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Grand Opera House (Manhattan)
Pike's Opera House, later renamed the Grand Opera House, was a theater in New York City on the northwest corner of 8th Avenue and 23rd Street, in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan. It was constructed in 1868, at a cost of a million dollars (equivalent to about US dollars in ), for distiller and entrepreneur Samuel N. Pike (1822–1872) of Cincinnati. The building survived in altered form until 1960 as an RKO movie theater, after which it was replaced by part of Penn South, an urban renewal housing development.Pike was a German Jew, born in 1822 in Schwetzingen/Baden, Germany. His birth name was "Samuel N. Hecht"; his family changed the name in 1827 in the USA to "Pike". See: Rehs, Michael. ''Wurzeln in fremder Erde: Zur Geschichte der südwestdeutschen Auswanderung nach Amerika'' (Stuttgart: DRW-Verlag (de), 1984) ; . History Pike's Opera House was built on what had been the property of Clement Clarke Moore, whose home, "Chelsea", has given its name to the neighborhood ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state of New York. Located near the southern tip of New York State, Manhattan is based in the Eastern Time Zone and constitutes both the geographical and demographic center of the Northeast megalopolis and the urban core of the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban landmass. Over 58 million people live within 250 miles of Manhattan, which serves as New York City’s economic and administrative center, cultural identifier, and the city’s historical birthplace. Manhattan has been described as the cultural, financial, media, and entertainment capital of the world, is considered a safe haven for global real estate investors, and hosts the United Nations headquarters. New York City is the headquarters of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dome
A dome () is an architectural element similar to the hollow upper half of a sphere. There is significant overlap with the term cupola, which may also refer to a dome or a structure on top of a dome. The precise definition of a dome has been a matter of controversy and there are a wide variety of forms and specialized terms to describe them. A dome can rest directly upon a Rotunda (architecture), rotunda wall, a Tholobate, drum, or a system of squinches or pendentives used to accommodate the transition in shape from a rectangular or square space to the round or polygonal base of the dome. The dome's apex may be closed or may be open in the form of an Oculus (architecture), oculus, which may itself be covered with a roof lantern and cupola. Domes have a long architectural lineage that extends back into prehistory. Domes were built in ancient Mesopotamia, and they have been found in Persian architecture, Persian, Ancient Greek architecture, Hellenistic, Ancient Roman architecture, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Frances Farmer
Frances Elena Farmer (September 19, 1913August 1, 1970) was an American actress and television hostess. She appeared in over a dozen feature films over the course of her career, though she garnered notoriety for sensationalized accounts of her life, especially her involuntary commitment to psychiatric hospitals and subsequent mental health struggles. A native of Seattle, Washington, Farmer began acting in stage productions while a student at the University of Washington. After graduating, she began performing in stock theater before signing a film contract with Paramount Pictures on her 22nd birthday in September 1935. She made her film debut in the B film ''Too Many Parents'' (1936), followed by another B picture, ''Border Flight'', before being given the lead role opposite Bing Crosby in the musical Western ''Rhythm on the Range'' (1936). Unhappy with the opportunities the studio gave her, Farmer returned to stock theater in 1937 before being cast in the original Broadway p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Helen Josephine Mansfield
Helen Josephine Mansfield (December 15, 1847 – October 27, 1931) – known as "Josie" – was an American woman who became famous when one of her two wealthy lovers murdered the other. Early life Mansfield was a descendant of many colonial families of Massachusetts, most notably John Alden, and was a distant cousin of Frank Gannett. She was born in 1847 on Kingston Street in Boston, Massachusetts, the first and only child of Sarah H. Gannett Mansfield and Joseph Mansfield, who had both been employed at the ''Boston Transcript''. When Josie Mansfield was about three months old, her parents moved to a boarding house at 13 Lincoln St. They later moved to 15 Crescent Place, where they lived for six months. In 1849 or 1850, Joseph Mansfield joined the California gold rush. On August 12, 1850, the U.S. Census shows Josie Mansfield, 3, living in Boston Ward 8 with her uncle, Charles H. Mansfield, 26, her grandmother Caroline Mansfield, 50, and her aunt Caroline Mansfield, 19. The a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
La Périchole
''La Périchole'' () is an opéra bouffe in three acts by Jacques Offenbach. Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy wrote the French libretto based on the 1829 one act play '' Le carrosse du Saint-Sacrement'' by Prosper Mérimée, which was revived on 13 March 1850 at the Théâtre-Français. Offenbach was probably aware of this production, as he conducted the orchestra of the Comédie-Française from around this time. Another theatrical creation that pre-dates Offenbach's opéra bouffe and may have influenced the piece is a farce by Desforges and Théaulon given on 21 October 1835 at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal. ''La Périchole''s title character is based on Micaela Villegas, a beloved 18th century Peruvian entertainer and the famous mistress of Manuel de Amat y Juniet, Viceroy of Peru from 1761 to 1776. The story concerns two impoverished Peruvian street-singers, too poor to afford a marriage license, and a lecherous viceroy, Don Andrès de Ribeira, who wishes to make La Péric ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Operetta
