Konrad Dryden

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Konrad Dryden

Konrad Claude Dryden (born September 13, 1963 in Pasadena, California ) is an American author. He deals with Italian opera, in particular with the verismo movement .

family

Dryden is the son of the British Kenneth Dryden (a pilot in the Royal Air Force and descendant of the court poet John Dryden ) and the German Ingeborg Rudhart, a descendant of Ignaz von Rudhart , Prime Minister of Greece under the reign of King Otto von Wittelsbach . His great uncle, Thomas von Rudhart, helped found the Germanic National Museum in Nuremberg.

Life

From his birthplace Pasadena, Dryden moved to northern California at a young age. Attending many performances at the War Memorial Opera House in San Francisco awakened in him a deep love for the lyrical theater, which in 1980 led him to train as a baritone singer at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music under the French-Canadian tenor Léopold Simoneau .

Dryden, who has lived in Europe since 1981, continued his opera training with the cavalier baritone singer Karl Schmitt-Walter in Munich . Schmitt-Walter is known for his numerous recordings and his participation in the reopening of the Bayreuth Festival after the Second World War . After Schmitt-Walter's death, Dryden perfected his craft with the American tenor James King between 1982 and 1983, both in Munich and in Salzburg .

This was followed by a move to Feldafing on Lake Starnberg , where Dryden spent over two years in collaboration with the German baritone singer Josef Metternich . In Italy , Dryden completed his training with the help of the mezzo-soprano Gianna Pederzini with the legendary baritone singer Gino Bechi in Florence . Bechi, one of the most famous baritone singers in Italy, sang in the HMV recording of Pietro Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana Alfio in 1940 under the direction of the composer.

In 1987 Dryden recorded an album of arias and songs (listed in The Orchestra that same year) before making his operatic debut in a nationally broadcast television production of Uberto in Giovanni Battista Pergolesi's La serva padrona in 1988. Dryden married the historian Countess Florence de Peyronnet (* 1968) in 1991, the couple have a son (* 1991).

Career

In 1999 Dryden published his work Riccardo Zandonai . A Biography , the first fully documented monograph on the composer by Francesca da Rimini , based on the play by Gabriele D'Annunzio . Forewords by Renata Scotto and by Tarquinia Jolanda Zandonai, the composer's daughter himself , were written especially for this edition . A second biography, Leoncavallo . Life and Works , with a foreword by Plácido Domingo and Piera Leoncavallo, was published in 2007. An earlier edition, sponsored by Baroness Hildegarde von Münchhausen, which acquired a large part of the composer's estate, was also published in 2007. After this publication, Dryden took on a series of interviews for the German broadcasting station ( NDR ) and the Bavarian Chamber Opera. His latest biography, Franco Alfano. Transcending Turandot (preface by Magda Olivero ), was published in 2010. For these monographs, Dryden translated all archived material into English from German, Italian and French.

Since 2000, Dryden has regularly written essays and articles for the following opera houses and concert halls: San Francisco Opera ; Royal Opera, Covent Garden ; Metropolitan Opera , New York; Teatro Real , Madrid; Concertgebouw , Amsterdam; Gran Teatre del Liceu , Barcelona; Opéra de Paris ; San Diego Opera ; Wexford Festival Opera ; Rome Opera ; Deutsche Oper Berlin and English National Opera . He lectures in the United States of America, Switzerland and Germany and writes articles for Opera Quarterly, cpo , Naxos and Die Musikforschung . Dryden's biography was published in the 267th volume of the reference work Contemporary Authors in 2008.

Between 2000 and 2003, Dryden was a contributing editor for the German magazine Opernglas . During this time he was known for numerous interviews with the people Magda Olivero, Carlisle Floyd , Birgit Nilsson , Astrid Varnay , Wolfgang Wagner , Simonetta Puccini, Inge Borkh , Gina Cigna , Dame Eva Turner , Maria Carbone, Adelaide Saraceni, Virginia Zeani and Alexander of Yugoslavia dealt. Until her death, Dryden maintained a friendship with the bestselling writer Barbara Cartland .

Dryden is recognized for his progressive research into the history of music in the realm of Italian opera composers during the turn of the century , which prior to his works focused almost exclusively on Puccini . His revelations of original manuscripts - whether from the composers Giacomo Meyerbeer and Ruggiero Leoncavallo or from the writer ETA Hoffmann - gave many archives the opportunity to obtain irreplaceable material. These finds also helped to correct erroneous historical data that had been found for decades in references, including The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and the German music encyclopedia MGG . Whether it was just the imprecise date of Leoncavallo's birth or that his opera Edipo Re was simply an adaptation of the earlier Der Roland von Berlin or that his Sardou-based Jeunesse de Figaro never existed was largely unknown before Dryden's works were published. Dryden received his doctorate in 2003 from the Philipps University of Marburg . Since 2004 he has been a part-time professor at the University of Maryland University College- Europe.

Works

  • Riccardo Zandonai. A biography. Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1999, ISBN 0-8204-3649-6 .
  • Leoncavallo. Life and Works. Scarecrow Press, Lanham MD et al. 2007, ISBN 978-0-8108-5880-0 (also: Marburg, Universität, Dissertation, 2003).
  • Franco Alfano. Transcending Turandot. Scarecrow Press, Lanham MD 2010, ISBN 978-0-8108-6970-7 .

literature

  • RJStove “Off with the Motley” in The New Criterion, vol. 26, Number 10, June 2008.
  • Contemporary Authors, Volume 267, Gale Publishers 2008.
  • Alan Mallach, The Autumn of Italian Opera, Northeastern University Press, 2007.
  • The orchestra, May 1989.
  • BBC Music, August 2007.
  • The Music Scene, Spring, 2007.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ www.konrad-dryden.de. Retrieved February 10, 2020 .
  2. ↑ www.konrad-dryden.de. Retrieved February 10, 2020 .
  3. ^ Riccardo Zandonai. A biography. Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 1999, ISBN 0-8204-3649-6 .
  4. ↑ Leoncavallo. Life and Works. Scarecrow Press, Lanham MD et al. 2007, ISBN 978-0-8108-5880-0 .
  5. ^ Franco Alfano. Transcending Turandot. Scarecrow Press, Lanham MD 2010, ISBN 978-0-8108-6970-7 .
  6. ^ RJ Stove: Off with the motley. In: The New Criterion. Vol. 26, June 2008, ISSN  0734-0222 , p. 85.
  7. ↑ www.konrad-dryden.de. Retrieved February 10, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Dryden, Konrad
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dryden, Konrad Claude (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American author
DATE OF BIRTH September 13, 1963
PLACE OF BIRTH Pasadena, California