I read recently that the young Celibidache hid in a toilet overnight at the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth so he could witness de Sabata rehearsing Tristan the following day,
Bartolomeo Merelli (1794–1879) earned the sobriquet ‘Eagle of the Impresarios’ for his skill, vision and refined taste. Unlike his competitors, Merelli was an accomplished musical scholar and librettist, and his name is indelibly tied to that of the greatest Italian opera composer, Giuseppe Verdi. Merelli was born in Bergamo, the Lombard city which also happened to produce many of the greatest composers and singers of the era. In his hometown, he studied under the German composer Giovanni Simone Mayr, initially contemplating a career as a musician. He first made his mark as a librettist, writing for his Bergamasc colleague Gaetano Donizetti, as well as Mayr, Nicola Vaccai and others. In 1830 Merelli entered the murky world of impresarios by taking over the impresa at the small theatre of Varese. In 1836, Merelli had his big break when he won the concession for Milan’s Teatro alla Scala, which he held on to until 1850. While that theatre was the most important house of...
Last night I dreamt someone had commissioned me to write a piece for an upmarket magazine on my recommendations for recordings readers might add to their collections. On waking up it seemed so real I couldn't tell if it was genuine or not so I began listing all the recordings I have found essential to my mind by composer from A - Z. In no way is this meant to be a 'building a library' kind of survey; just recordings I couldn't live without. I wrote a little Forward: People have described studio recordings as Electronic Music. I think there is some truth in that. Recordings of live performances are fundamentally different. They are witnesses to an event whereas studio recordings are an attempt to re-create a live event without any blemishes or imperfections. They also tend to take place in fundamentally different acoustics and so lack atmosphere. It is hard to re-create the atmosphere and excitement of a live performance in the studio and many studio recordings turn ou...
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