Puccini Opera Turandot

 Classical Music / Opera

 

Turandot is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to a libretto in Italian by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni. Puccini left the opera unfinished at the time of his death in 1924; it premiered in 1926 after the music was posthumously completed by Franco Alfano.

Composers: Giacomo Puccini, Franco Alfano

 

Librettists: Renato Simoni, Giuseppe Adami

 

Written: 1924

 

Language: Italian

 

Characters: Princess Turandot, Emperor Altoum, Calàf, Prince of Persia, Timur, A Mandarin, Liù, Ping, Pang, Pong

 

Arias: Nessun dorma, In questa reggia, Tu che di gel sei cinta, Non piangere, Liù, Del primo pianto

 

First performance: 25 April 1926, Teatro alla Scala, Milan, Italy

 

Turandot Synopsis

Act I

A Mandarin reads the royal decree that the Princess Turandot will marry any royal suitor who anser her three riddles. If he cannot, the price shall be his head. Her most recent suitor, the Prince of Persia, is to be executed at the moon’s rising. In the commotion outside the palace a blind man falls to the ground, and his companion, Liù, asks for help. They are aided by Calaf, who recognizes the man as his long-lost father, Timur, the banished ruler of his land. Calaf, like his father, is running from enemies and concealing his identity, and is known only as the Unknown Prince. Liù continues to aid Timur even in exile because years before, as she explains, Calaf bestowed a smile upon her.

The people impatiently await the beheading. As the Prince of Persia enters, the crowd is suddenly moved and pleads with the Princess to pardon him. Turandot appears and dispassionately confirms the Prince’s sentence with a silent gesture. Calaf immediately is entranced by Turandot's beauty when she apppears to condemn the Prince of Persia. Timur and Liù try to convince the smitten Calàf that he must leave with them, but he breaks away and attempts to announce himself as a suitor. The three ministers of the Imperial Household, Ping, Pang, and Pong, warn him of his folly, to n and tries to dissuade him, but to no avail. Liù begs him to listen, but Calaf ignores her entreaties and ceremoniously rings the gong, signifying his challenge for Turandot’s hand.

 

Act II

Ping, Pang, and Pong prepare for the eventuality of a wedding or a funeral. They discuss their misery since Turandot reached marriageable age, numbering the many noble suitors who have met a deadly fate. They long for their country homes. Their hopes are guarded. Is there truly a man whose passion can melt Turandot’s icy heart?

A crowd assembles for the Trial of the three riddles. Turandot devised this system to avenge her ancestress, who was captured, raped, and put to death by marauding invaders. She offers Calaf one last chance to withdraw, but he stands firm. The first question is offered: “What is born each night and dies each dawn?” Calàf correctly answers “Hope.” Slightly taken aback, Turandot poses the next riddle: “What flares warm like a flame, yet it is no flame?” Calaf hesitates, then answers perfectly “Blood.” Visibly shaken, Turandot asks the final question: “The ice that gives you fire, what can it be?” Calaf waits a while and triumphantly cries “Turandot!” The people celebrate his victory, but Turandot pleads with the emperor not to be given to this Unknown Prince. Seeing her distress, Calaf offers a riddle of his own: “If before dawn you can discover the name I bear, I shall forfeit my life.”

 

Act III

It is decreed that no one shall sleep, under penalty of death, until the name of the Unknown Prince is discovered. Calaf expresses his conviction that he alone will reveal the secret. Ping, Pang, and Pong offer prizes, including his safe escape, if he tells them his name. Timur and Liù are captured, and at Turandot’s request Timur is to be tortured until he reveals the truth. Liù steps forward and says that she knows the prince’s name but will keep it as her eternal secret then offers herself without revealing Calaf's name. She stabs herself, but before dying she predicts that Turandot will love Calaf by dawn. Calaf reproaches the Princess for her cruelty. 

Turandot’s strength and desire for revenge leave her, and she weeps for the first time. Turandot is transformed and admits her love for him. Calaf reveals his true identity, thereby putting his life in Turandot’s hands. Trumpets announce the arrival of dawn. Turandot addresses the emperor and the people, and announces Calaf's name to the crowd: “I have discovered the stranger’s name: it is Love!”

 

Photo credit:

Turandot.  Wikipedia Commons / Public Domain. Promotional poster for Giacomo Puccini's opera "Turandot", on 25 April 1926

 

Resources:

 Martin, Nicholas Ivor. The Da Capo Opera Manual. New York: Da Capo Press (1997)

Turandot. en.wikipedia.org

(c)  April 2010. Updated April 25, 2024.  Tel Asiado. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.

