Jacques Offenbach
3) Inspiration
Description
Eighteen-year-old cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason came into the spotlight with his performance at the royal wedding of Harry and Meghan. He also won the prestigious BBC Young Musician award in 2016. His debut album features Shostakovich's Cello Concerto No. 1, the piece Sheku performed in the BBCYM final.
4) Ludwig
Description
An operatic portrait of Ludwig II, the 19th century mad king of Bavaria. Tormented by his unrequited love for his cousin, Empress Elisabeth of Austria, coupled with his obsession for the music of Wagner, Ludwig retreats into a fantasy world. He builds fairytale castles and ultimately loses his already-fragile grip on his sanity.
6) Nocturne
Author
Description
Un mari à la porte ( A Husband at the Door) is a one-act operetta which was recorded at the Teatro del Maggio in occasion of the 200th anniversary of Offenbach's birth. Premiered in 1859, this rarely performed work is a most amusing comedy of errors, which is the typical frameset that the composer used to represent and mock the quirks and vices of the French society of his times.
Author
Description
La Perricholi - in reality, Micaela Villegas - was Lima's leading theatrical l lady in the 1770s when Peru was a Spanish colony. Her life was fictionalised in a one-act play by Prosper Mérimée and a libretto was fashioned on which Offenbach created his opéra bouffe La Périchole, reflecting the creative mania in Paris at the time for Spanish life and art. La Périchole and Piquillo, her lover and companion in misfortune, are impoverished street...
Author
Description
Acclaimed director Laurent Pelly is one of the most renowned and prolific interpreters of Offenbach's brilliantly inventive operettas, including several productions for the Opéra de Lyon. The composer's satirical and hilarious opéra bouffe version of Charles Perrault's 17th Century tale of the serial wife-murdering Bluebeard (in which no-one actually gets murdered!), deftly tows the line between humour and cruelty, with a star performance from Yann...
Author
Description
Jacques Offenbach had already achieved fame as an operetta composer by 1866, but that year's premiere of La Vie parisienne was his first portrayal of contemporary Parisian life. With its tale of romantic intrigues, disguises and comic celebrations of the mad gaiety of life in the French capital, La Vie parisienne became popular in the nation's theatres, but not after a hasty re-working of its final acts after protests from the original performers....