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Bertha Kalich
Bertha Kalich (also spelled Kalish, born Beylke Kalakh; 17 May 1874 – 18 April 1939) was a Ukrainian-Jewish-American actress. Though she was well-established as an entertainer in Eastern Europe, she is best remembered as one of the several "larger-than-life" figures that dominated New York stages during the "Golden Age" of American Yiddish Theatre during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Historians estimate that, during her career, Kalich performed more than 125 different roles in seven different languages. Life and career Early life Kalich was born Beylke Kalakh in Lemberg, Galicia, Austria-Hungary (today Lviv, Ukraine), the only child of Solomon Kalakh, a poor brush manufacturer and amateur violinist. Her mother was Babette Halber Kalakh, a seamstress who often made costumes for local theaters. Babette was an active opera fan and her devotion inspired a love for the stage in her daughter. They often attended performances together and when young Bertha c ...
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Lemberg
Lviv ( uk, Львів) is the largest city in Western Ukraine, western Ukraine, and the List of cities in Ukraine, seventh-largest in Ukraine, with a population of . It serves as the administrative centre of Lviv Oblast and Lviv Raion, and is one of the main Ukrainian culture, cultural centres of Ukraine. It was named in honour of Leo I of Galicia, Leo, the eldest son of Daniel of Galicia, Daniel, King of Ruthenia. Lviv emerged as the centre of the historical regions of Red Ruthenia and Galicia (Eastern Europe), Galicia in the 14th century, superseding Halych, Chełm, Belz and Przemyśl. It was the capital of the Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia from 1272 to 1349, when it was conquered by King Casimir III the Great of Poland. From 1434, it was the regional capital of the Ruthenian Voivodeship in the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland, Kingdom of Poland. In 1772, after the First Partition of Poland, the city became the capital of the Habsburg Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria. In 1918, f ...
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Joseph Rumshinsky
Joseph Rumshinsky (1881–1956) was a Jewish composer born near Vilna, Lithuania (then part of Russian Poland). Along with Sholom Secunda, Alexander Olshanetsky and Abraham Ellstein, he is considered one of the "big four" composers and conductors of American Yiddish theater.Joseph Rumshinsky
. Milken Archive of Jewish Music. milkenarchive.org. Retrieved 2016-12-13.


Biography

Joseph Rumshinsky's mother taught singing to local singers and badkhonim (wedding entertainers). As a child, he studied with a cantor. At the age of e ...
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Lee Shubert
Lee Shubert (born Levi Schubart; March 25, 1871– December 25, 1953) was a Lithuanian-born American theatre owner/operator and producer and the eldest of seven siblings of the theatrical Shubert family. Biography Born to a Jewish family, the son of Duvvid SchubartSome sources cite Shubard or Szemanski as the original spelling and Katrina Helwitz, in Vladislavov, in the Suwałki Governorate of Congress Poland, a part of the Russian Empire (present-day Kudirkos Naumiestis, Lithuania), Shubert was 11 years old when the family emigrated to the United States and settled in Syracuse, New York, where a number of Jewish families from their hometown already were living. His father's alcoholism kept the family in difficult financial circumstances, and Lee Shubert went to work selling newspapers on a street corner. With borrowed money, he and younger brothers Sam and Jacob eventually embarked on a business venture that led to them to become the successful operators of several theaters in u ...
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Minnie Maddern Fiske
Minnie Maddern Fiske (born Marie Augusta Davey; December 19, 1865 – February 15, 1932), but often billed simply as Mrs. Fiske, was one of the leading American actresses of the late 19th and early 20th century. She also spearheaded the fight against the Theatrical Syndicate for the sake of artistic freedom. She was widely considered the most important actress on the American stage in the first quarter of the 20th century. Her performances in several Henrik Ibsen plays helped introduced American audiences to the Norwegian playwright. Career Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, Minnie Maddern was the daughter of stage manager Thomas Davey and actress Lizzie Maddern. Coming from a theatrical family, she performed her first professional show at the age of three as the Duke of York in ''Richard III''. She debuted in New York as a four-year-old in the play ''A Sheep in Wolf's Clothing.'' She toured extensively as a child, and was educated in many convent schools. She was a child prod ...
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Harrison Grey Fiske
Harrison Grey Fiske (July 30, 1861 – September 2, 1942) was an American journalist, playwright and Broadway producer who fought against the monopoly of the Theatrical Syndicate, a management company that dominated American stage bookings around the turn of the twentieth century. Life and career Fiske was born in Harrison, New York, an affluent suburb in Westchester County just thirty minutes from New York City. The second of three sons of the wealthy hotel owner Lyman Fiske and his wife Jennie Maria (Durfee) Fiske, both of seventeenth-century Massachusetts descent, Fiske was still a young boy when his family moved into New York City, and he maintained a strong identity as a New Yorker for much of his life. As a young boy, Fiske was educated by private tutors and showed a strong interest in the arts. He recalled being taken to see his first play at Barnum's Museum at an early age and afterwards receiving the gift of a puppet theatre from his father. Later, whilst attendin ...
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Hermann Sudermann
Hermann Sudermann (30 September 1857 – 21 November 1928) was a German dramatist and novelist. Life Early career Sudermann was born at Matzicken, a village to the east of Heydekrug in the Province of Prussia (now Macikai and Šilutė, in southwestern Lithuania), close to the Russian frontier. The Sudermanns were a Mennonite family from the Vistula delta Mennonite communities near the former Elbing, East Prussia, (now Elbląg), Poland). His father owned a small brewery in Heydekrug, and Sudermann received his early education at the ''Realschule'' in Elbing, where he lived with his relatives and attended the Mennonite church where his uncle was the minister. His parents having been reduced in circumstances, he was apprenticed to a chemist at the age of 14. He was, however, able to enter the ''Realgymnasium'' (high school) in Tilsit, and to study philosophy and history at Königsberg University. In order to complete his studies Sudermann went to Berlin, where he was tuto ...
