Hélène (opera)

Hélène is a poème lyrique or opera in one act by composer Camille Saint-Saëns. It is the first opera for which Saint-Saëns wrote his own French libretto, which is based on the classic story of Helen of Troy and Paris from Greek mythology. The opera premiered at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo in Monaco on 18 February 1904. Moderately successful, the opera enjoyed a handful of revivals up through 1919, after which it fell out of the performance repertoire. The work was resurrected in 2008 for its world premiere recording by the Australian music label Melba.

Performance history

Hélène is the first opera that Saint-Saëns composed for the opera house in Monte Carlo, which was led by enterprising director Raoul Gunsbourg at that time. At its premiere, the opera was presented in conjunction with Jules Massenet's veristic La Navarraise. The role of Hélène was sung by acclaimed soprano Nellie Melba, who had commissioned Saint-Saëns to write the opera specifically for her. The reviews of the premiere performance, though not stellar, were generally positive. The opera was subsequently revived at the Opéra-Comique on 18 January 1905, with Mary Garden in the title role and in Monte Carlo again in 1909 and 1916. The Palais Garnier staged the work for the first time on 20 June 1919, with Marcelle Demougeot in the title role.

Hélène (song)

"Hélène" is a 1989 pop song recorded by the Canadian singer Roch Voisine. It was the first single from his first studio album Hélène, and was released in November 1989. This song allowed the singer to launch his career and achieved great success in France.

Song information

The song was recorded at the Intercession studio. The guitars are played by Carl Katz, and the keyboards by Luc Gilbert.

The cover for the CD maxi used the same photograph as that of the album Hélène : Roch Voisine's face with a black background. The song is mainly in French-language, but contains a line in English as follows: "Hélène things you do / Make me crazy about you".

The music video features the singer and an air hostess who are in love, but who are forced to separate because of professional reasons. She may be French because when, in the video, she writes her name on a mirror with her lipstick, she does end it with an 'e' ('Helene'), as on the single cover. The model who plays the role of Hélène is Ariane Cordeau.

Hélène (album)

Hélène is a 1989 album by Canadian singer Roch Voisine. The title track "Hélène" is his best sold single ever, reaching number one for nine weeks on the French Singles Chart. Other successful singles from the album include "Pourtant" (#3) and "Avant de partir" (#7), released in 1990 summer.

Two songs were both written and composed by the singer himself. Marc Voisine, his brother, participated in the writing of the last track. The recording and mixing were made at the Victor studio, except for the song "Hélène" (at Intercession studio).

The album debuted at #14 on 3 December 1989 on the SNEP Albums Chart and had a peak at number one for two weeks almost eleven months after. It totaled 40 weeks in the top ten and 113 weeks in the top 50. In 1991, the album achieved Diamond status for over one million copies sold. In Norway, the album entered the albums chart on February 1990 and stayed for six weeks in the top 20, with a peak at number nine.

Track listing

Hélène (drama)

Hélène is a drame in four acts and five tableaux of 1891, with French words by Paul Delair and incidental music by André Messager.

The story, found by the author in the fait divers of a newspaper concerns a child, Hélène, who, learning that her father has been murdered by his mother, swears vengeance; there are shades of Hamlet. Starting with a first act march for returning soldiers, the authors of the Annales praised Messager’s incidental music, despite echos of Gounod, Thomas and particularly Bizet and his L'Arlésienne.

The play was first performed at the Théâtre du Vaudeville on 15 September 1891, running for only 16 performances. The cast included Brandès in the title role, Adolphe Candé, Marie Sammary, Laroche and André Michel, and the orchestra was conducted by Gabriel-Marie.

References

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