André Messager News
French opera composer and conductor (1853–1929)
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2024-03-24
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2024-02-13 08:15:00
Pierre Loti's writings inspired Léo Delibes' opera Lakmé and a whole genre of Orientalist operas
Loti (right) with Chrysanthème and Pierre le Cor in Japan, 1885.Pierre Loti has a lot to answer for. Whilst he certainly did not invent Orientalisme, his exotic novels and short stories, inspired by his travels as a French naval office, fed into the Western European fascinating for the perceived exoticism of life in the East, and gave rise to a whole operatic genre. His 1880 book, Le Mariage de Loti (about his romantic liaison with an exotic Tahitian girl), inspired both the 1883 opera Lakmé by Léo Delibes, and an 1898 opera by Reynaldo Hahn, L'île du rêve.His 1887 novel Madame Chrysanthème (about a naval officer temporarily married to a Japanese woman while he was stationed in Nagasaki, Japan) would be one of the inspirations behind André Messager's 1893 opera of the same name, Mascagni's Iris (1898) and Puccini's Madama Butterfly (1904). The fashion for things Japanese, Japonisme, had developed from the mid-1850s with opening up of Japan, […]
2023-09-30 08:32:00
What is essential is that you have to be passionate about the work: Canadian baritone Étienne Dupuis, Don Carlo in the Royal Opera's revival of La Forza del Destino on his clutch of Verdi roles
[…] justified and some not as Étienne wryly adds. Halevy's La Reine de Chypre, which he recorded in 2018 [see my review], he was rather taken with, calling it beautiful and amazing. Like Verdi, Massenet wrote a considerable number of operas but we only hear four or five. Étienne recorded Massenet's Thérèse and a disc of Massenet's songs, but there are still more of the composer's works to explore. Another of Étienne's Bru Zane disc is Messager's 1926 operetta Passionément. In fact, there are plenty of works by unknown composers out there, and unknown works by better-known composers. And Étienne feels that it is a good time to focus on something different, you might not get the same audience sizes, but it keeps things fresh. The latest score he has been sent, Chabrier's Gwendoline which is set in the eighth century and features a Danish Pirate who falls in love with […]
2022-05-23 07:33:22
The Wreckers returns: Glyndebourne's vividly dramatic new production of Ethel Smyth's opera
[…] for the English premiere including some pages removed, so Tom Poster has recreated Smyth's orchestrations for these. And why French? Well, Smyth's close friend Henry Brewster was born in France of American parents. Whilst he had helped her with the German librettos to her first two operas, he preferred writing poetry in French. Smyth realised that an English performance of the opera was unlikely and so they aimed for a French language one; as Andre Messager due to be the musical director of the Grand Season at Covent Garden, the possibility of a French language performance there seemed likely at one point. I have no idea of the quality of Brewster's poetry, but there is no doubt of the confidence of his libretto, and it is a shame that its reputation has been obscured by the terrible fustian operatic English that the work was translated into for the English performances. […]
2022-05-18 18:19:00
San Francisco Opera Cast Change: Don Giovanni
[…] of the Vienna State Opera, Paris Opera, Royal Opera House Covent Garden, Metropolitan Opera and Deutsche Oper Berlin. Opera News praised her 2017 appearance in Puccini’s La Bohème at Covent Garden as “the evening’s exceptional vocal performance” and said “Car’s long-breathed, assured Mimì suggested a star in the making.” The Australian soprano’s repertory features leading operatic heroines, such as Mimì, Donna Elvira, Fiordiligi in Così fan tutte, Elisabetta in Don Carlo, Tatyana in Eugene Onegin, Marguerite in Faust and Micaëla in Carmen. Her recordings include Andre Messager’s Passionnèment for Palazzetto Bru Zane and two recital discs, Heroines and The Kiss, and Brahms’ A German Requiem for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).
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