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Spoleto Festival
The ''Festival dei Due Mondi'' (Festival of the Two Worlds) is an annual summer music and opera festival held each June to early July in Spoleto, Italy, since its founding by composer Gian Carlo Menotti in 1958. It features a vast array of concerts, opera, dance, drama, visual arts and roundtable discussions on science. The "Two Worlds" in the name of the festival comes from Gian Carlo Menotti's intention to have the worlds of American and European culture facing each other in his event; this concept would then be strengthened by the fact that it was held in conjunction with its "twin", the Spoleto Festival USA held annually in May/June in Charleston, South Carolina. That twinning lasted some 15 years and, after growing disputes between the Menotti family and the board of Spoleto Festival USA, in the early 1990s a separation occurred. Under Menotti's direction in 1986, a third installment in the Spoleto Festival series was held in Melbourne, Australia. Melbourne's Spoleto Festi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spoleto Festival 2008
Spoleto (, also , , ; ) is an ancient city in the Italian province of Perugia in east-central Umbria on a foothill of the Apennines. It is south of Trevi, north of Terni, southeast of Perugia; southeast of Florence; and north of Rome. History Spoleto was situated on the eastern branch of the Via Flaminia, which forked into two roads at Narni and rejoined at , near Foligno. An ancient road also ran hence to Nursia. The of the 1st century BC still exists. The forum lies under today's marketplace. Located at the head of a large, broad valley, surrounded by mountains, Spoleto has long occupied a strategic geographical position. It appears to have been an important town to the original Umbri tribes, who built walls around their settlement in the 5th century BC, some of which are visible today. The first historical mention of is the notice of the foundation of a colony there in 241 BC; and it was still, according to Cicero "": a Latin colony in 95 BC. After the Battle of Lake ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Schippers
Thomas Schippers (9 March 1930 – 16 December 1977) was an American conductor. He was highly regarded for his work in opera. Biography Of Dutch ancestry and son of the owner of a large appliance store, Schippers was born in Portage, Michigan. He began playing piano at age four. After graduating from high school at age 13, he attended the Curtis Institute and the Juilliard School. Schippers made his debut at the New York City Opera at age twenty-one, and the Metropolitan Opera at twenty-five. He conducted world premieres of now well-known music by Gian Carlo Menotti and Samuel Barber. He conducted child actor Chet Allen in a theatrical version of Menotti's '' Amahl and the Night Visitors''. Schippers conducted in all the major opera houses of the United States and Europe, most notably the Metropolitan Opera and La Scala, and founded Italy's Spoleto festival with Menotti and once described his perfect orchestra as being composed of "one-third Italian musicians for their lin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with Lucien Carr, William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Generation. He vigorously opposed militarism, economic materialism, and sexual repression, and he embodied various aspects of this counterculture with his views on drugs, sex, multiculturalism, hostility to bureaucracy, and openness to Eastern religions. Best known for his poem " Howl", Ginsberg denounced what he saw as the destructive forces of capitalism and conformity in the United States. San Francisco police and US Customs seized copies of "Howl" in 1956, and a subsequent obscenity trial in 1957 attracted widespread publicity due to the poem's language and descriptions of heterosexual and homosexual sex at a time when sodomy laws made male homosexual acts a crime in every state. The poem reflected Ginsberg's own sexuality a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marisa Berenson
Vittoria Marisa Schiaparelli Berenson (born February 15, 1947) is an American actress and former model. She appeared on the front covers of '' Vogue'' and ''Time'', and won the National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Natalia Landauer in the 1972 film ''Cabaret''. The role also earned her Golden Globe and BAFTA Award nominations. Her other film appearances include '' Death in Venice'' (1971), '' Barry Lyndon'' (1975), '' S.O.B.'' (1981), and '' I Am Love'' (2009). In 2001, she made her Broadway debut in the revival of '' Design for Living''. Early life Childhood Berenson was born in New York City, the elder of two daughters. Her father, Robert Lawrence Berenson, was an American career diplomat turned shipping executive. He was of Russian Jewish and Polish Jewish descent; the family's original paternal surname was ''Valvrojenski''. Her mother was Maria-Luisa Yvonne "Gogo" Radha de Wendt Schiaparelli, a socialite of Italian, Swiss and French ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Al Pacino
Alfredo James Pacino ( ; ; born April 25, 1940) is an American actor. Known for his intense performances on stage and screen, Pacino is widely regarded as one of the greatest actors of all time. His career spans more than five decades, during which he has earned many accolades, including an Academy Award, two Tony Awards, and two Primetime Emmy Awards, achieving the Triple Crown of Acting. He has also received four Golden Globe Awards, a BAFTA, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and was honored with the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2001, the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2007, the National Medal of Arts in 2011, and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2016. A method actor, Pacino studied at HB Studio and the Actors Studio, where he was taught by Charlie Laughton and Lee Strasberg. Pacino went on to receive the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in '' Scent of a Woman'' (1992). His other Oscar-nominated roles were in ''The Godfather'' (1972), '' Serpico'' (1973), ''The G ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ralph Farris
