WA2K Radio is now on the air

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oe3ysK0zfGc

My Mom would listen to this Kitty Wells record and say, "That's right."

Hey Letty and Edgar

Guess I'm just one these kinda gals...

Spice Girls - Friendship Never Ends

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcAlA4iY_kY&feature=related

it's the little things... it means everything

Thanks, edgar and Izzie, because those songs by the Spice Girls and Kittly Wells are philosophy and music combined.

Of course, folks, we know that Freud has a great question concerning women.

Women; What do they want?

Now I am going to warn you in advance, listeners, do NOT pay any attention to the video part of this next one. I think the pictures are very misleading, and it is too bad that they don't emphasis the two couples holding hands.

Ok, B.B. and Eric, let's here what really matters to both, ok?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXiQGJRSSjA

Time to say goodnight, folks, and I have picked a unique song for tonight. It is fascinating to me that the man plays solo acoustic bass. Wonder why? <smile>

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSUkl0SJ5Zk

Tomorrow, then.

From Letty with love

Mine is from Louis Jordan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwabxJdUkn4

Ain't it just Like a Woman

Hi Letty, I've been looking long and hard to bring you something unique from this great Country of ours for you to enjoy. This is a very catchy tune about the "Down Under Road Train Truckers" who traverse this vast Country called Australia.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=I19a3GZYyH4

Good morning, WA2K radio audience.

edgar, why can you find Louis Jordan's "Ain't That Just Like a Woman", and I can't find Johnny Mercer's "Personality" on YouTube. Thanks, Texas. Love it.

Well, well, folks. I coerced that cosmic eagle to visit our cyber radio station with a down under song. "Foggy Mountain Breakdown" is one of Flat and Scruggs best banjo songs. We all appreciate your contributions, Dutchman.

How about a classical piece this morning, and since it is Peter Nero's birthday, who better to play something by Chopin.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNNSckbBiUc

Richard Wagner
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wilhelm Richard Wagner (22 May 1813, Leipzig, Germany - 13 February 1883, Venice, Italy) was a German composer, conductor, music theorist and essayist, primarily known for his operas (or "music dramas", as they were later called). Unlike most other great opera composers, Wagner wrote the scenario and libretto for his works.

Wagner's compositions, particularly those of his later period, are notable for contrapuntal texture, rich chromaticism, harmonies and orchestration, and elaborate use of leitmotifs: musical themes associated with particular characters, locales or plot elements. Wagner pioneered advances in musical language, such as extreme chromaticism and quickly shifting tonal centres, which greatly influenced the development of European classical music.

He transformed musical thought through his idea of Gesamtkunstwerk ("total artwork"), the synthesis of all the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, epitomized by his monumental four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen (1876). To try to stage these works as he imagined them, Wagner built his own opera house.




Biography

Early life

Richard Wagner was born in Leipzig on 22 May 1813, the ninth child of Carl Friedrich Wagner, who was a clerk in the Leipzig police service.[1] Wagner's father died of typhus six months after Richard's birth, following which Wagner's mother, Johanna Rosine Wagner, began living with the actor and playwright Ludwig Geyer, who had been a friend of Richard's father. In August 1814 Johanna Rosine married Geyer, and moved with her family to his residence in Dresden. For the first 14 years of his life, Wagner was known as Wilhelm Richard Geyer. Wagner may later have suspected that Geyer was in fact his biological father, and furthermore speculated incorrectly that Geyer was Jewish.[2]

Geyer's love of the theatre was shared by his stepson, and Wagner took part in performances. In his autobiography Wagner recalled once playing the part of an angel. The boy Wagner was also hugely impressed by the Gothic elements of Weber's Der Freischutz. Late in 1820, Wagner was enrolled at Pastor Wetzel's school at Possendorf, near Dresden, where he received some piano instruction from his Latin teacher. He could not manage a proper scale but preferred playing theatre overtures by ear. Geyer died in 1821, when Richard was eight. Consequently, Wagner was sent to the Kreuz Grammar School in Dresden, paid for by Geyer's brother. The young Wagner entertained ambitions as a playwright, his first creative effort (listed as 'WWV 1') being a tragedy, Leubald[3] begun at school in 1826, which was strongly influenced by Shakespeare and Goethe. Wagner determined to set it to music; he persuaded his family to allow him music lessons.

By 1827, the family had moved back to Leipzig. Wagner's first lessons in composition were taken in 1828-31 with Christian Gottlieb Müller. In January of 1828 he first heard Beethoven's 7th Symphony and then, in March, Beethoven's 9th Symphony performed in the Leipzig Gewandhaus. Beethoven became his inspiration, and Wagner wrote a piano transcription of the 9th Symphony, piano sonatas and orchestral overtures.

In 1829 he saw the dramatic soprano Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient on stage, and she became his ideal of the fusion of drama and music in opera. In his autobiography, Wagner wrote, "If I look back on my life as a whole, I can find no event that produced so profound an impression upon me." Wagner claimed to have seen Schröder-Devrient in the title role of Fidelio; however, it seems more likely that he saw her performance as Romeo in Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi.[4] He enrolled at the University of Leipzig in 1831. He also took composition lessons with the cantor of Saint Thomas church, Christian Theodor Weinlig. Weinlig was so impressed with Wagner's musical ability that he refused any payment for his lessons, and arranged for one of Wagner's piano works to be published. A year later, Wagner composed his Symphony in C major, a Beethovenesque work which gave him his first opportunity as a conductor in 1832. He then began to work on an opera, Die Hochzeit (The Wedding), which he never completed.

In 1833, Wagner's older brother Karl Albert managed to obtain Richard a position as chorusmaster in Würzburg. In the same year, at the age of 20, Wagner composed his first complete opera, Die Feen (The Fairies). This opera, which clearly imitated the style of Carl Maria von Weber, would go unproduced until half a century later, when it was premiered in Munich shortly after the composer's death in 1883.

Meanwhile, Wagner held brief appointments as musical director at opera houses in Magdeburg and Königsberg, during which he wrote Das Liebesverbot (The Ban on Love), based on William Shakespeare's Measure for Measure. This second opera was staged at Magdeburg in 1836, but closed before the second performance, leaving the composer (not for the last time) in serious financial difficulties.

On 24 November 1836, Wagner married actress Christine Wilhelmine "Minna" Planer. In June 1837 they moved to the city of Riga, then in the Russian Empire, where Wagner became music director of the local opera. A few weeks afterwards, Minna ran off with an army officer who then abandoned her, penniless. Wagner took Minna back; however, this was but the first debâcle of a troubled marriage that would end in misery three decades later.

By 1839, the couple had amassed such large debts that they fled Riga to escape from creditors (debt would plague Wagner for most of his life). During their flight, they and their Newfoundland dog, Robber, took a stormy sea passage to London, from which Wagner claimed to draw the inspiration for Der Fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman - it was actually based on a sketch by Heinrich Heine[5]). The Wagners spent 1840 and 1841 in Paris, where Richard made a scant living writing articles and arranging operas by other composers, largely on behalf of the Schlesinger publishing house. He also completed Rienzi and Der Fliegende Holländer during this time.


Dresden

Wagner completed writing his third opera, Rienzi, in 1840. Largely through the agency of Meyerbeer, it was accepted for performance by the Dresden Court Theatre (Hofoper) in the German state of Saxony. Thus in 1842, the couple moved to Dresden, where Rienzi was staged to considerable acclaim. Wagner lived in Dresden for the next six years, eventually being appointed the Royal Saxon Court Conductor. During this period, he staged Der fliegende Holländer and Tannhäuser, the first two of his three middle-period operas.

The Wagners' stay at Dresden was brought to an end by Richard's involvement in leftist politics. A nationalist movement was gaining force in the independent German States, calling for constitutional freedoms and the unification of the weak princely states into a single nation. Richard Wagner played an enthusiastic role in this movement, receiving guests at his house who included his colleague August Röckel, who was editing the radical left-wing paper Volksblätter, and the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin.

Widespread discontent against the Saxon government came to a head in April 1849, when King Frederick Augustus II of Saxony dissolved Parliament and rejected a new constitution pressed upon him by the people. The May Uprising broke out, in which Wagner played a minor supporting role. The incipient revolution was quickly crushed by an allied force of Saxon and Prussian troops, and warrants were issued for the arrest of the revolutionaries. Wagner had to flee, first to Paris and then to Zürich. Röckel and Bakunin failed to escape and endured long terms of imprisonment.


Exile, Schopenhauer and Mathilde Wesendonck

Wagner spent the next twelve years in exile. He had completed Lohengrin before the Dresden uprising, and now wrote desperately to his friend Franz Liszt to have it staged in his absence. Liszt, who proved to be a friend in need, eventually conducted the premiere in Weimar in August 1850.

Nevertheless, Wagner found himself in grim personal straits, isolated from the German musical world and without any income to speak of. Before leaving Dresden, he had drafted a scenario that would eventually become his mammoth cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen. He wrote the libretto for a single opera, Siegfried's Tod (Siegfried's Death) in 1848. After arriving in Zurich he expanded the story to include an opera about the young Siegfried. He completed the cycle by writing Die Walküre and Das Rheingold and revising the later operas to agree with his new concept. His wife Minna, who had disliked the operas he had written after Rienzi, was falling into a deepening depression. Finally, he fell victim to erysipelas, which made it difficult for him to continue writing.

Wagner's primary published output during his first years in Zürich was a set of notable essays: The Art-Work of the Future (1849), in which he described a vision of opera as Gesamtkunstwerk, or "total artwork", in which the various arts such as music, song, dance, poetry, visual arts, and stagecraft were unified; Judaism in Music (1850), a tract directed against Jewish composers; and Opera and Drama (1851), which described ideas in aesthetics that he was putting to use on the Ring operas.

By 1852 Wagner had completed the libretto of the four Ring operas, and he began composing Das Rheingold in November 1853, following it immediately with Die Walküre in 1854. He then began work on the third opera, Siegfried in 1856, but finished only the first two acts before deciding to put the work aside to concentrate on a new idea: Tristan und Isolde.

Wagner had two independent sources of inspiration for Tristan und Isolde. The first came to him in 1854, when his poet friend Georg Herwegh introduced him to the works of the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. Wagner would later call this the most important event of his life. His personal circumstances certainly made him an easy convert to what he understood to be Schopenhauer's philosophy, a deeply pessimistic view of the human condition. He would remain an adherent of Schopenhauer for the rest of his life, even after his fortunes improved.

One of Schopenhauer's doctrines was that music held a supreme role amongst the arts, since it was the only one unconcerned with the material world. Wagner quickly embraced this claim, which must have resonated strongly despite its direct contradiction with his own arguments, in "Opera and Drama", that music in opera had to be subservient to the cause of drama. Wagner scholars have since argued that this Schopenhauerian influence caused Wagner to assign a more commanding role to music in his later operas, including the latter half of the Ring cycle, which he had yet to compose. Many aspects of Schopenhauerian doctrine undoubtedly found their way into Wagner's subsequent libretti. For example, the self-renouncing cobbler-poet Hans Sachs in Die Meistersinger, generally considered Wagner's most sympathetic character, is a quintessentially Schopenhauerian creation (despite being based on a real person).

Wagner's second source of inspiration was the poet-writer Mathilde Wesendonck, the wife of the silk merchant Otto von Wesendonck. Wagner met the Wesendoncks in Zürich in 1852. Otto, a fan of Wagner's music, placed a cottage on his estate at Wagner's disposal. By 1857, Wagner had become infatuated with Mathilde.


Though Mathilde seems to have returned some of his affections, she had no intention of jeopardising her marriage, and kept her husband informed of her contacts with Wagner[citation needed]. Nevertheless, the affair inspired Wagner to put aside his work on the Ring cycle (which would not be resumed for the next twelve years) and begin work on Tristan und Isolde, based on the Arthurian love story.

