Mariah Carey - Hero (Official HD Video)

364,955,967 views  Nov 24, 2009  #MariahCarey #Remastered #HD

Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 1, Op. 23 - Anna Fedorova - Live Concert HD

Pianist Anna Fedorova and the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie led by Yves Abel perform Tchaikovsky's 'Piano Concerto No. 1' in The Royal Concertgebouw Amsterdam. The concert is part of the NPO Radio 4-series The Sunday Morning Concert. Pianist Anna Fedorova is well known for her performance of Rachmaninoffs ‘Piano Concerto No. 2’. Her interpretation of this work on our YouTube Channel has over 19 million views! What will her version of Tchaikovsky’s ‘Piano Concerto No. 1’ achieve? The concerto is one of Anna’s all time favourites and it’s full of tenderness and bravura. Enjoy! The musical program Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto No. 1 in B♭ minor, Op. 23 The musicians Anna Fedorova [piano] The Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie Yves Abel [conductor] Recording Sunday the 14th of October 2018, in The Royal Concertgebouw Amsterdam.

Mozart, A Lonely Island, A Sunrise And An Expatriate in The Philippines

I started writing a book ten years ago. I thought, being an expatriate living in the Philippines, I will be having all the time of my life. "Beethoven under Palms"... .

Meanwhile, I realized that  the book have to wait! I am there somewhere near a beautiful sunrise, on a lonely tropical island and MY classical music. Mozart is one my friends here... .

Ich begann, irgendwann vor 10 Jahren als Einwanderer auf den Philippinen ein Buch zu schreiben. Ich dachte, ich hätte die gesamte Zeit meines Lebens noch vor mir. "Beethoven unter Palmen"... .

Inzwischen ist mir klargeworden, dass mein Buch warten muss. Ich befinde mich irgendwo zwischen einem wundervollen tropischen Sonnenuntergang, einer tropischen und einsamen Insel und meiner klassischen Musik. Mozart gehört zu einem meiner Weggefährten... .

 

Can you imagine.... .? Können Sie sich das vorstellen?

From time to time I am staying on such an island while enjoying Rachmaninow's Piano Concerto No.2, Mozart's Clarinet Concertos, Bruch's Violin Concerto No. 1, Vaughan Williams'  "The Lark Ascending", Grieg's Piano Concerts, Elgar's "Enigma Variations" or Beethoven's Symphony No. 6 and 9.

By the way: Mozart remains the most prolific of the 104 composers in the European charts since more then 20 years. Beethoven is - of course - the next followed by Tschaikowsky and Johann Sebastian Bach.

During the last years there has been a surge in support  in English composers with the numbers of entries from Elgar up to Vaughan Williams. Howard Shore's music from the film "The Lord Of The Rings" remains as one of the rare examples in the top 20

Les Misérables (2012) - I Dreamed A Dream Scene (1/10) | Movieclips

Les Misérables - I Dreamed A Dream: Fantine (Anne Hathaway) sings of her past and the horror of her current desperation. BUY THE MOVIE: https://www.fandangonow.com/details/m... Watch the best Les Misérables scenes & clips:    • Les Misérables (2012) | Movie Scenes ...   FILM DESCRIPTION: After 19 years as a prisoner, Jean Valjean (Hugh Jackman) is freed by Javert (Russell Crowe), the officer in charge of the prison workforce. Valjean promptly breaks parole but later uses money from stolen silver to reinvent himself as a mayor and factory owner. Javert vows to bring Valjean back to prison. Eight years later, Valjean becomes the guardian of a child named Cosette after her mother's (Anne Hathaway) death, but Javert's relentless pursuit means that peace will be a long time coming. CREDITS: TM & © Universal (2012) Cast: Anne Hathaway Screenwriter: Alain Boublil, Claude-Michel Schönberg, Herbert Kretzmer, William Nicholson Director: Tom Hooper

James Horner: TITANIC Orchestra Suite - Live in Concert (HD)

996,344 views Jan 27, 2022

Orchestra Suite from the movie TITANIC (1997), performed@HOLLYWOOD IN CONCERT, November 27, 2021 in the church of Wünnewil, Switzerland Composer: James Horner Conductor: Mathias Boschung Soprano: Nikolina Pinko-Behrends Uillean Pipes: Marina Tanner Tin Whistle: Marina Vonlanthen

