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Break A Leg
"Break a leg" is an English-language idiom used in the context of theatre or other performing arts to wish a performer "luck, good luck". An ironic or non-literal saying of uncertain origin (a dead metaphor), "break a leg" is commonly said to actors and musicians before they go on stage to perform or before an audition. Though a similar and potentially related term exists in German without theatrical associations, the English expression with the luck-based meaning is first attributed in the theatre in the 1930s or possibly 1920s. Origins Superstition theories There is anecdotal evidence of this expression from theatrical memoirs and personal letters as early as the 1920s. The urbane Irish nationalist Robert Wilson Lynd published an article, "A Defence of Superstition", in the October 1921 edition of the ''New Statesman'', a British liberal political and cultural magazine, that provides one of the earliest mentions of this usage in English: Thus, Lynd describes the expression as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Idiom
An idiom is a phrase or expression that largely or exclusively carries a Literal and figurative language, figurative or non-literal meaning (linguistic), meaning, rather than making any literal sense. Categorized as formulaic speech, formulaic language, an idiomatic expression's meaning is different from the Literal and figurative language, literal meanings of each word inside it. Idioms occur frequently in all languages. In English language, English alone there are an estimated twenty-five thousand idiomatic expressions. Some well known idioms in English are "spill the beans" (meaning "reveal secret information"), "it's raining cats and dogs" (meaning "it's raining intensely"), and "break a leg" (meaning "good luck"). Derivations Many idiomatic expressions were meant literally in their original use, but occasionally the attribution of the literal meaning changed and the phrase itself grew away from its original roots—typically leading to a folk etymology. For instance, the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aviation
Aviation includes the activities surrounding mechanical flight and the aircraft industry. ''Aircraft'' include fixed-wing and rotary-wing types, morphable wings, wing-less lifting bodies, as well as lighter-than-air aircraft such as hot air balloons and airships. Aviation began in the 18th century with the development of the hot air balloon, an apparatus capable of atmospheric displacement through buoyancy. Clément Ader built the "Ader Éole" in France and made an uncontrolled, powered hop in 1890. This was the first powered aircraft, although it did not achieve controlled flight. Some of the most significant advancements in aviation technology came with the controlled gliding flying of Otto Lilienthal in 1896. A major leap followed with the construction of the '' Wright Flyer'', the first powered airplane by the Wright brothers in the early 1900s. Since that time, aviation has been technologically revolutionized by the introduction of the jet engine which enabl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ford's Theatre
Ford's Theatre is a theater located in Washington, D.C., which opened in 1863. The theater is best known for being the site of the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. On the night of April 14, 1865, John Wilkes Booth entered the theater box where Lincoln was watching a performance of Tom Taylor's play ''Our American Cousin'', slipped the single-shot, 5.87-inch derringer from his pocket and fired at Lincoln's head. After being shot, the fatally wounded Lincoln was carried across the street to the nearby Petersen House, where he died the next morning. The theater was later used as a warehouse and government office building. In 1893, part of its interior flooring collapsed, causing 22 deaths, and needed repairs were made. The building became a museum in 1932, and it was renovated and re-opened as a theater in 1968. A related Center for Education and Leadership museum opened in 2012, next to Petersen House. The Petersen House and the theater are preserved together as Ford's Theatre N ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Wilkes Booth
John Wilkes Booth (May 10, 1838April 26, 1865) was an American stage actor who Assassination of Abraham Lincoln, assassinated United States president Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865. A member of the prominent 19th-century Booth family, Booth theatrical family from Maryland, he was a noted actor who was also a Confederate States of America, Confederate sympathizer; denouncing Lincoln, he lamented the then-recent Abolitionism in the United States, abolition of slavery in the United States. Originally, Booth and his small group of conspirators had plotted to kidnap Lincoln to aid the Confederate cause. They later decided to murder him, as well as Vice President Andrew Johnson and Secretary of State William H. Seward. Although the Army of Northern Virginia, commanded by General Robert E. Lee, had surrendered to the Union Army four days earlier, Booth believed that the American Civil War remained unresolved because the Army of Tennessee of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Assassination Of Abraham Lincoln
On April 14, 1865, Abraham Lincoln, the 16th president of the United States, was shot by John Wilkes Booth while attending the play '' Our American Cousin'' at Ford's Theatre in Washington, D.C. Shot in the head as he watched the play, Lincoln died of his wounds the following day at 7:22 a.m. in the Petersen House opposite the theater. He was the first U.S. president to be assassinated. His funeral and burial were marked by an extended period of national mourning. Near the end of the American Civil War, Lincoln's assassination was part of a larger political conspiracy intended by Booth to revive the Confederate cause by eliminating the three most important officials of the federal government. Conspirators Lewis Powell and David Herold were assigned to kill Secretary of State William H. Seward, and George Atzerodt was tasked with killing Vice President Andrew Johnson. Beyond Lincoln's death, the plot failed: Seward was only wounded, and Johnson's would-be att ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Garrick