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Fédora
''Fédora'' is a play by the French author Victorien Sardou. It opened at the Théâtre du Vaudeville in Paris on 11 December 1882,Noël, Edouard and Philippe StoulligLes Annales du théâtre et de la musique, 1882 p. 245 and ran for 135 performances. The first production starred Sarah Bernhardt. She wore a soft felt hat in that role which was soon a popular fashion for women; the hat became known as a fedora. The premiere was headline news in Paris. ''Le Figaro'' devoted its whole front page to it in addition to further coverage inside. The Paris correspondent of '' The Era'' called Bernhardt's performance as Princess Fédora Romazoff "magnificent throughout … the most brilliant of her remarkable career"."The Drama in Paris", ''The Era'', 16 December 1882, p. 5 Pierre Berton played Loris Ipanoff, the only other major role, and was highly praised. ''The Era'' commented, "The other ''rôles'' are less than subsidiary. They are filled faultlessly by MM. Colombey, Tchileff; Vois, ...
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Victorien Sardou
Victorien Sardou ( , ; 5 September 18318 November 1908) was a French dramatist. He is best remembered today for his development, along with Eugène Scribe, of the well-made play. He also wrote several plays that were made into popular 19th-century operas such as ''La Tosca'' (1887) on which Giacomo Puccini's opera ''Tosca'' (1900) is based, and ''Fédora'' (1882) and '' Madame Sans-Gêne'' (1893) that provided the subjects for the lyrical dramas '' Fedora'' (1898) and '' Madame Sans-Gêne'' (1915) by Umberto Giordano. His play ''Gismonda'', from 1894, was also adapted into an opera of the same name by Henry Février. Early years Victorien Sardou was born at 16 rue Beautreillis (), Paris on 5 September 1831. The Sardous were settled at Le Cannet, a village near Cannes, where they owned an estate, planted with olive trees. A night's frost killed all the trees and the family was ruined. Victorien's father, Antoine Léandre Sardou, came to Paris in search of employment. He was in su ...
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Zaza (play)
''Zaza'' is a French-language play written by playwrights Pierre Berton and , and staged for the first time at the Théâtre du Vaudeville in Paris, in May 1898.Johnson, Katie N. (2002). "Zaza: That "Obtruding Harlot" of the Stage." ''Theatre Journal''. Vol. 54, no. 2. pp. 223-243. Retrieved 2017-08-31 via ''Project MUSE'' database. . The title character is a prostitute who becomes a music hall entertainer and the mistress of a married man. The play is probably best known in the English-speaking world in the adaptation of the same title by David Belasco, which premiered at the Lafayette Square Opera House in Washington, D.C., in December 1898, and subsequently opened at the Garrick Theatre in New York City, in January 1899. It is also the source material for the 1900 opera ''Zazà'' by Ruggero Leoncavallo. A substantial difference between the two stagings is that in the original French play, Zaza and her married customer resume their relationship after she becom ...
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Bertha Kalich Kreutzer Sonata Broadway
Bertha is a female Germanic name, from Old High German ''berhta'' meaning "bright one". It was usually a short form of Anglo Saxon names ''Beorhtgifu'' meaning "bright gift" or ''Beorhtwynn'' meaning "bright joy". The name occurs as a theonym, surviving as Berchta, a figure in Alpine folklore connected to the Wild Hunt, probably an epithet of ''*Frijjō'' in origin. ''Bertha'' appears as a Frankish given name from as early as the 6th century. The monothematic ''Bertha'' as a given name may, however, not originate with the theonym but rather as a short form of dithematic given names including the "bright" element. This is notably the case with the mother of Charlemagne, Bertrada (properly ''berht-rada'' "bright counsel") called "Bertha Broadfoot." Carolingian uses of the name ''Bertha'', as in the case of Bertha, daughter of Charlemagne and Bertha, daughter of Lothair II, are in this tradition. In modern times, the name is associated with an unusually large example of a class ...
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Broadway Theatre
Broadway theatre,Although ''theater'' is generally the spelling for this common noun in the United States (see American and British English spelling differences), 130 of the 144 extant and extinct Broadway venues use (used) the spelling ''Theatre'' as the proper noun in their names (12 others used neither), with many performers and trade groups for live dramatic presentations also using the spelling ''theatre''. or Broadway, are the theatrical performances presented in the 41 professional theatres, each with 500 or more seats, located in the Theater District and the Lincoln Center along Broadway, in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. Broadway and London's West End together represent the highest commercial level of live theater in the English-speaking world. While the thoroughfare is eponymous with the district and its collection of 41 theaters, and it is also closely identified with Times Square, only three of the theaters are located on Broadway itself (namely the Broadwa ...
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Jacob Gordin
Jacob Michailovitch Gordin (Yiddish: יעקב מיכאַילאָװיטש גאָרדין; May 1, 1853 – June 11, 1909) was a Russian-born American playwright active in the early years of Yiddish theater. He is known for introducing realism and naturalism into Yiddish theater. ''The Cambridge History of English and American Literature'' characterizes him as "the acknowledged reformer of the Yiddish stage."Jacob Gordin
" '': An encyclopedia in eighteen volumes''. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1907-1921. Volume 18: Later National Literature, Part III. Chapter 31, Non-English Wr ...
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