Ravel: Ma mère l’Oye ∙ hr-Sinfonieorchester ∙ Julian Kuerti

Maurice Ravel: 

Ma mère l’Oye ∙ 

Fünf Kinderstücke für Orchester ∙

(Auftritt)  00:00 ∙

I. Pavane de la Belle au bois dormant (Die schöne die im Wald schläft)  00:44 ∙

II. Le Petit Poucet (Der Däumling) 02:22 ∙

III. Laideronnette, Impératrice des Pagodes (Die hässliche Kaiserin)  06:06 ∙

IV. Les entretiens de la Belle et de la Bête (Die schöne und das Biest)  09:53∙

V. Le jardin féerique (Der Zaubergarten)  14:27 ∙ 

hr-Sinfonieorchester (Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra) ∙

Julian Kuerti, Dirigent ∙

Alte Oper Frankfurt, 16. Januar 2015 ∙

Horner: Titanic - Suite · Korynta · Prague Film Orchestra

James Horner: Titanic - Suite George Korynta - conductor · Prague Film Orchestra / Recorded at Vocal Solo: Barbora Řeháčková Website of Prague Film Orchestra: http://www.praguefilmorchestra.com Facebook page:   / praguefilmorchestra  

Light Cavalry Overture (Suppé) - Herbert von Karajan [HQ]

Leichte Kavallerie (Light Cavalry) is an operetta in three acts by Franz von Suppé, with a libretto by Karl Costa. It was first performed in the Carltheater, Vienna on 21 March 1866. Herbert von Karajan was an Austrian orchestra and opera conductor. To the wider world he was perhaps most famously associated with the Berlin Philharmonic, of which he was principal conductor for 35 years. Although his work was not universally admired, he is generally considered to have been one of the greatest conductors of all time, and he was a dominant figure in European classical music from the 1960s until his death. Part of the reason for this was the large number of recordings he made and their prominence during his lifetime. By one estimate he was the top-selling classical music recording artist of all time, having sold an estimated 200 million records.

David Pomeranz does a musical about the Philippines

Leah C. Salterio - The Philippine Star

David Pomeranz is presently working on a musical that has something to do with the Philippines. He cannot disclose any specific details about the musical. He says, ‘It’s something I’ve been working on for quite some time with Filipina book writer, Liza Magtoto, who wrote Rak of Aegis.’ In 1995, David also wrote The Little Tramp, a musical on the life of Charlie Chaplin. He went north of San Francisco and rented himself a room cottage and locked himself all alone for three months.

MANILA, Philippines — “It’s not my 40th year in the music business,” balladeer extraordinaire, composer and lyricist David Pomeranz reiterated. “It’s my 40th year of performing in the Philippines.”

Still touring at 72, David is in the Philippines anew to stage a series of concerts in Manila all the way to Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao. The Coming Home tour is mounted for the first time by educator, entrepreneur and producer Dr. Carl Balita.

To date, when hundreds of thousands of Filipinos still sing his music every time he is onstage, David gets undeniably thrilled. “It’s delicious, absolutely delicious because it’s perfectly beautiful,” he remarked.

In 1983, David was invited to perform in Manila for the first time by concert promoter Renen de Guia (Ovation Productions). David performed at the Folk Arts Theater with such other balladeers as Stephen Bishop and Michael Johnson.

“Sixteen years went by and I never went back to the Philippines,” David recalled. “But I realized what I did was something awesome and special. Sixteen years later, I got another call from a different promoter. My wife and I made a decision.”

“We were ready to return to the Philippines. Whatever happens, say ‘Yes,’ I told her. I’ve never done that before in my life. After the long show, I was asked if I wanted to make an album. I was asked if I wanted to play in a mall. I said, ‘Sure,’” he added.

“The fascinating life lesson I learned then, if you just say ‘Yes,’ everything will come naturally. You don’t have to push anything. You don’t have to force anything. So that’s how it all came. I kept coming back here because I was always asked to.”

Through the years, David sang and recorded songs with such Filipino artists as Sharon Cuneta (If You Walk Away from Me Today), Ima Castro (In Our Hands and Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas).

“I also performed songs with Joey Albert (Tell Me), Pops Fernandez (King and Queen of Hearts) and Vina Morales (Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow). But when I sing with them in Tagalog, I needed a tele-prompter,” he shared.

