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Christopher Whelen
Christopher Whelen (17 April 1927 – 18 September 1993) was an English composer, conductor and playwright, best known for his radio and television operas. Because much of his work was written for specific theatre productions in the 1950s, or directly for broadcast in the 1960s to the 1980s, little of it survives today, though a number of his scores and related papers have been deposited in the British Library. Life Whelen was born in London into a musical family. He became a chorister at New College, Oxford, attended Worksop College (studying piano and 'cello) and then at the Birmingham and Midland School of Music (now the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire) between 1944 and 1946 (studying clarinet and composition). After two years National Service in the RAF he secured conducting lessons with the Austrian émigré Rudolf Schwarz, newly appointed to the Bournemouth Municipal Orchestra, subsequently becoming his Assistant Conductor. Already interested in Celtic culture (particularl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
List Of Television Operas ...
This is a list of operas specifically composed and produced for television performance. It does not include productions of the established opera repertoire subsequently broadcast on television. See also * List of radio operas * Radio opera References Further reading * * * * * "Television's audience for opera", ''The Guardian'', 8 December 1966, p. 8. {{Portal bar, Opera, Television Television Television (TV) is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. Additionally, the term can refer to a physical television set rather than the medium of transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vernon Scannell
Vernon Scannell (23 January 1922 – 16 November 2007) was a British poet and author. He was at one time a professional boxer, and wrote novels about the sport of boxing. He was a famous poet of English. Life Vernon Scannell, whose birth name was' John Vernon Bain', was born in 1922 in Spilsby, Lincolnshire. The family, always poor, moved frequently, including Ballaghaderreen in Ireland, Beeston, and Eccles, before settling in Buckinghamshire. Bain spent most of his youth growing up in Aylesbury in Buckinghamshire. His father had fought in World War I, and came to make a living as a commercial photographer. Scannell attended the local Queen's Park Boys' School, an elementary council school. He left school at the age of 14 to work as a clerk in an insurance office. His real passions, however, were for the unlikely combination of boxing and literature. He had been winning boxing titles at school and had been a keen reader from a very early age, although not properly attached t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Norman Morrice
Norman Alexander Morrice (10 September 1931 – 11 January 2008) was a British dancer, choreographer and artistic director of both Ballet Rambert from 1966 to 1974 and the Royal Ballet from 1977 to 1986, two of the UK's major ballet companies. Early life Norman Morrice was born in Agua Dulce, Mexico, on 10 September 1931, the second son of a British expatriate oil engineer. Morrice remained a Mexican citizen until he finished school, and this gave him an exemption from National Service in the UK. According to ''The Daily Telegraph'', "this fact may have explained why he was the only Royal Ballet director to receive no public honour". While still a boy, Morrice joined Marie Rambert's ballet school, and then her company as a dancer in 1952. Career His first fully independent choreographed piece was 1958's, ''Two Brothers'', a "powerful narrative of sibling rivalry and violence in an urban setting", and designed by Ralph Koltai. Morrice, like his contemporary fellow choreographers ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Coast Of Skeletons
''Coast of Skeletons'' is a 1965 adventure film, directed by Robert Lynn and starring Richard Todd and Dale Robertson. It is a sequel to the 1963 film '' Death Drums Along the River'', and just as that film, it uses the characters from Edgar Wallace's 1911 novel ''Sanders of the River'' and Zoltán Korda's 1935 film based on the novel, but placed in a totally different story. ''Coast of Skeletons'' was released in Germany as ''Sanders und das Schiff des Todes''/ ''Sanders and the Ship of Death''. Plot Following independence, the unnamed British colony where Commissioner Harry Sanders has been working for many years sacks its British police force. So Sanders returns to London, where he soon finds work for an insurance company, which wants him to oversee a project to dredge for diamonds in the shallow waters off South West Africa. Sanders soon finds himself drawn into a web of insurance fraud, a secret hunt for World War II gold bullion, and a rivalrous love triangle betwe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Face Of Fu Manchu
''The Face of Fu Manchu'' is a 1965 thriller film directed by Don Sharp and based on the characters created by Sax Rohmer. It stars Christopher Lee as the eponymous villain, a Chinese criminal mastermind, and Nigel Green as his pursuing rival Nayland Smith, a Scotland Yard detective. The film was a British-West German co-production, and was the first in a five-part series starring Lee and produced by Harry Alan Towers for Constantin Film, the second of which was '' The Brides of Fu Manchu'' released the next year, with the final entry being '' The Castle of Fu Manchu'' in 1969. Only the first two were directed by Sharp. It was shot in Technicolor and Techniscope on location in County Dublin, Ireland. The film has been called Towers' best movie. Plot The beheading of Dr. Fu Manchu is witnessed in China by his nemesis, Nayland Smith. Back in London, however, it is increasingly apparent to Smith—now assistant commissioner in Scotland Yard— that the international criminal m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Valiant (1962 Film)
''The Valiant'' (also known as ''Affondamento Della Valiant'') is a 1962 British-Italian drama film directed by Roy Ward Baker and starring John Mills, Ettore Manni, Roberto Risso, Robert Shaw, and Liam Redmond. It is based on the Italian manned torpedo attack which seriously damaged the two British battleships '' Valiant'' and ''Queen Elizabeth'' and the oil tanker ''Sagona'' at the port of Alexandria in December 1941. The film had a Royal Gala Premiere on 4 January 1962 at the Odeon Leicester Square in the presence of Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent. Plot Alexandria December, 1941. Two Italian frogmen are captured under suspicion of placing a mine under HMS ''Valiant''. They are brought onto the ship for questioning. Cast Production Roy Ward Baker said he was approached by John Pennington with the script by Willis Hall and Keith Waterhouse. "It was a good script," says Baker. "The two sailors were given some sour wartime humour." The producers wanted John Mills to play ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Martin Esslin