Mozart and Friends of Bertramka

24 April 2010

To all Mozart lovers and enthusiasts worldwide:

This post was passed on by Sherry Davis, one of my American Mozartean friends.

mozartsocietyofamerica.org/bertramka

Friends of Bertramka

Please join Friends of Bertramka, a group of individuals concerned about the future of this beloved Mozart monument in Prague, and dedicated to supporting its revival for a new era of Mozart plans and projects.

Seidan Bust of MozartBertramka was formally restituted to its owner, the Czech Mozart Society, in 2009. Friends of Bertramka has been created by the Mozart Society of America to aid its friends and colleagues in the Czech Mozart Society in repairing both recent and long-term damage to Bertramka and restoring its museum and educational programs.

Vladimir Nabokov

Literature / Writers Datebook: April 22

 

Brief biography of Vladimir Nabokov, Russian-born American novelist, one of 20^th century's outstanding writers, and famous for his masterpiece novel, Lolita, considered a controversial novel in his day. His literary knowledge spanned many languages, and he was a scholar of lepidoptery and literature.   

 

 

 

Early Life 

Vladimir Nabokov was born on April 22, 1899 in St. Petersburg, Russia, into an aristocratic family. An intelligent child, he learned to speak English and French along with his native Russian. His first poems were published before he was twenty years old.

During the Russian Revolution his family lost its wealth. The family moved abroad in 1919. Nabokov studied at Cambridge University, and from 1922 until 1940 lived first in Germany and then Paris, where he met novelist James Joyce and mixed with Russian refugees. He published nine novels during these years, writing in Russian under the pen name Vladimir Serin. Although his reputation as an novelist grew, he earned little money and had to teach to survive.

 

Migration to the U.S.

In 1940, Nabokov, his wife and son moved to America, where he took citizenship in 1945. His first novel in English was The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, published when he was 42. From then on he wrote all his books in English.

Nabokov taught at Cornell University from 1948 to 1059, in which he used this experience for his novel Pnin, a comic account of a Russian professor at an American university.

 

Lolita, a Masterpiece

When he was in his mid-50s, Nabokov published Lolita. It tells the story of a middle-aged man and his passion for his 12-year-old stepdaughter. That time the novel's subject matter shocked many people, but its literary style and humor were praised by critics. Lolita was an instant success, Nabokov's masterpiece. It catapulted him to fame and finally, enabled him to devote to writing.  

Vladimir Nabokov died at the age of 78, July 2, 1977.

 

Quoted from Nabokov's masterpiece, Lolita:

"I am trying to describe these things not to relive them in my present boundless misery, but to sort out the portion of hell and the portion of heaven in that strange, awful, maddening world – nymphet love."

 

Works by Vladimir Nabokov

Mashenka, 1926 (originally in Russian)

Mary, 1926

King, Queen, Knave, 1928

The Eye, 1930 (originally in Russian)

Laughter in the Dark, 1932

Despair, 1936

The Gift, 1937-1938

Invitation to a Beheading, 1938 (originally in Russian)

The Real Life of Sebastian Knight, 1941

Bend Sinister, 1947

Lolita, 1955

Pnin, 1957

Pale Fire, 1962

 

Photo Credit:

Vladimir Nabokov. Wikipedia Commons / Public Domain. Accessed April 2010

 

Resources:

Goring, Rosemary, editor. Larousse Dictionary of Writers. New York: Larousse, 1994

McGovern, Una, editor. Chambers Biographical Dictionary. Edinburgh: Chambers Harrap, 2002

Ousby, Ian. The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993

(c) April 2010. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.  

Pollyanna Film (Hayley Mills)

Film / Pollyanna

A young 12-year-old orphan girl comes to live with her aunt in a town embattled by feuds and intimidated by her aunt. By the time she must leave, she has transformed the community with her invincible will to see the the goodness of even the worst situations and bring it out for the best of all.

 

 

Director: David Swift

Adapted from: Pollyanna

Screenplay: David Swift

Cinematography: Russell Harlan

Edited by : Frank Gross

Music by : Paul SMith

Production Compnay: Walt Disney Productions 

Distributed by: Buena Vista Distribution 

Story by: Eleanor H. Porter 

Release date: 19 May 1960 (USA)

 

 

Award: Academy Juvenile Award (for Hayley Mills)

 

Pollyanna (1960 feature film)  stars child actress Hayley Mills, Jane Wyman, Karl Malden, Richard Egan, Adolf Menjou, Kevin Corcoran and Agnes Moorehead. in a story about a cheerful orphan changing the outlook of a small town. The film was written and directed by David Swift, based on the 1913 novel Pollyanna by Eleanor H. Porter. The film won Hayley Mills an Academy Juvenile Award and also received a BAFTA nomination for Best Actress. It was the last film of actor Adolphe Menjou.

Pollyanna was Hayley Mills' first film in the series of six for Disney and the directorial debut of David Swift.

