Alzira (opera)

Alzira is an opera in a prologue and two acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Salvatore Cammarano, based on the play Alzire, ou les Américains by Voltaire.

The first performance was at the Teatro San Carlo, Naples, on 12 August 1845. The contemporary reviews were mixed, and the first run of the opera received only four further performances.

Composition history

Following his completion of Giovanna d'Arco, Verdi began on work on Alzira, having been invited by the impresario of the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, Vincenzo Flauto, to write an opera for that house, the invitation having followed the earlier success of Ernani. One of the attractions of the arrangement to Verdi was to have the services of the man who was now - following Felice Romani's virtual retirement - the principal librettist in Italy. This was Salvatore Cammarano, the Naples "house poet" who had been responsible for some of Donizetti's successes, which included Lucia di Lammermoor. Using the publisher Giovanni Ricordi as "a kind of agent" Verdi's terms were laid out. These included being able to receive one-third more than his fee for I Lombardi and, more importantly, having a finished libretto from Cammarano in his possession four months before the production.

Opera

Opera /ˈɒprə/ (Italian: [ˈɔːpera]; English plural: operas; Italian plural: opere [ˈɔːpere]) is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text (libretto) and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. In traditional opera, singers do two types of singing: recitative, a speech-inflected style and arias, a more melodic style. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance. The performance is typically given in an opera house, accompanied by an orchestra or smaller musical ensemble, which since the early 1800s has been led by a conductor.

Opera is part of the Western classical music tradition. It started in Italy at the end of the 16th century (with Jacopo Peri's lost Dafne, produced in Florence in 1598) and soon spread through the rest of Europe: Schütz in Germany, Lully in France, and Purcell in England all helped to establish their national traditions in the 17th century. In the 18th century, Italian opera continued to dominate most of Europe (except France), attracting foreign composers such as Handel. Opera seria was the most prestigious form of Italian opera, until Gluck reacted against its artificiality with his "reform" operas in the 1760s. Today the most renowned figure of late 18th century opera is Mozart, who began with opera seria but is most famous for his Italian comic operas, especially The Marriage of Figaro (Le Nozze Di Figaro), Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte, as well as The Magic Flute (Die Zauberflöte), a landmark in the German tradition.

Opera (web browser)

Opera is a web browser developed by Opera Software. The latest version is available for Microsoft Windows, OS X, and Linux operating systems, and uses the Blink layout engine. An earlier version using the Presto layout engine is still available, and additionally runs on FreeBSD systems.

Opera siblings – Opera Mobile, Opera Mini and Opera Coast – work on devices running Android, iOS, Windows Phone, Symbian, Maemo, Bada, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile operating systems, while Opera Mini runs on Java ME-capable devices.

According to Opera Software, the browser had more than 350 million users worldwide in the 4th quarter 2014. Total Opera mobile users reached 291 million in June 2015. Opera has been noted for originating many features later adopted by other web browsers. A prominent example is Speed Dial.

History

Opera began in 1994 as a research project at Telenor, the largest Norwegian telecommunications company. In 1995, it branched out into a separate company named Opera Software ASA. Opera was first released publicly with version 2.0 in 1996, which only ran on Microsoft Windows. In an attempt to capitalize on the emerging market for Internet-connected handheld devices, a project to port Opera to mobile device platforms was started in 1998. Opera 4.0, released in 2000, included a new cross-platform core that facilitated creation of editions of Opera for multiple operating systems and platforms.

Opera (Tosca album)

Opera is the debut studio album of Richard Dorfmeister and Rupert Huber's electronic music project Tosca. It combines new material and previously released singles, including "Chocolate Elvis". "Irresistibly funky" (BBC), "the blues, and the thick sultry bass, makes it as sexy and melancholy as cigarette smoke after a one-night stand in a strange city" (Mixmag). It is "one of the few sure things in a modest genre" (Sasha Frere-Jones, LA Weekly).

Track list

All tracks written by Richard Dorfmeister and Rupert Huber.

References

External links

http://www.toscamusic.com/discography/66-opera

Alzira

Alzira may refer to: