October 21

1784 - Premiere at the Paris Comedie-italienne comic opera in three acts RICHARD COEUR DE LION Grétry André (1741-1813), on a libretto by Michel-Jean Sedaine (1719-1797).
Plot: Richard, returning from the Crusades, is imprisoned in the castle of Linz. Blondel, a faithful, pretending to be blind, arrived in the vicinity of the castle and suspect that the mysterious prisoner is none other than his king. The same day, also Margaret, Countess of Flanders and Artois and in love with Richard. Blondel discovers the true identity of the prisoner played the violin in an aria composed by Richard to Margaret and the prisoner recognizes and continues singing. Blondel, according to Margaret, then drawn a plan to free the king. Invited the governor of the fortress to a dance party, block it and entertain, so to get after the knights and soldiers surround the castle Margarita and conquer. Richard and Margaret finally meet, among the festivities.
Richard Coeur de Lion is probably among the works of Grétry, the most importance and interest. With it rose comic opera of the late eighteenth century musical optimum levels. His music has variety and expressiveness certainly remarkable, it is cool and breezy in the chorus of peasants, most sentimental and almost pre-Romantic in the arias of Richard and Margaret, always rich in musical variety, and original melodic accents.
The aria Une fièvre brûlante impressed Beethoven himself, who composed some variations on his theme, while the other famous aria, or Richard, ô mon roi, l'univers t'abandonne, would resonate shortly after a warning of importance historical (think Versailles October 1, 1789). This opera, which helped popularize the audience to its author, as estimated by Voltaire and the encyclopedic, was extended from three to four acts, was performed also at the Comedie-italienne, on 21 December of that year, 1784.

Source:
Bertel, Antonio [et al.] - The Opera: encyclopedia of opera

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Pascual Arrieta 1823 - Birth in Puente de la Reina (Navarra, Spain) PASCUAL composer Emilio Arrieta. He was orphaned as a child and was educated in Madrid with her sister Antonia, where he began his music studies at the Conservatory of Madrid. In 1839 his sister took him to Italy where he studied piano with the teacher and harmony with Mandancini Perelli, privately. In 1841 he entered the Conservatory of Milan, thanks to the generosity of Count Litta, studying piano and harmony with Maestro Nicola Vaccai (between 1838 and 1846), graduating with honors.
In Italy, in collaboration with librettist Solera Temistocle, he composed his first opera: Ildegonda, released in 1846 which obtained great success and won the prize in composition at the Scala in Milan. Back in Madrid, in 1846 became known as a conductor at the Teatro del Circo, which also debuts in the same year a symphony. Elizabeth II met at a party palace. The queen took it as a singing teacher, composer of the court appointing him three years later, and ordered to build a theater at the Royal Palace where the opera premiered Arrieta Conquest of Granada and Pergolesi.
Although he enjoyed the support of the queen, after the overthrow of that published the hymn below the Bourbons.
He was appointed professor of composition at the Escuela Nacional de Música in Madrid in 1857 and took over as director in 1868, he held until his death in 1894. At this time he composed many works for concerts, competitions and academic events. Among his most outstanding students were found and Ruperto Chapi Tomas Breton.
By reviving the zarzuela with the successes of Barbieri, Gaztambide and others, along with the closure of the Royal Palace Theater, Arrieta made to feel seduced by the zarzuela, leaving the opera, they can produce more than fifty zarzuelas.
In 1853 he premiered his first zarzuela, and the blue domino, thirty years after the last, San Francisco de Sena. Altogether the author of fifty titles, the most famous of which, the only remaining in the regular repertoire today is Marina, with a libretto by Francisco Camprodón. Born as zarzuela became in 1855 the opera which premiered at the Teatro Real in Madrid in 1871.
In 1871 he received the Great Cross of Isabel the Catholic, and in 1873 he was appointed professor at the Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in the newly created music section.
Pascual Emilio Arrieta died in Madrid on February 11, 1894 at 70 years old.
Fernando Perez Ollo, music critic, writes Arrieta: "His fame rests on his theatrical production and more specifically the key role it played in building the operetta as a genre. This dominance of the teacher Navarre was made possible by his sense of melody in the traditional line of Bellini, rather than renovating and Verdi's dramatic, and technical resources-harmonic and instrumental-that gave him his Italian training. In this latter respect, Arrieta was superior to his fellow Spaniards. "

Source:
Wikipedia - The Free Encyclopedia

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1847 - Birth Colleretto Parella (near Turin, Italy) from librettist Giuseppe Giacosa. Successful author of historical and modern dramas, was responsible for the diversification of the arguments for Luigi Illica dramatic operas La Bohème, Tosca and Madama Butterfly by Giacomo Puccini. Giuseppe Giacosa died in Colleretto Parella, 2 September 1906.

