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Leons Briedis
Leons Briedis (16 December 1949 – 1 February 2020) was a Latvian poet, a novelist, an essayist, a literary critic and publisher, translator of prose and poetry from Latin, Russian, English, Romance languages (Romanian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, Catalan, Rhaeto-Romanic), Swahili (of Bantu peoples), Albanian and other languages. He was also an author of several musicals produced on the radio and staged at the biggest theatres in Latvia, script writer (author of several scripts, one short-length film is produced) wrote much for children (poems, prose, plays), author of song texts (in collaboration with the composer Raimonds Pauls, texts for ~150 songs), translated 10 plays staged at Latvian theatres and rendered in verse opera librettos (e.g., the opera by Benjamin Britten "The Small Chimney-Sweep"). Early life After graduating the Sigulda Secondary School in 1968 he entered the Latvian State University, Day Department of the Latvian Language and Literature Faculty f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Madona
Madona (; german: Modohn) is a town with town rights in the Vidzeme region of Latvia and is the center of the Madona municipality. History The surrounding area of Madona had been populated in earlier times, which is confirmed by discoveries of old burial grounds in the city's vicinity. Madona is first mentioned in writing in 1461, when Archbishop Sylvester began renting the lands of Birži Manor. However, the Swedish government placed the land under state control. After the Great Northern War, Madona became property of the Russian Empire. Empress Elizabeth presented Birži Manor along with other of Vidzeme's manors to Count Alexander Buturlin. Empress Catherine II bought the lands back as a present to the Serbian-born General Maxim Zorić. From the 19th to the beginning of the 20th century, the location of Madona was the fields of Birži Manor. According to one version, the name of Madona stems from the adjacent Madona Lake. According to another version, Madona got its nam ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Romanian Language
Romanian (obsolete spellings: Rumanian or Roumanian; autonym: ''limba română'' , or ''românește'', ) is the official and main language of Romania and the Moldova, Republic of Moldova. As a minority language it is spoken by stable communities in the countries surrounding Romania (Romanians in Bulgaria, Bulgaria, Romanians in Hungary, Hungary, Romanians of Serbia, Serbia, and Romanians in Ukraine, Ukraine), and by the large Romanian diaspora. In total, it is spoken by 28–29 million people as an First language, L1+Second language, L2, of whom 23–24 millions are native speakers. In Europe, Romanian is rated as a medium level language, occupying the tenth position among thirty-seven Official language, official languages. Romanian is part of the Eastern Romance languages, Eastern Romance sub-branch of Romance languages, a linguistic group that evolved from several dialects of Vulgar Latin which separated from the Italo-Western languages, Western Romance languages in the co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sigulda
Sigulda (; german: Segewold, pl, Zygwold, russian: Сигулда) is a town in the Vidzeme region of Latvia, from the capital city Riga. Overview Sigulda is on a picturesque stretch of the primeval Gauja river valley. Because of the reddish Devonian sandstone which forms steep rocks and caves on both banks of the river, Sigulda has been called the "Switzerland of Vidzeme". After the restoration of Latvian independence in 1991, an emphasis was placed on conserving Sigulda's public monuments and parks as well as improving the town's tourist sector. Supported by the town council, a traditional Opera Festival takes place in an open-air music hall in the castle ruins each summer. A Town Festival is celebrated in May when cherry trees blossom, while Sigulda is known for the colors of its trees in autumn. Sports such as skiing, bobsledding, and the luge are popular in wintertime and bungee jumping is practiced during the rest of the year. The Gutmanis Cave lies halfway between Siguld ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Benjamin Britten
Edward Benjamin Britten, Baron Britten (22 November 1913 – 4 December 1976, aged 63) was an English composer, conductor, and pianist. He was a central figure of 20th-century British music, with a range of works including opera, other vocal music, orchestral and chamber pieces. His best-known works include the opera '' Peter Grimes'' (1945), the '' War Requiem'' (1962) and the orchestral showpiece ''The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra'' (1945). Born in Lowestoft, Suffolk, the son of a dentist, Britten showed talent from an early age. He studied at the Royal College of Music in London and privately with the composer Frank Bridge. Britten first came to public attention with the '' a cappella'' choral work '' A Boy was Born'' in 1934. With the premiere of ''Peter Grimes'' in 1945, he leapt to international fame. Over the next 28 years, he wrote 14 more operas, establishing himself as one of the leading 20th-century composers in the genre. In addition to large-sca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Raimonds Pauls
Ojārs Raimonds Pauls (born 12 January 1936 in Iļģuciems, Riga, Latvia) is a Latvian composer and piano player who is well known in Latvia, Russia, post-Soviet countries and worldwide. He was the Minister of Culture of Latvia from 1988 to 1993. Biography Raimonds Pauls is the second child of Iļguciems' glass blowing factory worker Voldemārs Pauls and seamstress Alma Matilde Brodele. His father Voldemārs began his career at the age of 15 years, when he joined his father (Raimonds Pauls' grandfather Ādolfs Pauls) at the factory. Meanwhile, Voldemārs' mother Aleksandra, respectively, Raimonds' grandmother, hired an assistant at her shop – Alma. In 1932, Voldemārs and Alma celebrate their wedding. Unfortunately, their firstborn son Gustavs dies from meningitis at the age of four months. As Raimonds' father has played drums and his grandfather – violin, Voldemārs decides that his son should also play a musical instrument. Equipped with an old violin, Raimonds gets into ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Script Writer
