Giacomo Puccini’s opera La Bohème is about struggling artists in Paris. Its title means „the bohemian lifestyle.“ But Bohemia isn't in France; it's in the Czech Republic. Other composers such […]
Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / 6:00 RSS Feed Share Link
Leonard Bernstein’s „Candide“ is an operetta. An operetta is like an opera, with one big difference. In opera, everything is sung, but in operetta, there are spoken lines between the […]
Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / 6:00 RSS Feed Share Link
Around the year 1600, Italian composers started writing theater pieces that use music all the way through them. Instead of speaking, characters in operas sing their lines. From Claudio Monteverdi, […]
Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / 6:00 RSS Feed Share Link
Ludwig van Beethoven was a uniquely talented composer and musician. But by the time Beethoven was 30, his increasing deafness put an end to his career as a pianist. That […]
Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / 6:00 RSS Feed Share Link
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote his first opera when he was twelve, and opera continued to fascinate him throughout his life. Mozart had such genius for combining music and theater that […]
Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / 6:00 RSS Feed Share Link
Charles Ives wrote the Country Band March about amateur musicians — people who make music for the love of it. In the Country Band March Ives combines a tune that […]
Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / 6:00 RSS Feed Share Link
Franz Joseph Haydn spent over thirty years working as music director for the Esterhazy family. By the end of his life, Haydn was both rich and famous, and he had […]
Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / 6:00 RSS Feed Share Link
Music by composers with all kinds of hyphens to their African heritage: African-French, French-Cuban, African-English, and African-American.
Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / 6:00 RSS Feed Share Link
At the time when Czech composer Antonin Dvorak was born, the Czech people had no country of their own. The regions where they lived — Bohemia and Moravia — were […]
Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / 6:00 RSS Feed Share Link
Johann Sebastian Bach was married two times, and had a grand total of 20 children! All of Bach’s ancestors were musicians, and his sons were expected to follow in his […]
Episode Rewind 10 Seconds 1x Fast Forward 30 seconds 00:00 / 6:00 RSS Feed Share Link
