|
Kismet (musical)
''Kismet'' is a musical adapted by Charles Lederer and Luther Davis from the 1911 play of the same name by Edward Knoblock, with lyrics and musical adaptation (as well as some original music) by Robert Wright and George Forrest. The music was mostly adapted from several pieces composed by Alexander Borodin. The story concerns a wily poet who talks his way out of trouble several times; meanwhile, his beautiful daughter meets and falls in love with the young caliph. The musical was first produced on Broadway in 1953 and won the Tony Award for best musical in 1954. It was also successful in London's West End and has been given several revivals. A 1955 film version was produced by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Background The musical was commissioned by Edwin Lester, founder and director of the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera, who conceived of a musical based on the 1911 play '' Kismet'' by Edward Knoblock.Rooney, David''Kismet'' ''Variety'', February 10, 2006, accessed November 28, 2 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alexander Borodin
Alexander Porfiryevich Borodin (12 November 183327 February 1887) was a Russian Romantic composer and chemist of Georgian–Russian parentage. He was one of the prominent 19th-century composers known as " The Five", a group dedicated to producing a "uniquely Russian" kind of classical music. Abraham, Gerald. ''Borodin: the Composer and his Music''. London, 1927. Borodin is known best for his symphonies, his two string quartets, the symphonic poem '' In the Steppes of Central Asia'' and his opera '' Prince Igor''. A doctor and chemist by profession and training, Borodin made important early contributions to organic chemistry. Although he is presently known better as a composer, he regarded medicine and science as his primary occupations, only practising music and composition in his spare time or when he was ill. As a chemist, Borodin is known best for his work concerning organic synthesis, including being among the first chemists to demonstrate nucleophilic substitution, as w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edwin Lester
Edwin Lester (30 March 1895 – 13 December 1990) was an American theatre director, impresario, and producer. He was the longtime general director of the Los Angeles Civic Light Opera, which he founded in 1938. He also co-founded the LACLO's affiliate organization, the San Francisco Civic Light Opera, with Homer Curran in 1939. Under his leadership, the LACLO produced or co-produced several of their own shows, a number of which went on to wider success, including '' Song of Norway'' (1944), '' Magdalena'' (1948), '' Kismet'' (1953), ''Peter Pan'' (1954) and '' Gigi'' (1973). Lester also brought in shows from Broadway to California, often with their original casts. Biography Lester was born in New York City, and worked professionally as a singer during his childhood and then had a brief career as a concert pianist. He moved to California to work for Sid Grauman at the Chinese Theater in Hollywood where he staged spectacle prologues in the late 1920s. In the early 1930s he wor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Omar Khayyam
Ghiyāth al-Dīn Abū al-Fatḥ ʿUmar ibn Ibrāhīm Nīshābūrī (18 May 1048 – 4 December 1131) (Persian language, Persian: غیاث الدین ابوالفتح عمر بن ابراهیم خیام نیشابورﻯ), commonly known as Omar Khayyam (), was a Persian poet and polymath, known for his contributions to Mathematics in medieval Islam, mathematics, Astronomy in the medieval Islamic world, astronomy, Iranian philosophy, philosophy, and Persian literature. He was born in Nishapur, Iran and lived during the Seljuk Empire, Seljuk era, around the time of the First Crusade. As a mathematician, he is most notable for his work on the classification and solution of cubic equations, where he provided a geometric formulation based on the intersection of conics. He also contributed to a deeper understanding of Euclid's parallel axiom. As an astronomer, he calculated the duration of the solar year with remarkable precision and accuracy, and designed the Jalali calendar, a solar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amah (occupation)
An amah (, , Medieval Latin: ''amma'', ) or ayah (, Latin: ''avia'', Tagalog language, Tagalog: ''yaya'') is a girl or woman employed by a family to clean, look after children, and perform other domestic tasks. ''Amah'' is the usual version in East Asia, while ''ayah'' relates more to South Asia, and tends to specifically mean a nursemaid looking after young children, rather than a general maid. Role It is a domestic servant role which combines functions of maid and nanny. They may be required to wear a uniform. The term, resembling the pronunciation for "mother" (see Mama and papa), is considered polite and respectful in the Chinese language. Ayahs have been identified as a distinctive occupational group in India from the late eighteenth century, becoming the mainstay of childcare work during the periods of Company rule in India and the British Raj, as colonial wives and therefore children became more prevalent. Joanna de Silva, a native of Bengal, possibly of part Portug ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Outlaw
An outlaw, in its original and legal meaning, is a person declared as outside the protection of the law. In pre-modern societies, all legal protection was withdrawn from the criminal, so anyone was legally empowered to persecute or kill them. Outlawry was thus one of the harshest penalties in the legal system. In Germanic law, early Germanic law, the death penalty is conspicuously absent, and outlawing is the most extreme punishment, presumably amounting to a death sentence in practice. The concept is known from Roman law, as the status of ''homo sacer'', and persisted throughout the Middle Ages. A secondary meaning of outlaw is a person systematically avoiding capture by evasion and violence. These meanings are related and overlapping but not necessarily identical. A fugitive who is declared outside protection of law in one jurisdiction but who receives asylum and lives openly and obedient to local laws in another jurisdiction is an outlaw in the first meaning but not the seco ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mecca
Mecca, officially Makkah al-Mukarramah, is the capital of Mecca Province in the Hejaz region of western Saudi Arabia; it is the Holiest sites in Islam, holiest city in Islam. It is inland from Jeddah on the Red Sea, in a narrow valley above sea level. Its metropolitan population in 2022 was 2.4million, making it the List of cities in Saudi Arabia by population, third-most populated city in Saudi Arabia after Riyadh and Jeddah. Around 44.5% of the population are Saudis, Saudi citizens and around 55.5% are Muslim world, Muslim foreigners from other countries. Pilgrims more than triple the population number every year during the Pilgrimage#Islam, pilgrimage, observed in the twelfth Islamic calendar, Hijri month of . With over 10.8 million international visitors in 2023, Mecca was one of the ten List of cities by international visitors, most visited cities in the world. Mecca is generally considered "the fountainhead and cradle of Islam". Mecca is revered in Islam as the birthp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hajj
