United States or Kuwait ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It came upon him like a thunderclap. He ran to the Conservatoire library and read Gluck's scores. He forgot to eat and drink; he was like a man in a frenzy. A performance of Iphigénie en Tauride finished him. He studied under Lesueur and then at the Conservatoire. And he had not yet got the Prix de Rome!
Garrick declared her a better actress than Clairon. She was as famous for her wit as for her singing and acting. When Mme. Laguerre appeared drunk in Iphigénie en Tauride she exclaimed, "Why this is Iphigénie en Champagne!"
The official statistics of New Russia alone that is to say, the provinces of Ekaterinoslaf, Tauride, Kherson, and Bessarabia enumerate the following nationalities: Great Russians, Little Russians, Poles, Servians, Montenegrins, Bulgarians, Moldavians, Germans, English, Swedes, Swiss, French, Italians, Greeks, Armenians, Tartars, Mordwa, Jews, and Gypsies.
A new director was now in charge of the Opera House. He conceived the bright idea of setting the two composers at work on the same subject, which was to be "Iphigénie en Tauride." This plan made great commotion in the ranks of the rival factions, as each wished to have their composer's work performed first. The director promised that Piccini's opera should be first placed in rehearsal.
The Poles eagerly joined the insurgents, and sent envoys to invite the Crimean Tartars to invade Russia from Tauride, while Poland and Livonia should assail the empire from the west. The Tartars were always ready for war at a moment's notice. Seventy thousand men were immediately on the march. They rapidly traversed the southern provinces, trampling down all opposition until they reached the Oka.
Upon a November afternoon, then, as his Excellency was returning from the Council, he came suddenly upon his daughter, standing in the court-yard of his house, bare-headed, arms akimbo, feet spread apart in the attitude of a jockey, her white bonnet thrown upon the muddy flags before her, her shrill voice raised to a scream, as she pelted her helpless nurse with a string of oaths that would have done credit to his Iron Majesty, all for presuming to interrupt her game within doors in order to take her for the prescribed daily walk in the gardens of the Tauride.
Throughout the score of 'Iphigénie en Tauride' the declamation is as vivid and true as in 'Alceste, while the intrinsic loveliness of the music yields not a jot to the passion-charged strains of 'Armide. The overture paints the gradual awakening of a tempest, and when the storm is at its height the curtain rises upon the temple of Diana at Tauris, where Iphigenia, snatched by the goddess from the knife of the executioner at Aulis, has been placed as high priestess.
He suggested, that the Turks, in possession of the Tauride as the country upon the north shore of the Black Sea, bounded by the Dnieper and the Sea of Azof was then called threatened the independence of Russia herself; that Vassili had every thing to fear from the ferocity, the perfidy and the success of Selim, who, stained with the blood of his father and his three brothers, dared to assume the title of master of the world.
Word Of The Day