YOSA Fun Facts: January 30, 2011

Fun facts of composers featured in the January 30 Gold Series concert.

-Rossini wrote "The Barber" to the commission of the manager of the Argentina Theatre, at Rome, where it was first produced in February 1816. According to contract, it had to be finished by a very near date. For thirteen days the poet and composer had little time to eat, and they slept on a sofa only when they could no longer keep their eyes open. Rossini did not even stop to shave, and when someone remarked on the strange fact the that "The Barber" should cause him to let his beard grow, he replied that "to get shaved meant going out, and if he went out he would not return so soon as he ought."

-Copeland's Tender Land Suite was inspired by photographs in James Agee and Walker Evans' timeless account of Depression-era America.

-Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg was Richard Wager's only comic opera.

-The famous "La donna e mobile," already referred to, made an instantaneous hit, and was long hummed and sung and played to boredom in every quarter of the globe. To make quite sure that the public should not get wind of this arresting melody before the night of the performance, Verdi did not put it on paper until within a few hours of the time when Mirate, the tenor, had to sing it.

-Mozart wrote the overture of "Don Giovanni" the night before the opera was preformed for the first time.

-The first production of Verdi's "La Traviata" was premiered in Venice in 1853. It was deemed a complete failure, but only due to the quality of the singers. The opera was brought forward again a year later with a different cast, and the same city which had decried it as a failure acclaimed it a success.

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