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Carmen Jones
''Carmen Jones'' is a 1943 Broadway musical with music by Georges Bizet (orchestrated for Broadway by Robert Russell Bennett) and lyrics and book by Oscar Hammerstein II which was performed at The Broadway Theatre. Conceptually, it is Bizet's opera ''Carmen'' updated to a World War II-era African-American setting. Bizet's opera was, in turn, based on the 1846 novella by Prosper Mérimée. The Broadway musical was produced by Billy Rose, using an all-black cast, and directed by Hassard Short. Robert Shaw prepared the choral portions of the show. The original Broadway production starred Muriel Smith (alternating with Muriel Rahn) in the title role. The original Broadway cast members were nearly all new to the stage; Kennedy and Muir write that on the first day of rehearsal only one member had ever been on a stage before. The 1954 film was adapted by Hammerstein and Harry Kleiner. It was directed by Otto Preminger and starred Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte. The musical h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Georges Bizet
Georges Bizet (; 25 October 18383 June 1875) was a French composer of the Romantic music, Romantic era. Best known for his operas in a career cut short by his early death, Bizet achieved few successes before his final work, ''Carmen'', which has become one of the most popular and frequently performed works in the entire opera repertoire. During a brilliant student career at the Conservatoire de Paris, Bizet won many prizes, including the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1857. He was recognised as an outstanding pianist, though he chose not to capitalise on this skill and rarely performed in public. Returning to Paris after almost three years in Italy, he found that the main Parisian opera theatres preferred the established classical repertoire to the works of newcomers. His keyboard and orchestral compositions were likewise largely ignored; as a result, his career stalled, and he earned his living mainly by arranging and transcribing the music of others. Restless for success, he ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
African-American
African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of Slavery in the United States, enslaved Africans who are from the United States. While some Black immigrants or their children may also come to identify as African-American, the majority of first generation immigrants do not, preferring to identify with their nation of origin. African Americans constitute the second largest racial group in the U.S. after White Americans, as well as the third largest ethnic group after Hispanic and Latino Americans. Most African Americans are descendants of enslaved people within the boundaries of the present United States. On average, African Americans are of West Africa, West/Central Africa, Central African with some European descent; some also have Native Americans in th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anika Noni Rose
Anika Noni Rose (born September 6, 1972) is an American actress and singer. She is best known for voicing Tiana, Disney's first African-American princess, as seen in ''The Princess and the Frog'' (2009). She was named a Disney Legend in 2011. She is also known for her starring role as Lorrell Robinson in the Academy Award-winning film ''Dreamgirls'' (2006) and for playing LaVerne "Jukebox" Ganner in the Starz series ''Power''. She is also known for her performances in theatre, particularly for her starring roles as Emmie Thibodeaux in the Broadway production of ''Caroline, or Change'' (2004), for which she won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical, and Beneatha Younger in the Broadway revival of ''A Raisin in the Sun'' (2014), for which she was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play. Early life Rose was born in Bloomfield, Connecticut, to Claudia and John Rose, a corporate counsel. She began her acting career in Bloomfield high school, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Doyle (director)
John Doyle (born 1952) is a Scottish stage director of musicals and plays, as well as operas. He served as artistic director at several regional theatres in the United Kingdom, where he staged more than 200 professional productions during his career spanning over 40 years. In 2005, he directed a Broadway revival of the musical '' Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street'', in a minimalist production in which the cast served as its own orchestra, for which he won the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical. His 2006 Broadway revival of the musical ''Company'' won the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Musical. Since 2016, he has served as Artistic Director of the off-Broadway theater Classic Stage Company, located in the East Village in New York City. The 2021/2022 season will be his final season at CSC. Biography Doyle was born and raised in Inverness, Scotland. He trained at the University of Georgia in the United States. He was associate director of the Watermill Theatre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Classic Stage Company
Classic Stage Company, or CSC, is a classical Off-Broadway theater. Founded in 1967, Classic Stage Company is one of Off-Broadway's oldest theaters. Its 199-seat theatre is the former Abbey Theatre located at 136 East 13th Street between Third and Fourth Avenues in the East Village near Union Square, Manhattan, New York City. Classic Stage Company is led by Artistic Director John Doyle. Its productions have been cited repeatedly by the major Off-Broadway theater awards: Obie Award, Drama Desk Award, Outer Critics Circle Award, Drama League Award and 1999 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Body of Work. Productions Recent productions include: Turgenev's '' A Month in the Country'' with Peter Dinklage and Taylor Schilling; Rodgers & Hammerstein's ''Allegro''; Brecht's ''The Caucasian Chalk Circle'' with Christopher Lloyd, and ''Galileo'' with F. Murray Abraham; Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's ''Passion'' with Melissa Errico, Judy Kuhn, and Ryan Silverman; Chekhov's ''Iv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Southbank Centre