The uneasy affair collapsed in 1858, when Minna intercepted a letter from Wagner to Mathilde. After the resulting confrontation, Wagner left Zürich alone, bound for Venice. The following year, he once again moved to Paris to oversee production of a new revision of Tannhäuser, staged thanks to the efforts of Princess de Metternich. The premiere of the Paris Tannhäuser in 1861 was an utter fiasco, due to disturbances caused by members of the Jockey Club. Further performances were cancelled, and Wagner hurriedly left the city.

In 1861, the political ban against Wagner in Germany was lifted, and the composer settled in Biebrich, Prussia, where he began work on Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. Despite the failure of Tannhäuser in Paris, the possibility that Der Ring des Nibelungen would never be finished and Wagner's unhappy personal life, this opera is by far his sunniest work. Wagner's second wife Cosima would later write, "when future generations seek refreshment in this unique work, may they spare a thought for the tears from which the smiles arose." In 1862, Wagner finally parted with Minna, though he (or at least his creditors) continued to support her financially until her death in 1866.

Between 1861 and 1864 Wagner tried to have Tristan und Isolde produced in Vienna. Despite over 70 rehearsals the opera remained unperformed, and gained a reputation as being "unplayable", which further added to Wagner's financial woes.


Patronage of King Ludwig II

Wagner's fortunes took a dramatic upturn in 1864, when King Ludwig II assumed the throne of Bavaria at the age of 18. The young king, an ardent admirer of Wagner's operas since childhood, had the composer brought to Munich. He settled Wagner's considerable debts, and made plans to have his new operas produced. After grave difficulties in rehearsal, Tristan und Isolde premiered to enormous success at the National Theatre in Munich on 10 June 1865, the first Wagner premiere in almost 15 years.

In the meantime, Wagner became embroiled in another affair, this time with Cosima von Bülow, the wife of the conductor Hans von Bülow, one of Wagner's most ardent supporters and the conductor of the Tristan premiere. Cosima was the illegitimate daughter of Franz Liszt and the famous Countess Marie d'Agoult, and 24 years younger than Wagner. Liszt disapproved of his daughter seeing Wagner, though the two men were friends. In April 1865, she gave birth to Wagner's illegitimate daughter, who was named Isolde. Their indiscreet affair scandalized Munich, and to make matters worse, Wagner fell into disfavor amongst members of the court, who were suspicious of his influence on the king. In December 1865, Ludwig was finally forced to ask the composer to leave Munich. He apparently also toyed with the idea of abdicating in order to follow his hero into exile, but Wagner quickly dissuaded him.

Ludwig installed Wagner at the villa Tribschen, beside Switzerland's Lake Lucerne. Die Meistersinger was completed at Tribschen in 1867, and premiered in Munich on 21 June the following year. In October, Cosima finally convinced Hans von Bülow to grant her a divorce, but not before having two more children with Wagner. They had another daughter, named Eva, and a son named Siegfried. Richard and Cosima were married on 25 August 1870. On Christmas Day of that year, Wagner presented the Siegfried Idyll for Cosima's birthday. The marriage to Cosima lasted to the end of Wagner's life.


Bayreuth

Wagner, settled into his newfound domesticity, turned his energies toward completing the Ring cycle. At Ludwig's insistence, "special previews" of the first two works of the cycle, Das Rheingold and Die Walküre, were performed at Munich, but Wagner wanted the complete cycle to be performed in a new, specially-designed opera house.

In 1871, he decided on the small town of Bayreuth as the location of his new opera house. The Wagners moved there the following year, and the foundation stone for the Bayreuth Festspielhaus ("Festival House") was laid. In order to raise funds for the construction, "Wagner societies" were formed in several cities, and Wagner himself began touring Germany conducting concerts. However, sufficient funds were only raised after King Ludwig stepped in with another large grant in 1874. Later that year, the Wagners moved into their permanent home at Bayreuth, a villa that Richard dubbed Wahnfried ("Peace/freedom from delusion/madness", in German).

The Festspielhaus finally opened in August 1876 with the premiere of the Ring cycle and has continued to be the site of the Bayreuth Festival ever since.


Final years

Following the first Bayreuth festival Wagner spent a great deal of time in Italy where he began work on Parsifal, his final opera. The composition took four years, during which he also wrote a series of increasingly reactionary essays on religion and art.

Wagner completed Parsifal in January 1882, and a second Bayreuth Festival was held for the new opera. Wagner was by this time extremely ill, having suffered through a series of increasingly severe angina attacks. During the sixteenth and final performance of Parsifal on 29 August, he secretly entered the pit during Act III, took the baton from conductor Hermann Levi, and led the performance to its conclusion.

After the Festival, the Wagner family journeyed to Venice for the winter. On 13 February 1883, Richard Wagner died of a heart attack in the Palazzo Vendramin on the Grand Canal. His body was returned to Bayreuth and buried in the garden of the Villa Wahnfried.

Franz Liszt's memorable piece for pianoforte solo, La lugubre gondola, evokes the passing of a black-shrouded funerary gondola bearing Richard Wagner's remains over the Grand Canal.


Works

Opera

Wagner's music dramas are his primary artistic legacy. These can be divided chronologically into three periods.

Wagner's early stage began at age 19 with his first attempt at an opera, Die Hochzeit (The Wedding), which Wagner abandoned at an early stage of composition in 1832. Wagner's three completed early-stage operas are Die Feen (The Fairies), Das Liebesverbot (The Ban on Love), and Rienzi. Their compositional style was conventional, and did not exhibit the innovations that marked Wagner's place in musical history. Later in life, Wagner said that he did not consider these immature works to be part of his oeuvre; he was irritated by the ongoing popularity of Rienzi during his lifetime. These works are seldom performed, though the overture to Rienzi has become a concert piece.

Wagner's middle stage output is considered to be of remarkably higher quality, and begins to show the deepening of his powers as a dramatist and composer. This period began with Der fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman), followed by Tannhäuser and Lohengrin. These works are widely performed today.

Wagner's late stage operas are his masterpieces that advanced the art of opera. Some are of the opinion that Tristan und Isolde (Tristan and Iseult) is Wagner's greatest single opera. Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (The Mastersingers of Nuremberg) is Wagner's only comedy still in the repertoire (his early Das Liebesverbot is forgotten) and one of the lengthiest operas still performed. Der Ring des Nibelungen, commonly referred to as the Ring cycle, is a set of four operas based loosely on figures and elements of Teutonic myth, particularly from later period Norse mythology. Taking 26 years to complete, and requiring roughly 15 hours to perform, the Ring cycle has been called the most ambitious musical work ever composed. Wagner's final opera, Parsifal, which was written especially for the acoustics of Wagner's Festspielhaus in Bayreuth and which is described in the score as a "Bühnenweihfestspiel" (festival play for the consecration of the stage), is a contemplative work based on the Christian legend of the Holy Grail.

Wagner drew largely from Northern European mythology and legend, notably Icelandic sources such as the Poetic Edda, the Volsunga Saga and the German Nibelungenlied. Through his operas and theoretical essays, Wagner exerted a strong influence on the operatic medium. He was an advocate of a new form of opera which he called "music drama", in which all the musical and dramatic elements were fused together. Unlike other opera composers, who generally left the task of writing the libretto (the text and lyrics) to others, Wagner wrote his own libretti, which he referred to as "poems". Further, Wagner developed a compositional style in which the orchestra's role is equal to that of the singers. The orchestra's dramatic role includes its performance of the leitmotifs, musical themes that announce specific characters, locales, and plot elements; their complex interleaving and evolution illuminates the progression of the drama.

Wagner's musical style is often considered the epitome of classical music's Romantic period, due to its unprecedented exploration of emotional expression. He introduced new ideas in harmony and musical form, including extreme chromaticism. In Tristan und Isolde, he explored the limits of the traditional tonal system that gave keys and chords their identity, pointing the way to atonality in the 20th century. Some music historians date the beginning of modern classical music to the first notes of Tristan, the so-called Tristan chord.


Early stage
(1832) Die Hochzeit (The Wedding) (abandoned before completion)
(1833) Die Feen (The Fairies)
(1836) Das Liebesverbot (The Ban on Love)
(1837) Rienzi, der Letzte der Tribunen (Rienzi, the Last of the Tribunes)

Middle stage
(1843) Der fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman)
(1845) Tannhäuser
(1850) Lohengrin

Late stage
(1865) Tristan und Isolde (Tristan and Isolde)
(1867) Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (The Mastersingers of Nuremberg)
Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung), consisting of:
(1869) Das Rheingold (The Rhinegold)
(1870) Die Walküre (The Valkyrie)
(1871) Siegfried (previously entitled Jung-Siegfried or Young Siegfried, and Der junge Siegfried or The young Siegfried)
(1874) Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods) (originally entitled Siegfrieds Tod or The Death of Siegfried)
(1882) Parsifal

Non-operatic music

Apart from his operas, Wagner composed relatively few pieces of music. These include a single symphony (written at the age of 19), a Faust symphony (of which he only finished the first movement, which became the Faust Overture), and some overtures, choral and piano pieces, and a re-orchestration of Gluck's Iphigénie en Tauride. Of these, the most commonly performed work is the Siegfried Idyll, a piece for chamber orchestra written for the birthday of his second wife, Cosima. The Idyll draws on several motifs from the Ring cycle, though it is not part of the Ring. The next most popular are the Wesendonck Lieder, properly known as Five Songs for a Female Voice, which were composed for Mathilde Wesendonck while Wagner was working on Tristan. An oddity is the "American Centennial March" of 1876, commissioned by the city of Philadelphia for the opening of the Centennial Exposition, for which Wagner was paid $5,000.

A vocal and instrumental piece which is not often performed and somewhat forgotten, Das Liebesmahl der Apostel (The Love-Meal of the Apostles) is a piece for male choruses and orchestra, composed in 1843. Wagner had just successfully played Rienzi in Dresden. However, Der fliegende Holländer witnessed a bitter failure. Wagner, who had been elected at the beginning of the year to the committee of a cultural association in the city of Dresden, received a commission to evoke the theme of Pentecost. The premiere took place at the Dresdner Frauenkirche on 6 July 1843, and was performed by around a hundred musicians and almost 1,200 singers. The concert was very well received.

After completing Parsifal, Wagner apparently intended to turn to the writing of symphonies. However, nothing substantial had been written by the time of his death. World Wagner week starts on the 19th May.

The overtures and orchestral passages from Wagner's middle and late-stage operas are commonly played as concert pieces. For most of these, Wagner wrote short passages to conclude the excerpt so that it does not end abruptly. This is true, for example, of the Parsifal prelude and Siegfried's Funeral Music. A curious fact is that the concert version of the Tristan prelude is unpopular and rarely heard; the original ending of the prelude is usually considered to be better, even for a concert performance.[citation needed]

One of the most popular wedding marches played as the bride's processional in English-speaking countries, popularly known as "Here Comes the Bride", takes its melody from the "Bridal Chorus" of Lohengrin. In the opera, it is sung as the bride and groom leave the ceremony and go into the wedding chamber. The calamitous marriage of Lohengrin and Elsa, which reaches irretrievable breakdown twenty minutes after the chorus has been sung, has failed to discourage this widespread use of the piece.


Writings

Wagner was an extremely prolific writer, authoring hundreds of books, poems, and articles, as well as voluminous correspondence, throughout his life. His writings covered a wide range of topics, including politics, philosophy, and detailed analyses (often mutually contradictory) of his own operas. Essays of note include "Oper und Drama" ("Opera and Drama", 1851), an essay on the theory of opera, and "Das Judenthum in der Musik" ("Judaism in Music", 1850), a polemic directed against Jewish composers in general, and Giacomo Meyerbeer in particular. He also wrote an autobiography, My Life (1880).


