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Reynaldo Hahn (1874-1947) He was born in Caracas, Venezuela. Born the youngest of twelve children, Reynaldo's father Carlos was an affluent engineer, inventor, and businessman of German-Jewish extraction; his mother, née de Echenagucia, was a Venezuelan of Basque origin. The increasingly volatile political atmosphere in South America during the 1870s made it wise for his father to retire and leave Venezuela. Hahn was just three years old when his family moved to Paris, and there is little doubt about the enormous impact this move would make on the future composer. Although he showed interest in his native music of Caracas in his youth, France would "determine and define Hahn's musical identity in later life". The city and its cultural resources: the Paris Opéra, the Paris Opéra Ballet, the Opéra Comique, in addition to the nexus of artists and writers, must have been an ideal setting for the precocious Hahn. He entered the Paris Conservatoire in 1886. He studied harmony with Théodore Dubois, piano with Decombes and composition with Jules Massenet, Charles Gounod and Camille Saint-Saëns. Alfred Cortot and Maurice Ravel were fellow students. Massenet's influence is clear in one of Hahn's earliest, and most famous, songs, Si mes vers avaient des ailes; written when the composer was only 13, it is a charming setting of verses by Victor Hugo. The combined forces of Massenet's advocacy on his behalf (enough to have his cycle of songs on the poetry of Paul Verlaine, Chansons grises, published in 1893) and Hahn's own fine singing voice (enabling him to accompany himself in salons and concert halls) helped to establish his reputation in the city.
Early in his career, Hahn made the acquaintance of Sarah Bernhardt and Marcel Proust; Proust, especially, would instill in Hahn a deep appreciation and understanding of poetry, which had a profound effect on Hahn's approach to vocal composition. Hahn once wrote, The genuine beauty of singing consists in a perfect unison, an amalgam, a mysterious alloy of the singing and the speaking voice, or to put it better, the melody and the spoken word. Hahn found himself seduced by the poetry of Victor Hugo, Théophile Gautier, and Paul Verlaine; he put his efforts toward creating musical phrasing and rhythmic gestures that would allow the words to speak for themselves. Hahn believed that only form can give a piece a chance of lasting.... This perhaps explains his predilection for the older, repetitive formal structures evident in some of his songs, such as "L'automne, Le printemps, and Quand je fus pris au pavillion.
Hahn's first stage composition was incidental music for Daudet's L'obstacle in 1890; his first opera to reach the stage was the three-act L'île du rêve, performed in Paris at the Opéra-Comique in 1898; a more successful serious opera appeared in 1935, Le marchand de Venise, in three acts, with a libretto by Zamacoïs, after Shakespeare. Notably, with Le marchand de Venise, Hahn deliberately returned to the "old-fashioned" division between musical numbers and recitatives and returned the orchestra to a purely accompanimental role. Hahn's most important ballet, Le dieu bleu, was composed in 1912 for Diaghilev's company (to a scenario by Cocteau and Madrazo). By far, Hahn's most successful theater piece is his operetta Ciboulette; it premiered to instant acclaim in Paris in 1923, and has received innumerable performances since. As a conductor he specialised in Mozart, conducting the initial performances of the Salzburg Festival at the invitation of Lilli Lehmann. He found the earlier composer so fascinating, in fact, that he composed in 1925 a musical comedy on his life, Mozart, in which he included pastiches of Mozart's own music. He also served, in the 1920s and 1930s, as general manager of the Cannes Casino opera house. For many years he was the influential music critic of the leading Paris daily, Le Figaro. Forced to leave Paris in 1940 during the Nazi occupation, he returned at the end of the war in 1945 to fulfill his appointment as director of the Paris Opéra. Unfortunately, he died shortly afterwards without executing the reforms for which his supporters had hoped.
Answers
Ciboulette, opereta en tres actos y cuatro cuadros (1923). Comienzo.
Última edición por Zelenka el 24 May 2014 10:05, editado 1 vez en total
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