1792 - Gioachino Rossini (b. Gioachino Antonio Rossini), Italian composer who gained fame for his 39 operas. His works also include many songs, some chamber music and piano pieces, and some sacred music.
He set new standards for both comic and serious opera before retiring
from large-scale composition at the height of his popularity, while still in his thirties. His famous comic operas include:
L'italiana in Algeri, Il barbiere di Siviglia (English: The Barber of Seville) and La Cenerentola, which brought to a peak the opera buffa tradition he inherited from masters such as Domenico Cimarosa. He also composed opera seria works such as Otello, Tancredi and Semiramide.
All these operas attracted admiration for their innovation in melody, harmonic and instrumental colour, and dramatic form. In 1824 Rossini was contracted by the Opéra in Paris, for which he produced an opera to celebrate the coronation of Charles X, Il viaggio a Reims (later amended for his first opera in French, Le comte Ory), revisions of two of his Italian operas, Le siège de Corinthe and Moïse, and in 1829 his last opera , Guillaume Tell. (The Best of Rossini. Uploaded by Top Classical Music. Accessed February 29, 2020.)
1840 - John Philip Holland, American modern submarine inventor, known as the 'father of the modern submarine', who designed and built the first underwater vessel accepted by the U.S. Navy.
1896 - Morarji Ranchhodji Desai, Indian independence activist and served between 1977 and 1979 as the 4th Prime Minister of India and led the government formed by the Janata Party. During his long career in politics, he held many important posts in government such as Chief Minister of Bombay State, Home Minister, Finance Minister and 2nd Deputy Prime Minister of India.
1904 - Jimmy Dorsey (James Francis Dorsey), American jazz clarinetist, saxophonist, composer and big band leader. Dorsey recorded and composed the jazz and pop standards "I'm Glad There Is You (In This World of Ordinary People)" and "It's The Dreamer In Me". His other major recordings were "Tailspin", "John Silver", "So Many Times", "Amapola", "Brazil (Aquarela do Brasil)", "Pennies from Heaven" with Bing Crosby, Louis Armstrong, and Frances Langford, "Grand Central Getaway", and "So Rare". He played clarinet on the seminal jazz standards "Singin' the Blues" in 1927 and the original 1930 recording of the popular "Georgia on My Mind", which were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
1916 - Dinah Shore (born Fannye Rose Shore), American Singer, Actress, and Television
Personality, and the top-charting female Vocalist of the 1940s. She rose
to prominence as a recording artist during the Big Band era. (Dinah Shore - It Had to be You. Uploaded by ssou02. Accessed February 29, 2019.)
1960 - Tony Robbins (Anthony Jay Robbins, born Anthony J. Mahavoric), American author, coach, motivational speaker, and philanthropist. Robbins is known for his infomercials, seminars, and self-help books including the books Unlimited Power (published in 1987) and Awaken the Giant Within (published in 1993). His seminars are organized through Robbins Research International.
Lefties:
None known
More birthdays and historical events, February 29 - On This Day
Historical Events
45 B.C.E. - Julius Caesar adjusts 46 B.C.E., known as the Year of Confusion, with 445 days, by fixing 365 days and six hours as a year's length, with an extra day added every four years.
1288- in Scotland it becomes legal for women to propose marriage to men only on this day (that is, leap year).
1960- An earthquake in Morocco kills one third of the population of Agadir in just 15 seconds. Populace: about 12,000 people.
1895 - Guiomar Novaes, Brazilian Pianist noted for individuality of tone and phrasing, singing line, and a subtle and nuanced approach to her interpretations. (Novaes plays Chopin: Ballade in F minor, Op. 52, No.4)
1901 - Linus Pauling, American chemist, biochemist, peace activist, author, educator, a scientist and Nobel Prize laureate in chemistry and peace. He's husband of American human rights activist Ava Helen Pauling. He published more than 1,200 papers and books, of which about 850 dealt with scientific topics. New Scientist called him one of the 20 greatest scientists of all time, and as of 2000, he was rated the 16th most important scientist in history. For his scientific work, Pauling was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1954. For his peace activism, he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1962. He is one of four individuals to have won more than one Nobel Prize (the others being Marie Curie, John Bardeen and Frederick Sanger). Of these, he is the only person to have been awarded two unshared Nobel Prizes, and one of two people to be awarded Nobel Prizes in different fields, the other being Marie Curie. Pauling was one of the founders of the fields of quantum chemistry and molecular biology. (Linus Pauling - Conversations with History. Uploaded by UCTV. Accessed February 28, 2017.)