Theatre design and operation

Wagner was responsible for several theatrical innovations developed at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, an opera house specially constructed for the performance of his operas (for the design of which he appropriated many of the ideas of his former colleague, Gottfried Semper, which he had solicited for a proposed new opera house at Munich). These innovations include darkening the auditorium during performances, and placing the orchestra in a pit out of view of the audience. The Bayreuth Festspielhaus is the venue of the annual Richard Wagner Festival, which draws thousands of opera fans to Bayreuth each summer.

The orchestra pit at Bayreuth is interesting for two reasons:

The first violins are positioned on the right-hand side of the conductor instead of their usual place on the left side. This is in all likeliness because of the way the sound is intended to be directed towards the stage rather than directly on the audience. This way the sound has a more direct line from the first violins to the back of the stage where it can be then reflected to the audience.
Double basses, cellos and harps (when more than one used, e.g. Ring) are split into groups and placed on either side of the pit.

Vegetarianism and animal rights

Wagner never espoused vegetarianism, unlike his friend Nietzsche, however he was in his later years a vociferous opponent of experimentation on animals. In 1879 he published an open letter, translated in the English version of his Collected Works as ' Against Vivisection ', in support of the animal rights activist Ernst von Weber.


Wagner's influence and legacy

In his lifetime, and for some years after, Wagner inspired fanatical devotion, and was occasionally considered by fans to have a near god-like status. His compositions, in particular Tristan und Isolde, broke important new musical ground. For years afterward, many composers felt compelled to align themselves with or against Wagner. Anton Bruckner and Hugo Wolf are indebted to him especially, as are César Franck, Henri Duparc, Ernest Chausson, Jules Massenet, Alexander von Zemlinsky, Hans Pfitzner and dozens of others. Gustav Mahler said, "There was only Beethoven and Wagner". The twentieth century harmonic revolutions of Claude Debussy and Arnold Schoenberg (tonal and atonal modernism, respectively) have often been traced back to Tristan. The Italian form of operatic realism known as verismo owes much to Wagnerian reconstruction of musical form.

Wagner made a major contribution to the principles and practice of conducting. His essay On conducting (1869) advanced the earlier work of Hector Berlioz and proposed that conducting was a means by which a musical work could be re-interpreted, rather than simply a mechanism for achieving orchestral unison. The central European conducting tradition which followed Wagner's ideas includes artists such as Hans von Bülow, Arthur Nikisch, Wilhelm Furtwängler and Herbert von Karajan.

Wagner also made significant changes to the conditions under which operas were performed. It was Wagner who first demanded that the lights be dimmed during dramatic performances, and it was his theatre at Bayreuth which first made use of the sunken orchestra pit, which at Bayreuth entirely conceals the orchestra from the audience.

Wagner's influence on literature and philosophy is significant. Friedrich Nietzsche was part of Wagner's inner circle during the early 1870s, and his first published work The Birth of Tragedy proposed Wagner's music as the Dionysian rebirth of European culture in opposition to Apollonian rationalist decadence. Nietzsche broke with Wagner following the first Bayreuth Festival, believing that Wagner's final phase represented a pandering to Christian pieties and a surrender to the new demagogic German Reich. In the twentieth century, W. H. Auden once called Wagner "perhaps the greatest genius that ever lived", while Thomas Mann and Marcel Proust were heavily influenced by him and discussed Wagner in their novels. He is discussed in some of the works of James Joyce. Wagner is one of the main subjects of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, which contains lines from Tristan und Isolde and refers to The Ring and Parsifal. Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé and Paul Verlaine worshipped Wagner. Many of the ideas his music brought up, such as the association between love and death (or Eros and Thanatos) in Tristan, predated their investigation by Sigmund Freud.

Not all reaction to Wagner was positive. For a time, German musical life divided into two factions, Wagner's supporters and those of Johannes Brahms; the latter, with the support of the powerful critic Eduard Hanslick, championed traditional forms and led the conservative front against Wagnerian innovations. They were supported by the conservative leanings of some German music schools, including the Conservatoire at Leipzig under Ignaz Moscheles and that at Köln under the direction of Ferdinand Hiller[6]. Even those who, like Debussy, opposed him ("that old poisoner"), could not deny Wagner's influence. Indeed, Debussy was one of many composers, including Tchaikovsky, who felt the need to break with Wagner precisely because his influence was so unmistakable and overwhelming. Others who resisted Wagner's influence included Gioachino Rossini ("Wagner has wonderful moments, and dreadful quarters of an hour").


Wagner in popular music and film

Wagner's concept of leitmotif and integrated musical expression has been a strong influence on many 20th century film scores, including such examples as John Williams' music for Star Wars. The rock composer Jim Steinman created what he called Wagnerian Rock. The rock subgenre of heavy metal music is also said by some to show influence of Wagner (as well as other classical composers}. In Germany Rammstein and Joachim Witt who has named three of his albums Bayreuth, claim inspiration from Wagner's music. Klaus Schulze (German electronic composer and Wagner admirer) dedicated his 1975 album Timewind to Wagner's death (two 30-min tracks, "Bayreuth Return" and "Wahnfried 1883"). He also used the alias Richard Wahnfried for a part of his discography.

Most of Trevor Jones's soundtrack to John Boorman's Arthurian film Excalibur is from Wagner's operas.

An adapted version of Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries is used in the Francis Ford Coppola film Apocalypse Now.

An unusual manifestation of Wagner was in the 1957 Bugs Bunny cartoon film, What's Opera, Doc?, adapting music from various of his operas to fit in with the traditional topic of Elmer Fudd hunting Bugs.


Movies about Wagner

The 1913 silent film Richard Wagner was directed by Carl Froelich and had Giuseppe Becce in the lead role who also wrote the musical score as Wagner's music was going to be too expensive. A documentary with the same title was made in 1925.

A film of the composer's life,Wagner, was made in 1983 for a TV mini-series by the director Tony Palmer. The cast included Richard Burton, John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier, Ralph Richardson and Vanessa Redgrave.

Wagner is also portrayed in Ken Russel's Lisztomania, and his music are featured frequently in the film.


Controversies

Wagner's operas, writings, his politics, beliefs and unorthodox lifestyle made him a controversial figure during his lifetime. In September 1876 Karl Marx complained in a letter to his daughter Jenny: "Wherever one goes these days one is pestered with the question: what do you think of Wagner?" Following Wagner's death, the debate about his ideas and their interpretation, particularly in Germany during the 20th century, continued to make him politically and socially controversial in a way that other great composers are not. Much heat is generated by Wagner's comments on Jews, which continue to influence the way that his works are regarded, and by the essays he wrote on the nature of race from 1850 onwards, and their putative influence on the anti-Semitism of Adolf Hitler.


Opinion on Jews and Judaism

Under a pseudonym in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, he published "Das Judenthum in der Musik" in 1850 (originally translated as "Judaism in Music," by which name it is still known, but better rendered as "Jewishness in Music.") The essay attacks Jewish contemporaries (and rivals) Felix Mendelssohn and Giacomo Meyerbeer, and accused Jews of being a harmful and alien element in German culture. Wagner stated the German people were repelled by their alien appearance and behavior: "with all our speaking and writing in favour of the Jews' emancipation, we always felt instinctively repelled by any actual, operative contact with them." He argued that because Jews had no connection to the German spirit, Jewish musicians were only capable of producing shallow and artificial music. They therefore composed music to achieve popularity and, thereby, financial success, as opposed to creating genuine works of art.

The initial publication of the article attracted little attention, but Wagner wrote a self-justifying letter about it to Liszt in 1851, claiming that his "long-suppressed resentment against this Jewish business" was "as necessary to me as gall is to the blood".[7] As a pamphlet under his own name in 1869, Wagner republished a greatly expanded version of Das Judenthum, leading to several public protests at performances of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. Wagner repeated similar views in several later articles, such as "What is German?" (1878), and his subsequent memoirs often recorded his comments about Jews. Although many have argued he suggested only Jews should suppress their Jewishness, others have interpreted sections of his writing more aggressively, to mean wiping out or burying the Jewish people.

Some biographers[8] have suggested that antisemitic stereotypes are also represented in Wagner's operas. The characters of Mime in the Ring, Sixtus Beckmesser in Die Meistersinger, and Klingsor in Parsifal are sometimes claimed as Jewish representations, though they are not explicitly identified as such in the libretto. Moreover, in all of Wagner's many writings about his works, there is no mention of an intention to caricature Jews in his operas; nor does any such notion appear in the diaries written by Cosima Wagner, which record his views on a daily basis over a period of 8 years.

Despite his very public views on Jews, throughout his life Wagner had Jewish friends, colleagues and supporters.[9]


Racism & Nazi appropriation

Some biographers have asserted that Wagner in his final years came to believe in the racialist philosophy of Arthur de Gobineau, and according to Robert Gutman, this is reflected in the opera Parsifal[10], but the latter conclusion remains unproven, as has been argued by more recent Wagner biographers (Lucy Beckett etc). Wagner showed no significant interest in Gobineau until 1880, when he read Gobineau's An Essay on the Inequality of the Human Races.[11] Wagner had completed the libretto for Parsifal by 1877, and the original drafts of the story date back to 1857. Wagner's writings of his last years indicate some interest in Gobineau's idea that Western society was doomed because of miscegenation between "superior" and "inferior" races. However, he does not seem to have subscribed to Gobineau's belief in the superiority of the supposed Germanic or "Nordic race".[12]

Wagner's writings on race and his antisemitism reflected some trends of thought in Germany at the end of the 19th century. Houston Stewart Chamberlain, expanded on Gobineau's and Wagner's ideas his 1899 book The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century, a work proclaiming the superiority of Aryan races, which had a wide circulation and later became required reading for members of the Nazi party. Chamberlain greatly admired Wagner's work and married Wagner's daughter, Eva, becoming a central part of the Bayreuth Circle, and thus contributing to the association of Wagner's name and works with racism and anti-semitism.

Adolf Hitler was an admirer of Wagner's music, lifestyle and anti-Jewish sentiments and saw in Wagner's operas an embodiment of his own heroic mythology of the German nation. There continues to be debate about the extent to which Wagner's views might have influenced Nazi thinking. As with the works of Nietzsche, the Nazis used those parts of Wagner's thought that were useful for propaganda and ignored or suppressed the rest. For example Joseph Goebbels banned Parsifal in 1939, shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, due to the perceived pacifistic overtones of the opera.[13] Although Hitler himself was obsessed by "the Master" many in the Nazi hierarchy were not, and, according to the historian Richard Carr, deeply resented the prospect of attending these lengthy epics at Hitler's insistence.[14]

As a consequence of this appropriation by Nazi propaganda, Wagner's operas have never been staged in the modern state of Israel. Although his works are broadcast on Israeli government-owned radio and television stations, attempts to stage public performances in Israel have been halted by protests, including protests from Holocaust survivors.[15]

Arthur Conan Doyle
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Born 22 May 1859(1859-05-22)
Edinburgh, Scotland
Died 7 July 1930 (aged 71)

Occupation Novelist, short story writer, poet, doctor
Genres Detective fiction, historical novels, non-fiction
Notable work(s) stories of Sherlock Holmes
The Lost World

Influences
Edgar Allan Poe

Influenced
Agatha Christie and other detective fiction authors


Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle, DL (22 May 1859 - 7 July 1930) was a Scottish author most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, which are generally considered a major innovation in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger. He was a prolific writer whose other works include science fiction stories, historical novels, plays and romances, poetry, and non-fiction.