Walt Disney said that the cast was the most important in the studio's history, including names such as Wyman, Malden, and Richard Egan. 
Pollyanna (The Book)

Pollyanna is a 1913 novel by American author Eleanor H. Porter, considered a classic of children's literature. The book's success led to Porter's soon writing a sequel, Pollyanna Grows Up (1915). Eleven more Pollyanna sequels, known as "Glad Books", were later published, most of them written by Elizabeth Borton or Harriet Lummis Smith. Further sequels followed, including Pollyanna Plays the Game by Colleen L. Reece, published in 1997. Due to the book's fame, "Pollyanna" has become a byword for someone who – like the title character – has an unfailingly optimistic outlook; a subconscious bias towards the positive is often described as the Pollyanna principle. Despite the current common use of the term to mean 'excessively cheerful', Pollyanna and her father played the glad game as a method of coping with the real difficulties and sorrows that, along with luck and joy, shape every life.

Pollyanna has been adapted for film several times. Some of the best known are the 1920 version starring Mary Pickford, and Disney's 1960 version starring child actress Hayley Mills, who won a special Oscar for the role.

Pie Jesu

 Classical Music / Sacred Music

"Pie Jesu" (original Latin: "Pie Iesu") is a text from the final couplet of the hymn "Dies irae", and is often included in musical settings of the Requiem Mass as a motet. The phrase means "pious Jesus".  A motet is  mainly a vocal musical composition of highly diverse form and style, from high medieval music to the present. The motet was one of the pre-eminent polyphonic forms of Renaissance music.

The settings of the Requiem Mass by Luigi Cherubini, Antonin Dvořák, Gabriel Fauré, Maurice Duruflé, John Rutter, Karl Jenkins, Kim André Arnesen and Fredrik Sixten include a "Pie Jesu" as an independent movement. Considered the best known is the "Pie Jesu" from Fauré's Requiem. 

Camille Saint-Saëns said of Fauré's "Pie Jesu": "Just as Mozart's is the only 'Ave verum corpus', this is the only 'Pie Jesu'."

Andrew Lloyd Webber's setting of "Pie Jesu" in his 1985 Requiem has become well-known and has been widely recorded, including by Sarah Brightman and Charlotte Church, among others. Performed by Sarah Brightman and Paul Miles-Kingston, it was a certified Silver hit in the UK in 1985.  Andrew Lloyd Webber, in his Requiem, combined the text of the "Pie Jesu" with the version of the "Agnus Dei" from the Tridentine Requiem Mass. 

In popular culture, the couplet is chanted by a group of flagellant monks as a running gag during the 1975 film Monty Python and the Holy Grail. In the 1997 film version of the Anime Dog of Flanders, Pie Jesu is heard in the final scene, set to an original composition by Taro Iwashiro

 

Featured Video: 

Sarah Brightman's incredible performance as she is joined by young Connar Burrowes to sing "Pie Jesu" in front of composer Andrew Lloyd Webber's episode of 'This is Your Life' in 1994. "Pie Jesu" is said to be one of Brightman's love songs. It was featured on the album 'Requiem,' a beautiful recording of Andrew Lloyd Webber's masterwork that went on to win a Grammy Award for best classical composition in 1986.

 

Video Credit:

Connar Burrowes and Sarah Brightman sing 'Pie Jesu'. YouTube, uploaded by Robert Glasby. Accesed April 18, 2010. 

 

Resource:

Pie Jesu. en.wikipedia.org

 

 

(c) April 2010. Tel. Inspired PenWeb. All rights reserved.

Samuel Beckett

Literature / Writers Datebook: April 13

 

Brief biography of Irish writer Samuel Beckett, playwright, poet and novelist, influential writer of the 20^th century, leading dramatist and Nobel laureate in literature. He was famous for Waiting for Godot. 

 

 

Samuel Beckett was one of the most important and influential writes of the 20^th century. He is best known as the leading playwright of the 1950s movement called the theatre of the absurd. He won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1969 and the Prix Formentor in 1961.

Early Life

Born in Dublin on April 13, 1906, he was brought up in a middle-class, Protestant household. After graduating from Trinity College, Dublin, he visited Paris in 1929, where he began writing.

He then taught English there, where he first met his lifelong friend, James Joyce. He returned to Trinity College at the age of 24 but decided that he disliked academic life. He took off on his travels around Europe.

Several years later he settled in Paris hoping to earn a living as a writer. During the Second World War, Beckett became a member of the French Resistance, fighting against the German occupation of France.

Beckett's Works and Theme

Beckett's first full-length novel, Murphy, was written in English and published when he was 32. Most of the works that followed were written in French and then translated into English, including the important trilogy of novels Molloy, Malone Dies and The Unnameable.

Beckett's Play Waiting for Godot 

The French play En attendant Godot (1952,) translated in English, Waiting for Godot (1954,) tells the story of two tramps, whiling away the time as they wait in vain for Godot, the enigmatic man. This is Beckett's vision of certain emptiness in human condition.