1903 - Vincente Minnelli, American stage director and film director. He directed the classic movie musicals Meet Me in St. Louis, An American in Paris, The Band Wagon, and Gigi. An American in Paris and Gigi both won the Academy Award for Best Picture, with Minnelli winning Best Director for Gigi. In addition to having directed some of the best known musicals of his day, Minnelli made many comedies and melodramas. He was married to Judy Garland from 1945 until 1951; the couple were the parents of Liza Minnelli. (Heartwarming interview of Liza Minelli on her father. Uploaded by Elisabet Petersen. Accessed February 28, 2017.)
1909 - Sir Stephen Spender, CBE, British poet, novelist, essayist and critic, whose work concentrated on themes of social injustice and the class struggle. He was appointed Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the United States Library of Congress in 1965.
1923 - Charles Edward Durning, American actor who appeared in over 200 movies, TV shows and plays. Durning's best-known films include The Sting, Dog Day Afternoon, True Confessions, Tootsie, Dick Tracy, among others. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for both The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (1982) and To Be or Not to Be (1983). Prior to his acting career, Durning served in World War II and was decorated for valor in combat.
1948 - Bernadette Peters (née Lazzara), American actress, singer, and children's book author. She has starred in musical theatre, television and film, performed in solo concerts and released recordings. She is a critically acclaimed Broadway performer, having received seven nominations for Tony Awards, winning two (plus an honorary award), and nine nominations for Drama Desk Awards, winning three. Four of the Broadway cast albums on which she has starred have won Grammy Awards. Regarded by many as the foremost interpreter of the works of Stephen Sondheim, Peters is particularly noted for her roles on the Broadway stage.(B. Peters - Not a Day Goes By. Youtube, uploaded by neergecyt. Accessed February 28, 2021.)
1948 - Mercedes J. Ruehl, an American screen and stage actor. She is the recipient of several accolades, including an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Tony Award, a Drama Desk Award, two Obie Awards, and two Outer Critics Circle Awards. Ruehl is known for her leading performance in the play Lost in Yonkers and supporting performance in the film The Fisher King. Her other film credits include Big, Married to the Mob, Last Action Hero, Roseanna's Grave, and Hustlers.
1969 - Robert Sean Leonard (born Robert Lawrence Leonard), American actor. He is known for playing Dr. James Wilson in the TV series House (2004–2012) and Neil Perry in the film Dead Poets Society. Leonard won a Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play for his performance in The Invention of Love. His other theater credits include Candida, Long Day's Journey Into Night, Breaking the Code, The Music Man, Born Yesterday, and To Kill a Mockingbird. From 2013 to 2014, Leonard had a recurring role as Dr. Roger Kadar on the television series Falling Skies. He also starred as the leading role in Swing Kids playing Peter Muller.
Death:
2019 - Andre Previn, German-American pianist, conductor, and composer. Winner of four Academy Awards for his film work and ten Grammy Awards for his recordings.
Lefties:
Scientist Linus Pauling - American chemist, 1954 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and 1962 Nobel Peace Prize for Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
Actress Mercedes Ruehl - American theater, television and film actress.
Cartoonist Milt Caniff - American cartoonist famous for the Terry and the Pirates and Steve Canyon comic strips.
Actor Robert Sean Leonard - He regularly starred in Broadway and off-Broadway productions. He has played the role of Dr. James Wilson on the TV series House. He played Neil Perry in the 1989 movie Dead Poets Society.
More birthdays and historical events, February 28 - On This Day
Historical Events
0364 - Valentinian I is appointed Roman Emperor.
1862 - Charles Gounod's opera La Reine de Saba (The Queen of Sheba), is first staged, in Salle le Peletier, Paris.
1807 - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, American poet and educator. His works include "Paul Revere's Ride", The Song of Hiawatha, and Evangeline. He was the first American to translate Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy and was one of the Fireside Poets from New England. (Life of Henry W. Longfellow. Uploaded by The Story of Liberty. Accessed February 27, 2015. An all-time favourite "A Psalm of Life", uploaded by SpokenVerse. Accessed February 27, 2010.)
1848 - Charles Hubert Hastings Parry, 1st Baronet, English composer, teacher and historian of music. Parry's first major works appeared in 1880. As a composer he is best known for the choral song "Jerusalem", his 1902 setting for the coronation anthem "I was glad", the choral and orchestral ode Blest Pair of Sirens, and the hymn tune "Repton", which sets the words "Dear Lord and Father of Mankind". His orchestral works include five symphonies and a set of Symphonic Variations.(Refer below for "Jerusalem".)
1861 - Rudolf Steiner, (born Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner, 27 or 25 February), Austrian philosopher, social reformer, architect, economist and claimed clairvoyant. Steiner gained recognition at the end of the 19th century as a literary critic and published philosophical works including The Philosophy of Freedom. At the beginning of the 20th century he founded an esoteric spiritual movement, anthroposophy, with roots in German idealist philosophy and theosophy; other influences include Goethean science and Rosicrucianism.