“Martin Nievera did Born for You. Sarah Geronimo recorded I’ll Be Yours. Lea Salonga’s version of This Is What I Dream is very exceptional. I also recorded (Gary Valenciano’s) Pasko Na, Sinta Ko on my Christmas album.”

Not only local artists recorded David’s songs. Cliff Richard also reimagined David’s ballad, I Still Believe in You, with a beautiful arrangement.

Barry Manilow recorded David’s hits like The Old Songs and Trying To Get the Feeling Again.

“Mny other people recorded my songs and there was always an odd experience,” David said. “Honestly, it was a little strange. When I write them, I hear the songs in my head. When I sing them, I sing them the way I heard them.”

Every time he performs any of his songs, David is not simply reliving it. “The song is always brand new,” he insisted. “Look at the audience, connect, sing to them. Brand new. It never gets old. It doesn’t die. If it dies, I might die, too. I’m so grateful.”

“That’s what I love most of all about being alive in this body. I think it has something to do with our mutual love for the beautiful melody. I was raised in Long Island, New York City and my parents would take me to Broadway shows as a very little boy,” he said.

“When I was five, my parents would play for me the West Side Story original cast album on Broadway. I just sat in one corner on the floor in our den and I wept at the depth and beauty of the work by Leonard Bernstein (music) and Stephen Sondheim (lyrics).”

David has managed to go on an R&R (rest and recreation) to the Philippines, minus any concert schedules. “One time, I’ve been to Boracay with my family,” he said. “I haven’t been to Palawan yet. You have very nice resorts here. I’ve also been to Balesin.”

Another thing that makes David return to the Philippines, is that a number of people and local artists have been his friends for a long time.

“They are dear, loyal and good friends,” he stressed. “My wife and son, they also love coming back here because Filipinos care.”

He continued: “Family is big here. I was raised in a Jewish family in New York and we were all together and we look forward to seeing each other during the holidays.”

“In the US, there’s a tendency to make kids who see you during the holidays to say, ‘Bye, see you next Christmas.’ That’s not so new.”

On occasions, there were lots of shows that David did in the Philippines that were really special and David had the fondest memories performing here.

“I don’t particularly remember which city or province, but on occasion, there were shows that were particularly special and it had a lot to do with the audience and me together,” David shared.

“It happened several times. There were always moments of connection. It was electrifying. People cried.”

David is presently working on a musical that has something to do with the Philippines. He cannot disclose any specific details about the musical, though. “Or I will be shot,” he smilingly said.

“It’s something I’ve been working on for quite some time with Filipina book writer, Liza Magtoto, who wrote Rak of Aegis.”

In 1995, David also wrote The Little Tramp, a musical on the life of Charlie Chaplin. He went north of San Francisco and rented himself a room cottage and locked himself all alone for three months.

“Because life is so noisy,” he revealed. “It was a room with a funky mattress on the floor and I finished a two-hour musical. That had been one of my most favorite moments.”

David’s “Coming Home” concert tour is presented by Carl Balita’s Review Center (CBRC). The shows kicks off in Zamboanga at the KCC Convention Center on Dec. 3, Cagayan de Oro at the Limketkai Mall, Dec. 4, Pangasinan at the Panpacific University Events Center, Dec. 5.

David will perform at the Newport Performing Arts Theater (NPAT) on Dec. 8 with Vina Morales as a special guest, in Bicol at the Albay Astrodome on Dec. 10, Mindoro at the Calapan City Convention Center on Dec. 12, Maguindanao del Sur at the Mango Grove at the South on Dec. 13.

He will be in Samar at the Calbayog City Sports Center on Dec. 17, Iloilo at the Iloilo Convention Center, Dec. 19 and Tacloban at the Summit Hotel, Dec. 15. Prior to the Philippines, he did two shows in Perth and one in Sydney, Australia.

