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Sigh No More (musical)
''Sigh No More'' is a musical revue consisting of twenty-two scenes and numbers composed, written and produced by Noël Coward, with additional items by Joyce Grenfell, Richard Addinsell and Norman Hackforth."A Noel Coward Revue", ''The Manchester Guardian'', 12 July 1945; p. 3 The show was Coward's first post-World War II musical and starred Cyril Ritchard, his wife Madge Elliott and Joyce Grenfell. It also featured Graham Payn, Coward's longtime partner, who sang the best-known song in the show, the wistful "Matelot". It opened at the Manchester Opera House on 11 July 1945, before transferring to London's West End, where it opened at the Piccadilly Theatre on 22 August 1945, running for 213 performances and closing on 23 February 1946.Ivor Brown, ''The Observer'', 26 August 1945, p. 2 Despite its indifferent success, it contained songs that endured in Coward's later cabaret act and elsewhere. Musical numbers ;Part 1 *Sigh No More – Harlequin and Singing Silphides (Pay ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Noël Coward
Sir Noël Peirce Coward (16 December 189926 March 1973) was an English playwright, composer, director, actor, and singer, known for his wit, flamboyance, and what ''Time (magazine), Time'' called "a sense of personal style, a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise"."Noel Coward at 70" ''Time'', 26 December 1969, p. 46 Coward attended a dance academy in London as a child, making his professional stage début at the age of eleven. As a teenager he was introduced into the high society in which most of his plays would be set. Coward achieved enduring success as a playwright, publishing more than 50 plays from his teens onwards. Many of his works, such as ''Hay Fever (play), Hay Fever'', ''Private Lives'', ''Design for Living'', ''Pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Loch Lomond (song)
"The Bonnie Banks o' Loch Lomond" (or "Loch Lomond") is a traditional Scottish folk song (Roud No. 9598).Loch Lomond , '. Edited by Robert B. Waltz and David G. Engle. 2018. Its origins are thought to date to the . is the largest Scottish |
Musicals By Noël Coward
Musical theatre is a form of theatrical performance that combines songs, spoken dialogue, acting and dance. The story and emotional content of a musical – humor, pathos, love, anger – are communicated through words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an integrated whole. Although musical theatre overlaps with other theatrical forms like opera and dance, it may be distinguished by the equal importance given to the music as compared with the dialogue, movement and other elements. Since the early 20th century, musical theatre stage works have generally been called, simply, musicals. Although music has been a part of dramatic presentations since ancient times, modern Western musical theatre emerged during the 19th century, with many structural elements established by the light opera works of Jacques Offenbach in France, Gilbert and Sullivan in Britain and the works of Harrigan and Hart in America. These were followed by Edwardian musical com ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mantovani
Annunzio Paolo Mantovani (; 15 November 1905 – 30 March 1980) was an Italian British conductor, composer and light orchestra-styled entertainer with a cascading strings musical signature. The book '' British Hit Singles & Albums'' stated that he was "Britain's most successful album act before the Beatles ... the first act to sell over one million stereo albums and avesix albums simultaneously in the US Top 30 in 1959". Biography Mantovani was born in Venice, Italy, into a musical family. His father, Benedetto Paolo "Bismarck" Mantovani, was a violinist and served as the concertmaster of La Scala opera house's orchestra in Milan, under the baton of Arturo Toscanini. The family moved to England in 1912, where young Annunzio studied at Trinity College of Music in London. After graduation, he formed his own orchestra, which played in and around Birmingham. He married Winifred Moss (1909-1977) in 1934, having two children: Kenneth (born 12 July 1935) and Paula Iren ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Observer
''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. First published in 1791, it is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper. In 1993 it was acquired by Guardian Media Group Limited, and operated as a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and '' The Guardian Weekly''. In December 2024, Tortoise Media acquired the paper from the Scott Trust Limited, with the transition taking place on 22 April 2025. History Origins The first issue was published on 4 December 1791 by W.S. Bourne, making ''The Observer'' the world's oldest Sunday newspaper. Believing that the paper would be a means of wealth, Bourne instead soon found himself facing debts of nearly £1,600. Though early editions purported editorial independence, Bourne attempted to cut his losses and sell the title to the government. When this failed, Bourne's brother (a wealthy businessman) made an offer to the government, which also refused to buy the paper but agreed to subsidise it in return for influence over its editori ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ivor Brown
Ivor John Carnegie Brown CBE (25 April 1891 – 22 April 1974) was a British journalist and man of letters. After graduating from Oxford with top honours, he joined the civil service, but left after two days to pursue a freelance career as a writer. He later joined the staff of ''The Manchester Guardian'' as its London drama critic, and subsequently wrote for, and for six years edited, ''The Observer''. He was widely regarded as the leading drama critic of his generation. Brown was a prolific author; he published more than seventy-five books – some of them compilations of his journalism, and others about words, their origins, meaning and use. Life and career Early years Brown was born in Penang, Malaya, on 25 April 1891, the younger of two sons of William Carnegie Brown, a specialist in tropical diseases, and his wife Jean, ''née'' Carnegie.Howard, Philip"Brown, Ivor John Carnegie (1891–1974)" ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blithe Spirit (play)
