March 3: A Monumental Novella

Today is the anniversary of the first performance (Paris, 1875) of the opera Carmen, by George Bizet.  Though it is easily one of the most popular opera’s performed today, it was not successful at its launch.  Bizet died in June that year at age 36.  Just before he died, he had agreed to have it performed in Vienna, and the performance there, also in 1875, was a huge success.  This led to continuing performances and its eventual fame. 

 

The opera was based on a short novel by Prosper Merimee.  The story is about a young woman who seduces a soldier; the soldier deserts the military, but she scorns him in favor of a bullfighter, after which he kills her.  It was written as an opera comique (where dialog is spoken) but is now played as a grand opera (dialog is sung).   You can read an English translation of the novel at

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2465/2465-h/2465-h.htm#link2HCH0001 

 

Prosper was an archaeologist and short story writer.  Prosper apparently learned of the story of Carmen from the Countess of Montijo (Spain), whose daughter married Napolean III and became Empress Eugenie. He also discovered the amazing tapestries of The Lady and the Unicorn; these are shown hanging in the Gryffindor Common Room in the Harry Potter movies. You can see pictures of the tapestries at http://www.musee-moyenage.fr/ang/pages/page_id18368_u1l2.htm.  

 

He wrote several other novels. One is called Mateo Falcone, which was also made into an opera. It is short story set in Corsica, a translation is available at http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/mfalcone.html The movie The Golden Coach, starring Anna Magnani (Academy Award winner in The Rose Tattoo) is also based on one of his stores; the film was directed by Jean Renoir, son of the famous painter. Another enjoyable story is Colomba, also set in Corsica, available at http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2708/2708-h/2708-h.htm

 

Merimee was the person appointed as France’s inspector general of historical monuments, and the French list of national monuments is named after him.

January 18: Give me a word, another word

January 18 is the birthday of Peter Roget, the creator of Roget’s Thesaurus.   The word thesaurus comes from Latin and Greek words for treasure.  A thesaurus is not a dictionary since it does not give the meaning of a word, just synonyms or words with a similar meaning.  The Historical Thesaurus of the English Dictionary is the largest thesaurus, and has over 900,000 words, about twice the size of Roget's.  His original version had about 15000 words, and it was expanded by his son and grandson, and continues to have words added.   The Karpeles Manuscript Library has the original manuscript; you can see an excerpt and find out more about the history of Roget's Thesaurus at http://www.rain.org/~karpeles/rogfrm.html  If you click on the link, you will find an interesting quote from Peter Pan. 

 

One of the earliest thesaurus’ was compiled by Philo of Byblos.  The word “philo” derives from the Greek word for love.  Byblos was a Phoenician town.  It became the Greek word for papyrus because it was exported through Byblos.  The word Bible derives from this.  Philo derives from the Greek word for love, hence the meaning of bibliophile.  Phyllo, as in dough, is not related to philo but comes from the Greek word for leaf.

 

Other's named Philo: the person who created the first fully functional electronic TV set was named Philo Farnsworth. In the movie “Every Which Way But Loose,” Clint Eastwood 's character is named Philo Beddoe. 

December 28: Give us the nice bright colors

On December 28, 1895 the Lumiere Brothers held the first public movie screening in the basement of a café in Paris. It was the birth of the cinema. Their father ran a photography shop in Lyon. The story goes that their father saw Edison’s Kinestoscope in Paris (where you had to look into a peephole to see the picture) and suggested to his sons that they could improve this by moving the “image out of the box.” They did, and in 1895, the first movie show was held.

The first showing was of 10 movies, each about 40 seconds in length. You can see all of them at the Lumiere Institute’s web site: http://www.institut-lumiere.org/english/frames_lum.html The first was Workers Leaving the Lumiere Factory; look at the guy with the handkerchief about 33 seconds in: what is he doing?. The second is really funny, named the “The Vaulting.” These films are in black and white.

 

The Lumiere brothers also invented the Autochrome, a new process for creating color photographs. This was a huge improvement over previous methods, and was the primary method used between 1907 and the 1930’s. The Albert Kahn Museum in Paris has a collection of 72,000 Autochrome photographs, the largest in the world.

The history of the invention and some pictures can be seen at http://www.institut-lumiere.org/english/frames_lum.html

 

Anyway, the café where the first movie screening took place was called the Salon Indien du Grand Café, located at 14 Boulevard Des Capucines in Paris.

On this same date, December 28, 1895, Wilhelm Rontgen published a paper on a new form of radiation (x-rays). It turns out he conducted experiments at the very same café.

 

Today, the site of the café is occupied by the Hotel Scribe, a 5* Sofitel property. One of its restaurants is called Le Lumiere:

http://www.sofitel.com/gb/hotel-0663-hotel-scribe-paris-managed-by-sofitel/index.shtml#./restaurant.shtml and you can see a picture of the Lumiere brothers over the fireplace.

 

Sort of related tidbits:

-- at 35 Boulevard des Capucines, in 1874, was the first impressionist exhibition, including work by Renoir, Manet, Pissarro, Degas, and Monet.