Amadeus Electric Quartet - Hijo de la luna (instrumental version)

Amadeus - all female string quartet : Andreea Runceanu - 1st violin ; Bianca Gavrilescu - 2nd violin ; Patricia Cimpoiasu - cello ; Naomi Anelis - piano. Credits : Hijo De La Luna - Mecano Written-By – J. M. Cano

Easy on me - Adele // Brittany Maggs cover

Martha Argerich: Fifteen Facts About One of the Greatest Pianists Ever

by Emily E. Hogstad

Martha Argerich is simultaneously one of the most celebrated and most enigmatic of classical music stars. Many people call her the greatest pianist of her generation – and others, the greatest pianist who ever lived!

Today, we are taking a look at the life and career of this fascinating woman and looking at fifteen facts you might not have known about her.

1. Martha Argerich was a precocious child.

Martha Argerich as a kid

She began kindergarten before her third birthday. One day, a schoolmate teased her that she couldn’t play piano. She then proceeded to sit down and play a piece by ear that their teacher had just played for them. She was just three years old.

2. Her first piano teacher was Italian pianist Vincenzo Scaramuzza.

He said of her that she may have been six, but she had the soul of a 40-year-old.

3. When she was a teenager, her family moved to Europe, and she began studying with one of the quirkiest pianists of all time.

Friedrich Gulda and Martha Argerich

His name was Friedrich Gulda, and he flouted convention by doing things like playing a concert in the nude and even faking his own death. His rebellious spirit appealed to Argerich, and although she only studied with him for eighteen months, she has cited him as one of the most important influences in her musical life.

4. When she was sixteen years old, she won two major competitions within the span of three weeks:

The Geneva International Music Competition and the Ferruccio Busoni International Competition. 

5. When she was a young woman, she gave up the piano for three years.

Martha Argerich

During this time, she considered becoming a doctor or a secretary. Luckily for listeners, she returned to the keyboard, and she won the 1965 Chopin competition when she was twenty-four, shortly after her break and after having given birth to her first child.

6. Her personal life has been tumultuous.

Her first husband was composer and conductor Robert Chen, a friend whom she was married to briefly in 1964. In 1969, she married conductor Charles Dutoit, who became a trusted musical collaborator. In the 1970s she was partnered with pianist Stephen Kovacevich. She had three daughters, one during each relationship. 

7. Argerich was an unconventional mom.

She liked having her kids at home rather than sending them to school, and she fostered a bohemian atmosphere, often staying up all night and sleeping well past noon. She did not have custody of her first daughter, Lyda Chen, and didn’t see her very often until she was a teenager. The two have reconciled and, according to a 2016 profile in the Washington Post, mother and daughter remain close.

8. Martha Argerich speaks six languages:

Spanish (her native language), Portuguese, French, English, German, and Italian. She spoke French at home when raising her daughters.

9. She can feel “lonely” onstage.

To combat this, she has shied away from solo repertoire and focused on chamber music and concerto performances, where she has other musicians to bounce ideas off of.

10. She is notorious for canceling appearances, due to incapacitating stage fright.

This happens so often that she doesn’t sign contracts. She also loathes giving interviews, which is why you read so few of them.

11. Her repertoire is relatively small.

Martha Argerich with The Philadelphia Orchestra, 2008 © carnegiehall.org

She doesn’t like to perform pieces that she doesn’t feel a deep connection with. Her favorite composers, and the composers she feels the deepest connection to, include Schumann, Ravel, and Chopin.

12. She loves Beethoven’s fourth piano concerto so much that she has never played it in public.

She also says that hearing Stephen Kovacevich playing this concerto was the thing that made her fall in love with him. She believes she will never play it in public. It’s the only Beethoven piano concerto that she hasn’t performed.

13. She travels the world with a stuffed Paddington bear.

Argerich’s oldest daughter told Gramophone in 2021, “She is always hugging her Paddington Bear and it is falling to pieces. This is the bear that Stéphanie [her youngest daughter] offered her to protect her during her travels, and has been traveling for at least 25 years, and recently had a change of clothes which was very complicated because we could not find exactly the right red hat and blue outfit.”

14. Martha Argerich was diagnosed with malignant melanoma in 1990.

She was forty-nine years old. It was treated and went into remission, but then returned five years later. Luckily, an experimental treatment in California resulted in Argerich becoming cancer-free.

15. In 2012 Stéphanie Argerich filmed a thoughtful documentary about her mother called Bloody Daughter.

In it, Martha Argerich comes across as a magnetic presence, simultaneously intense and childlike. In a poignant voiceover, Stéphanie says, “My mother is a supernatural being in touch of something beyond the reach of ordinary mortals. In fact, I’m the daughter of a goddess.”

