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Kit And The Widow
Kit and The Widow were a British double act, performing humorous songs in the vein of Tom Lehrer or Flanders and Swann; they also cite Anna Russell as an influence.''London Theatre Record'', 1988, "Kit Hesketh-Harvey (who co-scripted Maurice) is the ebullient domineering vocalist; Richard Sisson is the shy pianist ..." Kit Hesketh-Harvey (singer) and Richard Sisson (The Widow, pianist) performed at the Edinburgh Fringe and in West End theatre, West End theatres, and accepted private bookings. They have issued a double CD album, ''Les Enfants du Parody'', and ''100 Not Out''. They were both members of the Cambridge University Footlights society. Their style combines musical classicism and an understated Cambridge urbanity with often outrageous satire, satirical content. Targets of their humour range from stereotypes, such as the English white van driver ("White Van Man") and new-agers ("Dog on a String"), to the more specific, such as the Transportation Security Administration (" ...
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Double Act
A double act (also known as a comedy duo) is a form of comedy originating in the British music hall tradition, and American vaudeville, in which two comedians perform together as a single act. Pairings are typically long-term, in some cases for the artists' entire careers. Double acts perform on the stage, television and film. The format is particularly popular in the UK where successful acts have included Peter Cook and Dudley Moore (Cook’s deadpan delivery contrasted with Moore’s buffoonery), Morecambe and Wise and ''The Two Ronnies''. The tradition is also present in the US with acts like Wheeler and Woolsey, Abbott and Costello, Gallagher and Shean, Burns and Allen, and Lyons and Yosco. The British-American comedy double act Laurel and Hardy has been described as the most popular in the world. Format Humor is often derived from the uneven relationship between two partners, usually of the same gender, age, ethnic origin, and profession but drastically different in ...
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Satire
Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of shaming or exposing the perceived flaws of individuals, corporations, government, or society itself into improvement. Although satire is usually meant to be humorous, its greater purpose is often constructive social criticism, using wit to draw attention to both particular and wider issues in society. A feature of satire is strong irony or sarcasm —"in satire, irony is militant", according to literary critic Northrop Frye— but parody, burlesque, exaggeration, juxtaposition, comparison, analogy, and double entendre are all frequently used in satirical speech and writing. This "militant" irony or sarcasm often professes to approve of (or at least accept as natural) the very things the satirist wishes to question. Satire is found in many a ...
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British Comedy Musical Groups
British may refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories, and Crown Dependencies. ** Britishness, the British identity and common culture * British English, the English language as spoken and written in the United Kingdom or, more broadly, throughout the British Isles * Celtic Britons, an ancient ethno-linguistic group * Brittonic languages, a branch of the Insular Celtic language family (formerly called British) ** Common Brittonic, an ancient language Other uses *''Brit(ish)'', a 2018 memoir by Afua Hirsch *People or things associated with: ** Great Britain, an island ** United Kingdom, a sovereign state ** Kingdom of Great Britain (1707–1800) ** United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland (1801–1922) See also * Terminology of the British Isles * Alternative names for the British * English (other) * Britannic (other) * British Isles * Brit (other) * Briton (d ...
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Camille Saint-Saëns
Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns (; 9 October 183516 December 1921) was a French composer, organist, conductor and pianist of the Romantic music, Romantic era. His best-known works include Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso (1863), the Piano Concerto No. 2 (Saint-Saëns), Second Piano Concerto (1868), the Cello Concerto No. 1 (Saint-Saëns), First Cello Concerto (1872), ''Danse macabre (Saint-Saëns), Danse macabre'' (1874), the opera ''Samson and Delilah (opera), Samson and Delilah'' (1877), the Violin Concerto No. 3 (Saint-Saëns), Third Violin Concerto (1880), the Symphony No. 3 (Saint-Saëns), Third ("Organ") Symphony (1886) and ''The Carnival of the Animals'' (1886). Saint-Saëns was a musical prodigy; he made his concert debut at the age of ten. After studying at the Paris Conservatoire he followed a conventional career as a church organist, first at Saint-Merri, Paris and, from 1858, La Madeleine, Paris, La Madeleine, the official church of the Second French Empire, Fren ...
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The Carnival Of The Animals
''The Carnival of the Animals'' (''Le Carnaval des animaux'') is a humorous musical suite of fourteen movements, including " The Swan", by the French composer Camille Saint-Saëns. The work, about 25 minutes in duration, was written for private performance by two pianos and chamber ensemble; Saint-Saëns prohibited public performance of the work during his lifetime, feeling that its frivolity would damage his standing as a serious composer. The suite was published in 1922, the year after his death. A public performance in the same year was greeted with enthusiasm, and the work has remained among his most popular. In addition to the original version for chamber ensemble, the suite is frequently performed with a full orchestral complement of strings. History Following a disastrous concert tour of Germany in 1885–86, Saint-Saëns withdrew to a small Austrian village, where he composed ''The Carnival of the Animals'' in February 1886. From the beginning he regarded the work as a ...