Life

Arthur Conan Doyle was born on 22 May 1859, in Edinburgh, Scotland, to an English father, Charles Altamont Doyle, and an Irish mother, née Mary Foley, who had married in 1855.[1] Although he is now referred to as "Conan Doyle", the origin of this compound surname is uncertain.[2] Conan Doyle's father was an artist, as were his paternal uncles (one of whom was Richard Doyle), and his paternal grandfather John Doyle.

Conan Doyle was sent to the Roman Catholic Jesuit preparatory school Hodder Place, Stonyhurst, at the age of eight. He then went on to Stonyhurst College, but by the time he left the school in 1875, he had rejected Christianity to become an agnostic.

From 1876 to 1881 he studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, including a period working in the town of Aston (now a district of Birmingham). While studying, he also began writing short stories; his first published story appeared in Chambers's Edinburgh Journal before he was 20.[3] Following his term at university, he served as a ship's doctor on a voyage to the West African coast. He completed his doctorate on the subject of tabes dorsalis in 1885.[4]

In 1882, he joined former classmate George Budd as his partner at a medical practice in Plymouth, but their relationship proved difficult, and Conan Doyle soon left to set up an independent practice.[5] Arriving in Portsmouth in June of that year with less than £10 to his name, he set up a medical practice at 1 Bush Villas in Elm Grove, Southsea.[6] The practice was initially not very successful; while waiting for patients, he again began writing stories. His first significant work was A Study in Scarlet, which appeared in Beeton's Christmas Annual for 1887 and featured the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes, who was partially modelled after his former university professor, Joseph Bell. Future short stories featuring Sherlock Holmes were published in the English Strand Magazine. Interestingly, Rudyard Kipling congratulated Conan Doyle on his success, asking "Could this be my old friend, Dr. Joe?" Sherlock Holmes, however, was even more closely modelled after the famous Edgar Allan Poe character, C. Auguste Dupin.[7]

While living in Southsea he played football for an amateur side, Portsmouth Association Football Club, as a goalkeeper. (This club disbanded in 1894 and had no connection with the Portsmouth F.C. of today, which was founded in 1898.) Conan Doyle was also a keen cricketer, and between 1900 and 1907 he played 10 first-class matches for the MCC. His highest score was 43 against London County in 1902. He was an occasional bowler who took just one first-class wicket.

In 1885, he married Louisa (or Louise) Hawkins, known as "Touie", who suffered from tuberculosis and died on 4 July 1906.[8] He married Jean Leckie in 1907, whom he had first met and fallen in love with in 1897 but had maintained a platonic relationship with her out of loyalty to his first wife. Conan Doyle had five children, two with his first wife (Mary Louise (born 1889) and Alleyne Kingsley (1892 - 1918)) and three with his second wife (Jean Lena Annette, Denis Percy Stewart (17 March 1909 - 9 March 1955), second husband in 1936 of Georgian Princess Nina Mdivani (circa 1910 - 19 February 1987) (former sister-in-law of Barbara Hutton), and Adrian Malcolm).


In 1890, Conan Doyle studied the eye in Vienna; he moved to London in 1891 to set up a practice as an ophthalmologist. He wrote in his autobiography that not a single patient crossed his door. This gave him more time for writing, and in November 1891 he wrote to his mother: "I think of slaying Holmes... and winding him up for good and all. He takes my mind from better things." His mother responded, saying, "You may do what you deem fit, but the crowds will not take this lightheartedly." In December 1893, he did so in order to dedicate more of his time to more "important" works (his historical novels).

Holmes and Moriarty apparently plunged to their deaths together down a waterfall in the story, "The Final Problem". Public outcry led him to bring the character back; Conan Doyle returned to the story in "The Adventure of the Empty House", with the explanation that only Moriarty had fallen but, since Holmes had other dangerous enemies, he had arranged to be temporarily "dead" also. Holmes ultimately appears in a total of 56 short stories and four Conan Doyle novels (he has since appeared in many novels and stories by other authors).

Following the Boer War in South Africa at the turn of the 20th century and the condemnation from around the world over the United Kingdom's conduct, Conan Doyle wrote a short pamphlet titled, The War in South Africa: Its Cause and Conduct, which justified the UK's role in the Boer war, and was widely translated.

Conan Doyle believed that it was this pamphlet that resulted in 1902 in his being knighted and appointed Deputy-Lieutenant of Surrey. He also in 1900 wrote the longer book, The Great Boer War. During the early years of the 20th century, Sir Arthur twice ran for Parliament as a Liberal Unionist, once in Edinburgh and once in the Hawick Burghs, but although he received a respectable vote he was not elected.


Conan Doyle was involved in the campaign for the reform of the Congo Free State, led by the journalist E. D. Morel and the diplomat Roger Casement. He wrote The Crime of the Congo in 1909, a long pamphlet in which he denounced the horrors in that country. He became acquainted with Morel and Casement, taking inspiration from them for two of the main characters in the novel, The Lost World (1912).

He broke with both when Morel became one of the leaders of the pacifist movement during the First World War, and when Casement committed treason against the UK during the Easter Rising out of conviction for his Irish nationalist views. Conan Doyle tried, unsuccessfully, to save Casement from the death penalty, arguing that he had been driven mad and was not responsible for his actions.

Conan Doyle was also a fervent advocate of justice, and personally investigated two closed cases, which led to two imprisoned men being released. The first case, in 1906, involved a shy half-British, half-Indian lawyer named George Edalji, who had allegedly penned threatening letters and mutilated animals. Police were set on Edalji's conviction, even though the mutilations continued after their suspect was jailed.

It was partially as a result of this case that the Court of Criminal Appeal was established in 1907, so not only did Conan Doyle help George Edalji, his work helped establish a way to correct other miscarriages of justice. The story of Conan Doyle and Edalji is told in fictional form in Julian Barnes' 2005 novel, Arthur & George.

The second case, that of Oscar Slater, a German Jew and gambling-den operator convicted of bludgeoning an 82-year-old woman in Glasgow in 1908, excited Conan Doyle's curiosity because of inconsistencies in the prosecution case and a general sense that Slater was framed.

After the death of his wife Louisa in 1906, and the deaths of his son Kingsley, his brother Innes, his two brothers-in-law, and his two nephews shortly after World War I, Conan Doyle sank into depression. He found solace supporting Spiritualism and its alleged scientific proof of existence beyond the grave.

According to the History Channel program Houdini: Unlocking the Mystery (which briefly explored the friendship between the two), Conan Doyle became involved with Spiritualism after the deaths of his son and his brother. Kingsley Doyle died from pneumonia on 28 October 1918, which he contracted during his convalescence after being seriously wounded during the 1916 Battle of the Somme. Brigadier-General Innes Doyle died in February 1919, also from pneumonia. Sir Arthur became involved with Spiritualism to the extent that he wrote a Professor Challenger novel on the subject, The Land of Mist.

His book, The Coming of the Fairies (1921) shows he was apparently convinced of the veracity of the Cottingley Fairies photographs, which he reproduced in the book, together with theories about the nature and existence of fairies and spirits.

In his The History of Spiritualism (1926) Conan Doyle praised the psychic phenomena and spirit materialisations produced by Eusapia Palladino and Mina "Margery" Crandon.[9]

His work on this topic was one of the reasons that one of his short story collections, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, was banned in the Soviet Union in 1929 for supposed occultism. This ban was later lifted. Russian actor Vasily Livanov later received an Order of the British Empire for his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes.

Conan Doyle was friends for a time with the American magician Harry Houdini, who himself became a prominent opponent of the Spiritualist movement in the 1920s following the death of his beloved mother. Although Houdini insisted that Spiritualist mediums employed trickery (and consistently attempted to expose them as frauds), Conan Doyle became convinced that Houdini himself possessed supernatural powers, a view expressed in Conan Doyle's The Edge of the Unknown. Houdini was apparently unable to convince Conan Doyle that his feats were simply magic tricks, leading to a bitter public falling out between the two.[9]


Richard Milner, an American historian of science, has presented a case that Conan Doyle may have been the perpetrator of the Piltdown Man hoax of 1912, creating the counterfeit hominid fossil that fooled the scientific world for over 40 years. Milner says that Conan Doyle had a motive, namely revenge on the scientific establishment for debunking one of his favourite psychics, and that The Lost World contains several encrypted clues regarding his involvement in the hoax.[10]

Samuel Rosenberg's 1974 book Naked is the Best Disguise purports to explain how Conan Doyle left, throughout his writings, open clues that related to hidden and suppressed aspects of his mentality.


Death

Conan Doyle was found clutching his chest in the family garden on 7 July 1930. He soon died of his heart attack, aged 71, and is buried in the Church Yard at Minstead in the New Forest, Hampshire, England. His last words were directed toward his wife: "You are wonderful." The epitaph on his gravestone reads:

STEEL TRUE
BLADE STRAIGHT
ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE
KNIGHT
PATRIOT, PHYSICIAN & MAN OF LETTERS

Undershaw, the home Conan Doyle had built near Hindhead, south of London, and lived in for at least a decade, was a hotel and restaurant from 1924 until 2004. It was then bought by a developer, and has been empty since then while conservationists and Conan Doyle fans fight to preserve it.[8]

A statue honours Conan Doyle at Crowborough Cross in Crowborough, East Sussex, England, where Sir Arthur lived for 23 years. There is also a statue of Sherlock Holmes in Picardy Place, Edinburgh, Scotland, close to the house where Conan Doyle was born.

Laurence Olivier
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Born Laurence Kerr Olivier
22 May 1907(1907-05-22)
Dorking, Surrey, England
Died 11 July 1989 (aged 82)
Steyning, West Sussex, England
Occupation actor, producer, director, screenwriter
Years active 1930 - 1989
Spouse(s) Jill Esmond (1930-1940)
Vivien Leigh (1940-1960)
Joan Plowright (1961-1989)
Official website
Awards won
Academy Awards
Best Actor
1948 Hamlet
Best Picture
1948 Hamlet
Academy Honorary Award
1947 Henry V
1979 Lifetime Contributions
BAFTA Awards
Best Actor
1955 Richard III
Best Supporting Actor
1969 Oh! What a Lovely War
1976 Academy Fellowship
Emmy Awards
Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor - Miniseries or a Movie
1960 The Moon and Sixpence
1973 Long Day's Journey Into Night
1975 Love Among the Ruins
1984 King Lear
Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or a Special
1982 Brideshead Revisited
Golden Globe Awards
Best Actor - Motion Picture Drama
1949 Hamlet
Best Supporting Actor - Motion Picture
1977 Marathon Man
Cecil B. DeMille Award
1983 Lifetime Contributions
Golden Raspberry Awards
Worst Actor
1983 Inchon
Worst Supporting Actor
1981 The Jazz Singer
Other Awards
NBR Award for Best Actor
1946 Henry V
1978 The Boys from Brazil
NYFCC Award for Best Actor
1946 Henry V
1948 Hamlet
1972 Sleuth
Golden Lion
1948 Hamlet

Laurence Kerr Olivier, Baron Olivier, OM (IPA: /ˈlɒrəns əˈlɪvieɪ/; 22 May 1907 - 11 July 1989) was an English actor, director, and producer and the recipient of scores of awards. He is one of the most famous and revered actors of the 20th century, along with his contemporaries John Gielgud, Peggy Ashcroft and Ralph Richardson.[1] Olivier played a wide variety of roles on stage and screen from Greek tragedy, Shakespeare and Restoration comedy to modern American and British drama. He was the first artistic director of the National Theatre of Great Britain and its main stage is named in his honour. He is generally regarded to be the greatest actor of the 20th century, in the same category as David Garrick, Richard Burbage, Edmund Kean and Henry Irving in their own centuries.[2] Olivier's Academy acknowledgments are considerable?-fourteen Oscar nominations, with two wins for Best Actor and Best Picture for the 1948 film Hamlet, and two honorary awards including a statuette and certificate. He was also awarded five Emmy awards from the nine nominations he received. Additionally, he was a three-time Golden Globe and BAFTA winner.