--- Monet painted two pictures called Boulevard Des Capucines; one is in Moscow, the other in Kansas City.

---Capucine is also the name of an actress; you will recognize her from The Pick Panther and What’s New Pussycat:

Capucine_The_Pink_Panther.jpg

December 23: Dirty Rotten ...Row?

Today is the birthday of Heneage Finch, 1st Earl of Nottingham (1621).  He was Lord Chancellor and a member of Parliament. He became Baron Finch in 1673 and Earl of Nottingham in May 1681.

He built a house in (the village of) Kensington called the Nottingham House  It was acquired by King William III in 1689 because he wanted a residence near London but far away enough away from the smoke that covered London; the king was an asthmatic.  The king's official residence was St. James Palace in London.  Interestingly, it remains the official residence of the king/queen today even though no monarch has lived there for over 200 years.  In 1941, representatives of several countries met at the palace to sign the Declaration of St. James's Palace, which then became the charter of the United Nations.

Anyway, the house Finch built became Kensington Palace.  Christopher Wren made many enhancements to the house; he is responsible, among other things, for the architecture of St. Paul's Cathedral in London.  

A road was built from St. James Palace to Kensington Palace, and was called the "Route de Roi" or the road of kings.  Over time, the name evolved to "Rotten Row." I don't know how the name changed, but one hypothesis is that it comes from the Gaelic phrase Rat-an-righ, which translates as "Road Of The Kings" 

The road runs just south of Hyde Park, and still exists.  You can see a picture of it at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rotten_Row_-_Hyde_Park.jpg  The Household Cavalry exercises its horses on Rotten Row.

December 22: Oh what a night, late December...

Not what you are thinking, it was late December back in 1808, in Vienna. It was the date of a great concert, featuring the debut of Beethoven’s 5th and 6th symphonies, his 4th piano concerto, and the Choral Fantasy. Beethoven conducted and played the piano. 

 The debut was held at the Theater An Der Wien in Vienna, one of the nicest concert halls I have been to. My wife and I went there after we were first married, and saw a performance of the Merry Widow, by Franz Lehar. That operetta also had its debut at this theater, in 1905. In fact, they are performing it again next week.

The Theater An Der Wien has an interesting history, besides hosting the debut performance of great compositions. It was built by Emanuel Schikaneder, who wrote the libretto to the Magic Flute (Mozart), and sang the role of Papageno in the premiere. The theater has a statue of him in that role over one of its doors; he died in poverty in 1812.

In November of this year, a concert was held at the theater featuring one of Mozart’s favorite pianos; this piano returned to Vienna after 200 years. It had been donated to a museum in Salzburg soon after his death, and is now on display at Mozart’s house/museum. You can see a picture of it at http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.1192179!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_635/mozart26n-2-web.jpg

December 21: Wynne'ng words

On December 21, 1913, the first crossword puzzle was published. It was created by Arthur Wynne, a journalist born in Liverpool, who emigrated to the USA in 1891. He first worked for the Pittsburgh Press, and also was a violinist with the Pittsburgh Symphony. He later moved to New York, and the first puzzle was published in the New York World’s “fun” section. It was called a word-cross. The story goes that a typesetting error reversed the words and dropped the hyphen a few weeks later, and the crossword puzzle was born.

The first collection of crossword puzzles was published as a book in 1924. It was the first publication of two young men called Simon and Schuster. Simon’s aunt wanted to buy a book of crosswords for her daughter; Simon decided to publish one. They paid the newspaper $25 for each puzzle. The book was a spectacular success; they sold more than 300,000 books in the first year. Each book came with a pencil attached to it. Today, the company is owned by CBS and is one of the largest book publishers in the world.

September 20: Not quite around the world

On this day in 1519, Ferdinand Magellan set sail from Sanlúcar de
Barrameda in Spain to circumnavigate the globe. This has an
interesting background. In the late 1400's, it was known that the
Americas were a separate continent, and not part of Asia. The problem
for Spain was how to get to the Spice Islands ( the Moluccas, in
Indonesia today). They could not go round the Africa: a treaty signed
in 1494 gave the Portugese the sole right to this eastern route. So
they needed a western route.

Magellan proposed finding this route to Charles I of Spain, and the
project was approved because if successful, they would have a route
without having to go to war with the Portugese.

Five ships sailed on September 20, 1519. Ships from Portugal followed
them, but he got past them. When the arrived in South America, they
could not land in Brazil, it was Portugese territory. They landed
instead in Argentina (near Rio), there was a mutiny but Magellan
prevailed. Then they started to sail south, looking for a way around.
They found what we now call the Magellan Straits, sailed into the
Pacific (which was named by Magellan: Mar Pacifico because it was
peaceful), and they were the first cross the Pacific.

Magellan did not make it back: he was killed in the Battle of Mactan
in the Phillipines in 1521. Two of the ships continued the journey,
made it to the Spice Islands. They continued westward, around Africa,
almost died, and one ship, captained by Juan Sebastián Elcano, finally
returned to Sanlúcar de Barrameda. Elcano and his surviving crew were
the first to circumnavigate the globe.