Ralph Farris (born Ralph Howard Farris, Jr., 1970) is an American violist, violinist, composer, arranger, producer and conductor, best known as a founding member and artistic director of the ensemble ETHEL. Farris is an electric string player with a lengthy career that spans the gamut of musical genres from rock and jazz to Broadway. His instruments are outfitted with a piezoelectric pickup which allows him to play amplified. Amplification was initially adopted early in Farris's career in order to facilitate the playing of various "contemporary classical" pieces that involve electronic components. It continues to be integral to his signature sound. Early life Farris was born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1970, the son of musicians, Nancy DuCette Farris and Ralph Howard Farris. He began studying music at the age of 3, beginning with recorder and piano, moving on to violin at age six. As a boy soprano, he was featured as a soloist in several of his parents' Ralph Farris Chorale pr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Luciano Pavarotti
Luciano Pavarotti (, , ; 12 October 19356 September 2007) was an Italian operatic tenor who during the late part of his career crossed over into popular music, eventually becoming one of the most acclaimed tenors of all time. He made numerous recordings of complete operas and individual arias, gaining worldwide fame for his tone, and gaining the nickname "King of the High Cs". As one of the Three Tenors, who performed their first concert during the 1990 FIFA World Cup before a global audience, Pavarotti became well known for his televised concerts and media appearances. From the beginning of his professional career as a tenor in 1961 in Italy to his final performance of " Nessun dorma" at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Pavarotti was at his best in bel canto operas, pre-'' Aida'' Verdi roles, and Puccini works such as ''La bohème'', '' Tosca'', '' Turandot'' and '' Madama Butterfly''. He sold over 100 million records, and the first Three Tenors recording became the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arnoldo Foà
Arnoldo Foà (24 January 1916 – 11 January 2014) was an Italian actor, voice actor, theatre director, singer and writer. He appeared in more than 130 films between 1938 and 2014. Biography Foà was born in Ferrara, Italy, to a Jewish family, though Foà was an atheist in his adult life. Foà completed high school in Florence, where he moved with his family, and studied at the acting school of Rasi. He abandoned his studies in economics and at age 20 moved to Rome, where he attended the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia. He was initiated to the Italian Scottish Rite Freemasonry in 1947 at the lodge " Alpi Giulie" n.150 (in Rome), taking later the highest degree. Foà died on 11 January 2014 from respiratory failure, just 13 days short of his 98th birthday. Theatre 1930s * ''La serenata al vento'' by Carlo Veneziani, directed by Alberto Bracaloni, 1935 * ''La dodicesima notte'' by William Shakespeare, directed by Pietro Sharoff, 1938 * ''L’Alcalde di Zalamea' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vittorio Gassman
Vittorio Gassman (; born Gassmann; 1 September 1922 – 29 June 2000), popularly known as , was an Italian actor, director, and screenwriter. He is considered one of the greatest Italian actors, whose career includes both important productions as well as dozens of ''divertissements''. Early life Gassman was born in Genoa to a German father, Heinrich Gassmann (an engineer from Karlsruhe), and an Italian Jews, Italian Jewish mother, Luisa Ambron, born in Pisa. While still very young, he moved to Rome, where he studied at the Accademia Nazionale di Arte Drammatica Silvio D'Amico, Silvio D'Amico National Academy of Dramatic Arts. Career Gassman's debut was in Milan, in 1942, with Alda Borelli in Niccodemi's ''La Nemica'' (theatre). He then moved to Rome and acted at the ''Teatro Eliseo'' joining Tino Carraro and Ernesto Calindri in a team that remained famous for some time; with them he acted in a range of plays from bourgeois comedy to sophisticated intellectual theatre. In 19 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an List of poets from the United States, American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy, collaborator in Fascist Italy (1922–1943), Fascist Italy and the Italian Social Republic, Salò Republic during World War II. His works include ''Ripostes'' (1912), ''Hugh Selwyn Mauberley'' (1920), and ''The Cantos'' (–1962). Pound's contribution to poetry began in the early-20th century with his role in developing Imagism, a movement stressing precision and economy of language. Working in London as foreign editor of several American literary magazines, he helped to discover and shape the work of contemporaries such as H.D., Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, and James Joyce. He was responsible for the 1914 serialization of Joyce's ''A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man'', the 1915 publication of Eliot's "Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roman Polanski
Raymond Roman Thierry Polański (; born 18 August 1933) is a Polish and French filmmaker and actor. He is the recipient of List of awards and nominations received by Roman Polanski, numerous accolades, including an Academy Award, three British Academy Film Awards, ten César Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, as well as the Golden Bear and a Palme d'Or. In 1977, Polanski was arrested for Roman Polanski sexual abuse case, drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl. He pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of Statutory rape, unlawful sex with a minor in exchange for a probation-only sentence. The night before his sentencing hearing in 1978, he learned that the judge would likely reject the proffered plea bargain, so he fled the U.S. to Europe, where he continued his career. He remains a fugitive from the U.S. justice system. Further allegations of abuse have been made by other women. Polanski's parents moved the family from his birthplace in Paris back to Kraków in 1937.Paul Werner, ' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