Hajj (; ; also spelled Hadj, Haj or Haji) is an annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, the holiest city for Muslims. Hajj is a mandatory religious duty for capable Muslims that must be carried out at least once in their lifetime by all adult Muslims who are physically and financially capable of undertaking the journey, and of supporting their family during their absence from home. In Islamic terminology, Hajj is a pilgrimage made to the Kaaba, the "House of Allah", in the sacred city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia. It is one of the Five Pillars of Islam, alongside (oath that one believes there is no god but Allah), (prayer), (almsgiving), and (fasting during Ramadan). The Hajj is an annual practice when Muslim brotherhood is on display and their solidarity with fellow Muslim people and submission to God (Allah) is fulfilled. The Hajj is taken by Muslims to cleanse their souls of all worldly sins, which connotes both the outward act of a journey after death and th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Beggar
Begging (also known in North America as panhandling) is the practice of imploring others to grant a favor, often a gift of money, with little or no expectation of reciprocation. A person doing such is called a beggar or panhandler. Beggars may operate in public places such as transport routes, urban parks, and markets. Besides money, they may also ask for food, drink, cigarettes or other small items. Internet begging is the modern practice of asking people to give money to others via the Internet, rather than in person. Internet begging may encompass requests for help meeting basic needs such as medical care and shelter, as well as requests for people to pay for vacations, school trips, and other things that the beggar wants but cannot ostensibly afford. Beggars differ from religious mendicants in that some mendicants do not ask for money. Their subsistence is reciprocated by providing society with various forms of religious service, moral education, and preservation of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Imam
Imam (; , '; : , ') is an Islamic leadership position. For Sunni Islam, Sunni Muslims, Imam is most commonly used as the title of a prayer leader of a mosque. In this context, imams may lead Salah, Islamic prayers, serve as community leaders, and provide religious guidance. Thus for Sunnis, anyone can study the basic Islamic teachings and become an imam. For most Shia Islam, Shia Muslims, the Imams are absolute infallible leaders of the Islamic community after the Prophet. Shias consider the term to be only applicable to the members and descendants of the ''Ahl al-Bayt'', the family of the Islamic prophet Muhammad in Islam, Muhammad. In Twelver Shia, Twelver Shi'ism there are 14 The Fourteen Infallible, infallibles, 12 of which are Imams, the final being Muhammad al-Mahdi, Imam Mahdi who will return at the end of times. The title was also used by the Zaydism, Zaidi Shia Imams of Yemen, who eventually founded the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen (1918–1970). Sunni imams Sunni ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mosque
A mosque ( ), also called a masjid ( ), is a place of worship for Muslims. The term usually refers to a covered building, but can be any place where Salah, Islamic prayers are performed; such as an outdoor courtyard. Originally, mosques were simple places of prayer for the early Muslims, and may have been open spaces rather than elaborate buildings. In the first stage of Islamic architecture (650–750 CE), early mosques comprised open and closed covered spaces enclosed by walls, often with minarets, from which the Adhan, Islamic call to prayer was issued on a daily basis. It is typical of mosque buildings to have a special ornamental niche (a ''mihrab'') set into the wall in the direction of the city of Mecca (the ''qibla''), which Muslims must face during prayer, as well as a facility for ritual cleansing (''wudu''). The pulpit (''minbar''), from which public sermons (''khutbah'') are delivered on the event of Friday prayer, was, in earlier times, characteristic of the central ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Arabian Nights
''One Thousand and One Nights'' (, ), is a collection of Middle Eastern folktales compiled in the Arabic language during the Islamic Golden Age. It is often known in English as ''The Arabian Nights'', from the first English-language edition (), which rendered the title as ''The Arabian Nights' Entertainments''. The work was collected over many centuries by various authors, translators, and scholars across West Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, and North Africa. Some tales trace their roots back to ancient and medieval Arabic, Persian, and Mesopotamian literature. Most tales, however, were originally folk stories from the Abbasid and Mamluk eras, while others, especially the frame story, are probably drawn from the Pahlavi Persian work (, ), which in turn may be translations of older Indian texts. Common to all the editions of the ''Nights'' is the framing device of the story of the ruler Shahryar being narrated the tales by his wife Scheherazade, with one tale told over ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Baghdad
Baghdad ( or ; , ) is the capital and List of largest cities of Iraq, largest city of Iraq, located along the Tigris in the central part of the country. With a population exceeding 7 million, it ranks among the List of largest cities in the Arab world, most populous cities in the Middle East and Arab world and forms 22% of the Demographics of Iraq, country's population. Spanning an area of approximately , Baghdad is the capital of its Baghdad Governorate, governorate and serves as Iraq's political, economic, and cultural hub. Founded in 762 AD by Al-Mansur, Baghdad was the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate and became its most notable development project. The city evolved into a cultural and intellectual center of the Muslim world. This, in addition to housing several key academic institutions, including the House of Wisdom, as well as a multi-ethnic and multi-religious environment, garnered it a worldwide reputation as the "Center of Learning". For much of the Abbasid era, duri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
