Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

500 results found

Caballé, Montserrat

(Encyclopedia)Caballé, Montserrat mōnsĕrätˈ käbälyāˈ [key], 1933–2018, Spanish soprano. After voice study with Eugenia Kemeny and Conchita Badia in Barcelona, she made her operatic debut in Basel, Switze...

Six, Les

(Encyclopedia)Six, Les lā sēs [key], a short-lived group of six young early 20th-century French musicians. They were united by their adverse reactions to the extravagant impressionism of French composers such as ...

Schwarzkopf, Elisabeth

(Encyclopedia)Schwarzkopf, Elisabeth shwärtsˈkôpf [key], 1915–2006, German lyric soprano. After studying music in Berlin she was trained by Maria Ivogün. She sang with the Berlin State Opera (1938–42) and b...

Beecham, Sir Thomas

(Encyclopedia)Beecham, Sir Thomas bēˈchəm [key], 1879–1961, English conductor. Beecham was educated at Oxford but did not attend any formal music school. Early in his career as a conductor and producer, he int...

melodrama

(Encyclopedia)melodrama [Gr.,=song-drama], originally a spoken text with musical background, as in Greek drama. The form was popular in the 18th cent., when its composers included Georg Benda, J. J. Rousseau, and W...

Szell, George

(Encyclopedia)Szell, George sĕl [key], 1897–1970, American conductor and pianist, b. Budapest. He moved with his family to Vienna during his childhood and started his piano training at an early age studying at t...

Linklater, Richard Stuart

(Encyclopedia)Linklater, Richard Stuart, 1960–, American screenwriter, director, and actor, b. Houston. He dropped out of college and worked on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, then moved to Austin (1983), where...

Le Gallienne, Richard

(Encyclopedia)Le Gallienne, Richard, 1866–1947, English man of letters. As literary critic and contributor to the Yellow Book, he was associated with the fin-de-siècle aesthetes of the 1890s before becoming a re...

Arkwright, Sir Richard

(Encyclopedia)Arkwright, Sir Richard, 1732–92, English inventor. His construction of a machine for spinning, the water frame, patented in 1769, was an early step in the Industrial Revolution. His machines and his...

Lee, Richard Henry

(Encyclopedia)Lee, Richard Henry, 1732–94, political leader in the American Revolution, b. Westmoreland co., Va.; brother of Arthur Lee, Francis L. Lee, and William Lee. He served in the house of burgesses (1758...

Browse by Subject