A screenplay writer (also called screenwriter, scriptwriter, scribe or scenarist) is a writer who practices the craft of screenwriting, writing screenplays on which mass media, such as films, television programs and video games, are based. Terminology In the silent era, writers now considered screenwriters were denoted by terms such as photoplaywright, photoplay writer, photoplay dramatist and screen playwright.Steven Maras. ''Screenwriting: History, Theory and Practice.'' Wallflower Press, 2009. pp. 82–85. Screenwriting historian Steven Maras notes that these early writers were often understood as being the authors of the films as shown and argues that they cannot be precisely equated with present-day screenwriters because they were responsible for a technical product, a brief "film scenario, scenario", "treatment", or "synopsis" that is a written synopsis of what is to be filmed. Profession Screenwriting is a freelance profession. No education is required to be a profe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Albanian Language
Albanian ( endonym: or ) is an Indo-European language and an independent branch of that family of languages. It is spoken by the Albanians in the Balkans and by the Albanian diaspora, which is generally concentrated in the Americas, Europe and Oceania. With about 7.5 million speakers, it comprises an independent branch within the Indo-European languages and is not closely related to any other modern Indo-European language. Albanian was first attested in the 15th century and it is a descendant of one of the Paleo-Balkan languages of antiquity. For historical and geographical reasons,: "It is often thought (for obvious geographic reasons) that Albanian descends from ancient Illyrian (see above), but this cannot be ascertained as we know next to nothing about Illyrian itself." the prevailing opinion among modern historians and linguists is that the Albanian language is a descendant of a southern Illyrian dialect spoken in much the same region in classical times. Alternativ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bantu Peoples
The Bantu peoples, or Bantu, are an ethnolinguistic grouping of approximately 400 distinct ethnic groups who speak Bantu languages. They are native to 24 countries spread over a vast area from Central Africa to Southeast Africa and into Southern Africa. There are several hundred Bantu languages. Depending on the definition of "language" or "dialect", it is estimated that there are between 440 and 680 distinct languages. The total number of speakers is in the hundreds of millions, ranging at roughly 350 million in the mid-2010s (roughly 30% of the population of Africa, or roughly 5% of the total world population). About 60 million speakers (2015), divided into some 200 ethnic or tribal groups, are found in the Democratic Republic of the Congo alone. The larger of the individual Bantu groups have populations of several million, e.g. the people of Rwanda and Burundi (25 million), the Bagandapeople of Uganda (10 million as of 2019), the Shona of Zimbabwe (15 million ), the Zulu of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Swahili Language
Swahili, also known by its local name , is the native language of the Swahili people, who are found primarily in Tanzania, Kenya and Mozambique (along the East African coast and adjacent litoral islands). It is a Bantu language, though Swahili has borrowed a number of words from foreign languages, particularly Arabic, but also words from Portuguese, English and German. Around forty percent of Swahili vocabulary consists of Arabic loanwords, including the name of the language ( , a plural adjectival form of an Arabic word meaning 'of the coast'). The loanwords date from the era of contact between Arab slave traders and the Bantu inhabitants of the east coast of Africa, which was also the time period when Swahili emerged as a lingua franca in the region. The number of Swahili speakers, be they native or second-language speakers, is estimated to be approximately 200 million. Due to concerted efforts by the government of Tanzania, Swahili is one of three official languages (th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rhaeto-Romanic
Rhaeto-Romance, Rheto-Romance, or Rhaetian, is a purported subfamily of the Romance languages that is spoken in south-eastern Switzerland and north-eastern Italy. The name "Rhaeto-Romance" refers to the former Roman province of Raetia. The question of whether these languages actually form a subfamily is called the Questione Ladina. The Italian linguist Graziadio Ascoli, writing in 1873, found them to share a number of intricacies and believed they formed a linguistic group. What distinguishes the Rhaeto-Romance languages from Italian are their phonemic vowel length (long stressed vowels), consonant formation, and a central rounded vowel series. If the subfamily is genuine, three languages would belong to it: Romansh in Switzerland, and Ladin and Friulian in Italy. Their combined number of speakers is about 660,000; the large majority of these (about 500,000) speak Friulian. Origin Before the Roman conquest, the Alps were Celtic-speaking in the north and Rhaetian-speaking i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Catalan Language
Catalan (; autonym: , ), known in the Valencian Community and Carche as ''Valencian'' (autonym: ), is a Western Romance language. It is the official language of Andorra, and an official language of three autonomous communities in eastern Spain: Catalonia, the Valencian Community, and the Balearic Islands. It also has semi-official status in the Italian comune of Alghero. It is also spoken in the Pyrénées-Orientales department of France and in two further areas in eastern Spain: the eastern strip of Aragon and the Carche area in the Region of Murcia. The Catalan-speaking territories are often called the or "Catalan Countries". The language evolved from Vulgar Latin in the Middle Ages around the eastern Pyrenees. Nineteenth-century Spain saw a Catalan literary revival, culminating in the early 1900s. Etymology and pronunciation The word ''Catalan'' is derived from the territorial name of Catalonia, itself of disputed etymology. The main theory suggests that (Latin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Italian Language
Italian (''italiano'' or ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire. Together with Sardinian, Italian is the least divergent language from Latin. Spoken by about 85 million people (2022), Italian is an official language in Italy, Switzerland (Ticino and the Grisons), San Marino, and Vatican City. It has an official minority status in western Istria (Croatia and Slovenia). Italian is also spoken by large immigrant and expatriate communities in the Americas and Australia.Ethnologue report for language code:ita (Italy) – Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (ed.), 2005. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Fifteenth edition. Dallas, Tex.: SIL International. Online version Itali ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
