. In the foreground, a woman wheels a barrow marked ‘waste paper’ - the works of Shakespeare, Congreve, Dryden and Otway. The caricature was the first independent work of William Hogarth, one of the greatest of English painters and satirists, and a shrewd commentator on the fashions and foibles of his age.”
Handel, Rossini, Chopin, Vivaldi and now, him. Happy birthday to the incomparable Heitor Villa-Lobos! One of my idols and one of the greatest composers of the 20th Century! No… one of the greatest composers of all time!
Here, in this video, we got the wonderful soprano Sylvia Klein singing Villa’s Canção de Amor from “A Floresta do Amazonas”.
“City more beautiful than the smile, bigger than the paradise, better than the temptation. Notable city, inimitable, more beautiful than any other one.” ~ Noel Rosa
My beautiful and incomparable home!
PARABÉNS AMADO RIO!
Happy birthday!
HAPPY 53rd… I mean, 220th BIRTHDAY, ROSSINI!!
(I’m still very happy that Google reminded him! *_*)
Gaetano Majorano a.k.a Caffarelli, one of the few castrati that loved music enough to ask for being castrated.
The human voice is the most beautiful instrument of all, but it is the most difficult to play.
Richard Strauss (via theshoreofthewideworld)
A young Giuseppe di Stefano in the beginning of his career.