Rimskij-Korsakow: Capriccio espagnol ∙ hr-Sinfonieorchester ∙

Nikolaj Rimskij-Korsakow: Capriccio espagnol ∙ hr-Sinfonieorchester – Frankfurt Radio Symphony ∙ Pablo Heras-Casado, Dirigent ∙ Europa Open Air des hr-Sinfonieorchesters und der Europäischen Zentralbank ∙ 24. August 2017 ∙ Weseler Werft, Frankfurt am Main ∙

Adolphe Adam: "Le Cantique de Noël" | NDR

Christmas greetings from the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg: Harpist Anaëlle Tourret and her brass colleagues from the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra play "Le Cantique de Noël" by the French composer Adolphe Adam.

Adolphe Charles Adam - his music and his life

 

Adolphe Charles Adam ; 24 July 1803 – 3 May 1856) was a French composer, teacher and music critic. A prolific composer for the theatre, he is best known today for his ballets Giselle (1841) and Le corsaire (1856), his operas Le postillon de Lonjumeau (1836) and Si j'étais roi (1852) and his Christmas carol "Minuit, chrétiens!" (Midnight, Christians, 1844, known in English as "O Holy Night").

Adam was the son of a well-known composer and pianist, but his father did not wish him to pursue a musical career. Adam defied his father, and his many operas and ballets earned him a good living until he lost all his money in 1848 in a disastrous bid to open a new opera house in Paris in competition with the Opéra and Opéra-Comique. He recovered, and extended his activities to journalism and teaching. He was appointed as a professor at the Paris Conservatoire, France's principal music academy.

Together with his older contemporary Daniel Auber and his teacher Adrien Boieldieu, Adam is credited with creating the later Romantic French form of opera.

Life and career

Adam was born in Paris on 24 July 1803, the elder of the two children, both sons, of (Jean) Louis Adam and his third wife, Élisa, née Coste. She was the daughter of a prominent physician, and was a former pupil of her husband, a well-known composer, pianist and professor at the Paris Conservatoire.  Louis Adam gave his son lessons, but the boy was reluctant to learn even the basics of musical theory, and instead played fluently by ear:

I loved music, but I didn't want to learn it. I would sit quiet for hours, listening to my father play the piano, and as soon as I was alone I tapped on the instrument without knowing my notes. I knew without realising it how to find the harmonies. I didn't want to do scales or read music; I always improvised.

He later said that he never became a fluent sight-reader of a score. His mother concluded that her son needed a rigorous education, and he was sent to a boarding school, the Hix institute in the Champs-Élysées. It had a high reputation both academically and musically: his elder contemporary (and pupil of Louis Adam) Ferdinand Hérold had been educated there, and the music master was Henry Lemoine, another of Louis' former students. Adolphe was not an academic child, and recalled in his memoirs how he had recoiled from the study of Latin, which he found "barbaric". The fall of the French Empire in 1814–15, and the ensuing economic problems badly affected Louis Adam's income, and to save money his son was sent to a less expensive school. The staff there were capable, but Adam remained as indifferent to musical theory as to Latin.

At the age of 17 Adam enrolled at the Conservatoire, where he studied the organ with François Benoist, counterpoint with Anton Reicha and composition with Adrien Boieldieu. Adam's biographer Elizabeth Forbes calls Boieldieu the chief architect of Adam's musical development. He set his student exercises that taught him to compose sustained melodies without showy modulations and other technical devices.Adam's father did not want his son to become a professional composer: he would have preferred him to pursue a commercial or academic career, and although he gave Adam board and lodging he refused to subsidise any musical activities. By the age of 20 Adam was contributing songs to the Paris vaudeville theatres, writing what he later called "bad romances and worse piano pieces", and giving music lessons.

Duchaume, timpanist and chorus master of the new Théâtre du Gymnase, offered Adam an unpaid post playing the triangle in the orchestra. Adam said that as he would have paid to be allowed to join he was happy to serve without a salary, but he was quickly promoted to a well paid position:

My entry to the Gymnase was an event in my life. I made acquaintances and friendships with actors and writers; that was, in a word, my starting point. Duchaume died, and I succeeded him as timpanist and chorus master, at a salary of six hundred francs a year. It was a fortune. I no longer gave thirty-sous lessons, and I wrote a little less trashy music.

