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Peter Moores (businessman)
Sir Peter Moores (9 April 1932 – 23 March 2016) was a British businessman, art collector and philanthropist who was chairman of the Liverpool-based Littlewoods football pools and retailing business in the United Kingdom between 1977 and 1980. His father, Sir John Moores, was the founder of the Littlewoods company, though the family no longer owns it. In the Sunday Times Rich List 2006 the Moores' family wealth was estimated at £1,160m. Peter Moores was educated at Eton College and Christ Church, Oxford. His elder sister Lady Grantchester (née Betty Moores), who died in 2019, was the widow of Kenneth Bent Suenson-Taylor, 2nd Baron Grantchester (1921–1995). Peter Moores Foundation At the age of 32 in 1964, Moores set up the charity Peter Moores Foundation supporting music and the visual arts, but also education, health, social and environmental projects. The Foundation continued in existence until 5 April 2014, when its funds were exhausted. During its fifty years, it d ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Liverpool
Liverpool is a port City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. It is situated on the eastern side of the River Mersey, Mersey Estuary, near the Irish Sea, north-west of London. With a population of (in ), Liverpool is the administrative, cultural and economic centre of the Liverpool City Region, a combined authority, combined authority area with a population of over 1.5 million. Established as a borough in Lancashire in 1207, Liverpool became significant in the late 17th century when the Port of Liverpool was heavily involved in the Atlantic slave trade. The port also imported cotton for the Textile manufacture during the British Industrial Revolution, Lancashire textile mills, and became a major departure point for English and Irish emigrants to North America. Liverpool rose to global economic importance at the forefront of the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century and was home to the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, firs ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Amanda Roocroft
Amanda Jane Roocroft (born 9 February 1966) is an English operatic soprano, who in the course of her career has sung leading roles in the opera houses of Europe and North America. She is also a voice professor at London's Royal College of Music and a Fellow of the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester where she herself had trained as a singer. She also became a visiting tutor at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire in 2018. Roocroft was the winner of the 2007 Laurence Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement in Opera for her performance in the title role of ''Jenůfa'' at the English National Opera. Life and career Roocroft was born in Coppull, a village in Lancashire, and was educated at Southlands High School and Runshaw College. She then attended the Royal Northern College of Music where she studied singing under Barbara Robotham. In 1988 while still a student, she won the Kathleen Ferrier Award.Slonimsky, Nicolas and Kuhn, Laura (2005)"Roocroft, Amanda" ''Baker's ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Welsh National Opera
Welsh National Opera (WNO) () is an opera company based in Cardiff, Wales. WNO gave its first performances in 1946. The company began as a mainly amateur body and transformed into an all-professional ensemble by 1973. In its early days, the company gave a single week's annual season in Cardiff, gradually extending its schedule to become an all-year-round operation, with its own salaried chorus and orchestra. It has been described by ''The New York Times'' as "one of the finest operatic ensembles in Europe". For most of its existence the company lacked a permanent base in Cardiff, but in 2004 it moved into the new Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff Bay. The company tours nationally and internationally, giving more than 120 performances annually, with a repertoire of eight operas each year, to a combined audience of more than 150,000 people. Its most frequent venues other than Cardiff are Llandudno in Wales and Bristol, Birmingham, Liverpool, Milton Keynes, Oxford, Plymouth, and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gaetano Donizetti
Domenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti (29 November 1797 – 8 April 1848) was an Italian Romantic music, Romantic composer, best known for his almost 70 operas. Along with Gioachino Rossini and Vincenzo Bellini, he was a leading composer of the ''bel canto'' opera style during the first half of the nineteenth century and a probable influence on other composers such as Giuseppe Verdi. Donizetti was born in Bergamo in Lombardy. At an early age he was taken up by Simon Mayr who enrolled him with a full scholarship in a school which he had set up. There he received detailed musical training. Mayr was instrumental in obtaining a place for Donizetti at the Bologna Academy, where, at the age of 19, he wrote his first one-act opera, the comedy ''Il Pigmalione'', which may never have been performed during his lifetime. An offer in 1822 from Domenico Barbaja, the impresario of the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, which followed the composer's ninth opera, led to his move to Naples and his reside ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Benvenuto Cellini (opera)
''Benvenuto Cellini '' is an ''opera semiseria'' in four ''tableaux'' (spread across two or three acts) by Hector Berlioz, his first full-length work for the stage. Premiered at the Académie Royale de Musique (Salle Le Peletier) on 10 September 1838, it is a setting of a libretto by Léon de Wailly and Henri Auguste Barbier, who invented most of the plot inspired by the memoirs of the Florentine sculptor Benvenuto Cellini. The opera is technically challenging and was until the 21st century rarely performed. However, the overture occasionally features in orchestral concerts, as does the concert overture '' Le carnaval romain'' which Berlioz composed from material in the opera. Composition history Berlioz wrote this in his ''Mémoires'' about the background to the opera: I had been greatly struck by certain episodes in the life of ''Benvenuto Cellini''. I had the misfortune to believe they would make an interesting and dramatic subject for an opera, and I asked Léon de Wailly ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hector Berlioz
Louis-Hector Berlioz (11 December 1803 – 8 March 1869) was a French Romantic music, Romantic composer and conductor. His output includes orchestral works such as the ''Symphonie fantastique'' and ''Harold en Italie, Harold in Italy'', choral pieces including the Requiem (Berlioz), Requiem and ''L'Enfance du Christ'', his three operas ''Benvenuto Cellini (opera), Benvenuto Cellini'', ''Les Troyens'' and ''Béatrice et Bénédict'', and works of hybrid genres such as the "dramatic symphony" ''Roméo et Juliette (Berlioz), Roméo et Juliette'' and the "dramatic legend" ''La Damnation de Faust''. The elder son of a provincial physician, Berlioz was expected to follow his father into medicine, and he attended a Parisian medical college before defying his family by taking up music as a profession. His independence of mind and refusal to follow traditional rules and formulas put him at odds with the conservative musical establishment of Paris. He briefly moderated his style ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Terry Gilliam
Terrence Vance Gilliam ( ; born 22 November 1940) is an American-British filmmaker, comedian, collage film, collage animator, and actor. He gained stardom as a member of the Monty Python comedy troupe alongside John Cleese, Eric Idle, Michael Palin, Terry Jones, and Graham Chapman. Together they collaborated on the sketch comedy, sketch series ''Monty Python's Flying Circus'' (1969–1974) and the films ''Monty Python and the Holy Grail'' (1975, also co-directed), ''Monty Python's Life of Brian, Life of Brian'' (1979) and ''Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, The Meaning of Life'' (1983). In 1988, they received the British Academy Film Awards, BAFTA Award for BAFTA Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema Award, Outstanding British Contribution to Cinema. In 2009, Gilliam received the BAFTA Fellowship for lifetime achievement. Gilliam transitioned to directing serious films with themes exploring imagination and oppositions to bureaucracy and authoritarianism. His films are some ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera House (ROH) is a theatre in Covent Garden, central London. The building is often referred to as simply Covent Garden, after a previous use of the site. The ROH is the main home of The Royal Opera, The Royal Ballet, and the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House (now known collectively as the Royal Ballet and Opera). The first theatre on the site, the Theatre Royal (1732), served primarily as a playhouse for the first hundred years of its history. In 1734, the first ballet was presented. A year later, the first season of operas, by George Frideric Handel, began. Many of his operas and oratorios were specifically written for Covent Garden and had their premieres there. The current building is the third theatre on the site, following disastrous fires in 1808 and 1856 to previous buildings. The façade, foyer, and auditorium date from 1858, but almost every other element of the present complex dates from an extensive reconstruction in the 1990s. The main auditorium ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Written On Skin
''Written on Skin'' is an opera by the British composer George Benjamin, with a libretto written by Martin Crimp. Benjamin's first full-length opera, it was premiered at the 2012 Aix-en-Provence Festival by the Mahler Chamber Orchestra as a commission from five opera centres,John Allison. Review of operas performed at the Aix-en-Provence Festival. ''Opera'', September 2012, Volume 63 No 9, pp. 1087–88. and received its British premiere at the Royal Opera House in London in March 2013 and its Paris premiere at the Opéra-Comique in November that year; Benjamin conducted for all of these premiere seasons. The libretto by Martin Crimp, who also wrote the libretto for Benjamin's first opera ''Into The Little Hill'', is based on legend of the troubadour Guillaume de Cabestanh; the story is also repeated in ''The Decameron'' of Giovanni Boccaccio. The action takes place in 13th-century Provence. The opera is divided into 15 scenes. The Protector (a rich land-owner) pays the B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Benjamin (composer)
Sir George William John Benjamin, CBE (born 31 January 1960) is an English composer, conductor, pianist and teacher. Biography Benjamin was born in London and attended Westminster School. He studied piano privately with Marguerite Tury from 1967–1974. He wrote his first composition at the age of nine, and took piano and composition lessons with Peter Gellhorn until age 15, after which Gellhorn arranged for Benjamin to continue his lessons in Paris with Olivier Messiaen, whom he had known for many years. Messiaen was reported to have described Benjamin as his favourite pupil. He then read music at King's College, Cambridge, studying under Alexander Goehr and Robin Holloway. Benjamin's orchestral piece ''Ringed by the Flat Horizon'' (written for the Cambridge University Musical Society and premiered in Cambridge under the baton of Mark Elder on 5 March 1980) was performed at The Proms that August, while he was still a student, making him the then-youngest living composer ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Swan Song
The swan song (; ) is a metaphorical phrase for a final gesture, effort, or performance given just before death or retirement. The phrase refers to an ancient belief that swans sing a beautiful song just before their death while they have been silent (or alternatively not so musical) for most of their lifetime. The belief, whose basis has been long debated, had become proverbial in ancient Greece by the 3rd century BCE and was reiterated many times in later Western culture, Western poetry and art. In reality, swans learn a variety of sounds throughout their lifetime; their sounds are more distinguishable during courting rituals and not correlated with death. Origin and description In Greek mythology, the swan was a bird consecrated to Apollo, and it was therefore considered a symbol of harmony and beauty and its limited capabilities as a singer were sublime (philosophy), sublimated to those of songbirds. Aesop's fable of "The Swan and the Goose" incorporates the swan song lege ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
HIV/AIDS
The HIV, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is a retrovirus that attacks the immune system. Without treatment, it can lead to a spectrum of conditions including acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). It is a Preventive healthcare, preventable disease. It can be managed with treatment and become a manageable chronic health condition. While there is no cure or vaccine for HIV, Management of HIV/AIDS, antiretroviral treatment can slow the course of the disease, and if used before significant disease progression, can extend the life expectancy of someone living with HIV to a nearly standard level. An HIV-positive person on treatment can expect to live a normal life, and die with the virus, not of it. Effective #Treatment, treatment for HIV-positive people (people living with HIV) involves a life-long regimen of medicine to suppress the virus, making the viral load undetectable. Treatment is recommended as soon as the diagnosis is made. An HIV-positive person who has an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