1897 - Marian Anderson, American contralto. She performed with renowned orchestras in major concert and recital venues throughout the US and Europe. Anderson was an important figure in the struggle for African-American artists to overcome racial prejudice in the US during the mid-20th century. In 1939, the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) refused permission for her to sing to an integrated audience in Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C. With the aid of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and her husband President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Anderson performed a critically acclaimed open-air concert on Easter Sunday, April 9, 1939, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in the capital. Anderson was the first African-American to perform at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City on January 7, 1955. She was recipient of numerous awards and honors. (M. Anderson sings Schubert's loved "Ave Maria", Stokowski conducting the Westminster Choir and a small orchestral ensemble. YouTube, Adam28xx. Accessed February 27, 2020.)
1902 - John Steinbeck, American film writer, playwright, novelist, Nobel Prize laureate. He won the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humour and keen social perception." In his writings, Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters, Tortilla Flat, The Grapes of Wrath and Cannery Row, among others, he best expressed his belief in the power of the human spirit to endure great disasters and to overcome the erosive aspects of materialism. (John Steinbeck Biography, updated by Gary Criddle. Accessed February 27, 2018.)
1926 - David Hunter Hubel, FRS, Canadian American neurophysiologist noted for his work on visual cortex. He was co-recipient with Torsten Wiesel of the 1981 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine (shared with Roger W. Sperry), for their discoveries concerning information processing in the visual system. Hubel was the John Franklin Enders University Professor of Neurobiology at Harvard Medical School. In 1978, Hubel and Wiesel were awarded the Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University. In 1983, Hubel received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement.
1930 - Joanne Woodward (born Joanne Gignilliat Trimmier Woodward, American actress, producer, and philanthropist. She is the recipient of an Academy Award, three Primetime Emmy Awards, and three Golden Globe Awards. She is perhaps best known for her performance in The Three Faces of Eve, which earned her an Academy Award for Best Actress and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama. In a career spanning over six decades she starred or co-starred in many feature films, receiving four Oscar nominations (winning one), ten Golden Globe Award nominations (winning three), four BAFTA Film Award nominations (winning one), and nine Primetime Emmy Award nominations (winning three).
1932 - Dame Elizabeth Taylor, DBE (born Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor), British-American actress, businesswoman, and humanitarian, considered the most beautiful woman in her day. She began her career as a child actress in the early 1940s, in particular, Lassie Come Home, then in National Velvet aged 12, she became a truly movie star. She was one of the most popular stars of classical Hollywood cinema in the 1950s. She continued her career successfully into the 1960s, and remained a well-known public figure for the rest of her life. In 1999, the American Film Institute named her the seventh-greatest female screen legend. (Elizabeth Taylor in National Velvet, 1944. Uploaded by Storylan. Accessed February 27, 2012. Elizabeth Taylor BBC Tribute, wilsol70. Accessed February 27, 2013.)
1934 - Ralph Nader, American political activist, author, lecturer, lawyer, noted for his involvement in consumer
protection, environmentalism and government reform causes.
1980 - Chelsea Victoria Clinton, American author and global health advocate. She's is the only child of former U.S. President Bill Clinton and former U.S. Secretary of State and 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
1981 - Joshua Winslow Groban, American singer, songwriter, and actor. His first four solo albums have been certified multi-platinum, and he was charted in 2007 as the number-one best selling artist in the United States, with over 22.3 million records. As of 2022, he had sold over 25 million records worldwide. Josh Groban Website.J Groban sings "The Mystery of Your Gift" from the film Boychoir. YouTube, accessed February 27, 2024.
Leftie:
Joanne Woodward
Deaths: 1892 - Louis Vuitton, Entrepreneur Maker of Bags and Luggage 1936 - Ivan Pavlov, Physiologist 1993 - Lillian Gish, Actress 2002 - Spike Milligan, Comedian
More birthdays and historical events, February 27 - On This Day
Features:
Evangeline, A Tale of Acadieis an epic poem by the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and published in 1847. The poem follows an Acadian girl named Evangeline and her search for her lost love Gabriel, set during the time of the Expulsion of the Acadians. The idea for the poem came from Longfellow's friend Nathaniel Hawthorne, fellow American writer, novelist and short story writer. It became Longfellow's most famous work in his lifetime and remains one of his most popular and enduring works. (Evangeline, uploaded by Musee McCord Museum. Accessed February 27, 2010.)
