Susan Gritton

Susan Gritton (born 31 August 1965) is an English operatic soprano. She was the 1994 winner of the Kathleen Ferrier Award and has sung leading roles in a wide ranging repertoire from Handel and Mozart to Britten, Janáček and Strauss.

Life and career

Gritton was born in Reigate, Surrey. She was educated at the University of Oxford and the University of London, where she studied Botany.

On the operatic stage, her roles include Ellen Orford Peter Grimes (La Scala, Sydney & Tokyo); Blanche Dialogues des Carmélites (Bayerische Staatsoper); Countess Madeleine Capriccio and Tatyana Eugene Onegin (Grange Park); Micaela Carmen and Liù Turandot (Covent Garden); Donna Anna Don Giovanni (Bolshoi & Opera de Montreal & Scottish Opera); Elettra Idomeneo (Netherlands Opera) and Konstanze Die Entführung aus dem Serail (Deutsche Staatsoper & Bayerische Staatsoper). Title roles include Theodora (Glyndebourne); Rodelinda (Bayerische Staatsoper); The Bartered Bride (Covent Garden) and The Cunning Little Vixen (ENO).

Susan

Susan is a feminine given name, from French Susanne, from Late Latin Susanna, from Greek Sousanna, from Hebrew Šošanna, literally meaning "lily", a term derived from Susa (Persian: Šuš), a city in southwest Iran that was the ancient capital of the Elamite kingdom and Achaemenid empire.

Variations

Nicknames

Common nicknames for Susan include:

In other languages

Illuminations (poems)

Illuminations is an incompleted suite of prose poems by the French poet Arthur Rimbaud, first published partially in La Vogue, a Paris literary review, in May–June 1886. The texts were reprinted in book form in October 1886 by Les publications de La Vogue under the title Les Illuminations proposed by the poet Paul Verlaine, Rimbaud's assumed former lover. In his preface, Verlaine explained that the title was based on the English word illuminations, in the sense of coloured plates, and a sub-title that Rimbaud had already given the work. Verlaine dated its composition between 1873 and 1875.

Rimbaud wrote the majority of poems comprising Illuminations during his stay in the United Kingdom with Verlaine at his side. The texts follow Rimbaud's peregrinations in 1873 from Reading where he had hoped to find steady work, to Charleville and Stuttgart in 1875.

Content, style, and themes

The text of Illuminations is generally agreed to consist of forty-two poems. In large part, due to the circumstances surrounding the publication of the poems of Illuminations, there is no consensus as to the order in which Rimbaud intended the poems to appear. Nevertheless, certain conventions stand among the many editions of the text. For example, the various publications of Illuminations almost invariably begin with "Après Le Deluge". Despite this ostensible controversy, a large number of scholars have declared the order of Illuminations to be irrelevant. Perhaps translator Bertrand Mathieu best distilled the major reasons for this contention: "No single poem really depends on the others or counts on them to achieve its own perfections. Each is intrinsic (we don't know the exact sequence and we don't need to know it)."

Colin Davis

Sir Colin Rex Davis CH CBE (25 September 1927 – 14 April 2013) was an English conductor. He was particularly noted for his advocacy of the music of Hector Berlioz and of Michael Tippett.

Early years

Davis was born in Weybridge, Surrey, the youngest of three sons among seven siblings, to Reginald George and Lillian Davis. The family was musical, and he was exposed to music from an early age. He recalled:

With financial assistance from his great-uncle, Davis was educated at Christ's Hospital in Sussex and then won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music in London, where he studied the clarinet with Frederick Thurston. His fellow-students included Gervase de Peyer, but Davis developed a greater interest in conducting. He was, however, not eligible for the conducting class at the college, because he could not play the piano.

Following compulsory military service and completing his studies at college, Davis served as a clarinettist in the band of the Life Guards. Stationed at Windsor, he had continual opportunities to attend concerts in London under conductors including Sir Thomas Beecham and Bruno Walter. In 1949, he began his career as a freelance musician (the "freelance wilderness", in his own phrase) where he remained until 1957. His first conducting work was with the Kalmar Orchestra, which he co-founded with other former students of the Royal College. He was subsequently invited to conduct the recently founded Chelsea Opera Group in Don Giovanni. In the early years of his career, he also took some engagements as an orchestral clarinettist. What seemed at first to be a full-time conducting appointment, for the Original Ballet Russe in 1952, ended abruptly after three months, when the company collapsed. In between sparse conducting engagements, Davis worked as a coach and lecturer, including spells at the Cambridge University Musical Society and the Bryanston Summer School, where a performance of L'enfance du Christ awakened his love of Berlioz's music.

Orchestra

An orchestra (/ˈɔːrkᵻstrə/ or US /ˈɔːrˌkɛstrə/; Italian: [orˈkɛstra]) is a large instrumental ensemble used in classical music that contains sections of string (violin, viola, cello and double bass), brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments. Other instruments such as the piano and celesta may sometimes be grouped into a fifth section such as a keyboard section or may stand alone, as may the concert harp and, for 20th and 21st century compositions, electric and electronic instruments. The term orchestra derives from the Greek ὀρχήστρα, the name for the area in front of an ancient Greek stage reserved for the Greek chorus. The orchestra grew by accretion throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, but changed very little in composition during the course of the 20th century.