In 1824 Adam entered the Conservatoire's most important musical competition, the Prix de Rome. He gained an honourable mention, and the following year, at his second attempt, he won the second prize. Forbes writes that Adam derived more benefit from helping Boieldieu with the preparation of his opera La Dame blanche, produced at the Opéra-Comique in December 1825. Adam's piano transcriptions of themes from the opera were published in 1826 and made him enough money to tour the Netherlands, Germany and Switzerland in summer 1826 with a family friend, Sébastien Guillié. In Geneva he met the librettist Eugène Scribe, with whom he later collaborated on nine stage works.

During 1824–1827 Adam wrote or arranged the music for several one-act vaudevilles given at the Gymnase and the Théâtre du Vaudeville, including four written by Scribe as sole or co-author. In late 1827 Scribe provided the text for Adam's first opera, a one-act comic piece, Le Mal du pays, ou La Batelière de Brientz (Homesickness, or the Bargewoman of Brientz), comprising an overture and eleven numbers; it was produced at the Gymnase on 28 December 1827. A little over a year later, in February 1829, Adam's second one-act opera, Pierre et Catherine was given in a double bill at the Opéra-Comique with Auber and Scribe's La Fiancée, and ran for more than 80 performances.

Seven months after the premiere of Pierre et Catherine Adam married Sara Lescot, a member of the chorus at the Vaudeville. Adam's biographer Arthur Pougin describes the marriage as "an important and unfortunate event for him".By Pougin's account, Lescot manoeuvred Adam into marriage, and on his side – and later hers also – it was a loveless union; they separated in 1835. Their only child, Léopold-Adrien, born in 1832, killed himself in 1851.

Adam's first full length operas were premiered in 1829: Le jeune propriétaire et le vieux fermier and Danilowa, opéras comiques given at the Théâtre des Nouveautés and the Opéra-Comique respectively. Danilowa ran well until Parisian life was disrupted by the July Revolution. That, and an outbreak of cholera, led Adam to move to London; this was at the suggestion of his brother-in-law, Pierre François Laporte, manager of the King's Theatre, Haymarket. In 1832 Laporte leased the Theatre Royal, Covent Garden, and in October, as an afterpiece to The Merchant of Venice, he presented James Planché's His First Campaign, a "Military Spectacle" about the Duke of Marlborough, with music by Adam. The piece was received with "loud and general plaudits", but The Dark Diamond, a historical melodrama in three acts, which followed on 5 November, failed to repeat its success, and Adam went home to Paris in December. He returned briefly to London when his ballet Faust was presented at the King's Theatre in February and March 1833.

In 1834 Adam had one of his greatest popular successes with Le chalet, at the Opéra-Comique. This was a one-act opéra comique with words by Scribe and Mélesville based on Goethe's Jery und Bätely. It was given more than 1000 times in Paris over the next four decades. In May 1836 Adam was appointed as a chevalier of the Legion of Honour, later promoted to officer of the order. His first work for the Paris Opéra was a ballet, La fille du Danube, introduced by Marie Taglioni in September 1836.Within days of the premiere of that piece, his three-act opéra comique Le postillon de Lonjumeau opened successfully at the Opéra-Comique. It was the composer's greatest operatic success internationally, quickly taken up by foreign managements and seen in London in 1837 and New York in 1840.

During 1838 and 1839 Adam composed the music for Les Mohicans, a ballet for the Opéra, and four operas for the Opéra-Comique, and in September 1839 he left Paris for St Petersburg. His ballet for Taglioni, L'Écumeur de mer (The Pirate) was given before the imperial court in February 1840, and two of his operas were staged. He left Russia for Paris at the end of March, stopping off in Berlin, where he wrote an opera-ballet, Die Hamadryaden (The Tree Nymphs), which he conducted at the Court Opera in April 1840.

Adam's next substantial work was the composition by which he has become best known: the ballet Giselle. Based on Heinrich Heine's version of an old tale, the ballet premiered at the Opéra on 28 June 1841 with Carlotta Grisi in the title role. Adam continued his prolific output, including his first grand opera, Richard en Palestine, which was produced at the Opéra in 1844 but aroused little interest. In that year he was elected to membership of the Académie des Beaux-Arts.

