La traviata

of 330 different opera titles. Of these operas, only 20% were premiered in 1980 or later. In fact, 70% of the Opera House’s repertoire was premiered before the 1940s. In addition, the opera company’s top 20 most performed works, such as La Boehme, Aida, La Traviata, and Madama Butterfly, were all written at least 100 years ago. This data illustrates a general trend favoring the production of older, traditional operas rather than contemporary ones. To quote American Opera Project’s General…

of an impresario at La Fenice for Rigoletto there was one employed and his name was G. B. Lasina who was the “nominal impresario of the 1851 and 1853 seasons that launched Rigoletto and La Traviata… the line of least resistance in such a theatre was for the impresario to let the owners make most of the decisions and himself become a good deal of the executant” . This lines up well with the almost lack of mention for Lasina in the critical edition as it quite clear that in La Fenice upper-class…

called arias and two or more singers called ensembles. The sixteenth century saw the beginning of operas which started as poems sung by musicians called Camerata (“society”). In 1607 Claudio Monteverdi first used an orchestra to accompany his opera, La favola d’Orfeo, creating the modern opera we know today. (London: Octopus Publishing Group, 2008) The nineteenth century saw the rise of the Romantic era of opera whose two competing styles were Italian and German. Italian opera focused primarily…

way for composers of the Romantic Period such as Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt, Richard Wagner and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Previous rules were thrown out the window in order to create new sounds filled with passion. Operas like Giuseppe Verdi’s La traviata became very popular showcasing the evolution of opera from the Baroque Period, all the way to modern day musicals like the previously mentioned ones. Franz Liszt composed the first ‘tone poem’ or ’symphonic poem’, an orchestral composition…

In the modern days, there are various levels of clarinet competitions. They have played significant roles in clarinet development. The top talented young clarinet performers are usually discovered from these competitions. From the participants’point of view, they tend to gain experience and learn from other participants. For those competitions which have crucial influence internationally, it is an unwritten rule that organizing committee always invite a prestige composer to compose a new piece…