Olivier's career as a stage and film actor spanned more than six decades and included a wide variety of roles, from Shakespeare's Othello and Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night to the sadistic Nazi dentist Christian Szell in Marathon Man and the kindly but determined Nazi-hunter in The Boys from Brazil. A High Church clergyman's son who found fame on the West End stage, Olivier became determined early on to master Shakespeare, and eventually came to be regarded as one of the foremost Shakespeare interpreters of the 20th century. He continued to act until his death in 1989.[3] Olivier played more than 120 stage roles: Richard III, Macbeth, Romeo, Hamlet, Othello, Uncle Vanya, and Archie Rice in The Entertainer. He appeared in nearly sixty films, including William Wyler's Wuthering Heights, Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca, Stanley Kubrick's Spartacus, Otto Preminger's Bunny Lake is Missing, Richard Attenborough's Oh! What a Lovely War, Joseph L. Mankiewicz's Sleuth, John Schlesinger's Marathon Man, Daniel Petrie's The Betsy, Desmond Davis' Clash of the Titans, and his own Henry V, Hamlet, and Richard III. He also preserved his Othello on film, with its stage cast virtually intact. For television, he starred in The Moon and Sixpence, John Gabriel Borkman, Long Day's Journey into Night, The Merchant of Venice, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and King Lear, among others.

In 1999, the American Film Institute named Olivier among the Greatest Male Stars of All Time, at fourteen on the list.




Early life

Olivier was born in 1907 in Dorking, Surrey, England. He was raised in a severe, strict, and religious household, ruled over by his father, Gerard Kerr Olivier (1869-1939), a High Anglican priest.[4] whose father was Henry Arnold Olivier, a rector. Young Laurence took solace in the care of his mother, Agnes Louise Crookenden (1871-1920), and was grief-stricken when she died (at 48) when he was only 12.[5] Richard and Sybille were his two older siblings.

In 1918 his father became the new church minister at St. Mary's Church, Letchworth, Hertfordshire and the family lived at the Old Rectory, now part of St Christopher School.

He performed at the St. Christopher School Theatre, in December 1924 in Through the Crack (unknown author) as understudy and assistant stage manager, and in April 1925 he played Lennox in Shakespeare's Macbeth and was assistant stage manager.

He was educated at St Edward's School, Oxford, and, at 15, played Katherine in his school's production of The Taming of the Shrew, to rave reviews. After his brother, Richard, left for India, it was his father who decided that Laurence ?- or "Kim", as the family called him ?- would become an actor.[6]


Early career

Olivier then attended the Central School of Dramatic Art at the age of 17.[7] In 1926, he joined The Birmingham Repertory Company.[8] At first he was given only paltry tasks at the theatre, such as being the bell-ringer; however, his roles eventually became more significant, and in 1937 he was playing roles such as Hamlet and Macbeth.[3] Throughout his career he insisted that his acting was pure technique, and he was contemptuous of contemporaries who adopted the 'Method' popularized by Lee Strasberg. Olivier met and married Jill Esmond, a rising young actress, on July 25, 1930 and had one son, Tarquin, born in 1936.

Olivier was not happy in his first marriage from the beginning, however. Repressed, as he came to see it, by his religious upbringing, Olivier recounted in his autobiography the disappointments of his wedding night, culminating in his failure to perform sexually. He renounced religion forever and soon came to resent his wife, though the marriage would last for ten years.

He made his film debut in The Temporary Widow, and played his first leading role on film in The Yellow Ticket; however, he held the film in little regard.[7] His stage breakthroughs were in Noel Coward's Private Lives in 1930, and in Romeo and Juliet in 1935, alternating the roles of Romeo and Mercutio with John Gielgud. Olivier did not agree with Gielgud's style of acting Shakespeare and was irritated by the fact that Gielgud was getting better reviews than he was.[9][10] His tension towards Gielgud came to a head in 1940, when Olivier approached London impresario Binkie Beaumont about financing him in a repertory of the four great Shakespearean tragedies of Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth and King Lear, but Beaumont would only agree to the plan if Olivier and Gielgud alternated in the roles of Hamlet/Laertes, Othello/Iago, Macbeth/Macduff, and Lear/Gloucester and that Gielgud direct at least one of the productions, a proposition Olivier bluntly declined.[11]

The engagement as Romeo resulted in an invitation by Lilian Baylis to be the star at the Old Vic Theatre in 1937/38. Olivier's tenure had mixed artistic results, with his performances as Hamlet and Iago drawing a negative response from critics and his first attempt at Macbeth receiving mixed reviews. But his appearances as Henry V, Coriolanus, and Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night were triumphs, and his popularity with Old Vic audiences left Olivier as one of the major Shakespearean actors in England by the season's end.

Olivier continued to hold his scorn for film, and though he constantly worked for Alexander Korda, he still felt most at home on the stage. He made his first Shakespeare film, As You Like It, with Paul Czinner, however, Olivier disliked it, thinking that Shakespeare did not work well on film.



Vivien Leigh

Laurence Olivier saw Vivien Leigh in The Mask of Virtue in 1936, and a friendship developed after he congratulated her on her performance. While playing lovers in the film Fire Over England (1937), Olivier and Leigh developed a strong attraction, and after filming was completed, they began an affair.[12]

Leigh played Ophelia to Olivier's Hamlet in an Old Vic Theatre production, and Olivier later recalled an incident during which her mood rapidly changed as she was quietly preparing to go onstage. Without apparent provocation, she began screaming at him, before suddenly becoming silent and staring into space. She was able to perform without mishap, and by the following day, she had returned to normal with no recollection of the event. It was the first time Olivier witnessed such behaviour from her.[13]

Olivier travelled to Hollywood to begin filming Wuthering Heights as Heathcliff. Leigh followed soon after, partly to be with him, but also to pursue her dream of playing Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939). Olivier found the filming of Wuthering Heights to be difficult but it proved to be a turning point for him, both in his success in the United States, which had eluded him until then, but also in his attitude to film, which he had regarded as an inferior medium to theatre. The film's producer, Samuel Goldwyn was highly dissatisfied with Olivier's overstated performance after several weeks of filming and threatened to dismiss him. Olivier had grown to regard the film's female lead, Merle Oberon, as an amateur; however, when he stated his opinion to Goldwyn, he was reminded that Oberon was the star of the film and already a well-known name in American cinema. Olivier was told that he was dispensable and that he was required to be more tolerant of Oberon. Olivier recalled that he took Goldwyn's words to heart, but after some consideration realized that he was correct; he began to moderate his performance to fit the more intimate film medium and began to appreciate the possibilities it offered.

The film was a hit and Olivier was praised for his performance, and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor. Leigh won the Academy Award for Best Actress for Gone with the Wind, and the couple suddenly found themselves to be major celebrities throughout the world. They wanted to marry, but at first both Leigh's husband and Olivier's wife at the time, Jill Esmond, refused to divorce them. Finally divorced, they were married on 31 August 1940.


in Pride and Prejudice (1940)Olivier's American film career flourished with highly regarded performances in Rebecca (1940) and Pride and Prejudice (1940).

Olivier and Leigh starred in a theater production of Romeo and Juliet in New York City. It was an extravagant production, but a commercial failure.[14] Brooks Atkinson for The New York Times wrote, "Although Miss Leigh and Mr Olivier are handsome young people they hardly act their parts at all."[15] The couple had invested almost their entire savings into the project, and its failure was a financial disaster for them.[16]

They filmed That Hamilton Woman (1941) with Olivier as Horatio Nelson and Leigh as Emma Hamilton. With Britain engaged in World War II, the Oliviers returned to England, and in 1944 Leigh was diagnosed as having tuberculosis in her left lung, but after spending several weeks in hospital, she appeared to be cured. In spring she was filming Caesar and Cleopatra (1945) when she discovered she was pregnant, but suffered a miscarriage. She fell into a deep depression which reached its nadir when she turned on Olivier, verbally and physically attacking him until she fell to the floor sobbing. This was the first of many major breakdowns related to manic-depression, or bipolar mood disorder. Olivier came to recognise the symptoms of an impending episode - several days of hyperactivity followed by a period of depression and an explosive breakdown, after which Leigh would have no memory of the event, but would be acutely embarrassed and remorseful.[17]


Olivier and Leigh arriving in Brisbane, Australia, June 1948In 1947 Olivier was knighted as a Knight Bachelor and by 1948 he was on the Board of Directors for the Old Vic Theatre, and he and Leigh embarked on a tour of Australia and New Zealand to raise funds for the theatre. During their six-month tour, Olivier performed Richard III and also performed with Leigh in The School for Scandal and The Skin of Our Teeth. The tour was an outstanding success, and although Leigh was plagued with insomnia and allowed her understudy to replace her for a week while she was ill, she generally withstood the demands placed upon her, with Olivier noting her ability to "charm the press". Members of the company later recalled several quarrels between the couple, with the most dramatic of these occurring in Christchurch when Leigh refused to go on stage. Olivier slapped her face, and Leigh slapped him in return and swore at him before she made her way to the stage. By the end of the tour, both were exhausted and ill, and Olivier told a journalist, "You may not know it, but you are talking to a couple of walking corpses." Later he would comment that he "lost Vivien" in Australia.[18]

The success of the tour encouraged the Oliviers to make their first West End appearance together, performing the same works with one addition, Antigone, included at Leigh's insistence because she wished to play a role in a tragedy.

Leigh next sought the role of Blanche DuBois in the West End stage production of Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire, and was cast after Williams and the play's producer Irene Mayer Selznick saw her in the The School for Scandal and Antigone, and Olivier was contracted to direct.[19]

In 1951, Leigh and Olivier performed two plays about Cleopatra, William Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra and George Bernard Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra, alternating the play each night and winning good reviews. They took the productions to New York, where they performed a season at the Ziegfeld Theatre into 1952. The reviews there were also mostly positive, but the critic Kenneth Tynan angered them when he suggested that Leigh's was a mediocre talent which forced Olivier to compromise his own. Tynan's diatribe almost precipitated another collapse; Leigh, terrified of failure and intent on achieving greatness, dwelt on his comments, while ignoring the positive reviews of other critics.[20]

In January 1953 Leigh travelled to Ceylon to film Elephant Walk with Peter Finch. Shortly after filming commenced, she suffered a breakdown, and Paramount Pictures replaced her with Elizabeth Taylor. Olivier returned her to their home in England, where between periods of incoherence, Leigh told him that she was in love with Finch, and had been having an affair with him. She gradually recovered over a period of several months. As a result of this episode, many of the Oliviers' friends learnt of her problems. David Niven said she had been "quite, quite mad", and in his diary Noël Coward expressed surprise that "things had been bad and getting worse since 1948 or thereabouts."[21]

Leigh recovered sufficiently to play The Sleeping Prince with Olivier in 1953, and in 1955 they performed a season at Stratford-upon-Avon in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, Macbeth and Titus Andronicus. They played to capacity houses and attracted generally good reviews, Leigh's health seemingly stable. Noël Coward was enjoying success with the play South Sea Bubble, with Leigh in the lead role, but she became pregnant and withdrew from the production. Several weeks later, she miscarried and entered a period of depression that lasted for months. She joined Olivier for a European tour with Titus Andronicus, but the tour was marred by Leigh's frequent outbursts against Olivier and other members of the company. After their return to London, her former husband Leigh Holman, who continued to exert a strong influence over her, stayed with the Oliviers and helped calm her.

