Category: Opera
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Mozart’s Don Giovanni, K. 527
He wrote the overture the night before the premiere. The ink was still wet.
October 28, 1787. Prague. The premiere is tomorrow—and the overture doesn't exist yet. Mozart stayed up all night while Constanze kept him awake with stories and punch. The orchestra sight-read it from still-wet pages at dawn. Nobody knew they were…
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Donizetti’s Roberto Devereux
A Queen's Love — and Her Deadly Rage
An aging Queen Elizabeth I gives her favorite, Robert Devereux, a ring, promising it will save him from anything—even treason. When the ring is intercepted, three lives unravel. Donizetti wrote the opera in the shadow of immense personal grief, and…