1956 in Music - Opera

Opera

  • Malcolm Arnold – The Open Window, Op. 56 (opera in one act, libretto by S. Gilliat, after Saki), premiered on December 14, 1956 on BBC TV
  • Leonard Bernstein – Candide (comic operetta in two acts, libretto by Lillian Hellman, R. Wilbur, J. La Touche, D. Parker, and Bernstein, after Voltaire)
  • William Bergsma – The Wife of Martin Guerre (opera in three acts, libretto by J. Lewis)
  • Wolfgang Fortner – Bluthochzeit (opera in two acts, after Federico García Lorca)
  • Arnold Franchetti – The Game of Cards (opera in one act, libretto by the composer)
  • Kenneth Gaburo – Blur (opera in one act, libretto by the composer)
  • Hans Werner Henze – König Hirsch (opera in three acts, libretto by H. von Cramer, after Carlo Gozzi)
  • Ben Johnston – Gertrude, or Would She Be Pleased to Receive It? (chamber opera in two acts, libretto by W. Leach)
  • Leonard Kastle – The Swing (thirteen-minute television opera, broadcast at noon on Sunday, June 10, 1956 on NBC television)
  • Frank Martin – Der Sturm (opera in three acts, libretto after William Shakespeare, in a German translation by A.W. von Schlege)
  • Douglas Moore – The Ballad of Baby Doe
  • Gino Negri – Vieni qui, Carla (opera in one act, after Alberto Moravia's Gli indifferenti)
  • Elie Siegmeister – Miranda and the Dark Young Man (opera in one act, libretto by Edward Eager)
  • Robert Ward – He Who Gets Slapped (libretto by Bernard Stambler), staged under the title Pantaloon

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Famous quotes containing the word opera:

    “To survive there, you need the ambition of a Latin-American revolutionary, the ego of a grand opera tenor, and the physical stamina of a cow pony.”
    —Billie Burke (1885–1970)

    “If music in general is an imitation of history, opera in particular is an imitation of human willfulness; it is rooted in the fact that we not only have feelings but insist upon having them at whatever cost to ourselves.... The quality common to all the great operatic roles, e.g., Don Giovanni, Norma, Lucia, Tristan, Isolde, Brünnhilde, is that each of them is a passionate and willful state of being. In real life they would all be bores, even Don Giovanni.”
    —W.H. (Wystan Hugh)

    “He rides in the Row at ten o’clock in the morning, goes to the Opera three times a week, changes his clothes at least five times a day, and dines out every night of the season. You don’t call that leading an idle life, do you?”
    —Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)