Martin Julius Esslin OBE (6 June 1918 – 24 February 2002) was a Hungarian-born British producer, dramatist, journalist, adaptor and translator, critic, academic scholar and professor of drama, known for coining the term " theatre of the absurd" in his 1961 book ''The Theatre of the Absurd''. This work has been called "the most influential theatrical text of the 1960s". Life and work Born Pereszlényi Gyula Márton in Budapest, Esslin moved to Vienna with his family at a young age. He studied Philosophy and English at the University of Vienna and later studied directing under Max Reinhardt at the Reinhardt Seminar of Dramatic Arts in 1928; actor Milo Sperber was a classmate. Of Jewish descent (but not of Jewish practice), he fled Austria in the wake of the ''Anschluss'' of 1938, moving to Brussels for a year and then moving on to England. In his book, ''Theatre of the Absurd'', written in 1961, he defined the "Theatre of the Absurd" as follows: This attribute of "abs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rodney Milnes
Rodney Milnes Blumer OBE (26 July 1936 – 5 December 2015) was an English music critic, musicologist, writer, translator and broadcaster, with a particular interest in opera.Rodney Milnes. ''The New Grove Dictionary of Opera''. Macmillan, London and New York, 1997. He wrote under the professional name of Rodney Milnes. Life and career Milnes was born in Stafford, where his father was a surgeon. He learnt the piano as a child, to the level of playing the early Beethoven sonatas, and later recalled accompanying a fellow Oxford student in ''Winterreise'' at the Holywell Music Room. Wheatcroft, Geoffrey. Rodney Milnes, 1936-2015. ''Opera'', Vol 67 No 2, February 2016, p140-145. Milnes attended Rugby School and studied history at Christ Church, Oxford University. He was a member of the Oxford University Opera Club, taking part in ''The Fair Maid of Perth'' in 1955 (with Dudley Moore among the first violins and David Lloyd-Jones in the chorus),Rodney remembered (letters). ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Etruscan Architecture
Etruscan architecture was created between about 900 BC and 27 BC, when the expanding civilization of ancient Rome finally absorbed Etruscan civilization. The Etruscans were considerable builders in stone, wood and other materials of temples, houses, tombs and city walls, as well as bridges and roads. The only structures remaining in quantity in anything like their original condition are tombs and walls, but through archaeology and other sources we have a good deal of information on what once existed. From about 630 BC, Etruscan architecture was heavily influenced by Greek architecture, which was itself developing through the same period. In turn it influenced Roman architecture, which in its early centuries can be considered as just a regional variation of Etruscan architecture. But increasingly, from about 200 BC, the Romans looked directly to Greece for their styling, while sometimes retaining Etruscan shapes and purposes in their buildings. The main monumental forms of Etru ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ambrose Bierce
Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (June 24, 1842 – ) was an American short story writer, journalist, poet, and American Civil War veteran. His book '' The Devil's Dictionary'' was named one of "The 100 Greatest Masterpieces of American Literature" by the American Revolution Bicentennial Administration. His story " An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" has been described as "one of the most famous and frequently anthologized stories in American literature", and his book '' Tales of Soldiers and Civilians'' (also published as ''In the Midst of Life'') was named by the Grolier Club one of the 100 most influential American books printed before 1900. A prolific and versatile writer, Bierce was regarded as one of the most influential journalists in the United States and as a pioneering writer of realist fiction. For his horror writing, Michael Dirda ranked him alongside Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft. S. T. Joshi speculates that he may well be the greatest satirist America has ever produc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge
"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" is an 1890 short story by American writer and American Civil War veteran Ambrose Bierce, described as "one of the most famous and frequently anthologized stories in American literature"."An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge: Ambrose Bierce". in Joseph Palmisano, ed. ''Short Story Criticism'', volume 72. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2004, p. 2. It was originally published by '' The San Francisco Examiner'' on July 13, 1890, and was first collected in Bierce's book '' Tales of Soldiers and Civilians'' (1891). Bierce's abandonment of strict linear narration in favor of the internal mind of the protagonist is an early example of the stream of consciousness narrative mode. Plot Peyton Farquhar, a civilian who is also a wealthy planter and slave owner, is being prepared for execution by hanging from an Alabama railroad bridge during the American Civil War. Six military men and a company of infantrymen are present, guarding the bridge and carryin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Hopkins (screenwriter)
John Richard Hopkins (sometimes credited as John R. Hopkins; 27 January 1931 – 23 July 1998) was an English film, stage, and television writer. Biography Born in southwest London, England, Hopkins was educated at Raynes Park High School, Raynes Park County Grammar School, then completed his Conscription in the United Kingdom#After 1945, National Service in the Army from 1950 to 1951. He read English Literature at St Catharine's College, Cambridge, and joined BBC Television as a studio manager on graduation. Hopkins began his writing career in radio, writing episodes of the BBC serial ''Mrs Dale's Diary'' for eighteen months. An attempt to become a trainee television director at the commercial television franchise holder ITV Granada, Granada Television was unsuccessful. The company did accept his first play, ''Break Up'' (1958), about the end of the marriage of a young couple, although it was only shown in the Granada region. He established himself as a writer beginning when h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
