Le Contes d'Hoffmann, a French opera by Jacques Offenbach. The Tales of
Hoffmann opera plot synopsis, character description, and other Offenbach
opera information.
The Tales of Hoffmann (Les Contes d'Hoffmann) is a fantastic
three-act opera composed by Jacques Offenbach (June 20, 1819 – October
5, 1880.) Libretto is written by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré based on
E.T.A. Hoffmann stories. It was premiered at the Opéra Comique, Paris,
on February 10th, 1881. The setting is in Nuremberg, Paris, Munich and
Venice in the early 19th century.
Notable Arias: "Scintille
diamante" (Dappertutto), "Elle a fui" (Antonia,) "Jour et nuit"
(Franz,) and "Il était une fois à la cour d'Eisenbach" (Hoffmann.)
Brief biography and works of George Orwell, English novelist and essayist, author of classic novels '1984' and 'Animal Farm.'
George Orwell, English novelist and essayist, is famous for his two novels Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949).
Recognized as one of the greatest English essayists, he is known for his Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters, published in four volumes.
Animal Farm contains the memorable phrase "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others" – a classic quote of political satire.
Early Life of Orwell: Education and Odd Jobs
George Orwell was the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair. He was born in India (June 25, 1903 – January 21, 1950), to English parents and was taken to England
as a child. He was brought up in an upper-middle class and educated at Eton College.
Orwell served in the Imperial Police in Burma for five years from 1922. Upon his return to Europe, he took a series of poorly paid jobs, while trying to get his writing published. He became a socialist during those years. He described this period of his life in his first book, Down and Out in Paris and London, published when he was 30. His novel The Round to Wigan Pier highlights an angry study of the grinding poverty especially in the North of England's working classes at that time.
Later Life: The Spanish Civil War
Orwell fought on the left-wing Republican side in the Spanish Civil War and was wounded. Despite his left-wing views, his experiences made him dislike the communists, who backed the Republicans, and he attacked them in Homage to Catalonia, an account of experiences fighting for the Republican Government. He was unfit for military service in World War II and worked for the BBC.
Toward the end of the war he wrote Animal Farm,
a grim allegory of the history of the Soviet Union in which farm animals create a revolutionary state that goes terribly wrong. It depicts the betrayal of a revolution. The farm animals overthrow their human rulers, but eventually the pigs take over the former role of the humans.
Final Years
Orwell died from tuberculosis at the age of 46, soon after the publication of Nineteen Eighty-Four, on of his most famous book that describes a nightmare life under the dictatorship of a party leader, known as "Big Brother" who constantly reminds his people: "Big Brother is watching you," an even more grim picture of a future totalitarian world.
Books by George Orwell
Down and Out in Paris and London,
1933
Burmese Days, 1934
A Clergyman's Daughter, 935
Keep the Aspidistra Flying, 1936
The Road to Wigan
Pier, 1937
Homage to Catalonia, 1938
Coming up for Air, 1939
Animal Farm, 1945
Nineteen Eighty-Four, 1949
Image Credit:
George Orwell. NNDB.com / Public Domain
Resources:
Biographical Dictionary, edited by Una
McGovern, Chambers (2002)
Dictionary of Literature, Brockhampton Press
(1995)
Dictionary of Writers, edited by Rosemary
Goring, Larousse (1994)
(c) June 2009. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.
I was recently recommended to read a novel by Frank Tallis: Vienna Blood.
The person said I should read it because I'm a Mozart fan. I didn't see the significance of this as I began to read but it became clear as the plot developed. To say anymore than that would be giving too much away to anyone who wants to read it.
Where some of us live, espresso accounts for almost all of the commercialized cafés and coffeehouses. We might have been denied that heavenly smell of hot espresso coffee had not for a blessing of Pope Clement VIII.
A popular legend says that around 850 AD, an Ethiopian shepherd noticed his stock to be more active after eating the red berries of a small shrub. He tries some himself and noticed his remarkable surge in energy.
In 1475, the world's first café opens in Constantinople. It's been said that Turkish law allows women to divorce their husbands if they were not provided with a daily cup of coffee. For years, the Muslim world had the monopoly of the heavenly brew. Their love of the potent black liquid led the governments to forbid coffee from being transported out of their own territories.
Literature / Poet Datebook: June 13 Life and works of Irish poet and playwright William Butler Yeats, one of the most influential 20th century writers and widely considered one of the greatest poets of the English language.
William Butler Yeats' work was greatly influenced by the heritage and politics of Ireland.Yeats won the Nobel Prize of literature in 1923. He is best known for his plays The Land of Heart's Desire and Cathleen Ni Houlihan.