Beckett's presentation, however, is such that he manages to inject a kind of wit that keeps the tone of the play less empty but more witty. Waiting for Godot brought Beckett international fame.

Later Years of Samuel Beckett

As Beckett grew older, his later plays became even more strange, something of preferential jokes, for example, Breath, written when he was 64 years old, consists of a pile of rubbish, a breath and a cry. And his later plays. He died on December 22, 1989, at the age of 83.

Insight to Beckett's Literary Work

Samuel Beckett's works are complex, and they deal with difficult questions. His theme is often dark, and characters seem to be full of despair about death and people's failure to communicate with each other. As he grew older, his later plays became even more strange, something of preferential jokes. For example, Breath, written when he was 64 years old, consists of a pile of rubbish, a breath and a cry.

Despite the dreary side and his use of absurd humour with a despairing message, his works have been considered one of the theatre's greatest comedies. Samuel Beckett died on December 22, 1989, at the age of 83.

 

Books by Samuel Beckett

Murphy, 1938

Molloy, 1951

Malone Dies, 1951

The Unnameable, 1953

Waiting for Godot, 1953

Endgame, 1957

Happy Days, 1961

Breath, 1970

Not I, 1873

Ill Seen Ill Said, 1981

 

Photo credit:

Samuel Beckett. Wikipedia Commons / Public Domain.   (Beckett in 1977)

Resources:

Ousby, Ian.  The Cambridge Guide to Literature in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Oxford Who's Who in the 20^th Century. Oxford: OUP, 1999

Payne, Tom. The A-Z of Great Writers. London: Carlton, 1997

 

(c) April 2010. Updated April 13, 2024. Tel. All rights reserved.  

Hans Christian Andersen

Literature / Writers Datebook: April 2

 

Brief biography and works of 19th-century Danish writer, Hans Christian Andersen, famous for children's loved fairy tale stories, which are among the most widely rad works in literature.  

 

Brief profile

Andersen was born on April 2, 1805 in Odense, Denmark,into a poor family and attended the city's school for poor children. When he was 14, he let Odense, hoping to earn a living as an actor or singer in the capital city, Copenhagen. After three hard years of minor acting roles and barely enough o eat, Andersen became friendly with a theatre director who raised money for him to continue his education.

At the age of 23, Andersen went to the University of Copenhagen and a year later produced his first important work, A Walk from Holman's Canal to the East Point of the Island of Amager. This fantastic tale about a journey was an instant success.

Some of his tales are based on Danish folklore, and the others, on his own unhappy experiences at school and later. Many have a serious moral message. His use of dialogue in the stories makes them very direct and enjoyable to read. Charles Dickens admired them greatly.

Andersen fell deeply in love more than once but never married. He traveled throughout Europe and wrote plays, novels and travel books about his experiences. Following a long illness, he died at the age of 70, on August 4, 1875, in Copenhagen.

 

H.C. Andersen's Famous Fairy Tales

Andersen wrote 168 fairy tales between 1835 and 1872. The first few were published in Tales Told for Children when he was 30. Stories such as "The Little Mermaid," "The Princess and the Pea," "The Ugly Duckling," "The Emperor's New Clothes," "Thumbelina" and "The Snow Queen" won him worldwide fame.

Hans Christian Andersen wrote prolifically, but his immortality derives from the numerous fairy tales he wrote for children. These have been translated into more than 100 languages. His works have been adapted in films and stage, as well as recorded in DVDs, audio books, tapes, and CDs.

Elias Lieberman, on the statue of H.C. Andersen's memorial in New York's Central Park wrote,

"To bright-eyed children row on row

Enraptured by your fancies you

Are all the magic they need know

To make a story wonder-true."

 

Major Works by Hans Christian Andersen

A walk from Holman's Canal to the East Point of the Island of Amager, 1829

Poems, 1830

Agnete and the Merman, 1833

The Improvisatore, 1835

Fairy Tales Told for Children, 1835

72 Fairy Tales, 1835

O.T., 1836

Only a Fiddler, 1837

Picture Book Without Pictures, 1847

The True Story of My Life, 1847

In Sweden, 1851

The Fairy Tale of My Life, 1854

Lucky Peer, 1879

 

Photo Credit:

Hans Christian Andersen. Wikipedia Commons / Public Domain

 

Resources:

Goring, Rosemary, Ed. Larousse Dictionary of Writers. New York: Larousse, 1994

McGovern, Una, Ed. Chambers Biographical Dictionary. Edinburgh: Chambers Harrap Publishers, 2002

Payne, Tom. The A-Z of Great Writers. London: Carlton, 1997

 

(c) April 2010. Updated April 2, 2024. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.