Christophe Colomb
A two-part opera presenting episodes from the life of Christopher Columbus in a non-chronological order, with some allegorical scenes.
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A two-part opera presenting episodes from the life of Christopher Columbus in a non-chronological order, with some allegorical scenes.
A five-act, twelve-scene biblical opera about King David, based on the Books of Samuel.
When an invading Assyrian army threatens her community, Judith is chosen to appeal to its general, Holofernes. After deception frustrates her mission, she enters his tent and kills him to save her people.
L'Abandon d'Ariane is a one-act French-language opera by Darius Milhaud, with a libretto by Henri Hoppenot, based on Greek mythology. Its roles include Ariadne, Dionysus, Phaedra, and Theseus.
L'Homme et son désir, Op. 48, is a ballet composed by Darius Milhaud from 1917–18, based on a scenario of Paul Claudel. It was written in Brazil, where Milhaud had accompanied Claudel as a secretary when the latter was appointed ambassador to Rio de Janeiro. It was the passage of the Ballets Russes with Vaslav Nijinsky in Rio de Janeiro that triggered it. This was Claudel's first musical collaboration and he then repeated the experience several times with some major works (including Honegger's Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher). The work is also one of Milhaud's first ballets. The score is written for four voices (wordless) and a small orchestra and a large number of percussion instruments (including a whip and a whistle). The Premiere took place on 6 June 1921, with a choreography by the Ballets suédois under the orchestral direction of Désiré-Émile Inghelbrecht.
Darius Milhaud’s French-language operatic setting of Aeschylus’s Oresteia triptych, comprising Agamemnon, Les Choéphores, and Les Euménides.
L'Éventail de Jeanne (Jeanne's Fan) is a children's ballet choreographed in 1927 by Alice Bourgat and Yvonne Franck. The music is a collaborative work by ten French composers, each of whom contributed a stylised dance in classic form: Maurice Ravel (Fanfare) Pierre-Octave Ferroud (Marche) Jacques Ibert (Valse) Alexis Roland-Manuel (Canarie) Marcel Delannoy (Bourrée) Albert Roussel (Sarabande) Darius Milhaud (Polka) Francis Poulenc (Pastourelle) Georges Auric (Rondeau) Florent Schmitt (Finale: Kermesse-Valse) "Jeanne" refers to a Parisian hostess and patroness of the arts, Jeanne Dubost, who ran a children's ballet school. In the spring of 1927 she presented ten of her composer friends with leaves from her fan, asking each of them to write a little dance for her pupils. The children were dressed in fairytale costumes and the décor was enlivened by a set designed with mirrors. It was produced in private at Jeanne Dubost's Paris salon on 16 June 1927, with Maurice Ravel playing a piano transcription of the music. It had its public premiere at the Paris Opera on 4 March 1929, with the ten-year-old Tamara Toumanova dancing the lead role. This was the first performance of Darius Milhaud's music there and he was so annoyed to debut with a trifling work that he boycotted the performance. Excerpts have been recorded, particularly Ravel's Fanfare and Poulenc's Pastourelle. The first complete recording was made in 1984 by the Philharmonia Orchestra led by Geoffrey Simon.
La Création du monde, Op. 81a, is a 15-minute-long ballet composed by Darius Milhaud in 1922–23 to a libretto by Blaise Cendrars, which outlines the creation of the world based on African folk mythology. The premiere took place on 25 October 1923 at Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris.
Hippolyte’s love for Aricie arouses the jealousy of his stepmother Phèdre. After Hippolyte rejects her, Phèdre denounces him to his father, Thésée, who arranges his death by a monster. Théramene kills Phèdre in revenge and is then executed on Thésée’s orders. Aricie comforts the grieving Thésée.
La Mère coupable is a three-act opera by Darius Milhaud, with a libretto by Madeleine Milhaud. It is based on Beaumarchais' 1792 play of the same name, the third work in his Figaro trilogy.
Le Bœuf sur le toit (literally "the ox on the roof"), Op. 58 is a 15-minute piece for small orchestra by the composer Darius Milhaud, written in 1919–20. Milhaud conceived the piece as incidental music for any one of the comic silent films of Charlie Chaplin, but it received its premiere as the music for a ballet staged by Jean Cocteau in February 1920.
After fifteen years away, a sailor returns wealthy but unrecognized and visits his wife disguised as a stranger. He tells her that her husband is coming home, then rents a room at her bar. When she later finds him asleep, she kills him with a hammer and takes his valuables, while her father-in-law helps conceal the body. Still believing her husband will return, she sings of his approaching homecoming.