Source:
Hamilton, David - METROPOLITAN OPERA ENCYCLOPEDIA

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1858 - Premiere at the Paris Bouffes Parisiens magical opera in four acts and twelve tables of Orphée aux enfers Jacques Offenbach (1819-1880), on a libretto by Hector Cremieux and Ludovic Halevy (1833-1908), adapted by the authors for four acts and twelve paintings in 1874.
Argument: It is an adaptation in comic-satiric tone of the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Orpheus is a professor of violin and Eurydice is a champion of conjugal fidelity. Among those who courted is Pluto, which, to hide his true identity, posing as some Aristeo, a manufacturer of honey is Jupiter, which, to get it, it becomes fly and passes through the keyhole, is John Styx, son of an ancient king of Boeotia, and now servant of Pluto. When Eurydice dies, Orpheus, although he hates it, should go to hell to get it out, in accordance with the provisions. Orpheus sees there all: gods who dance the can-can, who oppose Jupiter singing the Marseillaise or dance a minuet. At the end of this eventful trip, when Orpheus and will return to earth with Eurydice, Jupiter, to stop him, gives him a hard kick that forced him to come back, and Eurydice, returns to the underworld, enthusiastically welcomed in a wild orgy.
Apparently, the operetta was unwelcome: Le Figaro's shattered and the public be persuaded. Fifteen years later, the mood of the times had changed: the disenchanted society of the Second Empire, which was near collapse of his power, but precisely because it was hungry for entertainment and finally ready to laugh at herself, accepted for readily be ridiculed by the theater of Offenbach, which, with overwhelming vigor, invited a cheerful self. The success was exceptional, and while the rooms were searched in the actual or alleged plot references to personalities and situations in the streets repeating the reasons most successful, as the can-can and the gallop, a pace which seemed to "revolve fantastically throughout the century, government, institutions, customs, laws, "as Sarcey. The meeting in Offenbach, endowed with a most steadfast musical training and an incisive and original language, with the librettists Halevy Cremieux and capable builders charged situations of caustic irony, he had started a new genre of music, operetta, which profaned characters and musical styles, while the grand-opera, which had given undue emphasis, entered its last quarter.

Source:
Bertel, Antonio [et al.] - The Opera: encyclopedia of opera

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1912 - born in Budapest (Hungary) from director Sir Georg Solti. Student of Dohnányi, Bartók and Kodály at the Liszt Institute in his hometown, he served as a repeater in Budapest and was assistant to Toscanini in Salzburg (1936-37); debut in Budapest, Le Nozze di Figaro, 1938. After spending the war years in Switzerland, became music director of the Bavarian Opera (1946-52), general manager in Frankfurt (1952-61) and musical director at Covent Garden (1961-71), bringing the Company at an international level of performance, music adviser to the Paris Opera (1971-73). Other presentations of the master Solti: San Francisco (debut, Elektra, 1953), Glyndebourne (Don Giovanni, 1954), Opera of Chicago (debut, Salome, 1956), Salzburg (since 1956) and the Metropolitan (debut, Tannhäuser, December 1960 ), where he spent three seasons Aida, Boris Godunov, Don Carlo, Otello and Tristan. Since 1969, music director of the Chicago Symphony, and also his name was associated with the Paris Orchestra (1972-75) and the London Philharmonic (1979-83). The tension and precise articulation of the strong performances of Solti achieved international fame through his recordings, prominent among them the first comprehensive study version of Der Ring der Nibelung, with the Vienna Philharmonic (1958-65).
The teacher SOLTI died in Antibes (France) on 6 September 1997 at the age of 84.

Source:
Hamilton, David - METROPOLITAN OPERA ENCYCLOPEDIA

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1923 - Birth in Meridian (Miss., USA) to read JOHN ALEXANDER. He studied with Robert Weede in the Cincinnati Conservatory, debut as Faust, Cincinnati, 1952. He debuted in New York City Opera (Alfredo, 1957) and Metropolitan (Ferrando, 1961). From then on the cast of the Metropolitan is valued for its insurance and singing in a huge musical repertoire that includes: Bacchus (Ariadne), Stolzing Hoffmann, Belmonte, Arbace and the title role of Idomeneo, Alfredo and Faust. He has also performed in Vienna at the Volksoper (Tote Stadt, 1967) and the State Opera (Rodolfo, 1968), at Covent Garden (Pollione, 1970), San Francisco and Boston, where he sang Don Carlo in the U.S. premiere of the original French version, 1973.

Source:
Hamilton, David - METROPOLITAN OPERA ENCYCLOPEDIA

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1925 - Birth Solovastru (Romania) from VIRGINIA ZEANI. His father was a native of that country and the mother, Italian. He began his studies in Bucharest Lipovskaia Lydia. At twenty years he moved to Milan for the purpose of studying literature, history and philosophy at the university there. At the same time she studied singing with Lucia Anghel. His debut was in 1948 in Bologna when he had to replace an indisposed colleague in La traviata. This fact was crowned by a resounding success and opened the doors of the major Italian theaters, especially the Rome Opera, where he developed an important part of his career.
VIRGINIA ZEANI appeared at La Scala on 10 December 1956 as Cleopatra in Handel's Giulio Cesare in poster shared with Franco Corelli, Giulietta Simionato, Nicola Rossi Lemeni. In January the following year was Bianca (Blanche) at the world premiere of Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmelites with Gencer, Misciano and Pederzini. He returned in May 1961 as Olympia, Giulietta, Antonia and Stella in Les Contes d'Hoffmann with Rossi-Lemeni in parts of the villains. He had married this low in 1958. She sang at the Arena of Verona from 1956 to 1963 on titles such as Lucia di Lammermoor and Lohengrin, and in those years made appearances in Austria, Spain, France, England, Greece, Switzerland, South Africa and Egypt. In 1957 was made in Chile, where he participated with great success in the centenary season of the Teatro Municipal de Santiago. In 1967, Maria Callas ZEANI replaced a previous commitment with the Vienna State Opera. In that theater was Violetta and Lucia. In the former Soviet Union acted in Leningrad and Moscow and was a regular artist in Barcelona.
ZEANI debuted at the Metropolitan in 1966 with La Traviata. Then he sang in Houston, Montreal, New Orleans, Vancouver and Philadelphia. He retired from the scene in San Francisco with Dialogues des Carmelites in 1983, dedicating himself to teaching at the University of Bloomington.