In 1958, considering her marriage to be over, Leigh began a relationship with the actor Jack Merivale, who knew of Leigh's medical condition and assured Olivier he would care for her. She achieved a success in 1959 with the Noël Coward comedy Look After Lulu, with The Times critic describing her as "beautiful, delectably cool and matter of fact, she is mistress of every situation."[22]

In December 1960 she and Olivier divorced, and Olivier married the actress Joan Plowright, with whom he later had three children: Richard Kerr (b. 1961), Tamsin Agnes Margaret (b. 1963), and Julie-Kate (b. 1966).

In his autobiography he discussed the years of problems they had experienced because of Leigh's illness, writing, "Throughout her possession by that uncannily evil monster, manic depression, with its deadly ever-tightening spirals, she retained her own individual canniness - an ability to disguise her true mental condition from almost all except me, for whom she could hardly be expected to take the trouble."[23]


War

When World War II broke out, Olivier intended to join the Royal Air Force, but was still contractually obliged to other parties. He apparently disliked actors such as Charles Laughton and Sir Cedric Hardwicke, who would hold charity cricket matches to help the war effort.[3] Olivier took flying lessons, and racked up over 200 hours. After two years of service, he rose to the rank Lieutenant Olivier RNVR, as a pilot in the Fleet Air Arm[24] but was never called to see action.

In 1944 he and fellow actor Ralph Richardson were released from their naval commitments to form a new Old Vic Theatre Company at the New Theatre (later the Albery, now the Noel Coward Theatre) with a nightly repertory of three plays, initially Henrik Ibsen's Peer Gynt, Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man and Shakespeare's Richard III (which would become Olivier's signature role), rehearsed over 10 weeks to the accompaniment of German V1 ?'doodlebugs'. The enterprise, with John Burrell as manager, eventually extended to five acclaimed seasons ending in 1949, after a prestigious 1948 tour of Australia and New Zealand, which included Vivien Leigh in productions of Richard III, Richard Brinsley Sheridan's School for Scandal, and Thornton Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth.

The second New Theatre season opened with Olivier playing both Harry Hotspur and Justice Shallow to Richardson's Falstaff in Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2, in what is now seen as a high point of English classical theatre. The magic continued with one of Olivier's most famous endeavours, the double bill of Sophocles' Oedipus and Sheridan's The Critic, with Olivier's transition from Greek tragedy to high comedy in a single evening becoming a thing of legend. He followed this triumph with one of his favorite roles, Astrov in Uncle Vanya. Kenneth Tynan was to write (in He Who Plays the King, 1950): ?'The Old Vic was now at its height: the watershed had been reached and one of those rare moments in the theatre had arrived when drama paused, took stock of all that it had learnt since Irving, and then produced a monument in celebration. It is surprising when one considers it, that English acting should have reached up and seized a laurel crown in the middle of a war.'

In 1945 Olivier and Richardson were made honorary Lieutenants with ENSA, and did a six-week tour of Europe for the army, performing Arms and the Man, Peer Gynt and Richard III for the troops, followed by a visit to the Comédie-Française in Paris, the first time a foreign company had been invited to play on its famous stage.[25] When Olivier returned to London the populace noticed a change in him. Olivier's only explanation was: "Maybe it's just that I've got older."[7]

A 2007 biography of Olivier, Lord Larry: The Secret Life of Laurence Olivier by Michael Munn, claims that Olivier was recruited to be an undercover agent inside the United States for the British government by film producer and MI5 operative Alexander Korda on the instructions of Winston Churchill.

According to an article in The Telegraph, David Niven, a good friend of Olivier's, is said to have told Michael Munn, "What was dangerous for his country was that (Olivier) could have been accused of being an agent. So this was a danger for Larry because he could have been arrested. And what was worse, if German agents had realised what Larry was doing, they would, I am sure, have gone after him."


Shakespeare trilogy

After gaining widespread popularity in the film medium, Olivier was approached by several investors (namely Filippo Del Giudice, Alexander Korda and J. Arthur Rank), to create several Shakespearean films, based on stage productions of each respective play. Olivier tried his hand at directing, and as a result, created three highly successful films: Henry V, Hamlet and Richard III.


Henry V

Olivier made his directorial debut with a film of Shakespeare's Henry V. At first, he did not believe he was up to the task, instead trying to offer it to William Wyler, Carol Reed, and Terence Young. The film was shot in Ireland (due to the fact that it was neutral), with the Irish plains having to double for the fields of Agincourt. During the shooting of one of the battle scenes, a horse collided with a camera that Olivier was attending. Olivier had had his eye to the viewfinder, and when the horse crashed into his position, the camera smashed into him, cutting his lip, and leaving a scar that would be prominent in later roles.

The film opened to rave reviews, despite Olivier's initial reluctance. It was the first widely successful Shakespeare film, and was considered a work of art by many. The film received Oscar nominations for Best Picture and Best Actor, but the Academy, in Olivier's opinion, did not feel comfortable in giving out all of their major awards to a foreigner, so they gave him a special Honorary Award. Olivier disregarded the award as a "fob-off".[26]


Hamlet

Olivier followed up on his success with an adaptation of Hamlet. He had played this role more often than he had Henry, and was more familiar with the melancholy Dane. However, Olivier was not particularly comfortable with the introverted role of Hamlet, as opposed to the extroverts that he was famous for portraying. The running time of Hamlet (1948) was not allowed to exceed 153 minutes, and as a result Olivier cut almost half of Shakespeare's text. He was severely criticized for doing so by purists, most notably Ethel Barrymore; Barrymore stated that the adaptation was not nearly as faithful to the original text as her brother John's stage production from 1922. Ironically, Ethel presented the Best Picture Oscar that year--and was visibly shaken when she read,"Hamlet".

The film became another resounding critical and commercial success in Britain and abroad,[3] winning Olivier Best Picture and Best Actor at the 1948 Academy Awards. It was the first British film to win Best Picture, and Olivier's only Best Actor win, a category he would be nominated for five more times before his death. Olivier also became the first person to direct himself in an Oscar-winning performance, a feat not repeated until Roberto Benigni directed himself to Best Actor in 1999 for Life Is Beautiful. Also, Olivier remains the only actor to receive an Oscar for Shakespeare. Olivier, however, did not win the Best Director Oscar that year, preventing what would have almost been a clean sweep of all the major awards for which the film was nominated.


Richard III

Olivier's third major Shakespeare project as director and star was Richard III. Alexander Korda initially approached Olivier to reprise on film the role he had played to acclaim at the Old Vic in the 1940s. This role had been lauded as Olivier's greatest (rivaled only by his 1955 stage production of Macbeth and his performance as the broken down music hall performer Archie Rice in The Entertainer), and is arguably considered to be his greatest screen performance. During the filming of the battle scenes in Spain, one of the archers actually shot Olivier in the ankle, causing him to limp. Fortunately, the limp was required for the part, so Olivier had already been limping for the parts of the film already shot.

Although the film was critically well received, it was a financial failure. Korda sold the rights to the American television network NBC, and the film became the first to be aired on television and released in theatres simultaneously. Many deduce that from the enormous ratings that the NBC transmissions received, more people saw Richard III in that single showing than all the people who had seen it on stage in the play's history.


The Entertainer

Since the end of World War II, apart from his Shakespeare trilogy, Olivier had made only sporadic film appearances.

In the second half of the 1950s, British theatre was changing with the rise of the "Angry Young Men". John Osborne, author of Look Back in Anger wrote a play for Olivier entitled The Entertainer, centred on a washed-up stage comedian called Archie Rice, which opened at the Royal Court on 10 April 1957. As Olivier later stated, "I am Archie Rice. I am not Hamlet."

During rehearsals of The Entertainer, Olivier met Joan Plowright who took over the role of Jean Rice from Dorothy Tutin when Tony Richardson's Royal Court production transferred to the Palace Theatre in September 1957.[27] Later, in 1960, Tony Richardson also directed the screen version with Olivier and Plowright repeating their stage roles.

He left Vivien Leigh for Plowright, a decision that apparently gave him a sense of guilt for the rest of his life.[3] Olivier married Plowright on St. Patrick's Day, 1961, finally providing him with domestic stability and happiness. Leigh died in 1967.


National Theatre

Olivier was one of the founders of the National Theatre. He became first NT Director at the Old Vic before the South Bank building was constructed with his opening production of Hamlet in October 1963.

During his directorship he appeared in twelve plays (taking over roles in three) and directed nine. However, his career at the National ended, in his view, in betrayal and tragedy.[3]


Othello

For Othello, Olivier underwent a transformation, requiring extensive study and heavy weightlifting, in order to get the physique needed for the Moor of Venice. It is said that he bellowed at a herd of cows for an hour to get the deep voice that was required. John Dexter's 1964 stage production of the play was filmed in 1965, securing Olivier his 6th Oscar Nomination for Best Actor. It was not without criticism as director Jonathan Miller called it "a condescending view of an Afro Caribbean person".


Three Sisters

Olivier's final film as director was the 1970 film Three Sisters, based on the Chekhov play of the same name, and his 1967 National Theatre production. It was, in Olivier's opinion, his best work as director.[6] The film was co-directed by John Sichel.

In addition his most fondly remembered National Theatre performances at the Old Vic were as Astrov in his own production of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, seen first in 1962 at the Chichester Festival Theatre; his Captain Brazen in William Gaskill's December 1963 staging of George Farquhar's The Recruiting Officer; Shylock in Jonathan Miller's 1970 revival of The Merchant of Venice; and his definitive portrayal of James Tyrone in Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night, produced in December 1971 by Michael Blakemore. These last two were later restaged for television, and telecast both in England and in the United States.

He played an unforgettably droll supporting role as the ancient Antonio in Franco Zeffirelli's 1973 production of Eduardo de Filippo's Saturday, Sunday, Monday, with his wife Joan Plowright in the starring role of Rosa. His final stage appearance, on 21 March, 1974, was as the fiery Glaswegian, John Tagg, in John Dexter's production of Trevor Griffiths' The Party.

The only appearance he made on the stage of the new Olivier Theatre, was at the royal opening of the new National Theatre building on 25 October, 1976.


Later career

Famous throughout his career for his commitment to his art, Olivier immersed himself even more completely in his work during his later years, reportedly as a way of distracting himself from the guilt he felt at having left his second wife Vivien Leigh.[3] He began appearing more frequently in films, usually in character parts rather than the leading romantic roles of his early career, and received Academy Award nominations for Sleuth (1972), Marathon Man (1976) and The Boys from Brazil (1978). Having been recently forced out of his role as director of the Royal National Theatre, he worried that his family would not be sufficiently provided for in the event of his death, and consequently chose to do many of his later TV special and film appearances on a "pay cheque" basis. He later freely admitted that he was not proud of most of these credits, and noted that he particularly despised the 1982 film Inchon, in which he played the role of General Douglas McArthur.[27]

In 1967 Olivier underwent radiation treatment for prostate cancer, and was also hospitalised with pneumonia. For the remainder of his life, he would suffer from many different health problems, including bronchitis, amnesia and pleurisy. In 1974 he was diagnosed with dermatomyositis - a degenerative muscle disorder, and nearly died the following year, but he battled through the next decade.

One of Olivier's enduring achievements involved neither stage nor screentime. In 1974, UK Thames Television released The World at War, an exhaustive 26-part documentary on the Second World War to which Olivier, with some reluctance, lent his voice. His narration serves as the so-called "voice of God", surveying with deep lament the devastation as it unfolds.

His last decade did contain three great roles for the television medium. In 1981 he appeared in Brideshead Revisited, the final episode of which revolved entirely around Olivier's character Lord Marchmain, patriarch of the Flyte family, as he came to his deathbed. Brideshead Revisited was credited with having been adapted for the screen by John Mortimer, and in the year following Brideshead, Olivier was cast in the much-praised television adaptation of Mortimer's own stage play A Voyage Round My Father, in the role of Clifford Mortimer, the author's blind father. Finally, in 1983 Olivier played his last great Shakespearian role, which inevitably was King Lear, for Granada Television. For the Voyage Olivier received a BAFTA nomination, but for the final episode of Brideshead Revisited and for the King Lear he won Emmys in the Best Supporting Actor and Best Actor categories, respectively.

