Simon from Guillaume Rouillé's Promptuarii Iconum Insigniorum

Hasmonean Kingdom under Simon Maccabaeus

  situation in 143 BC

  area conquered

Simon Thassi (died 135 BCE) was the second son of Mattathias and thus a member of the Hasmonean family. The name "Thassi" has an uncertain meaning ("the Director", "the Guide", "the Man of Counsel", and "the Zealous" are all possible meanings of the term^[1])

He took part in the Jewish revolt against the Seleucid Empire led by his brothers, Judas Maccabaeus and Jonathan Maccabaeus. He became the first prince of the Hebrew Hasmonean Dynasty. He reigned from 142 to 135 BC.

The Hasmonean Dynasty was founded by a resolution, adopted in 141 BCE, at a large assembly "of the priests and the people and of the elders of the land, to the effect that Simon should be their leader and high priest forever, until there should arise a faithful prophet" (1 Maccabees 14:41).

Recognition of the new dynasty by the Roman Republic was accorded by the Senate about 139 BCE, when the delegation of Simon was in Rome. Simon made the Jewish people semi-independent of the Seleucid Empire.

In February 135 BCE, he was assassinated at the instigation of his son-in-law Ptolemy, son of Abubus. Simon was followed by his third son, John Hyrcanus, whose two elder brothers, Mattathias and Judah, had been murdered, together with their father.

References[link]

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Simon Andrew Thomas Standage (born 8 November 1941 in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire) is an English violinist and conductor best known for playing and conducting music of the baroque and classical eras on original instruments.

Biography and career[link]

He studied music at King's College, Cambridge University, following which he spent four years in the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra under Szymon Goldberg. He won a Harkness Fellowship to study with Ivan Galamian in New York City^[1] from 1967 to 1969.

After a 1972 Wigmore Hall debut, he became a founding member of Trevor Pinnock's period-instrument ensemble The English Concert. He was first violinist of The English Concert from 1972 to 1991. In this time, he performed and recorded violin concertos by Bach (the single and double concertos, and the Brandenburg Concertos), Vivaldi (The complete op.3 l'estro armonico, op.4 la stravaganza and op.8 il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione, and Le quattro stagioni a celebrated second time), Haydn and others. He was also the first concertino violin in the concerti grossi of Corelli, Handel and others. During this time, he was sub-leader of the English Chamber Orchestra from 1974 to 1978 and led the City of London Sinfonia (the successor of the Richard Hickox Orchestra) from 1980 to 1989.

In 1981 he was a founder of the Salomon Quartet (with Micaela Comberti, violin II, Trevor Jones, viola, and Jennifer Ward Clarke, cello), a period-performance string quartet specialising in the classical repertory, performing and recording works by Mozart, Haydn, and lesser known composers.

He played regularly with The Academy of Ancient Music throughout the 1980s, often as first violin, and recorded Vivaldi's op.9 la cetra, and the complete violin concertos of Mozart. He later became associate director of the AAM from 1991 to 1995.^[1] In 1990, he and Richard Hickox founded the group Collegium Musicum 90, a period-performance group varying in size from two musicians to full orchestra and chorus with which he has made many recordings as both conductor and violin soloist, of works by Telemann, Vivaldi, Leclair, Marcello, Albinoni, Arne, Boyce, and others. He has also made regular collaboration with Collegium Musicum Telemann in Osaka and Haydn Sinfonietta in Vienna. He plays in period-instrument chamber group The Music Collection with Susan Alexander-Max (fortepiano) and Jennifer Ward Clarke (cello).

Appointments[link]

Standage has been a professor of baroque violin at the Royal Academy of Music^[2] since 1983, and taught baroque violin and conducting at the Akademie für Alte Musik Oberlausitz in Görlitz since 1993. He is also president of the Early music society, Music by the Commons, based in Wimbledon, South West London.