''Blithe Spirit'' is a comic play by Noël Coward, described by the author as "an improbable farce in three acts". The play concerns the socialite and novelist Charles Condomine, who invites the eccentric medium and clairvoyant Madame Arcati to his house to conduct a séance, hoping to gather material for his next book. The scheme backfires when he is haunted by the ghost of his wilful and temperamental first wife, Elvira, after the séance. Elvira makes continual attempts to disrupt Charles's marriage to his second wife, Ruth, who cannot see or hear the ghost. The play was first seen in the West End in 1941 and ran for 1,997 performances, a new record for a non-musical play in London. It also did well on Broadway later that year, running for 657 performances. The play was adapted for the cinema in 1945; a second film version followed in 2020. Coward directed a musical adaptation, '' High Spirits'', seen on Broadway and in the West End in 1964. Radio and television presenta ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Manchester Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Guardian Media Group, owned by the Scott Trust Limited. The trust was created in 1936 to "secure the financial and editorial independence of ''The Guardian'' in perpetuity and to safeguard the journalistic freedom and liberal values of ''The Guardian'' free from commercial or political interference". The trust was converted into a limited company in 2008, with a constitution written so as to maintain for ''The Guardian'' the same protections as were built into the structure of the Scott Trust by its creators. Profits are reinvested in its journalism rather than distributed to owners or shareholders. It is considered a newspaper of record in the UK. The editor-in-chief Katharine Viner succeeded Alan Rusbridger in 2015. S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Samba
Samba () is a broad term for many of the rhythms that compose the better known Brazilian music genres that originated in the Afro-Brazilians, Afro Brazilian communities of Bahia in the late 19th century and early 20th century, It is a name or prefix used for several rhythmic variants, such as samba urbano carioca (''urban Carioca samba''), samba de roda (sometimes also called ''rural samba''), among many other forms of samba, mostly originated in the Rio de Janeiro (state), Rio de Janeiro and Bahia states. Having its roots in Brazilian mythology, Brazilian folk traditions, especially those linked to the primitive rural samba of the Colonial Brazil, colonial and Empire of Brazil, imperial periods, is considered one of the most important cultural phenomena in Brazil and one of the country symbols. Present in the Portuguese language at least since the 19th century, the word "samba" was originally used to designate a "popular dance". Over time, its meaning has been extended to a "B ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Times
''The Times'' is a British Newspaper#Daily, daily Newspaper#National, national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (founded in 1821), are published by Times Media, since 1981 a subsidiary of News UK, in turn wholly owned by News Corp. ''The Times'' and ''The Sunday Times'' were founded independently and have had common ownership only since 1966. It is considered a newspaper of record in the UK. ''The Times'' was the first newspaper to bear that name, inspiring numerous other papers around the world. In countries where these other titles are popular, the newspaper is often referred to as or , although the newspaper is of national scope and distribution. ''The Times'' had an average daily circulation of 365,880 in March 2020; in the same period, ''The Sunday Times'' had an average weekly circulation of 647,622. The two ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Begin The Beguine
"Begin the Beguine" is a popular song written by Cole Porter. Porter composed the song during a 1935 Pacific cruise aboard the Cunard ocean liner ''Franconia'' from Kalabahi, Indonesia, to Fiji. In October 1935, it was introduced by June Knight in the Broadway musical ''Jubilee'', produced at the Imperial Theatre in New York City. The first successful recording was a swing orchestral version released by Artie Shaw and His Orchestra in 1938. In 1981, Julio Iglesias released a Spanish language version which reached No. 1 on the U.K. chart, the first fully Spanish song to top the chart in the country. Music The beguine is a dance and music form, similar to a slow rhumba. In his book ''American Popular Song: The Great Innovators 1900–1950'', musicologist and composer Alec Wilder, described "Begin the Beguine" as a maverick, it is an unprecedented experiment and one which, to this day, after hearing it hundreds of times, I cannot sing or whistle or play from start to finish wit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Piccadilly Theatre
The Piccadilly Theatre is a West End theatre located at the junction of Denman Street and Sherwood Street, near Piccadilly Circus, in the City of Westminster, London. It opened in 1928. In its early years the theatre presented a wide range of productions, and was briefly a cinema. During the Second World War it presented productions ranging from the premiere of Noël Coward's '' Blithe Spirit'' to John Gielgud's lavish production of ''Macbeth''. Later productions in the 1940s and 1950s included Cole Porter's ''Panama Hattie'' (1943), Coward's revue ''Sigh No More (musical), Sigh No More'' (1945) and Peter Ustinov's ''Romanoff and Juliet (play), Romanoff and Juliet'' (1956). In 1964 the Piccadilly presented the British premiere of ''Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?'', but by this time musicals had begun to outnumber non-musical plays at this theatre, with revivals of ''Oliver!'' and ''Man of La Mancha'', and later productions including ''Gypsy (musical), Gypsy'' (1973), ''A Funn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