Financial disaster

In 1845 François-Louis Crosnier, director of the Opéra-Comique, resigned and was succeeded by Alexandre Basset. Basset soon fell out with Adam and told him that as long as he was director, Adam's works would never be performed at the Opéra-Comique.[Early in 1847 a theatre in the Boulevard du Temple became available, and Adam, in partnership with the actor Achille Mirecour, took it over, rechristening it the Opéra-National. The cost of refurbishing the theatre was enormous, and in addition to investing his own money, Adam raised large sums in loans. The new opera house opened in November 1847, but from the outset its prospects looked doubtful. Financial and artistic performance alike were poor, and the 1848 Revolution was the final blow to the enterprise. The theatres were closed by the incoming régime, and when they were permitted to re-open, there was little demand for tickets at Adam's opera house, which closed on 28 March 1848, after the production of nine operas during its four months of existence, leaving him financially ruined.

Adam assigned the royalties from his earlier works to help pay off his debts, and like many other French composers in need of money he turned to journalism to earn extra income. He contributed reviews and articles to Le Constitutionnel and the Assemblée nationale. He also became a teacher, accepting the post of professor of composition at the Conservatoire, where his students included Léo Delibes.Meanwhile, Basset having left the Opéra-Comique at the time of the revolution, Adam was able to return to what Forbes calls his spiritual home under its new director, Émile Perrin.

Last years

In July 1850 Giralda, ou La nouvelle psyché – one of Adam's best operas in Forbes's view – was given at the Opéra-Comique. In 1851 his estranged wife died, and Adam married the singer Chérie-Louise Couraud (1817–1880), with whom he lived for his remaining years.For the Théâtre-Lyrique, the revived incarnation of his failed Opéra-National, Adam wrote the successful Si j'étais roi, first given in September 1852. In that year he produced six new works, enabling him to clear all his debts.

During the last three years of his life Adam continued to compose prolifically. His late works include what Forbes rates as one of his finest ballets, Le Corsaire, based on a poem by Byron; it was presented at the Opéra in January 1856, after a year's preparation. His final stage work, the one-act opérette Les Pantins de Violette (Violette's Puppets) was given at the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens on 29 April 1856. Four nights later Adam died in his sleep, at the age of 52. He was buried in the Montmartre Cemetery.

In Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Forbes writes that much of Adam's prolific output was ephemeral. This includes the many popular numbers he wrote for vaudevilles in his early years, a large number of piano arrangements, transcriptions and potpourris of favourite operatic arias, and numerous light songs and ballads. Nonetheless, "there remain several operas and ballets that are not merely delightful examples of their kind, but are also scores full of genuine inspiration". In this category Forbes includes Le chalet (which incorporates music from the cantata he wrote for the 1825 Prix de Rome competition) which she ranks with Adam's best works for its freshness of invention. For the musicologist Theodore Baker, Adam ranks with Auber and Boieldieu as one of the creators of French opera, thanks to the expressive power of his melodic material and his keen sense of dramatic development.

In France, during Adam's lifetime and beyond, Le chalet was his most popular opera. In other countries the favourite was Le postillon de Lonjumeau. In Germany in particular the opera was celebrated for its tenor aria "Mes amis, écoutez l'histoire" (given in translation as "Freunde, vernehmet die Geschichte"), with its demanding high D. Grove comments that the opera has distinctive and well characterised roles and a sense of theatre, found in all Adam's operas. Of the later operas, Grove singles out Giralda and Si j'étais roi as "the most stylish, tuneful and accomplished".

Although he was a prolific composer of opera, Adam wrote ballet music even more fluently. He commented that it was fun, rather than work. Giselle is the best known; Baker calls it a major work in the history of choreography, which continues to be performed with the same success. Forbes comments that although Giselle has the advantage of a particularly memorable plot, La jolie fille de Gand, La filleule des fées and Le corsaire are of equal quality musically.

Little of Adam's religious music has entered the regular repertory, with the exception of his Cantique de Noël, "Minuit, chrétiens!", known in English as "O Holy Night".

Adam's memoirs were published posthumously, in two volumes: Souvenirs d'un musicien (1857) and Derniers souvenirs d'un musicien (1859).