References[link]

Dame Janet Abbott Baker, CH, DBE, FRSA (born 21 August 1933) is an English mezzo-soprano best known as an opera, concert, and lieder singer.^[1]

She was particularly closely associated with baroque and early Italian opera and the works of Benjamin Britten. During her career, which spanned the 1950s to the 1980s, she was considered an outstanding singing actress and widely admired for her dramatic intensity, perhaps best represented in her famous portrayal as Dido, the tragic heroine of Berlioz's magnum opus Les Troyens.^[2] As a concert performer, Baker was noted for her interpretations of the music of Gustav Mahler and Edward Elgar. David Gutman, writing in the Gramophone, described her performance of Mahler's Kindertotenlieder as "intimate, almost self-communing."^[3]

Biography and career[link]

Early life[link]

Baker was born in Hatfield, South Yorkshire, northern England. Her father was an engineer who sang in a male voice choir. Members of her family worked at Bentley pit, in Doncaster, South Yorkshire.^{[citation needed]} She attended York College for Girls and then Wintringham Girls' Grammar School in Grimsby. The death of her elder brother, Peter, when she was 10 years old, from a heart condition, was a formative moment that made her take responsibility for the rest of her life, she revealed in a BBC Radio 3 Lebrecht Interview in September 2011.^[4]

In her early years Baker worked in a bank, transferring to London in 1953 where she trained with Meriel St Clair and Helene Isepp, whose son Martin became her regular accompanist. Knocked down by a bus in 1956, she suffered concussion and a persistently painful back injury.^[5] That same year, she came second in the Kathleen Ferrier Memorial Competition at the Wigmore Hall, winning national attention.

Debut[link]

In 1956, she made her stage debut with the Oxford University Opera Club as Miss Róza in Smetana's The Secret. That year, she also made her debut at Glyndebourne. In 1959, she sang Eduige in the Handel Opera Society's Rodelinda; other Handel roles included Ariodante (1964), of which she later made an outstanding recording with Raymond Leppard, and Orlando (1966), which she sang at the Barber Institute, Birmingham.

Opera[link]

With the English Opera Group at Aldeburgh, Baker sang Purcell's Dido and Aeneas in 1962, Polly (Benjamin Britten's version of The Beggar's Opera) and Lucretia (in Britten's The Rape of Lucretia). At Glyndebourne she appeared again as Dido (1966) and as Diana/Jupiter in Francesco Cavalli's La Calisto, and Penelope in Monteverdi's Il ritorno d'Ulisse in Patria. For Scottish Opera she sang Dorabella in Mozart's Così fan tutte, Dido, Octavian in Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier, the Composer in Ariadne auf Naxos and the role of Orfeo in Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice. The latter was considered her signature role; she sang it everywhere and a videotaped performance from Glyndebourne is available (see below).

In 1966, Baker made her debut as Hermia at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, and went on to sing Berlioz's Dido, Kate in Britten's Owen Wingrave, Mozart's Vitellia and Idamante, Cressida in William Walton's Troilus and Cressida and the title role in Gluck's Alceste (1981) there. For the English National Opera, she sang the title role in Monteverdi's L'incoronazione di Poppea (1971),^[6] Charlotte in Massenet's Werther, and the title roles in Donizetti's Maria Stuarda and Handel's Giulio Cesare.

Oratorio and song[link]

During this same period she made an equally strong impact on audiences in the concert hall, both in oratorio roles and solo recitals. Among her most notable achievements are her recordings of the Angel in Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius, made with Sir John Barbirolli in December 1964 and Sir Simon Rattle over twenty years later; her 1965 performances of Elgar's Sea Pictures and Mahler's Rückert-Lieder, also recorded with Barbirolli; and, also from 1965, the first commercial recording of Ralph Vaughan Williams's Christmas oratorio Hodie under Sir David Willcocks. She performed in 1971 for the Peabody Mason Concert series in Boston.^[7] In 1976 she premièred the solo cantata Phaedra, written for her by Britten; and Dominick Argento's Pulitzer Prize-winning song cycle From the Diary of Virginia Woolf, also written with Baker's voice in mind. She has also been highly praised for her insightful performances of Brahms's Alto Rhapsody, Wagner's Wesendonck Lieder as well as solo songs from the French, German and English repertoire.