Gaston, an amnesiac veteran, is claimed by several families and identified as Jacques Renaud, a cruel young man before the First World War. Unable to reconcile that past with his present self, he leaves the Renauds and joins a surviving boy’s family, telling Jacques’s brother that Jacques is dead.
Le train bleu is a one-act ballet choreographed by Bronislava Nijinska to music by Darius Milhaud for Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, based on a scenario by Jean Cocteau. The title was taken from the night train called Le Train Bleu, which transported wealthy passengers from Calais to the Mediterranean Sea. The ballet is set on the fashionable French Riviera and has a sporting theme, with swimmers, tennis players, and weight lifters. Henri Laurens supplied a Cubist beach scene and Coco Chanel outfitted the cast in sportswear. The curtain was painted after Deux femmes courant sur la plage, a 1922 work by Pablo Picasso. The ballet was first performed on 20 June 1924 at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, with Nijinska, who played a tennis player based on Suzanne Lenglen, Lydia Sokolova, Anton Dolin and Leon Woizikovsky in the leading roles. The orchestra was conducted by André Messager.
The story of the ballet is somewhat nonsensical: The new couple have a wedding breakfast on Bastille Day (July 14) at a table on one of the platforms of the famous tower. A guest makes a pompous speech. When a humpbacked photographer bids everyone to "watch the birdie," it appears that a telegraph office suddenly springs into existence on the platform. A lion comes in and eats one of the guests for breakfast and a strange figure called "a child of the future" appears and kills everybody. Nevertheless, the ballet concludes with the end of the wedding. When asked what the ballet was about, Cocteau replied: "Sunday vacuity; human beastliness, ready-made expressions, disassociation of ideas from flesh and bone, ferocity of childhood, the miraculous poetry of everyday life." On 29 July 1923, in a letter, Francis Poulenc described the work as "toujours de la merde... hormis l'Ouverture d'Auric" ("yet more shit... apart from Auric's Overture").
A French prisoner of war dreams of his orphaned grandchildren and a puppet theatre in their bedroom. In the nested farces, a plush bear who is a swindling financier tries to keep a stolen diamond, while an old Moon schemes to win a legless aviator’s love; the schemes entangle with the orphans’ future and end in a dreamlike release.
A two-part opera presenting episodes from the life of Christopher Columbus in a non-chronological order, with some allegorical scenes.
A five-act, twelve-scene biblical opera about King David, based on the Books of Samuel.
When an invading Assyrian army threatens her community, Judith is chosen to appeal to its general, Holofernes. After deception frustrates her mission, she enters his tent and kills him to save her people.
L'Abandon d'Ariane is a one-act French-language opera by Darius Milhaud, with a libretto by Henri Hoppenot, based on Greek mythology. Its roles include Ariadne, Dionysus, Phaedra, and Theseus.
L'Homme et son désir, Op. 48, is a ballet composed by Darius Milhaud from 1917–18, based on a scenario of Paul Claudel. It was written in Brazil, where Milhaud had accompanied Claudel as a secretary when the latter was appointed ambassador to Rio de Janeiro. It was the passage of the Ballets Russes with Vaslav Nijinsky in Rio de Janeiro that triggered it. This was Claudel's first musical collaboration and he then repeated the experience several times with some major works (including Honegger's Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher). The work is also one of Milhaud's first ballets. The score is written for four voices (wordless) and a small orchestra and a large number of percussion instruments (including a whip and a whistle). The Premiere took place on 6 June 1921, with a choreography by the Ballets suédois under the orchestral direction of Désiré-Émile Inghelbrecht.
Darius Milhaud’s French-language operatic setting of Aeschylus’s Oresteia triptych, comprising Agamemnon, Les Choéphores, and Les Euménides.