When presenting the Best Picture Oscar in 1985, he absent-mindedly presented it by simply stepping up to the microphone and saying "Amadeus". He had grown forgetful, and had forgotten to read out the nominees first.[28]


From Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004)In 1986, Olivier appeared as the pre-filmed holographic narrator of the West End production of the multi-media Dave Clark rock musical Time.

One of Olivier's last feature films was Wild Geese II (1985), in which, aged 77, he played Rudolf Hess in the sequel to The Wild Geese (1978). According to the biography Olivier by Francis Becket (Haus Publishing, 2005), Hess's son Wolf Rudiger Hess said Olivier's portrayal of his father was, 'uncannily accurate'.

In 1988 Olivier gave his final performance, aged 81, as a wheelchair-bound old soldier in Derek Jarman's film War Requiem (1989).

He died of cancer in Steyning, West Sussex, England, in 1989 at the age of 82. He left his son from his first marriage, as well as his wife and their three children. Lord Olivier's body was cremated, his ashes interred in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey, London. Only two actors have been accorded this honour, with David Garrick being the other in 1779.

Interestingly, Olivier is buried alongside some of the people he has portrayed in theatre and film, for example King Henry V, General John Burgoyne and Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding.

Fifteen years after his death, Olivier once again received star billing in a film. Through the use of computer graphics, footage of him as a young man was integrated into the 2004 film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow in which Olivier "played" the villain.


Bisexual claim

Since Olivier's death, multiple biographers have produced books about him, several of which include the claim that Olivier was bisexual.

Joan Plowright has said,

I have always resented the comments that it was I who was the homewrecker of Larry's marriage to Vivien Leigh. Danny Kaye was attached to Larry far earlier than I.[29]

in reference to biographer Donald Spoto's claim that Kaye and Olivier were lovers.[30] According to Sir Noel Coward, sexually speaking, Olivier had "a puppy-like acquiescence to all experiences", as quoted by friend the late Michael Thornton.[31] Terry Coleman's authorised biography of Olivier suggests a relationship between Olivier and an older actor, Henry Ainley, based on correspondence from Ainley to Olivier although the book disputes that there is any evidence linking Olivier sexually to Kaye.[3] Olivier's son Tarquin disputed these rumours as 'unforgivable garbage'.[32] and sought to suppress them, leading Dame Joan Plowright to privately state that "a man who had been to Eton and in the Guards might be expected to be a little more broad-minded".[31] Also, during the filming of A Streetcar Named Desire, which featured Olivier's wife, Vivien Leigh, David Niven discovered Leigh's co-star Marlon Brando and Olivier kissing in the swimming pool.

I turned my back to them and went back inside to join Vivien. I'm sure she knew what was going on, but she made no mention of it. Nor did I. One must be sophisticated about such matters in life.[33]

In August 2006, on the radio program Desert Island Discs, Plowright responded to the question of Olivier's alleged bisexuality by stating:

If a man is touched by genius, he is not an ordinary person. He doesn't lead an ordinary life. He has extremes of behaviour which you understand and you just find a way not to be swept overboard by his demons. You kind of stand apart. You continue your own work and your absorption in the family. And those other things finally don't matter.[31]


Honours

Olivier was the founding director of the Chichester Festival Theatre (1962-1966) and of the Royal National Theatre of Great Britain (1962-1973) for which he received his life peerage. He was created a Knight Bachelor on 12 June 1947 (in the King's Birthday Honours,[34] and created a life peer on 13 June 1970 (in the Queen's Birthday Honours) as Baron Olivier, of Brighton in the County of Sussex, the first actor to be accorded this distinction.[35][36] He was admitted to the Order of Merit in 1981.[37] The Laurence Olivier Awards, organised by The Society of London Theatre, were renamed in his honour in 1984. Though he was a Life Peer and one of the most respected personalities in the industry, Olivier insisted that one should address him as "Larry", and he simply would not listen to anyone addressing him with honorifics such as "Lord", and "Sir".[3]

Charles Aznavour
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Background information

Birth name Shahnour Vaghinagh Aznavourian
Born May 22, 1924 (1924-05-22) (age 84) in Paris, France
Genre(s) Pop, Chanson, Jazz
Occupation(s) singer, songwriter, actor, public activist
Voice type(s) Tenor
Years active 1936 - present
Label(s) EMI, MusArm Records
Website www.c-aznavour.com

Charles Aznavour (Armenian: Շառլ Ազնավուր; born Shahnourh Varinag Aznavourian, Շահնուր Վաղինակ Ազնավուրյան, May 22, 1924) is an Armenian-French singer, songwriter, actor and public activist. Besides being one of France's most popular and enduring singers, he is also one of the most well-known singers in the world. He is known for his characteristic short figure and unique tenor voice; clear and ringing in its upper reaches, with gravely and soulful low notes. He has appeared in more than 60 movies, composed about 1000 songs (including 150 in English, 100 in Italian, 70 in Spanish, and 50 in German), and sold well over 100 million records.[1] Aznavour started his global farewell tour in late 2006.



Biography

Aznavour was born in Paris, the son of Armenian immigrants Michael Aznavourian and Knar Bagdasarian[2]. His artistic parents introduced him to the world of theatre at an early age.

He began to perform when he was nine and soon took the stage name Aznavour. His big break came when the singer Édith Piaf heard him sing and arranged to take him with her on tour in France and to the United States.

Often described as the "Frank Sinatra of France", Aznavour sings mostly about love. He has written musicals and about a thousand songs, made more than one hundred records, and appeared in sixty movies, including Shoot the Piano Player, The Tin Drum and Ararat. Aznavour sings in many languages (French, English, Italian, Spanish, German, Russian, Armenian, Portuguese), which has helped him perform at Carnegie Hall and other major venues around the world. He also recorded at least one song from the 18th century poet Sayat Nova, in Armenian. Que C'est Triste Venise, sung in French, Italian (Com'è Triste Venezia), Spanish (Venecia Sin Ti), English (How Sad Venice Can Be), and German (Venedig im Grau), is one of Aznavour's most famous polylingual songs.

In the 1970s Aznavour became a major success in the United Kingdom where his song "She" went to Number One in the charts. His other well-known song in the UK was "Dance in the Old Fashioned Way".

An admirer of Quebec, where he played in Montreal cabarets before becoming famous, he has helped the career of Quebec singer-songwriter Lynda Lemay in France, and has a house in Montreal.


Since the 1988 earthquake in Armenia, Aznavour has been helping the country through his charity, Aznavour for Armenia. Together with his brother in-law and co-author Georges Garvarentz he writes the song "Pour toi Armenie", which topped the charts for 13 weeks. There is a square named after him in central Yerevan on Abovian Street. In 1995 Charles Aznavour was appointed an Ambassador and Permanent Delegate of Armenia to UNESCO. Aznavour is a member of the Armenia Fund International Board of Trustees. The organization has rendered more than $150 million in humanitarian aid and infrastructure development assistance to Armenia since 1992. Charles Aznavour was appointed as "Officier" (Officer) of the Légion d'honneur in 1997.

In 1998, Charles Aznavour was chosen as Entertainer of the Century by CNN and users of Time Online from around the globe. Aznavour was recognized as the century's outstanding performer, with nearly 18% of the total vote, edging out Elvis Presley and Bob Dylan. After Frank Sinatra's death, Charles Aznavour is the last of these "Greats".


Artists who have covered his songs range from Fred Astaire, Bob Dylan and Bing Crosby to Ray Charles, Liza Minnelli and Julio Iglesias. In 1974, Jack Jones recorded an entire album of Aznavour compositions entitled "Write Me A Love Song, Charlie", re-released on CD in 2006 [3]. Elvis Costello recorded "She" for the film Notting Hill. Legendary Spanish operatic tenor Plácido Domingo is a good friend of Aznavour and often performs his hits, most notably Aznavour's version of "Ave Maria" in 1994. Also in 1994, Aznavour performed with Domingo and Norwegian soprano Sissel Kyrkjebø at Domingo's third annual Christmas in Vienna concert. The three singers performed a variety of carols, medleys, and duets, and the concert was televised throughout the world, as well as released on a CD internationally. [4]


At the start of autumn in 2006, Aznavour initiated his farewell tour, performing in the US and Canada, and earning very positive reviews. Aznavour started 2007 with concerts all over Japan and Asia. The second half of 2007 saw Aznavour return to Paris for over 20 shows at the Palais des Congrès in Paris, followed by more touring Belgium, the Netherlands, and the rest of France. He has repeatedly stated that this farewell tour, health permitting, will likely last beyond 2010. At 84, Aznavour is in excellent health. He still sings in multiple languages and without teleprompters, but typically sticks to just two or three (French and English being the primary two, with Spanish or Italian being the third) during most concerts.[5] On September 30, 2006, Aznavour performed a major concert in Yerevan, the capital of Armenia to start off the cultural season "Arménie mon amie" in France. Former Armenian president Robert Kocharyan and French president Jacques Chirac, at the time on an official visit to Armenia, were in front-row attendance.[6]

In 2006, 82-year old Aznavour traveled to Cuba, where he, together with Chucho Valdes, recorded his new album Colore Ma Vie, presented at Aznavour's Moscow concert in April 2007. Later, in July of 2007, Aznavour was invited to perform at the Vieilles Charrues Festival, and sang his greatest hits to a thrilled audience.

"Forever Cool" (2007), an album from Capitol/EMI, features Aznavour singing a new duet of "Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime" with the voice of the late Dean Martin.

Aznavour finished a tour of Portugal in February 2008. On January 18, 2008 he participated as guest vocalist with the contestants of the French reality show Star Academy and sang his famous Emmenez-Moi with contestant Jérémy Chapron. Throughout the spring of 2008, Aznavour will tour South America, holding a multitude of concerts in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay.


Film career

Aznavour has had a long and varied parallel career as an actor, appearing in over 60 films. In 1960 Aznavour starred in François Truffaut's Tirez sur le pianiste, playing a character called Édouard Saroyan. He also put in a critically acclaimed performance in the 1974 movie And Then There Were None. Aznavour had an important supporting role in 1978's The Tin Drum, winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1979. Aznavour starred in the 2002 movie Ararat playing Edward Saroyan, a movie director.

Peter Nero
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Background information

Birth name Bernard Nierow
Born 22 May 1934 (1934-05-22) (age 74)
Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
Occupation(s) Musician
Instrument(s) Piano
Website www.peternero.com

Peter Nero (born Bernard Nierow, 22 May 1934) is an American pianist and pops conductor.





Early life

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Nero started his formal music training at the age of seven. By the time he was fourteen, he was accepted to New York City's prestigious High School of Music and Art and won a scholarship to the Juilliard School of Music. Constance Keene, his teacher and mentor, once wrote in an issue of Keyboard Classics, "Vladimir Horowitz was Peter's greatest fan!"


Early career

Nero recorded his first album in 1961, and won a Grammy Award that year for "Best New Artist." Since then, he has received another Grammy, garnered ten additional nominations and released 67 albums. Nero's early association with RCA Records produced 23 albums in eight years. His subsequent move to Columbia Records resulted in a million-selling single and album - The Summer of '42.

His first major national TV success came at the age of seventeen when he was chosen to perform Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue on Paul Whiteman's TV Special. He subsequently appeared on many top variety and talk shows including 11 guest appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show, and numerous appearances on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show.

