October 25 Dateline

Birthdays

1825 - Johann Strauss II (Jr.), Austrian composer, famous for "The Blue Danube Waltz" and Die Fledermaus ("The Bat"). He's the eldest son of composer and orchestra leader Johann Strauss I. Johann strauss II is known as "The Waltz King", with his waltzes melodic and charming. He wasn't also limited to dances, as he composed a series of brilliant operettas. His music exudes the same love of melody and graceful Viennese mood.

1838 - Georges Bizet (born Alexandre César Léopold Bizet) French composer of the Romantic era, famous for opera Carmen, the tragic tale of a Spanish gypsy girl, is one of the most popular and frequently performed operas ever written. During his brilliant student career at the Conservatoire de Paris, Bizet won many prizes, including the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1857. His two other works are Symphony in C and Les Pecheurs de perles (The Pearl Fishers). (Bizet - Symphony in C 1/4, Avi Ostrowsky, Bilkent Symphony Orchestra. Uploaded by avihu4. Accessed October 25, 2015. Note: I've enabled the autoplay at Youtube so the next three movements will play until 4/4.)

1881 - Pablo Picasso, Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, stage designer. Regarded as one of the most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), and Guernica (1937), a dramatic portrayal of the bombing of Guernica by the German and Italian airforces during the Spanish Civil War. He spent most of his adult life in France.    

1923 - Don Oscar Banks, Australian composer of concert, jazz, and commercial music. Jazz was Banks' earliest and strongest musical influence. He studied composition privately with Matyas Seiber, who was himself much interested in jazz. He became a friend and associate of Gunther Schuller and was much involved with Tubby Hayes, writing several compositions for him. Banks's best-known works include Nexus, his major 'Third Stream' composition, the Sonata da Camera for flute, clarinet, bass clarinet, piano, percussion, violin, viola, and cello (1961 - dedicated to Matyas Seiber); a Horn Concerto (1965); a Trio for horn, violin, and piano (1962); and a Violin Concerto (1968).

1928 - Marion Eileen Ross, American retired actress. Her best-known role is that of Marion Cunningham on the ABC television sitcom Happy Days, on which she starred from 1974 to 1984 and received two Primetime Emmy Award nominations. Before her success on Happy Days, Ross appeared in a variety of film roles, appearing in The Glenn Miller Story, Sabrina, Lust for Life, Teacher's Pet, Some Came Running, Operation Petticoat, and Honky, as well as several minor television roles, one of which was on television’s The Lone Ranger. Ross also starred in The Evening Star, for which she was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress. Since the 1990s, Ross has been known for voice-over work on animated television series.

1942 - Helen Maxine Reddy, Australian-American singer, songwriter, author, actress, and activist. She moved to Chicago, and subsequently, Los Angeles, where she made her debut singles "One Way Ticket" and "I Believe in Music". The B-side of the latter single, "I Don't Know How to Love Him", reached number eight on the pop chart of Canadian magazine RPM. She was signed to Capitol Records a year later. Reddy's song "I Am Woman" played a significant role in popular culture, becoming an anthem for second-wave feminism. She came to be known as a "feminist poster girl" or a "feminist icon". In 2011, Billboard named her the number-28 adult contemporary artist of all time (number-9 woman). In 2013, the Chicago Tribune dubbed her as the "Queen of '70s Pop" (Helen Reddy - I don't know how to love Him [Andrew Lloyd Webber]  - "The Queen of Pops 70s. ReddyRockedThe70s. Accessed October 25, 2020.) 

 
Leftie:
Artist Pablo Picasso

 

More birthdays and historical events, October 25 - On This Day

 

Historical Events

1415 - Henry V of England defeats the French at the Battle of Agincourt in northern France.

1823 - Carl Maria von Weber's opera Euryanthe stars Henrietta Sontag at its premiere, in Vienna.

October 24 Dateline

Birthdays

1632 - Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, FRS, Dutch businessman and scientist (Microbiologist) in the Golden Age of Dutch science and technology. A largely self-taught man in science, he is commonly known as "the Father of Microbiology", and one of the first microscopists and microbiologists. (Antonie van Leeuwenhoek Biography. Wikipedia.)

1811 - Ferdinand (von) Hiller, German composer, conductor, pianist, writer and music critic. He was very successful lecturer and a forceful writer, his contributions to reviews and newspapers having been in book form. He also published among others: Musikalisches und Persönliches (1870), Wie hören wir Musik? (How do we hear [or: listen to] music?, 1880); Goethes musikalisches Leben (Goethe's musical life, 1880); and Erinnerungsblätter (Reminiscences, 1884). He published an account of his friendship with Mendelssohn in 1874. Part of his vast correspondence with other musicians and artists of his period has been published in seven volumes.

1868 -  Alexandra David-Néel, Belgian–French explorer, spiritualist, anarchist and writer. She is most known for her 1924 visit to Lhasa, Tibet, when it was forbidden to foreigners. She was unhappy as a child. She tried running away over and over, starting when she was two years old. As a teenager, she traveled by herself through European countries, including a bike trip across Spain. When she was 21, she inherited money from her parents, and she used it all to go to Sri Lanka. She worked as an opera singer for a while to finance her travels. She was especially interested in Buddhism. She wrote over 30 books about Eastern religion, philosophy, and her travels, including Magic and Mystery in Tibet which was published in 1929. Her teachings influenced the beat writers Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, the populariser of Eastern philosophy Alan Watts, and the esotericist Benjamin Creme.

1925 - Luciano Berio, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI, Italian composer. He is noted for his experimental work (in particular his 1968 composition Sinfonia and his series of virtuosic solo pieces titled Sequenza), and also for his pioneering work in electronic music.

1932 - Perre-Gilles de Gennes, French physicist and the Nobel Prize Laureate in physics in 1991. He worked on granular materials and on the nature of memory objects in the brain and was awarded the Nobel Prize for discovering that "methods developed for studying order phenomena in simple systems can be generalized to more complex forms of matter, in particular to liquid crystals and polymers".

1947 - Kevin (Delaney) Kline, American actor. He has won an Oscar and three Tony Awards and is a 2003 American Theatre Hall of Fame inductee. A multi-awarded actor, Kline began his career on stage in 1972 with The Acting Company. He has gone on to win three Tony Awards for his work on Broadway, winning Best Featured Actor in a Musical for the 1978 original production of On the Twentieth Century, Best Actor in a Musical for the 1981 revival of The Pirates of Penzance, and Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for the 2017 revival of Present Laughter.

Lefties:
None known

 

More birthdays and historical events, October 24 - On This Day

 

Historical Events

1260 - Chartres Cathedral in France, is dedicated in the presence of King Louis IX of France. It is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

1861 - The first transcontinental telegraph line across the U.S., between St. Joseph, Missouri, and Sacramento, California, is completed by the Western Union Company.

1885 - Johann Strauss, Jr.'s operetta The Gipsy Baron is first staged in Vienna. 

WATCH VIDEO in YOUTUBE!  Playback is ONLY made available there.  Johann Strauss • Overture to 'The Gipsy Baron' - Der Zigeunerbaron • Volker Hartung, conductor.