Early Life of W.B. Yeats
William Butler Yeats was born on June 13, 1865 in Sandymount, Dublin. His family was Anglo-Irish, that is,
Protestant upper class that felt strong ties to England. His father, John B. Yeats, a painter, moved the family to London when he was three. So, for much of his early life he lived sometimes in London and sometimes in Ireland, but he was always attached to his homeland, especially captivated by the landscape of County Sligo in northwestern Ireland.
Yeats was half-blind in one eye; he didn't do well in school. At the age of 15, his family moved back to Ireland, to Howth on Dublin Bay. Five years later, the Dublin University Review published his first two poems.
Enjoy this wonderful performance, beautiful and heartwarming interpretation by Australian soprano Taryn Fiebig and harpist Jayne Hockley of W.B. Yeats' "Down by the Salley Gardens", from the Album Thyme & Roses, licensed by The Orchard Music (on behalf of MBT Publishing); Imagem Music (publishing) US, and 1 music rights societies. (YouTube, uploaded by artandcode. Accessed May 29, 2018.)
The Young Poet
In London he became increasingly interested in Eastern philosophy and religions, the supernatural and Irish folklore. It was also this time in 1889 that Yeats fell in love with Maud Gonne, a beautiful Irish actress who was involved in the political struggle to end English rule in Ireland. His inability of attaining Maud would haunt him through his life. He proposed in 1891 and again in 1916 but was refused both times.
His mystical beliefs and love for Gonne inspired The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems, published when he was 24. The poetry is filled with sad longings yet beautiful. Yeats believed that the Anglo-Irish and Irish could be united under a rich although mystical Celtic heritage.
Below, I'd like to share one of my favourite poems by Yeats:
Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light, The blue and the dim and the dark cloths Of night and light and the half light, I would spread the cloths under your feet: But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
Kind thanks to Ilse Isler, my friend at Facebook, for this straightforward heartwarming paraphrase:
"If I could offer you the secret of the sky Embroidered with golden light and silver reflections, The mysterious secret, the eternal secret of night and day, of life and time With all my Love I will put it on your feet!"
Later Years
In 1896 Yeats returned to live permanently in Ireland. He met a wealthy aristocrat, Lady Gregory, whose interest in Irish traditions matched his own. Together in 1904 they formed the Abbey Theatre group.
In a Vision, Yeats set out his philosophy, his belief in myths and the meanings of the symbols he used. As he aged, his
writing became stronger and more solid. His best work is in The Tower, The Winding Stair and Last Poems and Plays. The Tower includes some of his famous works, including "Sailing to Byzantium," "Among School Children," and "Leda and the Swan."
Legacy of W.B. Yeats
Yeats founded the National Literary Society and what would become the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. Yeats received the Nobel Prize in literature in 1923. He also served as an Irish Free State senator for six years.
He died on January 28, 1939, aged 73.
Works by William Butler Yeats
The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems, 1889
The Celtic Twilight, 1893
The Land of Heart's Desire, 1894
The Secret Rose, 1897
Cathleen Ni Houlihan, 1902
The Second Coming, 1921
A Vision, 1925
The Tower, 1928
The Winding Stair, 1928
Last Poems and Plays, 1936-39
A famous poem by Yeats: "Down by the Salley Gardens"
"Down by the salley gardens my love and I did meet;
She passed the salley gardens with little snow-white feet.
She bid me take love easy, as the leaves grow on the tree;
But I, being young and foolish, with her did not agree.
In a field by the river my love and I did stand,
And on my leaning shoulder she lay her snow-white hand.
She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs;
But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears."
Resources:
Dictionary of Writers, edited by Rosemary Goring, Larousse, 1994 The Cambridge Literature in English, New Edition, edited by Ian Ousby,Cambridge, 1993
Photo Credit:
W.B. Yeats. en.wikipedia.org / Public Domain
Note: This article was originally written and published by me for Suite101.com, June 16, 2008. It's an abridged version. / Tel
(c) June 2009. Updated August 27, 2023. Tel. Inspired Pen Web. All rights reserved.
Lives have been planned and timed, thanks to clocks. While the first clocks had no internal mechanics, and without the accuracy enjoyed today, they were capable of doing some functions.
The term "clock" came into use in the 14th century and its meaning was not the one we know today. It meant "bell" or "alarm."
There is no exact date as to the invention of the first timekeeping device. Timekeeping dates back five to six thousand years ago with the civilization inhabiting the Middle East and North Africa. The Egyptians in 3500 B.C. had a way of keeping time in the form of obelisks. These were slender, four-sided, tapered monuments that cast shadows on the sand and denoted the passing of time.
