May 16 Dateline

Birthdays

1892 - Richard Tauber, Austrian film actor and tenor who sung in light operas especially Mozart's and Lehar's. Listen to Tauber sing "You are my heart's delight", from the operetta Land of Smiles (Land des Lächelns), composed by Franz Lehar.

 
1905 - Henry Jaynes Fonda, American actor who had a career that spanned five decades in Hollywood. Fonda cultivated a strong, appealing screen image in several films now considered to be classics, earning one Academy Award for Best Actor on two nominations. His early career peaked with his Academy Award-nominated performance as Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath, about an Oklahoma family who moved to California during the Dust Bowl 1930s. This film is widely considered to be among the greatest American films.

1919 - Liberace (Władziu Valentino Liberace), American pianist, singer and actor. A child prodigy of Italian and Polish origin, Liberace enjoyed a career spanning four decades of concerts, recordings, television, motion pictures, and endorsements. At the height of his fame, he was the highest-paid entertainer in the world, with established concert residencies in Las Vegas, and an international touring schedule. Liberace embraced a lifestyle of flamboyant excess both on and off stage, acquiring the nickname "Mr. Showmanship".

1929 - Adrienne Rich (born Adrienne Cecile Rich), American poet, essayist and feminist. She was called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the 20th century", and was credited with bringing "the oppression of women and lesbians to the forefront of poetic discourse." She criticized rigid forms of feminist identities, and valorized what she coined the "lesbian continuum," a female continuum of solidarity and creativity that impacts and fills women's lives. Her first collection of poetry, A Change of World, was selected by renowned poet W. H. Auden for the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award. She famously declined the National Medal of Arts, protesting the vote by House Speaker Newt Gingrich to end funding for the National Endowment for the Arts.

Lefties:
None known

 

More birthdays and historical events today, May 16 - On This Day.

 

 

Feature: 

Liberace, the flamboyant piano prodigy performing Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's  "Waltz of the Flowers" (1892), a piece of orchestral music from the second act of  Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker ballet.

Historical Events

1770- Marie Antoinette, aged 14, marries the future King Louis XVI of France, aged 15.  

1929 - Hollywood stages an experimental publicity stunt for the movie industry at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. This later evolves into the Academy Awards extravaganza.

May 15 Dateline

Birthdays

1567 - Claudio Monteverdi, Italian composer, regarded as the father of modern opera. He was an Italian composer of both secular and sacred music, a pioneer in the development of opera and considered a crucial transitional figure between the Renaissance and the Baroque periods of music history. (Monteverdi: Damigella tutta bella; Voices of Music. Uploaded by Voices of Music. Accessed May 15, 2019. And here's the sublime Magnificat (Complete) by Monteverdi. Uploaded by S. Quimas. Accessed May 15, 2019.)

1759 - Maria Theresia Paradis, Austrian musician and composer who lost her sight at an early age, and for whom Mozart may have written his Piano Concerto No. 18 in B-flat major. (Sharing an all-time favourite music by Maria T. von Paradis, "Sicilienne", beautifully interpreted by Jacqueline du Pré, accompanied by Gerald Moore on the piano. Uploaded by Taskin Damirel. Accessed May 15, 2012. Maria Theresia von Paradis: Sicilienne for Flute and Harp. PPZ production presents in Best Youth European Classical program: Vita Benko, flute. Eva Tomšič, harp. YouTube, uploaded by zevnikov. Accessed May 15, 2021.) 

1890 - Katherine Anne Porter, American short-story writer and novelist, journalist, and essayist, and university professor. Her 1962 novel Ship of Fools was the best-selling novel in America that year, but her short stories received much more critical acclaim. Despite Porter's claim that after the publication of Ship of Fools (her only novel) she would not win any more prizes in America, in 1966 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize and the U.S. National Book Award for The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter. That year she was also appointed to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

1909 - James Neville Mason, English actor. Mason is widely considered to be one of the greatest film actors of the 20th century, achieving success in British cinema before becoming one of Hollywood's biggest stars. He starred in Odd Man Out (1947), the first recipient of the BAFTA Award for Best British Film.  He starred in a number of successful British and American films from the 1950s to the early 1980s.  Mason was nominated for three Academy Awards, three Golden Globes (winning the Golden Globe in 1955 for A Star is Born) and two BAFTA Awards.

1948 - Brian Eno (born Brian Peter George Eno), English musician, record producer, visual artist, and theorist, best known for his pioneering work in ambient music and contributions to rock, pop and electronica. A self-described "non-musician", Eno has been described as one of popular music's most influential and innovative figures.

Lefties:
None known

More birthdays and historical events today, May 15 - On This Day.

 

Historical Events

1940 - Nylon stockings start its general sale in the U.S.  Nylon is the first commercially successful polymer, made entirely from the basic ingredients of coal, water, and air.

1944 - Generals Eisenhower and Montgomery, Prime Minister Churchill, and King George VI discuss Britain's D-Day plan.