Retirement[link]

Dame Janet Baker's final operatic appearance was as Orfeo in Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice, on 17 July 1982, at Glyndebourne.^[8] She published a memoir, Full Circle, in 1982. In 1991, Baker was elected Chancellor of the University of York. She held the position until 2004, when she was succeeded by Greg Dyke. An enthusiastic Patron of the Leeds International Pianoforte Competition, she gave an address at the closing ceremony of the 2009 event.^[9]

Honours and awards[link]

Baker was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1970 and appointed to Dame Commander (DBE) in 1976. She was appointed a member of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) in 1993. In 1968, she was initiated as an Honorary Member of Sigma Alpha Iota International Music Fraternity by the Alpha Omicron Chapter at Occidental College, California, United States.^[10] She received the Léonie Sonning Music Prize of Denmark in 1979. In 2008, she received the Distinguished Musician Award from the Incorporated Society of Musicians and in 2011 she was installed as an Honorary Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Musicians at a ceremony in the City of London. This is the highest honour that the Company can bestow on a fellow musician.^{[citation needed]} Baker was voted into Gramophone Magazine's inaugaral Hall of Fame in 2012.^[11]

Private life[link]

She married (James) Keith Shelley in 1957 in Harrow. Following her retirement as a singer she did perform and record some spoken roles, for example the role of the Narrator in Britten's incidental music for The Rescue of Penelope; in later years, apart from occasional public appearances such as the 2009 Leeds event, she now has "nothing to do with anyone except close friends".^[8]

[edit] Recordings

• Mahler: Kindertotenlieder with The Hallé Orchestra; John Barbirolli conducting (EMI LP cat. no. ASD 2338; released 1968)
• Mahler: Das Lied von der Erde with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra under Bernard Haitink.
• Handel: Julius Caesar with the English National Opera; Charles Mackerras conducting (Chandos CHAN 3019; recorded 1–7 August 1984; released 1999)
• Schubert: Lieder. A double-CD with pianists Gerald Moore and Geoffrey Parsons, containing forty-two songs. EMI classics, 7243 5 69389 2
• Gluck: Orpheus and Euridice at Glyndebourne Festival Opera, conducted by Raymond Leppard. On video. Copyright 1982 by National Video Corporation, Limited.
• Mozart: La clemenza di Tito, conducted by Sir Colin Davis. Philips.
• Elgar: Sea Pictures, Op. 37
• Purcell: Dido and Aeneas, conducted by Anthony Lewis, English Chamber Orchestra, The St. Anthony Singers; rec. Oct. 1961; with Raimund Herincx as Aeneas. Decca Legendary Performances/UMG. SOL 60047.

References[link]

Notes

External links[link]

• Janet Baker at Allmusic
• IMDb

Dame Felicity Joan Palmer, DBE (born 6 April 1944, Cheltenham), is an English mezzo-soprano and music professor. She sang soprano roles until 1983.

Palmer studied at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London and under Marianne Schech's guidance at the Munich College for Music and Theatre. In April 1970, she won first prize in the Kathleen Ferrier Memorial Scholarship. She made her operatic debut in 1971 as Dido in Dido and Aeneas with the Kent Opera. In 1973, she made her US debut with the Houston Grand Opera, and in 1975 she made her debut with English National Opera (ENO). Her Metropolitan Opera debut was in 2000 as Waltraute (Götterdämmerung).^[1]

Palmer has performed and recorded Gilbert and Sullivan operas, as Katisha in The Mikado for the ENO^[2] and the Welsh National Opera (WNO), Dame Carruthers in The Yeomen of the Guard (WNO) and Little Buttercup in H.M.S. Pinafore (WNO). In 1998, she played Widow Begbick in the Lyric Opera of Chicago production of The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny. In 2003, she performed the role of Mrs Lovett in Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd at the Royal Opera House (the only musical the ROH has ever presented).^[3]

