Birthdays
1893 - Lili Boulanger (born Marie-Juliette Olga Boulanger), French composer and the first female winner of the Prix de Rome composition prize. Her older sister was the noted composer and composition teacher Nadia Boulanger. (Lili Boulanger's Deux Morceaux - Nocturne, interpreted by Nadia Boulanger and Yvonne Astruc. YouTube, uploaded by Alan D. Accessed 21 August 2018. Music's Greatest Loss: Why Listen to Lili Boulanger. YouTube, uploaded by Inside the Score. Accessed September 11, 2024.)
1930 - Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon, CI, GCVO, CD (Margaret Rose), English Royal, younger daughter of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth (Queen Mother), and the only sibling of Queen Elizabeth II.
1933 - Dame Janet Baker, CH DBE FRSA (born Janet Abbott Baker), English mezzo-soprano, opera, concert and lieder singer. She's closely associated with baroque and early Italian opera and the works of Benjamin Britten. During her career, she was considered an outstanding singing actress and widely admired for her dramatic intensity, perhaps best represented in her famous portrayal as Dido, the tragic heroine of Berlioz's magnum opus, Les Troyens. As a concert performer, Dame Janet was noted for her interpretations of the music of Gustav Mahler and Edward Elgar. (Dame Janet Baker sings Handel's "Messiah" re-edited HQ, YouTube, uploaded by ClsasicPrformances2. Accessed August 21, 2021. And two of my personal favourites: "When I am laid in earth", Purcell's Dido & Aeneas, and Janet Baker and Sir Adrian Boult "Prelude and Angel's Farewell" (Elgar 'The Dream of Gerontius').
1938 - Kenny Rogers (born Kenneth Ray Rogers), American singer, songwriter and entrepreneur. He was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2013. Rogers was particularly popular with country audiences but also charted more than 120 hit singles across various music genres, and topped the country and pop album charts for more than 200 individual weeks in the United States alone. He sold over 100 million records worldwide during his lifetime, making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time.
1944 - Peter Weir, AM (born Peter Lindsay Weir), Australian film director. He was a leading figure in the Australian New Wave cinema movement (1970–1990), with films such as the mystery drama Picnic at Hanging Rock, the supernatural thriller The Last Wave and the historical drama Gallipoli. The climax of Weir's early career was the $6 million multi-national production The Year of Living Dangerously (1983).
1956 - Kim Victoria Cattrall, British-born Canadian-American actress. She is best known for her role as Samantha Jones on HBO's Sex and the City (1998–2004), for which she received five Emmy Award nominations and four Golden Globe Award nominations, winning the 2002 Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress. She reprised the role in the films Sex and the City (2008) and Sex and the City 2 (2010).
Leftie:
None known
Featuring: Dame Janet Baker, English operatic mezzo-soprano.
An extraordinary mezzo-soprano Dame Janet Baker retired in the late 1980's. She is known for her vocal expression, stage presence, and effective diction... a class on her own. As a recitalist she was noted for her interpretations of the works of Gustav Mahler, Sir Edward Elgar, and Johann Sebastian Bach. She later served as chancellor of the University of York (1991–2004). She was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1976 and a Companion of Honour in 1994.
What a superb mezzo-soprano voice! Dame Janet Baker sings Schubert's "An die Musik", accompanied by well-known pianist Murray Perahia. Youtube, uploaded by Gabba02. Accessed August 21, 2022.)
Dame Janet Baker sing "Where Corals Lie", 4th aria of Sir Elgar's Sea Pictures Op. 37. Youtube, uploaded by Batsmanspaly. Link to the complete "Sea Pictures - here. Uploaded by GilPiotr. Accessed August 21, 2020.
Baker studied voice in London until 1956, when she won second prize in the Kathleen Ferrier Award, which paid for her studies at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria. She made her operatic debut in 1956 at the Oxford University Opera Club as Roza in Bedřich Smetana’s The Secret and also sang Eduige in Rodelinda (1959), the first of many memorable performances of the operatic roles of George Frideric Handel and other Baroque composers at the Barber Institute in Birmingham. This established her in Handel and pre-classical opera.
Baker sang the female lead in Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas (1962). A long association with Benjamin Britten began in 1963 when she was Polly in Britten’s The Beggar’s Opera. She created the role of Kate Julian, written especially for her, in Britten’s Owen Wingrave, first for television and then for the stage (1971). She also won the Hamburg Shakespeare Prize that year. She performed successfully in the Raymond Leppard revivals of early Italian operas, notably as Penelope in Claudio Monteverdi’s Il Ritorno d’Ulisse in patria in 1972. She sang the 1975 premiere performance of Dominick Argento’s song cycle From the Diary of Virginia Woolf, which won the Pulitzer Prize. She retired in 1982. That year, Full Circle: An Autobiographical Journal, an account of her last year onstage, was published.
Historical Events
1808 - British Commander Wellington, with and Anglo-Portuguese force, defeats the French under General Jean Junot, in the Battle of Vimeiro in Portugal, part of the Peninsular War. Two thousand French soldiers are killed during the short battle. Accepting Junot's surrender, he uses the Royal Navy to transport the French survivors home, even allowing them to keep looted valuables. Wellington's unusual generosity makes him subject of an inquiry into his conduct. He is exonerated but in his absence, command is passed on to Sir John Moore, who is killed at Carunna in 1809.
1841 - John Hampson of New Orleans patents the Venetian blind.