David Garrick (19 February 1716 – 20 January 1779) was an English actor, playwright, Actor-manager, theatre manager and producer who influenced nearly all aspects of European theatrical practice throughout the 18th century, and was a pupil and friend of Samuel Johnson. He appeared in several amateur theatricals, and with his appearance in the title role of Shakespeare's ''Richard III (play), Richard III'', audiences and managers began to take notice. Impressed by his portrayals of Richard III and several other roles, Charles Fleetwood (theatre manager), Charles Fleetwood engaged Garrick for a season at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in the West End theatre, West End. He remained with the Drury Lane company for the next five years and purchased a share of the theatre with James Lacy (actor), James Lacy. This purchase inaugurated 29 years of Garrick's management of the Drury Lane, during which time it rose to prominence as one of the leading theatres in Europe. At his death, thr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard III (play)
''The Tragedy of Richard the Third'', often shortened to ''Richard III'', is a play by William Shakespeare, which depicts the Niccolò_Machiavelli, Machiavellian rise to power and subsequent short reign of King Richard III of England. It was probably written . It is labelled a Shakespearean history, history in the First Folio, and is usually considered one, but it is sometimes called a Shakespearean tragedy, tragedy, as in the quarto edition. ''Richard III'' concludes Shakespeare's first tetralogy which also contains ''Henry VI, Part 1'', ''Henry VI, Part 2'', and ''Henry VI, Part 3''. It is the second longest play in the Shakespeare's plays, Shakespearean canon and is the longest of the First Folio, whose version of ''Hamlet'', otherwise the longest, is shorter than its quarto counterpart. The play is often abridged for brevity, and peripheral characters removed. In such cases, extra lines are often invented or added from elsewhere to establish the nature of the characters' rel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Encore
An encore is an additional performance given by performers at the conclusion of a show or concert, usually in response to extended applause from the audience.Lalange Cochrane, in ''Oxford Companion to Music'', Alison Latham, ed., Oxford University Press, 2002, 2003 They are regarded as the most complimentary kind of applause for performers. Multiple encores are not uncommon, and they initially originated spontaneously, when audiences continued to applaud and demand additional performance from the artists after they had left the stage. However, in modern times they are rarely spontaneous and are usually a pre-planned part of the show. Origin of the encore Encores are believed to have originated from Italian operas in the 18th century. One of the earliest recorded encores was in 1786 at the premiere of Mozart's ''Marriage of Figaro.'' Contrary to modern encores, encores were traditionally spontaneous and followed a singular piece or movement. Performers would often perform an enc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Curtain Calls
A curtain call (often known as a walkdown or a final bow) occurs at the end of a performance when one or more performers return to the stage to be recognized by the audience for the performance. In musical theatre, the performers typically recognize the orchestra and its conductor at the end of the curtain call. Luciano Pavarotti holds the record for receiving 165 curtain calls, more than any other artist, for his February 24, 1988, performance of Nemorino in Gaetano Donizetti's ''L'elisir d'amore''. In film and television In film and television, the term "curtain call" is used to describe a sequence at the end of the film and before the closing credits, in which brief clips, stills, or outtakes featuring each main character are shown in sequence with the actor's name captioned. This sequence results in a similar individual recognition of each actor by the audience as would occur in a stage curtain call. This is not common, but when seen is more common in films that are li ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theater Drapes And Stage Curtains
Theater drapes and stage curtains are large pieces of cloth that are designed to mask backstage areas of a theater from spectators. They are designed for a variety of specific purposes, moving in different ways (if at all) and constructed from various fabrics. Many are made from black or other darkly colored, light-absorbing material (In North America, for example, heavyweight velour is the current industry standard). Theater drapes represent a portion of any production's ''soft goods'', a category comprising any non-wardrobe, cloth-based element of the stage or scenery. Theater curtains are often pocketed at the bottom to hold weighty chain or to accept pipes to remove their fullness and stretch them tight. Proscenium stages use a greater variety of drapes than arena or thrust stages. In proscenium theaters, drapes are typically suspended from battens and can be controlled by a fly system (i.e., they are "flown," in theater terminology). When a drape is flown, the task of adjust ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Yiddish
Yiddish, historically Judeo-German, is a West Germanic language historically spoken by Ashkenazi Jews. It originated in 9th-century Central Europe, and provided the nascent Ashkenazi community with a vernacular based on High German fused with many elements taken from Hebrew language, Hebrew (notably Mishnaic Hebrew, Mishnaic) and to some extent Aramaic. Most varieties of Yiddish include elements of Slavic languages and the vocabulary contains traces of Romance languages.Aram Yardumian"A Tale of Two Hypotheses: Genetics and the Ethnogenesis of Ashkenazi Jewry".University of Pennsylvania. 2013. Yiddish has traditionally been written using the Hebrew alphabet. Prior to World War II, there were 11–13 million speakers. 85% of the approximately 6 million Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust were Yiddish speakers,Solomon Birnbaum, ''Grammatik der jiddischen Sprache'' (4., erg. Aufl., Hamburg: Buske, 1984), p. 3. leading to a massive decline in the use of the language. Jewish ass ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