Palmer is noted for her interpretation of the role of Madame de Croissy in Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites, which she has sung at the Metropolitan Opera^[4] and at the Lyric Opera of Chicago's first ever production of the work. She also sang the role in English with the ENO and recorded it as part of the Chandos "Opera in English" series.^[5] Her other commercial recordings include The Flying Dutchman.^[6] Her work in contemporary music has included the first Glyndebourne production of Péter Eötvös's opera Love and Other Demons, in the role of Josefa Miranda.^[7]

Palmer is a professor at the Royal College of Music in London. She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1993 and Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2011 New Year Honours for services to music.^[8][9]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Intermusica agency page on Felicity Palmer

Gerald Finley (born 30 January 1960) is a Canadian bass-baritone opera singer.

Career[link]

He was born in Montreal and received his musical education in St. Matthew's Anglican Church, Ottawa, the University of Ottawa, King's College, Cambridge and the Royal College of Music in London, England. The sometime organist of Westminster Abbey, Sir William Mckie, who lived during his last years in Ottawa and who was Finley's great-uncle, encouraged him in his early musical activities.^[1]

He is particularly renowned for his interpretations of Mozart roles such as Guglielmo, Papageno, Figaro, the Count and Don Giovanni. He made his New York debut at the Metropolitan Opera on January 24, 1998 in the role of Papageno in Die Zauberflöte. He has subsequently performed the title role of Don Giovanni and Marcello in Puccini's La bohème at the Metropolitan.^[2]

In addition to his success with Mozart, Finley has been active in contemporary opera. He has created a number of roles including Doctor Oppenheimer in the world premiere of John Adams' opera Doctor Atomic at the San Francisco Opera on October 1, 2005. This opera had its Metropolitan Opera premiere with Finley in the Oppenheimer role on October 13, 2008 and was broadcast as part of the Met's Live in HD broadcast series on November 8, 2008. Other roles he has originated include Harry Heegan in The Silver Tassie by Mark-Anthony Turnage at the English National Opera and the title role in Fantastic Mr. Fox by Tobias Picker at the Los Angeles Opera.^[3]

Finley has been critically praised in both opera and concert. After a recital at Carnegie Hall in March, 2007, he was praised by New York Times critic Bernard Holland as having a "bass-baritone of easy luxury" and that his "sensibilities begin with the pre-eminence of words." ^[4] His portrayal of Schumann's Dichterliebe at the Wigmore Hall in 2006 was also highly praised.

Expanding his repertoire, Finley sang the title role of Eugene Onegin at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, this March. This is the second time he has sung a Tchaikovsky role for the Royal Opera; the first being Prince Yeletsky, from Pique Dame. In 2011 he sang Hans Sachs in the Glyndebourne Opera production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.^[5]

Finley appears on a number of recordings, including several solo albums on the Hyperion label.^[3]

Discography[link]

Finley's recordings include:^[6]

• Songs by Samuel Barber - Accompanied by Julius Drake (Hyperion, 2007)
• Maurice Ravel: Songs, Gerald Finley, accompanied by Julius Drake (Hyperion, 2009)
• Wigmore (Hall) Live, Gerald Finley acc. Julius Drake (2008)
• Ives: Songs (vol.11), Romanzo di Central Park with Gerald Finley, acc. Julius Drake (Hyperion, 2008)

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Betty Nygaard King. 'Finley, Gerald', The Canadian Encyclopedia
• Ross, Alex (15 March 2010). "Critic's Notebook: Baritone Poem". The New Yorker 86 (4): 15. http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/notebook/2010/03/15/100315gonb_GOAT_notebook_ross. Retrieved 15 January 2011. 

External links[link]

• www.geraldfinley.com Official website
• www.geraldfinley.info Fansite & archive

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