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Charles B. Cochran
Sir Charles Blake Cochran (25 September 1872 31 January 1951), generally known as C. B. Cochran, was an English theatrical manager and impresario. He produced some of the most successful musical revues, musicals and plays of the 1920s and 1930s, becoming associated with Noël Coward and his works. After beginning his career as an actor in America about 1890, Cochran became a manager and press agent for vaudeville, legitimate theatre and other entertainments. He returned to England by 1902 producing theatre, variety shows and revues. By the end of the First World War, he was producing shows at the Oxford Music Hall, including the surprise hit ''The Better 'Ole''. In addition to producing several Noël Coward works, Cochran introduced or promoted such stars as Coward, Beatrice Lillie, Gertrude Lawrence, Jessie Matthews, Yvonne Printemps, Lizbeth Webb and Effie Atherton. He also produced the Ballets Russes and, for 12 years, managed the Royal Albert Hall. Early life Cochra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Albert Hall
The Royal Albert Hall is a concert hall on the northern edge of South Kensington, London. One of the UK's most treasured and distinctive buildings, it is held in trust for the nation and managed by a registered charity which receives no government funding. It can seat 5,272. Since the hall's opening by Queen Victoria in 1871, the world's leading artists from many performance genres have appeared on its stage. It is the venue for the BBC Proms concerts, which have been held there every summer since 1941. It is host to more than 390 shows in the main auditorium annually, including classical, rock and pop concerts, ballet, opera, film screenings with live orchestral accompaniment, sports, awards ceremonies, school and community events, and charity performances and banquets. A further 400 events are held each year in the non-auditorium spaces. Over its 151 year history the hall has hosted people from various fields, including meetings by Suffragettes, speeches from Winston Churchi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Odette Dulac
Odette Dulac (14 July 1865 – 3 November 1939) was a French actress, singer and ''diseuse'' in the manner of Yvette Guilbert. Background Dulac was born in Aire-sur-Adour. She became a militant feminist and novelist. ''La houille rouge: les enfants de la violence'' (''The Red Coal'', 1916) narrated the horrors of raped and impregnated Frenchwomen at the time the First World War was being waged, in an anti-abortion polemic of triumphing French nationalism. She became a member of the Ligue des droits de femme (League for Women's Rights). At the start of her public career, as a singer-actress, she appeared in light opera at Antwerp in 1895 and was soon a star at the '' Théâtre des Bouffes Parisiens'', where she appeared in André Messager's operetta, ''Les p'tites Michu ''Les p'tites Michu'' (The Little Michus) is an opérette in three acts, with music by André Messager and words by Albert Vanloo and Georges Duval (journalist), Georges Duval. The piece is set in Paris in the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harry Houdini
Harry Houdini (, born Erik Weisz; March 24, 1874 – October 31, 1926) was a Hungarian-American escape artist, magic man, and stunt performer, noted for his escape acts. His pseudonym is a reference to his spiritual master, French magician Robert-Houdin (1805–1871). He first attracted notice in vaudeville in the United States and then as "Harry 'Handcuff' Houdini" on a tour of Europe, where he challenged police forces to keep him locked up. Soon he extended his repertoire to include chains, ropes slung from skyscrapers, straitjackets under water, and having to escape from and hold his breath inside a sealed milk can with water in it. In 1904, thousands watched as he tried to escape from special handcuffs commissioned by London's ''Daily Mirror'', keeping them in suspense for an hour. Another stunt saw him buried alive and only just able to claw himself to the surface, emerging in a state of near-breakdown. While many suspected that these escapes were faked, Houdini prese ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Hackenschmidt
Georg Karl Julius Hackenschmidt ( – 19 February 1968) was an early 20th-century Estonian strongman, professional wrestler, author, and sports philosopher who is recognized as professional wrestling's first world heavyweight champion. Hackenschmidt launched his professional career in Reval (Tallinn), Estonia (then part of Russian Empire), at the time when contests were largely legitimate, and lived most of his life in London, England, where he gained the nickname of "The Russian Lion". He is believed to be the creator of the professional wrestling version of the bear hug as well as the person who popularised the hack squat, a deadlift with arms behind the body, Hackenschmidt is also atributed as the creator of the bench press. He was known for his impressive strength, fitness and flexibility and, later in life, wrote many books on physical culture, training and philosophy. Early life Georg Hackenschmidt's grandfather, Christian Philipp Hackenschmidt, a Prussian dyer, acc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Gabriel Borkman
''John Gabriel Borkman'' is a 1896 play by the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. It was his penultimate work. Plot The Borkman family fortunes have been brought low by the imprisonment of John Gabriel who used his position as a bank manager to speculate with his investors' money. The action of the play takes place eight years after Borkman's release when John Gabriel Borkman, Mrs. Borkman, and her twin sister Ella Rentheim fight over young Erhart Borkman's future. Though ''John Gabriel Borkman'' continues the line of naturalism and social commentary that marks Ibsen's work over the preceding thirty years, the final act suggests a new phase for the playwright which was brought to fruition in his final symbolic work ''When We Dead Awaken''. Characters * John Gabriel Borkman * Mrs. Gunhild Borkman * Erhart Borkman, their son * Ella Rentheim, Mrs. Borkman's twin sister * Mrs. Fanny Wilton * Vilhelm Foldal * Frida Foldal, his daughter * Malene, housekeeper Background The Norwegia ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Henrik Ibsen