Operetta is a form of theatre and a genre of light opera. It includes spoken dialogue, songs, and dances. It is lighter than opera in terms of its music, orchestral size, length of the work, and at face value, subject matter. Apart from its shorter length, the operetta is usually of a light and amusing character. It sometimes also includes satirical commentaries. "Operetta" is the Italian diminutive of "opera" and was used originally to describe a shorter, perhaps less ambitious work than an opera. Operetta provides an alternative to operatic performances in an accessible form targeting a different audience. Operetta became a recognizable form in the mid-19th century in France, and its popularity led to the development of many national styles of operetta. Distinctive styles emerged across countries including Austria-Hungary, Germany, England, Spain, the Philippines, Mexico, Cuba, and the United States. Through the transfer of operetta among different countries, cultural cosmop ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jay Gould
Jason Gould (; May 27, 1836 – December 2, 1892) was an American railroad magnate and financial speculator who is generally identified as one of the robber barons of the Gilded Age. His sharp and often unscrupulous business practices made him one of the wealthiest men of the late nineteenth century. Gould was an unpopular figure during his life and remains controversial. Early life and education Gould was born in Roxbury, New York, to Mary More (1798–1841) and John Burr Gould (1792–1866). His maternal grandfather Alexander T. More was a businessman, and his great-grandfather John More was a Scottish immigrant who founded the town of Moresville, New York. Gould studied at the Hobart Academy in Hobart, New York, paying his way by bookkeeping. As a young boy, he decided that he wanted nothing to do with farming, his father's occupation, so his father dropped him off at a nearby school with fifty cents and a sack of clothes. Early career Gould's school principal was credit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Fisk (financier)
James Fisk Jr. (April 1, 1835 – January 7, 1872), known variously as "Big Jim", "Diamond Jim", and "Jubilee Jim" – was an American stockbroker and corporate executive who has been referred to as one of the " robber barons" of the Gilded Age. Though Fisk was admired by the working class of New York and the Erie Railroad, he achieved much ill-fame for his role in Black Friday in 1869, where he and his partner Jay Gould befriended the unsuspecting President Ulysses S. Grant in an attempt to use the President's good name in a scheme to corner the gold market in New York City. Several years later Fisk was murdered by a disgruntled business associate. Early life and career Fisk was born in the hamlet of Pownal, Vermont, in Bennington County in 1835. After a brief period in school, he ran away in 1850 and joined Van Amberg's Mammoth Circus & Menagerie. Later, he became a hotel waiter, and finally adopted the business of his father, a peddler. He applied what he learned in the ci ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
14th Street (Manhattan)
14th Street is a major crosstown street in the New York City borough of Manhattan, traveling between Eleventh Avenue on Manhattan's West Side and Avenue C on Manhattan's East Side. It forms a boundary between several neighborhoods and is sometimes considered the border between Lower Manhattan and Midtown Manhattan. At Broadway, 14th Street forms the southern boundary of Union Square. It is also considered the northern boundary of Greenwich Village, Alphabet City, and the East Village, and the southern boundary of Chelsea, Flatiron/Lower Midtown, and Gramercy. West of Third Avenue, 14th Street marks the southern terminus of western Manhattan's grid system. North of 14th Street, the streets make up a near-perfect grid that runs in numerical order. South of 14th, the grid continues in the East Village almost perfectly, but not so in Greenwich Village, where an older and less uniform grid plan applies. In the early history of New York City, 14th Street was an upscale locati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Academy Of Music (New York City)
The Academy of Music was a New York City opera house, located on the northeast corner of 14th Street (Manhattan), East 14th Street and Irving Place in Manhattan. The 4,000-seat hall opened on October 2, 1854. The review in ''The New York Times'' declared it to be an acoustical "triumph", but "In every other aspect ... a decided failure," complaining about the architecture, interior design and the closeness of the seating; although a follow-up several days later relented a bit, saying that the theater "looked more cheerful, and in every way more effective" than it had on opening night. The Academy's opera season became the center of social life for New York's elite, with the oldest and most prominent families owning seats in the theater's boxes. The opera house was destroyed by fire in 1866 and subsequently rebuilt, but it was supplanted as the city's premier opera venue in 1883 by the new Metropolitan Opera House (39th St), Metropolitan Opera House – created by the ''nouve ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jacques Offenbach
Jacques Offenbach (, also , , ; 20 June 18195 October 1880) was a German-born French composer, cellist and impresario of the Romantic period. He is remembered for his nearly 100 operettas of the 1850s to the 1870s, and his uncompleted opera ''The Tales of Hoffmann''. He was a powerful influence on later composers of the operetta genre, particularly Johann Strauss Jr. and Arthur Sullivan. His best-known works were continually revived during the 20th century, and many of his operettas continue to be staged in the 21st. ''The Tales of Hoffmann'' remains part of the standard opera repertory. Born in Cologne, the son of a synagogue cantor, Offenbach showed early musical talent. At the age of 14, he was accepted as a student at the Paris Conservatoire but found academic study unfulfilling and left after a year. From 1835 to 1855 he earned his living as a cellist, achieving international fame, and as a conductor. His ambition, however, was to compose comic pieces for the musical the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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