Hailed as one of the premier interpreters of Gershwin, Nero starred in the Emmy Award-winning NBC Special, S'Wonderful, S'Marvelous, S'Gershwin. Other TV credits include performances on PBS-TV Piano Pizzazz and with the National Symphony in Washington, D.C. on its July 4th special titled A Capitol Fourth. Nero served as music director and pianist for the PBS-TV special The Songs of Johnny Mercer: Too Marvelous for Words with co-stars Johnny Mathis, Melissa Manchester and many members of The POPS.

In 1963 Peter composed and performed the musical score for the major motion picture "Sunday in New York." The title song has been recorded by over two dozen vocalists and the score was nominated for both a Golden Globe and Hollywood Reporter Award. He also made an appearance in the film alongside Jane Fonda, Rod Taylor, and Cliff Robertson.

Peter's recordings over the last 15 years include CDs with full symphony orchestra: On My Own, Classical Connections and My Way. He recorded Peter Nero and Friends, which contains collaborations with Mel Torme, Maureen McGovern and Doc Severinsen, among others. Peter's latest CDs are romantic albums titled Love Songs for a Rainy Day and More in Love. By popular demand, four of his earlier recordings have been re-issued. A younger generation of music lovers can now hear Peter on the recent Rod Stewart CD, As Time Goes By…The Great American Songbook, Volume II.


Awards and honors

In an issue of Keyboard Magazine, Ray Charles, when asked about his favorite pianist was quoted as saying, "Art Tatum could play anything he wanted to. He's one of the few people who I truly believe could play anything he thought of… and Peter Nero plays his buns off!"

Nero's long list of honors include six Honorary Doctorates, the most recent from Drexel University in 2004, and the prestigious International Society of Performing Arts Presenters Award for "Excellence in the Arts." He is also included on two historic walks of fame - one in Philadelphia, and one in Miami, Florida. In 1999, he received the Pennsylvania Distinguished Arts Award, presented by Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge. Previous honorees include Marian Anderson, James Michener, Andrew Wyeth and Riccardo Muti.

One of Nero's greatest achievements is being the founding Music Director of the world renowned Peter Nero and the Philly Pops(R).

He currently is the artistic director and conductor of Peter Nero and the Philly Pops.


Personal life

He is an active participant committed to many important causes, including the funding of school music programs, fundraising for the building of new arts centers across the country, as well as research for cancer, dystonia and autism.

Nero has long been a devotee and advocate of consumer electronics. His expertise has led him to be dubbed a "technocrat" by leaders of the industry. While computers and other electronics have made him "the Gadget King," he still makes music on the traditional Steinway concert grand piano.

He is the father of two children, Beverly and Jedd.


Trivia

Furniture (band) released a track called 'On A Bus With Peter Nero'.

Richard Benjamin
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Born May 22, 1938 (1938-05-22) (age 69)
New York City United States

Richard Benjamin (born May 22, 1938) is an American actor and film director.

He has starred in a number of productions, including the 1969 film, Goodbye, Columbus based upon the novella of the same name by Philip Roth, and with Yul Brynner in Westworld in 1973.

Benjamin was born in New York City, New York and attended the High School of Performing Arts. He married actress Paula Prentiss on October 26, 1961 and they have two children. He graduated from Northwestern University where he was involved in many plays and studied in the famous Northwestern theater school. Benjamin is Jewish.[1] He and his wife appeared together in the short-lived television series He & She (1967-68), as well as the film Catch-22 (1970). In 1978, he starred in the ambitious, but short-lived, television series Quark.

Susan Strasberg
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Born Susan Elizabeth Strasberg
May 22, 1938
New York City, New York
Died January 21, 1999 (aged 60)
New York City, New York
Spouse(s) Christopher Jones (1965-1968)
Awards won
BAFTA Awards
Nominated: Best Newcomer
1956 Picnic
Golden Globe Awards
Nominated: Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama
1963 Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man
Tony Awards
Nominated: Best Leading Actress in a Play
1956 The Diary of Anne Frank

Susan Elizabeth Strasberg (May 22, 1938 - January 21, 1999) was an American actress.





Biography

Personal life

Strasberg, a Jewish American, was born in New York City, New York, the daughter of theatre director and drama coach Lee Strasberg and former actress Paula Strasberg. Her brother, John Strasberg, is an acting coach. Strasberg died in 1999 from breast cancer. She had a daughter, Jennifer Robin Jones (born March 14, 1966 in Los Angeles, by actor Christopher Jones) and joked in her autobiography Bittersweet that her daughter would be the "real Jennifer Jones" as the actress Jennifer Jones had taken it as a stage name.


Career

After a widely praised performance as a teenager in Picnic, Strasberg originated the title role in the Broadway production of The Diary of Anne Frank at the age of 18 and was nominated for a Tony Award. Her stature on the stage was symbolized when Julie Harris presented to her a handkerchief which Helen Hayes had used in portraying Victoria Regina and had presented to Harris to honor her performance in I Am a Camera. Strasberg also starred in the Italian holocaust film Kapò, which was nominated for an Academy Award as best foreign film of 1960. She lived in Italy for several years and was delighted to be called "La Strasberg" in the Italian idiom.

Strasberg wrote two best-selling books: Bittersweet, an autobiography, in which she discussed her tumultuous relationships with actors Richard Burton and Christopher Jones, as well as her daughter's struggles with a serious heart defect, and Marilyn and Me: sisters, rivals, friends which recounted her relationship with her "surrogate sister" Marilyn Monroe who was a "member" of the Strasberg family for many years.

Paul Winfield
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia



Born Paul Edward Winfield
May 22, 1939(1939-05-22)
Los Angeles, California, USA
Died March 7, 2004 (aged 64)
Los Angeles, California, USA
Years active 1966-2004
Spouse(s) Charles Gillan Jr. (1970s-2002)
Awards won
Emmy Awards
Outstanding Guest Actor-Drama Series
1995, Picket Fences

Paul Edward Winfield (May 22, 1939 - March 7, 2004) was an Emmy Award-winning and Academy Award-nominated American television and film actor. He was known for his portrayal of a Louisiana sharecropper who struggles to support his family during the Great Depression in the landmark film Sounder and as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the television miniseries King. Off camera, Winfield narrated the television crime series City Confidential.





Biography

Career

Winfield carved out a diverse career in film, television, theater and voiceovers by taking ground breaking roles at a time when African-American actors were scarcely cast. His first major feature film role was in the 1969 film, The Lost Man starring Sidney Poitier. Winfield first became well-known to television audiences when he appeared for several years opposite Diahann Carroll on the groundbreaking television series Julia. Filmed during a high point of racial tensions in the United States, the show was unique in featuring an African-American female as the central character. He also starred as Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 1978 miniseries King.

In 1973, Winfield was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for the 1972 film Sounder, and his co-star in that film, Cicely Tyson, was nominated for Best Actress. Prior to their nominations, only two other African Americans - Dorothy Dandridge and Sidney Poitier - had ever been nominated for a leading role. He appeared in the 2003 Disney-produced television remake of Sounder. Winfield played the part of "Jim the Slave" in Huckleberry Finn (1974) which was a musical based on the novel by Mark Twain. Winfield would recall late in his career that as a young actor he had played one of the two leads in Of Mice and Men in local repertory, made up in whiteface, since a black actor playing it would have been unthinkable. Winfield also starred in more recent miniseries, including Roots: The Next Generations, Alex Haley'sQueen: The Story of an American Family and Scarlett.

The actor gained a new segment of fans for his brief but memorable roles in several science fiction TV programs and movies. He portrayed Captain Clark Terrell, an unwilling minion of Khan Noonien Singh, in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and a friendly but crusty cop partnered with Lance Henriksen in The Terminator starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. On the small screen Star Trek franchise, he appeared as an alien captain who communicates in metaphor in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Darmok". He also appeared on Babylon 5, as General Richard Franklin, the father of regular character Dr. Stephen Franklin, in the second season episode "Gropos."

Winfield also took on roles as gay characters in the films Mike's Murder in 1984 and again in 1998 in the film Relax...It's Just Sex.

Winfield found success off-camera due to his unique voice. He provided voices on the cartoons Spider-Man, The Magic School Bus, Batman Beyond, K10C, and The Simpsons, on the latter voicing the Don King parody Lucius Sweet. In his voiceover career, he perhaps best-known as the narrator for the A&E true crime series City Confidential, a role he began in 1998 and continued with until his death in 2004.

Throughout his career, Winfield frequently managed to perform in the theater. His only Broadway production, Checkmates, in 1988, co-starring Ruby Dee, was also the Broadway debut of Denzel Washington. He also appeared in productions at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, and The Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, D.C.

He was nominated for an Emmy Award for his performance in the King and Roots: The Next Generations. He won an Emmy Award, in 1995, for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series, for his appearance as Judge Harold Nance in an episode of the CBS drama Picket Fences.


Personal life

Winfield was born in Los Angeles, California, the son of Lois Beatrice (née Edwards), a union organizer in the garment industry. His stepfather from the age of eight was Clarence Winfield, a construction worker.[1][2] He attended the University of Portland, Stanford University, Los Angeles City College and the University of California at Los Angeles. He was openly gay in his private life, but remained discreet about it in the public eye.[3]

Winfield died of a heart attack in 2004 at the age of 64. His husband of 30 years, architect Charles Gillan Jr., died March 5, 2002 of bone cancer.

Save the dead rabbit


A man was driving along the highway, and saw a rabbit hopping across the middle of the road. He swerved to avoid hitting the rabbit, but unfortunately the rabbit jumped in front of the car and was hit. The driver, being a sensitive man as well as an animal lover, pulled over to the side of the road and got out to see what had become of the rabbit. Much to his dismay, the rabbit was dead. The driver felt so awful he began to cry.

A woman driving down the highway saw the man crying on the side of the road and pulled over. She stepped out of her car and asked the man what was wrong.

"I feel terrible," he explained. "I accidently hit this rabbit and killed it."

The woman told the man not to worry. She knew what to do. She went to her car trunk and pulled out a spray can. She walked over to the limp, dead rabbit, and sprayed the contents of the can onto the rabbit. Miraculously, the rabbit came to life, jumped up, waved its paw at the two humans and hopped down the road. 50 feet away the rabbit stopped, turned around, waved at the two again, hopped down the road another 50 feet, turned, waved, and hopped another 50 feet. The man was astonished. He couldn't figure out what substance could be in the woman's spray can! He ran over to the woman and demanded, " What was in your spray can? What did you spray onto that rabbit?" The woman turned the can around so that the man could read the label. It said:

"'Hare Spray' Restores Life to Dead Hare. Adds Permanent Wave."

Thanks, hawkman, for the great bio info. Surprised about Paul Winfield.

Well, your funny of the day reminds me of this altered expression. "Hare today; gone tomorrow."

Until the puppy prances in, I was intrigued by this man's voice, folks. We may have listened to him before on WA2K radio, but he is worth hearing again.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hQBSl5yAv8

Good afternoon WA2K.

Can never have too much Charles Aznavour, Letty
or
Laurence Olivier

Hey, puppy. You are absolutely correct about Charles.

The first time that I saw Laurence doing Shakespeare was in Richard III. That is when I begin to get suspicious about his being a villain. I was just a kid and I questioned everything. Still do, PA. Thanks for the septet of black and whites. Often, folks, I think they are the best. Something delightfully stark about them.

Well, all, this is the best that I can do with Paul Winfield, but before we listen to the trailer, I want to quote the bard again in regard to Teddy Kennedy. Something tells me that when he dies, MacBeth will be the perfect play for him:

The original Thane of Cawdor was executed thus assigning MacBeth the new title, and it was reported to Duncan:

"Nothing in his life became him like the leaving of it."

Now for Paul.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5fE-rD08Jw

Inspired by Stray Cat's "Life's Lessons", I thought of Frank Zappa and this funny song, folks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2wgxwdPYFE