"Jerusalem" with words from poet William Blake and music composed by Sir Charles H. H. Parry, performed at the royal wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton (The Royal Wedding - Jerusalem - 29 April 2011. YouTube, uploaded by pishposhx. Accessed February 27, 2017.)
Historical Events
1740 - Handel's L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato ("The Cheerful, the Thoughtful, and the Moderate Man"; HWV 55) is premiered. It is a pastoral ode by George Frideric Handel based on the poetry of John Milton. Handel composed the work over the period of 19 January to 4 February 1740, and the work was premiered on 27 February 1740 at the Royal Theatre of Lincoln's Inn Fields. At the urging of Handel's librettist, Charles Jennens, Milton's two poems, "L'Allegro" and "il Penseroso", were arranged by James Harris, interleaving them to create dramatic tension between the personified characters of Milton's poems: L'Allegro or the "Joyful man" and il Penseroso or the "Contemplative man". The first two movements consist of this dramatic dialog between Milton's poems. At Handel's request, Jennens added a new poem, "il Moderato", to create a third movement. The popular concluding aria and chorus, "As Steals the Morn" is adapted from Shakespeare's Tempest, V.i.65–68. [Wiki]
Here's a beautiful interpretation of Handel's "As Steals the Morn" (L'Allegro, HWV 55), with soloists Amanda Forsythe and Thomas Cooley, performed by Voices of Music 4K. Accessed February 27, 2020.
1815 - Napoleon Bonaparte escapes from the Island of Elba, beginning the Hundred Days' War, which ended his defeat in Waterloo.
1879 - Constantine Fahlberg discovers the artificial sweetener saccharin by accident.
1564 - Christopher Marlowe, English dramatist, poet and translator of the Elizabethan era. (baptised this day, although actual birth date is uncertain). He greatly influenced William Shakespeare, who was born in the same year as Marlowe and who rose to become the pre-eminent Elizabethan playwright after Marlowe's mysterious early death. (Christopher Marlowe - Elizabethan Dramatist. Uploaded by Biography. Accessed Februay 26, 2015.)
1802 - Victor Marie Hugo, French writer, poet, dramatist of the Romantic movement. He's famous for the classic novels Les Miserables (1862) and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831). Hugo is considered to be one of the greatest and best-known French writers. (Victor Hugo: Biography... Uploaded by Way Back. Accessed February 26, 2017. Les Miserables 10th Anniversary Concert in Full. Uploaded by Potato Gel. Accessed February 26, 2018.)
1829 - Levi Strauss, German-American businessman, clothing designer. He founded the first company to manufacture blue jeans. Now known as simply "Levi's", his firm of Levi Strauss & Co. began in 1853 in San Francisco, California.
1879 - Frank Bridge, English composer, violist, conductor, and teacher. He was one of the most accomplished musicians of his day, known especially for his chamber music and songs. After a period in the Joachim Quartet (1906) he played with the English String Quartet until 1915. Although he composed in many genres, he was particularly successful in his smaller forms, such as the Phantasie Quartet for piano and strings (1910), four string quartets, and songs and piano pieces. His early works were Romantic in style. While he never abandoned Romanticism in later years, he moved toward atonality. He was widely respected as a teacher, and his pupils included Benjamin Britten. (Frank Bridge's Pensiero, interpreted by Timothy Ridout (Violin) and Frank Dupree (Piano). Uploaded by France Musique. Accessed February 26, 2020.)
1914 - Robert Alda (born Alfonso Giuseppe Giovanni Roberto D'Abruzzo), American theatrical and film actor, a singer, and a dancer. He was the father of actors Alan and Antony Alda. Robert Alda was featured in a number of Broadway productions, then he moved to Italy during the early 1960s. He appeared in many European films over the next two decades, occasionally returning to the U.S. for film appearances such as The Girl Who Knew Too Much.
1916 - Jackie Herbert Gleason, American actor, comedian, writer, composer, and conductor known affectionately as "The Great One." Developing a style and characters from growing up in Brooklyn, New York, he was known for his brash visual and verbal comedy, exemplified by his Ralph Kramden character in the TV series The Honeymooners. He developed high ratings The Jackie Gleason Show. Among his notable film roles were Minnesota Fats in 1961's The Hustler (co-starring with Paul Newman), and Buford T. Justice in the Smokey and the Bandit series. Gleason also enjoyed a prominent secondary music career, producing a series of best-selling "mood music" albums. His first album, Music for Lovers Only, still holds the record for the longest stay on the Billboard Top Ten Charts (153 weeks), and his first 10 albums sold over a million copies
each. His output spans some 20-plus singles, nearly 60 long-playing record albums, and over 40 CDs.
