MARIETTA BRAMBILLA - ITALY
BORN 6 JUNE
Marietta Brambilla was an Italian contralto who sang leading roles in the opera houses of Europe from 1827 until her retirement from the stage in 1848. She is best known today for having created the roles of Maffio Orsini in Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia and Pierotto in his Linda di Chamounix, but she also created several other roles in lesser-known works. She was the elder sister of the opera singers Teresa and Giuseppina Brambilla and the aunt of Teresina Brambilla who was also an opera singer.
Marietta studied at the Milan Conservatory and made her stage debut in 1827 at Her Majesty's Theatre in London as Arsace in Rossini's Semiramide. She sang in several other operas in London that season as well as giving recitals in other English cities. She returned to Italy in 1828 where she sang at La Fenice in the world premiere of Pietro Generali's Francesca da Rimini. Brambilla made her debut at La Scala in the 1833 world premiere of Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia as Maffio Orsini, a role he had written expressly for her. He also composed Pierotto in Linda di Chamounix for her and adapted the tenor role of Armando di Gondì in Maria di Rohan for her voice when the opera had its first Paris performance in 1843.
Brambilla retired from the stage in 1848, after which she taught singing in Milan and composed several albums of songs and vocal exercises. She married Count Francesco Furga-Gornini in 1857. The marriage ended with his death four years later. She died of cancer in Milan at the age of 68 and was buried in Cassano d'Adda.
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BETH MEHOCIC - USA
BORN 6 JUNE
Beth Mehocic is a composer, poet, visual artist, filmmaker and author received her M.M. and Ph.D. in music composition from Michigan State University, East Lansing and is currently the Music Director/Composer-in-Residence and full professor for the Department of Dance at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Dr. Mehocic has written over one hundred works for orchestra, concert band, chamber music, dance ensembles, theatre and film and her works have been performed throughout the United States, Japan, China, Korea and Europe. She has produced works in several Las Vegas Hotels including The Mirage, Caesar's Palace and the Las Vegas Hilton.
From 2000-18, several of her music compositions written for choreography have been performed at the Endinburgh Fringe Festival, Edinburgh, Scotland, the Adaliade Fringe Festival, Adalaide, Australia and for joint concerts between UNLV and the Korea National Sport University, Seoul, Korea. Her video dance poem Perpetual Motion with original music for vibraphone quartet, was also performed in Seoul, Korea and the video is in the Jerome Robbins Dance Library of the NYC Library at Lincolon Center.
Shadows, a dance poem with her original music, and her video dance poem, Hands were presented at the 2005 International Taishan Congress of Cultures and the 19th World Congress of Poets in Tai’an City, Shandong Province, China for which she was awarded a “Gold Medal in Innovation” for digital poetry, dance and music by the Peoples Republic of China.
As a multimedia performing artist, her music, poetry, visual art and dance were presented in her one-woman exhibit entitled Poetic Visions which was on tour in the Clark County Library Galleries in Las Vegas.
She has received several grants from The Nevada State Council on the Arts as well as receiving a grant for her participation in the China Conference. Her other grants include awards from New Music Across America, the Southwest Gas Corp., The Western States Arts Foundation and Meet-the-Composer as well as awards in music composition from ASCAP.
She was proclaimed "Distinguished Composer" of the City of Las Vegas by Former Mayor, Jan Laverty Jones and received commissions from New Music Across America, the Sierra Woodwind Quintet, the University of Utah for a musical score to a documentary film that commemorated fifty years of dance history at that university as well as commissions from Artists Embassy International and the Natica Angilly Poetic Dance Theater.
She was awarded the First Performing Artist's Fellowship in Music Composition from the State of Nevada and became a founding member for the International Guild of Musicians in Dance, the first guild in western history devoted to the advancement of concert dance music and musical education of dancers. She was also the founding editor for the Guild's Journal for three years.
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