John Constable

(11 June, 1776 – 31 March, 1837)

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an English Romantic painter. Born in Suffolk, he is known principally for his landscape paintings of Dedham Vale, the area surrounding his home which he invested with an intensity of affection. His most famous paintings include Dedham Vale of 1802 and The Hay Wain of 1821.

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One of the most respected Old Masters, and one of the foremost artists in Rome during the era of Baroque art. He was greatly influenced by historical Greek and Roman mythology, and as a result abandoned mainstream Baroque painting in his early 30s, preferring to develop his own unique style of classicism. In terms of subjects, he is best known for his religious art, notably his Christian history painting and his narrative landscape painting. Among the greatest examples of his painting are works like Rape of the Sabine Women (1637-8), The Continence of Scipio (1640), the series of the Seven Sacraments (1644-8), Landscape with the Blind Orion Looking for Sun (1658), The Holy Family (1650), Death of Sapphira (1652), The Rest on the Flight into Egypt (1657), and The Four Seasons (1660-64).

Edgar Degas

(1834-1917)

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one of the main proponents of the Impressionism art movement, although preferring to be called a Realist. He worked in various media, including oils, watercolours, pastels and bronze sculpture. Degas is renowned for his outstanding figure painting and figure drawing, and is best known for his studies of ballerinas. His notable works include The Absinthe Drinker (1875) and the Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer (1879). Like Renoir, he remained a figurative Impressionist all his life. Many of Degas' paintings are now available as prints in the form of poster art.

Amedeo Modigliani

(1884-1920)

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the Italian artist and highly individual exponent of Expressionism who spent most of his short working life painting in Paris, and became friends with Pablo Picasso, Toulouse-Lautrec and Georges Rouault. As a painter and a sculptor, he is best known for his female nudes and portraits of women with unnaturally elongated necks. Most of his life was spent battling poverty, alcoholism, drug addiction and ill health. He died prematurely at the age of 35. His most notable works include Seated Nude (c.1918) and Portrait of Jeanne Hébuterne (1918).

Dame Margaret Berenice Price

(13 April 1941 – 28 January 2011)

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a Welsh soprano. Price was most famous for her Mozart portraits. Price was also very active as a lieder singer, equally at home in the romantic idiom of Franz Schubert, Robert Schumann or Richard Strauss, and that of the Second Viennese School.

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songs composed to a German poem of reasonably high literary aspirations, especially during the nineteenth century. The poetry forming the basis for Lieder often centers upon pastoral themes or themes of romantic love. Typically, Lieder are arranged for a single singer and piano. Sometimes Lieder are gathered in a Liederkreis or "song cycle"—a series of songs tied by a single narrative or theme.

Sesto Bruscantini

(December 10, 1919 - May 4, 2003)

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an Italian bass-baritone, one of the greatest buffo singers of the post-war era, especially renowned in Mozart and Rossini.

Inge Borkh

(26 May 1917-)

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a German-born Swiss soprano. She was initially an actress and had some training in dance, both of which served her well in opera: she became known both for her voice and for her dramatic intensity - the "singing actress" exemplified, years before the term became common usage.

Edmond Clément

(28 March 1867 - 24 February 1928)

Karl Terkal

(October 7, 1919 - August 12, 1996)

Lina Pagliughi

(May 27, 1907 - October 1, 1980)

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an Italian-American opera singer. Based in Italy for the majority of her career, she made a number of recordings and established herself as one of the world's finest lyric coloratura sopranos of the 1930s and '40s.

Felicie Hüni-Mihacsek

(April 3, 1891 - March 26, 1976)

Shirley Verrett

(May 31, 1931 – November 5, 2010)

Mario Del Monaco

(July 27, 1915 - October 16, 1982)

Jonathan Stewart Vickers

(born October 29, 1926)

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A singer with a deep, strong voice that spans the range between baritone and tenor.