1950 - Helen Elizabeth Clark, ONZ SSI PC, New Zealand politician who served as the 37th Prime Minister of New Zealand from 1999 to 2008, and was the Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme from 2009 to 2017. She was New Zealand's fifth-longest-serving prime minister, and the second woman to hold that office.
1953 - Michael Bolton (born Michael Bolotin), American singer and songwriter. Bolton originally performed in the hard rock and heavy metal genres from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, both on his early solo albums and those he recorded as the frontman of the band Blackjack. He became better known for his series of pop rock ballads, recorded after a stylistic change in the late 1980s. His achievements include selling more than 75 million records, recording eight top 10 albums and two number-one singles on the Billboard charts, as well as winning six American Music Awards and two Grammy Awards.
Leftie:
None known
More birthdays and historical events, February 26 - On This Day
Historical Events
1797 - The Bank of England issues the first £1 note.
1922 - Camille Saint-Saens's suite "Carnival of the Animals" is first performed, in Paris.
1841 - Pierre-Auguste Renoir (or August Renoir), French painter and sculptor, known as Auguste Renoir, was an artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. (Renoir's Works, 1841-1919. Uploaded by Brendan. Accessed February 25, 2019. Pierre Auguste Renoir: A collection of 1549 paintings (HD). Uploaded by LearnFromMasters. Accessed February 25, 2019.) Here's a favourite quote from Renoir: "Go and see what others have produced, but never copy anything except nature. You would be trying to enter into a temperament that is not yours andnothing that you would do would have any character."
1873 - Enrico Caruso, Italian operatic tenor. He sang to great acclaim at the major opera houses of Europe and the Americas, appearing in a wide variety of roles from the Italian and French repertoires that ranged from the lyric to the dramatic. Caruso was the first gramophone star to sell more than a million copies with his 1907 recording of 'Vesti la giubba' (as Canio) from the opera 'Pagliacci' by Ruggero Leoncavallo. Here are his recordings from 30th of November 1902, 1st of February 1904 and 17th of March 1907, Caruso singing 'Vesti la giubba', uploaded by Tom Frokjaer. Accessed February 25, 2009.
1890 - Dame Julia Myra Hess, English pianist (featured below), best known for her performances of the works of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and Schumann. Her influence was enormous. Her protégés included Clive Lythgoe and Richard and John Contiguglia. She also taught Stephen Kovacevich (then known as Stephen Bishop). She also has a link to jazz, having given lessons in the 1920s to Elizabeth Ivey Brubeck, mother of Dave Brubeck. Arnold Bax's 1915 piano piece In a Vodka Shop is dedicated to her. (Dame Myra Hess plays Bach's famous Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring. YouTube, uploaded by Beckmesser2. Accessed February 25, 2011.)
1901 - Herbert Manfred "Zeppo" Marx, American actor, comedian, theatrical agent, and engineer. He was the youngest and last survivor of the five Marx Brothers. He appeared in the first five Marx Brothers feature films, from 1929
to 1933, but then left the act to start his second career as an engineer and theatrical agent.
1917 - Anthony Burgess, FRSL (John Anthony Burgess Wilson), English writer and composer. He composed over 250 musical works; considered himself as much a composer as an author, although he enjoyed considerably more success in writing. Burgess was predominantly a comic writer, his dystopian satire A Clockwork Orange remains his best-known novel. In 1971, it was adapted into a controversial film by Stanley Kubrick. He produced numerous other novels, including the Enderby quartet, and Earthly Powers. He wrote librettos and screenplays, including the 1977 TV mini-series Jesus of Nazareth. He worked as a literary critic for publications, including The Observer and The Guardian, and wrote studies of classic writers, notably James Joyce. A versatile linguist, Burgess lectured in phonetics, and translated Cyrano de Bergerac, Oedipus Rex, and the opera Carmen, among others.
1937 - Sir Tom Courtenay, English actor. Since the mid-1960s, he has been known primarily for his work in the theatre, although he received Academy Award nominations for Doctor Zhivago and the film adaptation of The Dresser, which he had performed in the West End and on Broadway. He was created a Knight Bachelor in February 2001 for his services to cinema and theatre. Aside from his role in Doctor Zhivago, my personal favourite is his title character in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, a joint Norwegian-British film, based on the novel by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn released in 1970. The Norwegian title is En dag i Ivan Denisovitsj' liv. In this film, Courtenay is a prisoner in the Soviet gulag system of the 1950s who endures a long prison sentence. It tells of one routine day in his life.
