Daniel-Francois-Esprit Auber (1782-1871) was long considered one of the most typically French as well as one of the most successful of the opera composers of the 19th century. Although musically gifted, he initially chose commerce as a career, but soon realized that his future lay in music. He studied under Cherubini, and it was not long before his opera-comique La Bergere Chateleine (1820), written at the age of 38, established him as an operatic composer. Perhaps the greatest turning point in Auber's life was his meeting with the librettist Eugene Scribe (1791-1861), with whom he developed...

The integrity of the human being made in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:26) has been a challenge confronting not just the theologian, but great rulers, politicians, reformers, scientists, poets, artists, composers and novelists over centuries. The Orthodox Tradition might note that our human condition in time and space is shaped and challenged by this journey from likeness to image. Biblically we journey to see the face of God. Less theologically, the human condition is shaped by the tensions and contradictions as we journey to seek afreedom'. Paradigms of Freedom explores, in the...

Giacomo Meyerbeer was once one of the most famous of all opera composers, enjoying into the twentieth century the same universal admiration and performance as a composer like Puccini does today.Through a series of adverse factors, his reputation was seriously damaged with the resurgence of nationalism and the growing ant-Semitism in France and Germany at the end of the nineteenth century, the propagation of a Wagnerian operatic aesthetic, the decline of the bel canto vocal tradition, and the disfavour manifested towards the heroism of French grand opera. All these factors, and especially the...

Vasco de Gama was the last collaboration between Giacomo Meyerbeer and Eugene Scribe, the famous playwright and librettist. The work had intermittently preoccupied them both since 1838, and it had become legendary as L'Africaine years before its completion. The first version of the opera became known as the Vecchia Africana of the long years of Meyerbeer's anxious labours on this most troublesome of his operas An adoring public gave Meyerbeer a tumultuous posthumous accolade on the premiere of L'Africaine on 28 April 1865, a year after his death. This opera which involved Meyerbeer and...

This study presents themes deriving from the key contributions of the Apostles John and Paul to the New Testament. It examines the Gospel of John and aspects of the Letters and Theology of Paul. These cover chronology and authorship, contemporary contexts, use of rhetorical figures, the Christological hymns, and soteriological and moral concerns in the wider context of both the New Testament and the Old Testament. The approach is essentially synchronic, but also encompasses diachronic elements. Christological and tropological issues are examined afresh, especially in the light of the...

The composer Ludwig Minkus represents one of music's biggest mysteries. Who was he? Hardly anything is known about him, and yet he occupied an influential position in the theatres of the Imperial ballet in late nineteenth-century Russia. He has been recognised as a predecessor of Tchaikovsky, but as a musician is commonly held to have been so feeble as to be beneath contempt.Yet despite the scorn heaped on him, and his consequent obscurity, Minkus is far from being forgotten. Since the early 1960s his name has slowly begun to re-surface. Two works, Don Quixote (1869) and La Bayadere (1877),...

The composer Adolphe-Charles Adam (1803-1856) is known all over the world for the famous Christmas anthem 'Minuit chretiens' ('O Holy Night'). However, he wrote much more than just this. His ballet Giselle (1841) is the quintessence of mystical Romanticism and one of the most enduring works of the dance repertoire. Adam composed a series of ballets, principally for the Paris Opera, establishing this genre as a serious and integral musical form. His last work was Le Corsaire (1856) which reaches sublime heights. However, Adam was just as famous as a composer for the lyric stage. With...

Daniel-Francois-Esprit Auber (1782-1871), the composer of La Muette de Portici (1828) and Fra Diavolo (1830), was once regarded as one of the great figures of music, a staple of the operatic repertoire in France, and indeed around the world. It is now almost impossible to understand the extent of his once universal fame, his influence on contemporary composers. His operas were in the theatre repertories of the world until the 1920s, and innumerable arrangements of them were published and sold everywhere. The ubiquity of his overtures-Masaniello, Fra Diavolo, The Bronze Horse, The Black...

The composer Adolphe-Charles Adam (1803-1856) is particularly famous for the Christmas anthem 'Minuit chretiens' ('O Holy Night'). He was renowned as a composer for the lyric stage. With Boieldieu, Herold and Auber, Adam forms one of the quartet of masters that represent the second school of that profoundly French genre of opera-comique, producing the charming Le Chalet (1834) and the adorable and enduringly popular Le Postillon de Lonjumeau (1836). However, Adam's greatest originality and most substantial achievement lay in the field of ballet. Giselle (1841) is the quintessence of mystical...