L'Éventail de Jeanne (Jeanne's Fan) is a children's ballet choreographed in 1927 by Alice Bourgat and Yvonne Franck. The music is a collaborative work by ten French composers, each of whom contributed a stylised dance in classic form: Maurice Ravel (Fanfare) Pierre-Octave Ferroud (Marche) Jacques Ibert (Valse) Alexis Roland-Manuel (Canarie) Marcel Delannoy (Bourrée) Albert Roussel (Sarabande) Darius Milhaud (Polka) Francis Poulenc (Pastourelle) Georges Auric (Rondeau) Florent Schmitt (Finale: Kermesse-Valse) "Jeanne" refers to a Parisian hostess and patroness of the arts, Jeanne Dubost, who ran a children's ballet school. In the spring of 1927 she presented ten of her composer friends with leaves from her fan, asking each of them to write a little dance for her pupils. The children were dressed in fairytale costumes and the décor was enlivened by a set designed with mirrors. It was produced in private at Jeanne Dubost's Paris salon on 16 June 1927, with Maurice Ravel playing a piano transcription of the music. It had its public premiere at the Paris Opera on 4 March 1929, with the ten-year-old Tamara Toumanova dancing the lead role. This was the first performance of Darius Milhaud's music there and he was so annoyed to debut with a trifling work that he boycotted the performance. Excerpts have been recorded, particularly Ravel's Fanfare and Poulenc's Pastourelle. The first complete recording was made in 1984 by the Philharmonia Orchestra led by Geoffrey Simon.
La Création du monde, Op. 81a, is a 15-minute-long ballet composed by Darius Milhaud in 1922–23 to a libretto by Blaise Cendrars, which outlines the creation of the world based on African folk mythology. The premiere took place on 25 October 1923 at Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris.
Hippolyte’s love for Aricie arouses the jealousy of his stepmother Phèdre. After Hippolyte rejects her, Phèdre denounces him to his father, Thésée, who arranges his death by a monster. Théramene kills Phèdre in revenge and is then executed on Thésée’s orders. Aricie comforts the grieving Thésée.
La Mère coupable is a three-act opera by Darius Milhaud, with a libretto by Madeleine Milhaud. It is based on Beaumarchais' 1792 play of the same name, the third work in his Figaro trilogy.
Le Bœuf sur le toit (literally "the ox on the roof"), Op. 58 is a 15-minute piece for small orchestra by the composer Darius Milhaud, written in 1919–20. Milhaud conceived the piece as incidental music for any one of the comic silent films of Charlie Chaplin, but it received its premiere as the music for a ballet staged by Jean Cocteau in February 1920.
After fifteen years away, a sailor returns wealthy but unrecognized and visits his wife disguised as a stranger. He tells her that her husband is coming home, then rents a room at her bar. When she later finds him asleep, she kills him with a hammer and takes his valuables, while her father-in-law helps conceal the body. Still believing her husband will return, she sings of his approaching homecoming.
Gaston, an amnesiac veteran, is claimed by several families and identified as Jacques Renaud, a cruel young man before the First World War. Unable to reconcile that past with his present self, he leaves the Renauds and joins a surviving boy’s family, telling Jacques’s brother that Jacques is dead.
Le train bleu is a one-act ballet choreographed by Bronislava Nijinska to music by Darius Milhaud for Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, based on a scenario by Jean Cocteau. The title was taken from the night train called Le Train Bleu, which transported wealthy passengers from Calais to the Mediterranean Sea. The ballet is set on the fashionable French Riviera and has a sporting theme, with swimmers, tennis players, and weight lifters. Henri Laurens supplied a Cubist beach scene and Coco Chanel outfitted the cast in sportswear. The curtain was painted after Deux femmes courant sur la plage, a 1922 work by Pablo Picasso. The ballet was first performed on 20 June 1924 at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, with Nijinska, who played a tennis player based on Suzanne Lenglen, Lydia Sokolova, Anton Dolin and Leon Woizikovsky in the leading roles. The orchestra was conducted by André Messager.
The story of the ballet is somewhat nonsensical: The new couple have a wedding breakfast on Bastille Day (July 14) at a table on one of the platforms of the famous tower. A guest makes a pompous speech. When a humpbacked photographer bids everyone to "watch the birdie," it appears that a telegraph office suddenly springs into existence on the platform. A lion comes in and eats one of the guests for breakfast and a strange figure called "a child of the future" appears and kills everybody. Nevertheless, the ballet concludes with the end of the wedding. When asked what the ballet was about, Cocteau replied: "Sunday vacuity; human beastliness, ready-made expressions, disassociation of ideas from flesh and bone, ferocity of childhood, the miraculous poetry of everyday life." On 29 July 1923, in a letter, Francis Poulenc described the work as "toujours de la merde... hormis l'Ouverture d'Auric" ("yet more shit... apart from Auric's Overture").
A French prisoner of war dreams of his orphaned grandchildren and a puppet theatre in their bedroom. In the nested farces, a plush bear who is a swindling financier tries to keep a stolen diamond, while an old Moon schemes to win a legless aviator’s love; the schemes entangle with the orphans’ future and end in a dreamlike release.