German Novelist, Short Story
Writer, Essayist, Social Critic, Philanthropist, Nobel Laureate
Brief biography of German writer and social critic Thomas
Mann, Nobel laureate for Literature in 1929. Famous for Death in Venice and The Magic
Mountain.
Thomas Mann became one of the leading novelists
of the 20th century Germany
at the young age of twenty-five. He was novelist, short story writer, essayist,
social critic, and a philanthropist. A 1929 Nobel Prize in literature, he is
famous for his novels The Magic Mountain, Joseph and His Brothers, and Doktor
Faustus, among others. His most powerful books were derived from experiences
during the World War II in which he opposed fascism.
He married Katia Pringsheim in 1905. His wife
comes from a prominent Jewish family of intellectuals. They had six children,
who also became pursued literary and artistic careers. Mann took US citizenship in 1944 and settled in Zurich in 1952 where he
died at the age of 80, on August 12, 1955.
Early Life
Paul Thomas Mann was born on June 6, 1875 in Lübeck, Germany
from a wealthy, middle-class German family. In his early 20s he worked in
business but wanted to be a writer. When his father died in 1891 and the family
business was liquidated, they eventually moved to Munich. A change in his family's fortunes
inspired him to write a long, detailed family novel, Buddenbrooks, which was an
immediate success and made his reputation. For such a young man this was a
remarkably mature work.
Later Life
During the next 20 years or so Mann
concentrated on short novels, or novellas. But at age 49 he published his
second long novel, The Magic Mountain. This book, set in a hospital for
patients recovering from tuberculosis, had started as a short story but grew
into a long and serious novel. It earned Mann the 1929 Nobel Prize for
literature and established him as a novelist of international fame.
Work Legacy
Mann's famous novella Death in Venice (German: Der Tod in Venedig), was published in 1912.
It presents an ennobled writer who visits Venice and is liberated,
uplifted, and then increasingly obsessed by the sight of a boy in a
family of Polish tourists—Tadzio, nicknamed for Tadeusz. The story itself is fiction, however, Tadzio was
based on a real boy named Władzio whom Mann had observed during his 1911 visit to the city. A film of the same name (Italian: Morte a Venezia) was produced in a 1971 historical drama directed and produced by Luchino Visconti, adapted from this novella by Thomas Mann. The easily recognisable soundtrack features Gustav Mahler's glorious Symphony No. 5 "Adagietto". Death in Venice offers several themes, among them, the sensuality of Venice the place, the conflict between intellect and inspiration, beauty, passion, youth and art. The major messages lie mostly in the mind of
Aschenbach - within the relationship between the main character and the young boy, Tadzio.
Mann also embarked on his most ambitious work, a
modern version of the biblical story of Joseph and his brothers. Published in
four volumes between 1933 and 1943 and together known as Joseph and His
Brothers, the work concerns the conflict between personal freedom and political
tyranny. During the writing he was forced, as a free and outspoken spirit, to
leave Germany,
which was then under the control of the Nazis. He went to the United States, where he produced
his final great work, Doctor Faustus. It is a version of a German legend in
which a man, Faust, makes a deal with the devil. In Doctor Faustus Mann was
probably making a comment on the destructive course of Nazi Germany.
Works by Thomas Mann
Buddenbrooks, 1901
Tonio Krüger, 1903
Royal Highness, 1909
Death in Venice,
1912
The Magic
Mountain, 1924
Joseph and His Brothers, 1933-43
Lotte in Weimar,
1939
Doctor Faustus, 1947
Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man,
1954
Image Credit:
Thomas Mann. Wikipedia Commons / Public Domain
Resources:
Chambers Biographical Dictionary, New Edition,
edited by Una McGovern, Chambers Harrap Publishers, 2002
History of the Scrabble Game and the Scrabble Board
Scrabble (originally called "Lexico") is a board game enjoyed by children and adults. It's gone a long way since it was conceived by its inventor, Alfred Mosher Butts, an architect who loved word games. The name Scrabble® is a registered trademark.Architect Alfred Mosher Butts (1899-1993) enjoyed word games. At the age of 31, he lost his job during the Great Depression. Suddenly, he found himself indulging in his hobby at home in Poughkeepsie, New York.
One day, while browsing the front page of the New York Times, Butts calculated how often each letter of the alphabet appeared, awarding a point value to each letter based on its rate of use. The exacting designer then hand-made letter tiles from quarter-inch squares of balsa wood.