Henrik Johan Ibsen (; ; 20 March 1828 – 23 May 1906) was a Norwegian playwright and theatre director. As one of the founders of modernism in theatre, Ibsen is often referred to as "the father of realism" and one of the most influential playwrights of his time. His major works include ''Brand'', '' Peer Gynt'', '' An Enemy of the People'', ''Emperor and Galilean'', ''A Doll's House'', ''Hedda Gabler'', '' Ghosts'', ''The Wild Duck'', ''When We Dead Awaken'', ''Rosmersholm'', and ''The Master Builder''. Ibsen is the most frequently performed dramatist in the world after Shakespeare, and ''A Doll's House'' was the world's most performed play in 2006. Ibsen's early poetic and cinematic play ''Peer Gynt'' has strong surreal elements. After ''Peer Gynt'' Ibsen abandoned verse and wrote in realistic prose. Several of his later dramas were considered scandalous to many of his era, when European theatre was expected to model strict morals of family life and propriety. Ibsen's later wo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
World's Columbian Exposition
The World's Columbian Exposition (also known as the Chicago World's Fair) was a world's fair held in Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ... in 1893 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's arrival in the New World in 1492. The centerpiece of the Fair, held in Jackson Park (Chicago), Jackson Park, was a large water pool representing the voyage Columbus took to the New World. Chicago had won the right to host the fair over several other cities, including New York City, Washington, D.C., and St. Louis. The exposition was an influential social and cultural event and had a profound effect on American Architecture of the United States, architecture, the arts, American industrial optimism, and Chicago's image. The layout of the Chicago Columbian E ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Medicine Show
Medicine shows were touring acts (traveling by truck, horse, or wagon teams) that peddled "miracle cure" patent medicines and other products between various entertainments. They developed from European Charlatan, mountebank shows and were common in the United States in the nineteenth century, especially in the American Old West, Old West (though some continued until World War II). They usually promoted "miracle elixirs" (sometimes referred to as snake oil), which, it was claimed, had the ability to cure disease, smooth wrinkles, remove stains, prolong life or cure any number of common ailments. Most shows had their own patent medicine (these medicines were for the most part unpatented but took the name to sound official). Entertainments often included a freak show, a flea circus, musical ensemble, musical acts, magic (illusion), magic tricks, jokes, or storytelling. Each show was run by a man posing as a doctor who drew the crowd with a monologue. The entertainers, such as acrobats, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flea Circus
A flea circus is a circus sideshow attraction in which fleas are attached (or appear to be attached) to miniature carts and other items, and encouraged to perform circus acts within a small housing. History The first records of flea performances were from watchmakers who were demonstrating their metalworking skills. In 1578, Mark Scaliot produced a lock and chain that were attached to a flea. The first recorded flea circus dates back to the early 1820s, when an Italian impresario called Louis Bertolotto advertised an “extraordinary exhibition of industrious fleas” on Regent Street, London. Some flea circuses persisted in very small venues in the United States as late as the 1960s. The flea circus at Belle Vue Zoological Gardens, Manchester, England, was still operating in 1970. In 2013, there was still at least one genuine flea circus still performing (at the annual Oktoberfest in Munich, Germany) and Svensons in the UK occasionally use real fleas, but most flea circuses ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Mansfield
Richard Mansfield (24 May 1857 – 30 August 1907) was an English actor-manager best known for his performances in Shakespeare plays, Gilbert and Sullivan operas, and the play '' Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde''. Life and career Mansfield was born in Berlin and spent his early childhood on Heligoland, Germany, an island in the North Sea, then under British rule. His parents were Hermine Küchenmeister-Rudersdorf, a Russian-born operatic soprano, and Maurice Mansfield, a British London-based wine merchant (died 1861). His grandfather was the violinist Joseph Rudersdorff.Turney, Wayne S"Richard Mansfield", ''A Glimpse of Theater History'', accessed 20 May 2012 Mansfield was educated at Derby School, in Derby, England, where he studied painting in London. His mother took him to America, where she was performing, but he returned to England at age 20. Finding that he could not make a living as a painter, he gained some success as a drawing-room entertainer, eventually moving into actin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rip Van Winkle
"Rip Van Winkle" is a short story by the American author Washington Irving, first published in 1819. It follows a Dutch-American villager in colonial America named Rip Van Winkle who meets mysterious Dutchmen, imbibes their liquor and falls asleep in the Catskill Mountains. He awakes 20 years later to a very changed world, having missed the American Revolution. The concept is ancient, including the 70-year nap by Choni HaMeA-Gail. Irving, inspired by a conversation on nostalgia with his American expatriate brother-in-law, wrote his story while temporarily living in Birmingham, England. It was published in his collection, ''The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.'' While the story is set in New York's Catskill Mountains near where Irving later took up residence, he admitted, "When I wrote the story, I had never been on the Catskills." Plot Rip Van Winkle, a Dutch-American man with a habit of avoiding useful work, lives in a village at the foot of New York's Catskill Mount ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