Southbank Centre is a complex of artistic venues in London, England, on the South Bank of the River Thames (between Hungerford Bridge and Waterloo Bridge). It comprises three main performance venues (the Royal Festival Hall including the National Poetry Library, the Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Purcell Room), together with the Hayward Gallery, and is Europe’s largest centre for the arts. It attracted 4.36 million visitors during 2019. Over two thousand paid performances of music, dance and literature are staged at Southbank Centre each year, as well as over two thousand free events and an education programme, in and around the performing arts venues. In addition, three to six major art exhibitions are presented at the Hayward Gallery yearly, and national touring exhibitions reach over 100 venues across the UK. Location Southbank Centre's site, which formerly extended to 21 acres (85,000 m2) from County Hall to Waterloo Bridge, is fronted by The Queen’s Walk. In ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
London
London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a major settlement for two millennia. The City of London, its ancient core and financial centre, was founded by the Romans as '' Londinium'' and retains its medieval boundaries.See also: Independent city § National capitals The City of Westminster, to the west of the City of London, has for centuries hosted the national government and parliament. Since the 19th century, the name "London" has also referred to the metropolis around this core, historically split between the counties of Middlesex, Essex, Surrey, Kent, and Hertfordshire, which largely comprises Greater London, governed by the Greater London Authority.The Greater London Authority consists of the Mayor of London and the London Assembly. The London Mayor is distinguished fr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harry Belafonte
Harry Belafonte (born Harold George Bellanfanti Jr.; March 1, 1927) is an American singer, activist, and actor. As arguably the most successful Jamaican-American pop star, he popularized the Trinbagonian Caribbean musical style with an international audience in the 1950s. His breakthrough album '' Calypso'' (1956) was the first million-selling LP by a single artist. Belafonte is best known for his recordings of "The Banana Boat Song", with its signature "Day-O" lyric, " Jump in the Line", and " Jamaica Farewell". He has recorded and performed in many genres, including blues, folk, gospel, show tunes, and American standards. He has also starred in several films, including ''Carmen Jones'' (1954), '' Island in the Sun'' (1957), and ''Odds Against Tomorrow'' (1959). Belafonte considered the actor, singer and activist Paul Robeson a mentor, and was a close confidant of Martin Luther King Jr. in the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s and 1960s. As he later recalled, "Paul Robes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dorothy Dandridge
Dorothy Jean Dandridge (November 9, 1922 – September 8, 1965) was an American actress, singer and dancer. She is the first African-American film star to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress, which was for her performance in ''Carmen Jones'' (1954). Dandridge performed as a vocalist in venues such as the Cotton Club and the Apollo Theater. During her early career, she performed as a part of The Wonder Children, later The Dandridge Sisters, and appeared in a succession of films, usually in uncredited roles. In 1959, Dandridge was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for ''Porgy and Bess''. She is the subject of the 1999 HBO biographical film, ''Introducing Dorothy Dandridge''. She has been recognized with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Dandridge was married and divorced twice, first to dancer Harold Nicholas (the father of her daughter, Harolyn Suzanne) and then to hotel owner Jack Denison. Dandridge died in 1965 at the age of 42. Early life Dandridge ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Otto Preminger
Otto Ludwig Preminger ( , ; 5 December 1905 – 23 April 1986) was an Austrian-American theatre and film director, film producer, and actor. He directed more than 35 feature films in a five-decade career after leaving the theatre. He first gained attention for film noir mysteries such as '' Laura'' (1944) and ''Fallen Angel'' (1945), while in the 1950s and 1960s, he directed high-profile adaptations of popular novels and stage works. Several of these later films pushed the boundaries of censorship by dealing with themes which were then taboo in Hollywood, such as drug addiction (''The Man with the Golden Arm'', 1955), rape (''Anatomy of a Murder'', 1959) and homosexuality (''Advise & Consent'', 1962). He was twice nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director. He also had several acting roles. Early life Preminger was born in 1905 in Wischnitz, Bukovina, Austro-Hungarian Empire (present-day Vyzhnytsia, Ukraine), into a Jewish family. His parents were Josefa (née Fraenke ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Muriel Rahn
Muriel Ellen Rahn (1911–1961) was an American vocalist and actress. She co-founded the Rose McClendon Players with her husband, Dick Campbell and was one of the leading black concert singers of the mid-20th Century. She is perhaps best known for her starring role in the original Broadway production of ''Carmen Jones''. Rahn also served as musical director of the German State Theater in Frankfurt. Biography Muriel Ellen Rahn was born in Boston in 1911, the daughter of Willie and Elizabeth "Bessie" Rahn (''née'' Smith). After her father died, she moved with her mother to New York City, where Bessie met and married Cornelius M. Battey, who became director of photography of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. Muriel finished her high school at Tuskegee, then attended Atlanta University before earning a degree from the Music Conservatory of the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. She was also educated at Columbia University and studied voice at Juilliard School of Music. In 1929, she ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Muriel Smith (singer)
Muriel Burrell Smith (February 23, 1923 – September 13, 1985) was an American singer. In the 1940s and 1950s, she was a star of musical theater and opera, and was also the off-film ghost singer in several hit movies. She is perhaps best known in the UK for her 1953 #3 hit single, "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me", which was first covered in 1965 by Mel Carter (and which remains a staple of easy listening and oldies radio to this day) and later in 1994 by Gloria Estefan. Biography Smith was born in New York City.Stephen BourneSmith, Muriel (1923–1985) Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. Her early life remains obscure. She appeared on the popular radio series ''Major Bowes' Amateur Hour'' in 1937. After singing at a cocktail party in 1939, one of the guests, Elizabeth Westmoreland, arranged a scholarship for her at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. She was the first African-American to study at Curtis. She worked in a factory, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