Franco Corelli

(8 April 1921 – 29 October 2003)

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a famous Italian tenor who had a major international opera career between 1951 and 1976. Associated in particular with the spinto and dramatic tenor roles of the Italian repertory, he was celebrated universally for his powerhouse voice, electrifying top notes, clear timbre, a very elegant and passionate singing and remarkable performances. Dubbed the "Prince of tenors", Corelli possessed handsome features and a charismatic stage presence which endeared him to audiences.

Ettore Bastianini

(September 24, 1922 – January 25, 1967)

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau

(28 May 1925-)

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a retired German lyric baritone and conductor of classical music, one of the most famous Lieder (art song) performers of the post-war period and "one of the supreme vocal artists of the 20th century". At his peak, he was greatly admired for his interpretive insights and exceptional control of his beautiful voice. Fischer-Dieskau has also performed and recorded a great many operatic roles.

Although his vocal technique was highly accomplished, Fischer-Dieskau's voice was rather light, a lyric-chamber baritone with less-than-overwhelming power. Despite this, he performed and recorded many heavy heroic baritone and bass-baritone operatic.

Titta Ruffo

(June 9, 1877 - July 5, 1953)

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an Italian opera star who had a major international singing career. Known as the "Voce del leone" ("voice of the lion"), he was greatly admired.

Tito Gobbi

(24 October 1913 – 5 March 1984)

Jan Peerce

(June 3, 1904 – December 15, 1984)

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an American operatic tenor. Peerce was an accomplished performer on the operatic and Broadway concert stages, in solo recitals, and as a recording artist.

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an operatic soprano who specializes in music that is distinguished by agile runs and leaps. The term coloratura refers to the elaborate ornamentation of a melody, which is a typical component of the music written for this voice.

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designates a singer capable of by sheer industry or natural talent to extend her upper range and be able to encompass the coloratura soprano tessitura.

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going beyond the real into the realm of the "super-real" and often includes the world of unconsciousness or dreams.

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presenting life as the author or writter feels it to be, not as it appears. Works of this type present the world in an utterly subjective perspective, radically distorting it for emotional effect, to evoke moods or ideas. Expressionist artists sought to express the meaning of "being alive" and emotional experience rather than physical reality.

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a complex artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe. In part, it was a revolt against aristocratic social and political norms of the Age of Enlightenment and a reaction against the scientific rationalization of nature.

The movement validated strong emotion as an authentic source of aesthetic experience, especially that which is experienced in confronting the sublimity of untamed nature and its picturesque qualities, both new aesthetic categories. It elevated folk art and ancient custom to something noble, made of spontaneity a desirable character, and argued for a "natural" epistemology of human activities as conditioned by nature in the form of language and customary usage. Romanticism attempted to embrace the exotic, unfamiliar, and distant, harnessing the power of the imagination to envision and to escape.

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a style used by novelists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries which relies on greater-than-life heroes and villains and a grandiose sense of the macabre.

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a member of the saxophone family of woodwind instruments. It is smaller than the tenor but larger than the soprano, and is the type most used in classical compositions. The alto and tenor are the most common types of saxophone.

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a valved brass wind instrument that produces a mellow tone from a long narrow tube that is coiled in a circle before ending in a flaring bell.

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the musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. They are constructed of brass tubing bent twice into an oblong shape, and are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air column inside the trumpet.

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the largest and lowest pitched brass instrument. Sound is produced by vibrating or "buzzing" the lips into a large cupped mouthpiece.

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a type of reasoning pattern in which the conclusion does not follow the line of reasoning used to reach it.

central staging

or theatre-in-the-round

or arena theatre

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any theatre space in which the audience surrounds the stage area.

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typical in American theaters, a "picture frame" stage with a large space separating the audience from the stage. A primary feature is a large frame or arch, which is located at or near the front of the stage. The audience directly faces the stage, which is typically raised several feet above front row audience level, and views the performance through the proscenium "arch".

Non-Aristotelian drama

or epic form of drama

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a kind of play whose dramaturgical structure departs from the features of classical tragedy in favour of the features of the epic. The German modernist theatre practitioner Bertolt Brecht coined the term 'non-Aristotelian drama' to describe the dramaturgical dimensions of his own work, beginning in 1930 with a series of notes and essays entitled "On a non-aristotelian drama."