1938 - Diane
Carol Baker, American actress, producer and educator who has
appeared in motion pictures and on television since 1959. She is known for the films: The Diary of Anne Frank, Journey to the Center of the Earth, The Prize, Marnie, and Mirage. She appeared in many more. After Mirage, she appeared frequently on television and began producing films, including the drama film Never Never Land (1980) and the miniseries A Woman of Substance (1984), in which she played Laura. She then re-emerged on the big screen. Baker spent more than a decade teaching acting at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco. She was formerly the executive director of the School of Motion Pictures-Television and the School of Acting.
1943 - George Harrison, MBE, English musician, singer-songwriter, rock singer, music and film producer, and member of The Beatles. He achieved international fame as the lead guitarist of the Beatles group. Often referred to as "the quiet Beatle", Harrison embraced Indian culture and helped broaden the scope of popular music through his incorporation of Indian instrumentation and Hindu-aligned spirituality in the Beatles' work.
Leftie:
Tenor Enrico Caruso
More birthdays and historical events, February 25 -On This Day
Feature:
Dame Myra Hess (25 February 1890 – 25 November 1965), and her famous arrangement of Bach's Chorale "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring."
Her favourite anecdote relating to Bach's "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" concerned a British soldier who whistled it on a train during the war. "Are you interested in Bach?" The soldier was asked by a journalist. "No," he answered. "But you are whistling a Bach composition," the newsman insisted.
"That's no Bach," he replied indignantly. "That's Myra Hess." (From Marian McKenna's "Myra Hess -- A Portrait"). Below, video uploaded by pianopera. Accessed February 25, 2018.
Deaths:
1723 - Sir Christopher Wren, Considered greatest architect of his time. Along with more than fifty other
churches and secular buildings, he designed London's St Paul's Cathedral, Monument to the Great Fire of 1666, the Royal Observatory at Greenwich and library at Trinity, Cambridge.
1983 - Tennessee Williams, Playwright
Historical Events:
1570 - Pope Pius V excommunicates English Queen Elizabeth I from the Catholic Church and absolves from having to pledge allegiance to her.
1836 - Samuel Colt receives a patent for a pistol that uses a revolving cylinder containing powder and bullets in 6 individual tubes.
1766 - Samuel Wesley, English organist and composer in the late Georgian period. Wesley was a contemporary of Wolfgang A Mozart and was called by some "the English Mozart". He was the son of noted Methodist and hymnodist Charles Wesley, the grandson of Samuel Wesley (a poet of the late Stuart period) and the nephew of John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Church.(Samuel Wesley (1766-1837): Twelve Short Pieces Nos. 1-3. Uploaded by einer von weitem. Accessed February 24, 2019.)
1786 - Wilhelm Carl Grimm (also known as Karl Grimm), German author and anthropologist, and the younger brother of Jacob Grimm, of the Brothers Grimm.Wilhelm took great delight in music, for which his brother had but a
moderate liking, and he had a remarkable gift of story-telling. A collection of fairy tales was first published in 1812 by the Grimm brothers, known in English as Grimms' Fairy Tales. From 1837–1841, the Grimm brothers joined five of their colleague professors at the University of Göttingen to form a group known as the Göttinger Sieben (The Göttingen Seven). They protested against Ernest Augustus, King of Hanover, whom they accused of violating the constitution. All seven were fired by the king.He died of an infection, aged 73.
1842 - Arrigo Boito, Italian opera composer (original name: Enrico Giuseppe Giovanni Boito). He wrote essays under the anagrammatic pseudonym of Tobia Gorrio). He was also a Poet, Journalist, Novelist, Librettist and Composer, best known today for his libretti, especially those for Giuseppe Verdi's last two monumental operas Otello and Falstaff (not to mention Amilcare Ponchielli's operatic masterpiece La Gioconda) and his own opera Mefistofele. Along with Emilio Praga and his own brother Camillo Boito, he is regarded as one of the prominent representatives of the Scapigliatura artistic movement.
1887 - Mary Ellen Chase (Mary Peters), American novelist, scholar and educator. She is regarded as one of the most important regional literary figures of the early 20th-century. Her influence as an educator was profound. Among her famous students she counselled as professor of English at Smith College included Anne Morrow (Lindbergh), Sylvia Plath and Betty Goldstein (Friedan). Author of ten novels, she brought to life her native Maine. In 1961, she gave a speech in New York: "Perhaps our present-day fiction will give us little or nothing until we return to the verities of the human spirit ... until we again live by faith, hope, courage." She also made this observation after publication of her best-selling novel The Lovely American: "Most readers think that a novel is first of all, a story. Well, it really isn't... A novel is ... an evaluation of life. Its story is merely a means to an end."