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Le Cygne
''Le cygne'', , or ''The Swan'', is the 13th and penultimate movement of ''The Carnival of the Animals'' by Camille Saint-Saëns. Originally scored for solo cello accompanied by two pianos, it has been arranged and transcribed for many instruments but remains best known as a cello solo. Music The piece is in 6/4 time, with a key signature of G major and a tempo marking ''andantino grazioso''. The slow cello melody is accompanied by almost constant broken chord figurations on the pianos. When performed as a separate movement, not in the context of ''The Carnival'', ''The Swan'' is frequently played with accompaniment on only one piano. This is the only movement from ''The Carnival of the Animals'' that the composer allowed to be played in public during his lifetime. He thought the remaining movements were too frivolous and would damage his reputation as a serious composer. Because of its slow tempo and mostly legato performance indications, the movement is suitable for perfor ...
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Andrew Lloyd Webber
Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber (born 22 March 1948), is an English composer and impresario of musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 21 musicals, a song cycle, a set of variations, two film scores, and a Latin Requiem Mass. Several of his songs have been widely recorded and were successful outside of their parent musicals, such as "Memory" from ''Cats,'' " The Music of the Night" and "All I Ask of You" from '' The Phantom of the Opera'', " I Don't Know How to Love Him" from '' Jesus Christ Superstar'', " Don't Cry for Me Argentina" from '' Evita'', and " Any Dream Will Do" from ''Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.'' In 2001, ''The New York Times'' referred to him as "the most commercially successful composer in history". ''The Daily Telegraph'' ranked him the "fifth most powerful person in British culture" in 2008, lyricist Don Black writing "Andrew more or less sing ...
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Transportation Security Administration
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is an agency of the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that has authority over the security of transportation systems within, and connecting to the United States. It was created as a response to the September 11 attacks to improve airport security procedures and consolidate air travel security under a dedicated federal administrative law enforcement agency. The TSA develops broad policies to protect the U.S. transportation system, including highways, railroads, buses, mass transit systems, ports, pipelines, and intermodal freight facilities. It fulfills this mission in conjunction with other federal agencies and state partners. However, the TSA's primary focus is on airport security and the prevention of aircraft hijacking. It is responsible for screening passengers and baggage at more than 450 U.S. airports, employing screening officers in airports, armed Federal Air Marshals on planes, mobile teams of dog ha ...
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Footlights
Cambridge University Footlights Dramatic Club, commonly referred to simply as the Footlights, is an amateur theatrical club in Cambridge, England, founded in 1883 and run by the students of Cambridge University. History Footlights' inaugural performance took place in June 1883. For some months before the name "Footlights" was chosen, the group had performed to local audiences in the Cambridge area (once, with a cricket match included, at the "pauper lunatic asylum"). They wished to go wider than the University Amateur Dramatic Club (ADC), founded in 1855, with its membership drawn largely from Trinity College, and its theatre seating only 100. They were to perform every May Week at the Theatre Royal, Barnwell, Cambridge, the shows soon open to the public. A local paper commended the club's appeal to the "general public, the many different classes of which life in Cambridge is made up". The club grew in prominence in the 1960s as a hotbed of comedy and satire, and established ...
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Tom Lehrer
Thomas Andrew Lehrer (; born April 9, 1928) is an American former musician, singer-songwriter, satirist, and mathematician, having lectured on mathematics and musical theater. He is best known for the pithy and humorous songs that he recorded in the 1950s and 1960s. His songs often parodied popular musical forms, though he usually created original melodies when doing so. A notable exception is " The Elements", in which he set the names of the chemical elements to the tune of the " Major-General's Song" from Gilbert and Sullivan's '' Pirates of Penzance''. Lehrer's early musical work typically dealt with non-topical subject matter and was noted for its black humor in songs such as "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park". In the 1960s, he produced a number of songs that dealt with social and political issues of the day, particularly when he wrote for the U.S. version of the television show '' That Was the Week That Was''. The popularity of these songs has far outlasted their topical subjec ...
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Cambridge University
The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III of England, Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world's List of oldest universities in continuous operation, third oldest surviving university and one of its most prestigious, currently ranked second-best in the world and the best in Europe by ''QS World University Rankings''. Among the university's List of University of Cambridge people, most notable alumni are 11 Fields Medalists, seven Turing Award, Turing Award winners, 47 Head of state, heads of state, 14 List of prime ministers of the United Kingdom by education, British prime ministers, 194 Olympic medal-winning athletes,All Known Cambridge Olympia ...
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