Held annually, the Bal des Petits Lits Blancs was a charity gala benefitting orphaned children in France. Here, a glamorous socialite waves a symbolic white bed sheet from within her opera box.
Cocorico was a magazine published between 1898 and 1902. As a literary and artistic publication, its main role was to promote the Art Nouveau movement and its primary artists included Grun, Mucha, Steinlen, de Feure, Villon and many others. In all, there were 63 issues. The name of the periodical is the French term for “cock-a-doodle-doo,” the crowing of a rooster.The light opera by Ganne bearing the same title as the well-known magazine is justly forgotten and the poster by Gruen extremely rare.
For Giuseppe Verdi, Aida represented a significant break with his past compositional and staging practices. The new opera was in complete contrast with his last two works, Don Carlos (Paris, 1867) and the revision of La Forza del Destino (Milan, 1869). Both present large, grandiose, and sometimes sprawling visual and musical images in projecting the dramatic action. Aida, on the other hand, is clearly delineated, precisely constructed and provides more \’bite\’.
When Giacomo Puccini wrote the opera in Milan in 1904, he had to have had American gunboat diplomacy and Western imperialism in mind. The often disastrous meeting of East and West at the turn of the 20th century inspired this very bitter operatic tragedy.
Porgy and Bess was George Gershwin’s longest and most ambitious creation, but it was not truly successful during his lifetime. Some of the songs had achieved popularity before Gershwin’s death in 1937, but the work earned real approval and favor only after the 1940 Theater Guild presentation of a slightly revised version. For years it was performed more frequently in Europe, where it was considered a true American opera, than in America. Porgy and Bess received its first uncut production in Houston in the 1970’s, conducted by John DeMain, to great acclamation, and it was finally produced at the Met some 50 years after the first production. It is probably the only opera founded on 1920’s and 30’s jazz which has survived past the post-World War II period, when composers began to use jazz satirically.
