Hugues Cuénod was born in Coiseaux-sur-Vevey. Cuénod he studied at the Ribaupierre Institute in Lausanne, at the conservatories in Geneva and Basel, and in Vienna. At first he sang in concerts. Then, in 1928, he got a part in the jazz opera "Jonny spielt auf" by Ernst Krenek when it was performed in Paris. The next year he sang for the first time in the United States in Noël Coward's "Bitter Swee t". He worked in Geneva until 1933, then he went to Paris where he met the music teacher Nadia Boulanger. She had a big influence on his musical development. He made a concert tour of North America. From 1940 to 1946 he taught at the Geneva Conservatory. In 1943 he started singing in opera again, singing in Johann Strauss II's "Die Fledermaus" in Geneva. Then he sang at Milan's La Scala (1951), the Glyndebourne Festival (from 1954 on) and London's Royal Opera House, Covent Garden (1954, 1956 and 1958).
Cuénod sang music by many different composers. He was famous for singing the part of Basilio in Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro", the Astrologer in Rimsky-Korsakov's "The Golden Cockerel", and Sellem in Stravinsky's "The Rake's Progress". He sang with a light tenor voice, not a heavy heroic voice.
One of the most famous opera houses in the world is the Metropolitan Opera in New York. He did sing there, but not until he was 84. By that age almost all singers have been long retired. He sang the part of the Emperor Altoum in Puccini's "Turandot" in 14 performances there.
The very last time he sang on stage was in 1994 when he was 92. He sang M. Triquet in Tchaikovsky's "Eugene Onegin" when it was given by the Lausanne Opera at the Théâtre du Jorat in Mézières.
Cuénod lived with his male partner, Alfred Augustin, in the Vaud region of Switzerland. They lived in an 18th-century castle that had belonged to members of his family for several generations. The couple were in a civil union.
On his last birthday on 26 June 2010 he turned 108. He died in Vevey on 6 December that year.
Roberto Alagna
Roberto Alagna (born near Paris, 7 June 1963) is a French operatic tenor.
Alagna's family came from Sicily. He was born in Clichy-sous-Bois, Seine-Saint-Denis, near Paris, France in 1963. When he was a teenager he started singing pop music in Paris cabarets. Later he started to sing in operas. He won the Luciano Pavarotti Voice Competition. He started to sing professionally in 1988 singing the part of Alfredo Germont in Giuseppe Verdi's "La Traviata" with the Glyndebourne touring opera
Soon he was being asked to sing all over the world in opera houses such as La Scala, Covent Garden and the Metropolitan Opera. His performances of Romeo in "Romeo and Juliet" by Charles Gounod at Covent Garden in 1994 made him a great international star. When he sang that role on 15 December 2007 at the Metropolitan Opera with Anna Netrebko as Juliet the performance was broadcast by the Met into 447 theaters worldwide in high definition and seen by about 97,000 people.
Alagna's first wife, Florence Lancien, died of a brain tumor in 1994; they had one daughter, Ornella, who was born in 1992. In 1996 he married the Romanian soprano Angela Gheorghiu. They often performed together in operas. However, they separated in 2009.
Lila Downs
Lila Downs (September 9, 1968 in Tlaxiaco, Oaxaca, Mexico) is a Mexican/American singer-songwriter. She performs her own compositions as well as Mexican traditional and popular music. She also incorporates indigenous Mexican influences and have recorded songs in indigenous languages such as Mixtec, Zapotec, Maya, Nahuatl and P'urhépecha. Her albums are "One Blood", "Shake Away", and "Sins and Miracles" has won various Grammys and World Music Awards.
Downs is the daughter of Mixtec cabaret singer Anita Sánchez and Allen Downs, a Scottish/English-American professor of art and cinematographer from Minnesota. She learned to sing at the age of four. She began to perform rancheras songs when she was 10 years old. Lila grew up partly in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, partly in the U.S. state of California as a teenager. She was 15 when she went to Performing Arts Institute of Oaxaca, where she studied music. She lived in Minnesota as an adult. She graduated from the University of Minnesota in voice and anthropology.
She later returned to Mexico where she learned to weave. Later, she began singing in the club scenes of Oaxaca and Philadelphia along with Paul Cohen, an American-born saxophonist. They began collaborating on songs that would slowly evolve into Downs' subsequent recordings. Cohen became both Downs' husband and her artistic director.
In recent years, Downs and her band have toured widely in Mexico, South America, the US and Europe. She was also heard in the soundtrack to the movie "Frida" in a song, "Burn it Blue", that was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Song and that she performed at the 75th Academy Awards. Other songs that she performed on the soundtrack are "Benediction and Dream", "Estrella Oscura", and "La Llorona". Other movies in which her songs are featured include Maria Ripoll's 2001 "Tortilla Soup", Patricia Cardoso's 2002 "Real Women Have Curves" and Carlos Saura's 2007 "Fados". She was also invited to the Twelve Girls Band's concert in Shanghai, where she sang in French and English. Downs is currently based in Coyoacán, a borough of Mexico City.
On September 2, 2008, Lila Downs released "Shake Away", her latest album of new material as well as featuring a few cover songs, including "I Envy The Wind" by Lucinda Williams and "I Would Never" by The Blue Nile. Downs also collaborated with artists like La Mari from Chambao and Enrique Bunbury from Héroes del Silencio. In 2010 she appeared on The Chieftains' album "San Patricio".
"Sins and Miracles" is the most recent album by Lila Downs. It was released in 2011. It reached the top of the charts in Mexico, Germany, Argentina, Colombia, Spain and the United States. It also reached the top ten in other major markets. Downs did a tour for the album called the "Pecados y Milagros World Tour". The singles on "Sins and Miracles" are: "Palomo del Comalito", "Zapata se Queda" and "Mezcalito". The album and its singles received one Grammy Award. The main music genres which make up the album are pop, folk and ska. She has a contralto vocal range.
Rock Band 2
Rock Band 2 is an interactive music game by Harmonix. It is a sequel to the game "Rock Band". To play the game, players use a microphone to sing or a controller to hit notes on the screen. Players get points by hitting the right notes at the right time. Earning points can help a player earn stars, which show how well a player performed the song. If a player misses too many notes or hits too many of the wrong notes, they fail out of the song. It has a quickplay mode and a world tour mode.
In quickplay mode, players choose songs from a list to play. In world tour mode, players can play songs in venues (public places) in cities around the world. Rock Band 2 also has a practice mode, where players can play a song without failing out of it. Players can choose one of four skill levels to play. The skill levels are Easy, Medium, Hard, and Expert.The songs in Rock Band 2 are sorted by how hard they are to play. Zero dots means the song is one of the easiest to play, and five red dots means that the song is one of the hardest. Players can play solo (by themselves) or with other people.
Citadel
A citadel is a large fortress or castle that is usually built to protect cities or towns from attacks or disaster, though citadels have been built for other reasons as well. Citadels are often built to be the final protection for a city or town, in case enemies break through other protections such as walls or soldiers.
The oldest known citadels were built in the Indus Valley Civilization, where the citadel may have been used as a symbol of authority (power), though no one is entirely sure why they were built.