1932 - Michel Jean Legrand, French musical composer, arranger, conductor, and jazz pianist. Legrand was a prolific composer, having written over 200 film and television scores, in addition to many songs. His scores for two of the films of French New Wave director Jacques Demy, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964) and The Young Girls of Rochefort (1967), earned Legrand his first Academy Award nominations. Legrand won his first Oscar for the song "The Windmills of Your Mind" from The Thomas Crown Affair (1968), and additional Oscars for Summer of '42 (1971) and Yentl (1983).
(The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Film clip. Youtube, uploaded by SirBasildeBrush. Accessed February 24, 2023. The Windmills of your Mind. Sung by Noel Harrison, accessed February 24, 2018. From Thomas Crown Affair film/ L’Affaire Thomas Crown. Youtube, uploaded by Chad Lawson. Accessed February 24, 2022.)
1938 - James Farentino, American actor. He appeared in nearly 100 television, film, and stage roles, among them The Final Countdown, Jesus of Nazareth, and Dynasty. In the 1950s and 1960s, he performed on the stage and a few TV roles. In 1978, he was nominated for an Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or Movie for his portrayal of Simon Peter in the miniseries Jesus of Nazareth. In 1980, Farentino starred in The Final Countdown with Kirk Douglas and Martin Sheen, and then played Juan Perón opposite Faye Dunaway's Eva Perón in the 1981 television film Evita Perón.
1948 - Dennis Waterman, English actor and singer, best known for his tough-guy leading roles in television series including The Sweeney, Minder and New Tricks, singing the theme tune of the latter two. Waterman's acting career has spanned 60 years. He i is notable for the range of roles he played, including horror (Scars of Dracula), adventure (Colditz), comedy (Fair Exchange), comedy-drama (Minder), musical (Windy City) and sports (The World Cup: A Captain's Tale), as well as police TV series such as The Sweeney.
He has appeared in 28 films but retired from acting between 2015 and 2019.
Leftie:
None known
More birthdays and historical events, February 24 - On This Day
Historical Events
1607 - Monteverdi's opera Orfeo is first staged, in Mantua.
1711 - George F. Handel's opera Rinaldo, his first staged in London, is first performed.
1804 - London's Drury Lane Theatre burns to the ground, leaving owner Richard Brinsley Sheridan destitute.
1839 - William Otis receives a patent for the steam shovel.
1857 - The first shipment of perforated postage stamps is received by the U.S. Government.
1876 - Edvard Grieg's incidental music to Ibsen's drama Peer Gynt is first performed with the drama at Christiania, Oslo.
1633 - Samuel Pepys, FRS, English diarist, administrator of the navy of England and Member of Parliament who is most famous for the diary he kept for a decade while still a relatively young man.
1685 - George Frideric Handel (born Georg Friederich Händel) [(O.S.) 23 February and (N.S.) 5 March], German, later British, Baroque composer who spent the bulk of his career in London, becoming well known for his operas, oratorios, concerti grossi and organ concertos. He is especially famous for his oratorio "Messiah". Handel received important training in Halle and worked as a composer in Hamburg and Italy before settling in London in 1712; he became a naturalised British subject in 1727. He was strongly influenced both by the great composers of the Italian Baroque and by the middle-German polyphonic choral tradition.
1863 - Charles Joseph Chamberlain, Ph.D., American botanist, known for pioneering the use of zoological
techniques on the study of plants, particularly in the realm of microscopic studies of tissues and cells; his specialty was the cycad. He made contributions to the Botanical Gazette, and was the author of Methods in Plant Histology and The Morphology of Angiosperms. In collaboration with John M. Coulter, he wrote The Morphology of Gymnosperms.
1928 - Vasily Grigoryevich Lazarev, Soviet cosmonaut who flew on the Soyuz 12 spaceflight as well as the abortive Soyuz 18a launch in 5 April 1975. He was injured by the high acceleration of the abort and landing and was initially denied his spaceflight bonus pay, having to appeal directly to Leonid Brezhnev to receive it. Brezhnev was at the time the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Lazarev held a degree in medicine and the rank of colonel in the Soviet Air Force. He never fully recovered from the injuries sustained on Soyuz 18a. He was awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union, the title Pilot-Cosmonaut of the USSR and the Order of Lenin.
1940 - Peter Fonda, American actor, film director and screenwriter. He was the son of Henry Fonda, younger brother of Jane Fonda, and father of Bridget Fonda. He was a part of the counterculture of the 1960s. Fonda was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Easy Rider, and the Academy Award for Best Actor for Ulee's Gold. For the latter, he won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama. Fonda also won the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Series, Miniseries or Television Film for The Passion of Ayn Rand.
1951 - Shigefumi Mori, Japanese mathematician, known for his work in algebraic geometry, particularly in relation to the classification of three-folds.
