Word: fidelia
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...clumsy little shock-haired man stood in the pit of a Vienna theatre, conducting an opera as if by might & main he could make its success. At 35, with deafness already upon him, Ludwig van Beethoven was presenting his Fidelia. Circumstances could scarcely have been worse. The week before, Napoleon had taken the city with the result that Austria's music patrons had withdrawn to the country. Temperature in the theatre was below freezing. Apathetic music critics found the score abounding in repetitions while the orchestra kept up a perpetual din. After three performances Beethoven's one & only...
...later years Beethoven referred to Fidelia as "the one of all my children that cost me the worst birth-pangs, the one that brought me the greatest sorrow, and for that very reason the one most dear to me." Records show that for Leonore's big aria, Komm Hoffnung, he tried 18 different attacks, ten for his concluding chorus. He wrote four overtures be fore he was satisfied, each seething with symphonic ideas. Handicaps were his lack of theatre technique, his stormy impatience with what seemed to be intrigue. In a revised version the opera had a more promising...
...symphony concerts and operas. Often Sir Thomas has remarked good-naturedly that music in England is one long, promissory note. But at the season's gala opening in Covent Garden last week, England's No. 1 conductor was in no mood for suave epigrams. The opera was Fidelia, a heavy choice for Londoners less interested in Beethoven than in the King and Queen of Siam who sat in the royal box. The overture started but conversation buzzed on. Suddenly, without turning from the players. Sir Thomas barked: "Stop talking...
...contralto richness that holds to the high est notes, again complained because they had to wait so long to hear her at the Metropolitan. Chicago had her for a few performances in 1931 and 1932. From Vienna, Salzburg, Paris and London have come ecstatic reports of her Leonore in Fidelia, her Marschallin in Der Rosenkavalier. New Yorkers who had heard her only in Lieder suddenly wanted to know more about this stately youthful person who could act as well as sing. During her first years in opera her fa ther never let Lotte Lehmann forget that school-teaching would have...
...choir of 8,000 in front of the City Hall; operettas of Strauss, Suppé, and Offenbach; church concerts in Modling (near Vienna) featuring Beethoven's Missa Solemnis. The Salzburg Festival, August 4 to 30, calls in the assistance of the Vienna Philharmonic. Beethoven's Fidelia, Mozart's Don Giovanni and Strauss's Rosenkavalier are all listed for performances as well as orchestral and sacred concerts...