1994 - Dakota Fanning, American actress. She rose to prominence at the age of seven for her performance as Lucy Dawson in the drama film I Am Sam, for which she received a Screen Actors Guild Award nomination at age eight, making her the youngest nominee in SAG history. Fanning played major roles in the films Uptown Girls, The Cat in the Hat, Man on Fire, War of the Worlds, Dreamer, and Charlotte's Web. She then followed with more mature roles. Fanning made her modelling debut in 2009 when she was featured on the cover of fashion magazines Elle, Vanity Fair, and Cosmopolitan, among others. She also appeared in the fashion week in New York in 2014 and at the opening ceremony of Fashion Week New York S/S 2015.
Leftie:
Actor Peter Fonda
More birthdays and historical events, February 23 - On This Day
Feature:
In memory of Handel's birthday, I share two videos of Handel's most famous work, "Messiah" - one performed by the Sydney Philharmonia Choirs (December, 2015, with Australian sign language, AUSLAN) and another, "Hallelujah" Chorus performed as a flash mob. Whether you are a God-believer or not, this optimistic work of Handel
is universal. This wonderful and majestic music reinforces that hope is universal.
On November 13, 2010, unsuspecting shoppers got a wonderful big surprise while enjoying their lunch from this awesome Christmas Flash Mob.
Historical Events
1455 - Traditional date for the publication
of the Gutenberg Bible, the first Western book printed from movable
type.
1689 - Dutch Prince William III is proclaimed King of England.
Dear bibliophile friends, any interesting books you're reading? From my lists below, continued from Bibliophilia and Readings (Part 1), can you identify books you have read, books in your shelves, books you're currently reading, books you want to read, books you're letting go, or...?
My letting go of books continues; rereading old ones in the book shelves to find out which need to stay.
1 May 2024
Yesterday I decided to take a rest from my painting brushes to read Hayley Mills' book, Forever Young A Memoir. What a lovely memoir of a favourite former child actress. Prior becoming a household name as the star of the movie Pollyanna (embedded in one's heart if you're a positivist), initially, I've greatly admired her in two films: Whistle Down the Wind (as Kathy Bostock, a novel written by her writer-actress mother, Mary Hayley Mills), and Tiger Bay (as Gillie, with her father Sir John Mills and Horst Buchholz in starring roles). If you want to read more about her achievements, accolades, honours, six films with Walt Disney, etc..., simply go to Wikipedia.
Through Hayley Mills' memoir, we learn a lot more, and in detail, about her fascinating childhood experiences and her youthful fame, mainly as Walt Disney movie star. Her life interaction with Hollywood celebrities is enormous, and if you love classic movies like I do, aside from being her fan, you will enjoy her memoir tremendously.
I've wondered though: why Hayley's memoir stopped after the end of her first marriage. She was in her 20s then, after the birth of Crispian, her first son. She only very briefly mentions her second son, but not the father, nor any of her
subsequent relationships. She also leaves out her bout with breast cancer. For whatever reason, I'll let it be.
Forever Young is fascinating and honest. And so endearing. Read it if you haven't.
31 March 2024
Happy Easter to all my book lover friends! Mea culpa if I haven't any readings to share as I have been busy with my other love: watercolour painting. Soon my friends, soon. As I regularly cull books, it's but natural I re-visit those ones to let go. Last week, eight went, mainly writing books I no longer need. The book I was reading when my watercolour brush pens interrupted me was Unpacking My Library: Writers and Their Books, edited by Leah Price. Very interesting. Some of them reminded me of me. Why? Simply because personal libraries of some writers mentioned spotlight the same books I've kept through the years. The editor (or interviewer) muses on the history and future of the bookshelf, asking what books can tell us about their owners. Each writer provides a list of top ten favourite titles, offering unique personal histories along with suggestions for every bibliophile. Definitely, Unpacking will remain in my shelf.
16 February 2024
Apollo's Summer Look by British author Kathleen Conlon. Published by Collins, in London (1968). It is summer in a seaside town. Rose and Sally, down from their second academic year are on a working vacation. Also newly emancipated from the apron strings of their families, both friends are anxious for exciting experiences. Unlike 21 year-old Sally who falls in and out of love as regularly as she changes her hair-style, one-year younger Rose deliberately embarks on an affair, confident that by October she'll be able to return to university emotionally intact. The atmosphere is set when 40-ish Philip arrives from London. Philip, whose marriage is in the doldrums, is not averse to a little light amorous delight with so willing a young partner. When summer ends, Sally escapes emotional entanglements, but both Rose and Philip have realised that passion revolves where "no strings attached" is broken as it was made. The story reminds me of the movie, Interlude, starringOskar Werner and Barbara Ferris (older sister of Pam Ferris). It is an old story told many times, but the author puts a pleasant spin.
