The Sorcerer
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The Sorcerer
''The Sorcerer'' is a two-act comic opera, with a libretto by W. S. Gilbert and music by Arthur Sullivan. It was the British duo's third operatic collaboration. The plot of ''The Sorcerer'' is based on a Christmas story, ''An Elixir of Love'', that Gilbert wrote for ''The Graphic'' magazine in 1876. A young man, Alexis, is obsessed with the idea of love levelling all ranks and social distinctions. To promote his beliefs, he invites the proprietor of J. W. Wells & Co., Family Sorcerers, to brew a love potion. This causes everyone in the village to fall in love with the first person they see and results in the pairing of comically mismatched couples. In the end, Wells must sacrifice his life to break the spell. The opera opened on 17 November 1877 at the Opera Comique in London, where it ran for 178 performances. It was considered a success by the standards of that time and encouraged the collaborators to write their next opera, ''H.M.S. Pinafore''. ''The Sorcerer'' was r ...
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Trial By Jury
A jury trial, or trial by jury, is a legal proceeding in which a jury makes a decision or findings of fact. It is distinguished from a bench trial in which a judge or panel of judges makes all decisions. Jury trials are used in a significant share of serious criminal cases in many but not all common law judicial systems. The majority of common law jurisdictions in Asia (such as Singapore, India, Pakistan and Malaysia) have abolished jury trials on the grounds that juries are susceptible to bias. Juries or lay judges have also been incorporated into the legal systems of many civil law countries for criminal cases. Only the United States makes routine use of jury trials in a wide variety of non-criminal cases. Other common law legal jurisdictions use jury trials only in a very select class of cases that make up a tiny share of the overall civil docket (like malicious prosecution and false imprisonment suits in England and Wales), but true civil jury trials are almost entirely ...
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Rutland Barrington
Rutland Barrington (15 January 1853 – 31 May 1922) was an English singer, actor, comedian and Edwardian musical comedy star. Best remembered for originating the lyric baritone roles in the Gilbert and Sullivan operas from 1877 to 1896, his performing career spanned more than four decades. He also wrote at least a dozen works for the stage. After two years with a comic touring company, Barrington joined Richard D'Oyly Carte's opera company and, over the next two decades, created a number of memorable comic opera roles, including Captain Corcoran in ''H.M.S. Pinafore'' (1878), the Sergeant of Police in ''The Pirates of Penzance'' (1880), and Pooh Bah in ''The Mikado'' (1885), among many others. Failing in an 1888 attempt to become a theatrical manager, Barrington refocused his energies on acting and occasional playwriting. Beginning in 1896 and continuing for ten years, Barrington played in a series of very successful musical comedies under the management of George Edwarde ...
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Sims Reeves
John Sims Reeves (21 October 1821 – 25 October 1900) was an English operatic, oratorio and ballad tenor vocalist during the mid-Victorian era. Reeves began his singing career in 1838 but continued his vocal studies until 1847. He soon established himself on the opera and concert stage and became known for his interpretation of ballads. He continued singing through the 1880s and later taught and wrote about singing. Musical beginnings Sims Reeves was born in Shooter's Hill, in Kent, England. His parents were John Reeves, a musician of Yorkshire origin, and his wife, Rosina. He received his earliest musical education from his father, a bass soloist in the Royal Artillery Band, and probably through the bandmaster, George McKenzie. By the age of fourteen he was appointed choirmaster of North Cray church and performed organist's duties. He seems to have studied medicine for a year but changed his mind when he gained his adult voice: it was at first a baritone, training under Th ...
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Tenor
A tenor is a type of classical music, classical male singing human voice, voice whose vocal range lies between the countertenor and baritone voice types. It is the highest male chest voice type. The tenor's vocal range extends up to C5. The low extreme for tenors is widely defined to be B2, though some roles include an A2 (two As below middle C). At the highest extreme, some tenors can sing up to the second F above middle C (F5). The tenor voice type is generally divided into the ''leggero'' tenor, lyric tenor, spinto tenor, dramatic tenor, heldentenor, and tenor buffo or . History The name "tenor" derives from the Latin word ''wikt:teneo#Latin, tenere'', which means "to hold". As Fallows, Jander, Forbes, Steane, Harris and Waldman note in the "Tenor" article at ''Grove Music Online'': In polyphony between about 1250 and 1500, the [tenor was the] structurally fundamental (or 'holding') voice, vocal or instrumental; by the 15th century it came to signify the male voice that ...
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Letty Lind
Letitia Elizabeth Rudge (21 December 1861 – 27 August 1923), known professionally as Letty Lind, was an English actress, singer, dancer and acrobat, best known for her work in burlesque at the Gaiety Theatre, and in musical theatre at Daly's Theatre, in London. Life and career Lind was born at her parents' residence in Birmingham, England, and was christened at Saint Thomas church. Her father, Henry Rudge, was a brass founder and chandelier maker. Her mother, Elizabeth Rudge, was an actress whose career was brief and confined mostly to the Birmingham area. Lind was one of the Rudge Sisters, all of whom became well-known performers. Lind also had two brothers who were brass founders. Early career Lind first appeared on stage when she was about five years old as Eva in ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'', then toured with American entertainer and writer Howard Paul and his British wife, Mrs Howard Paul from about the age of ten. The Pauls billed her as "La Petite Letitia." Howard Paul ...
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Mrs Howard Paul
Isabella Hill (1 April 1833 – 6 June 1879), better known as Mrs Howard Paul, was an English actress, operatic singer and Actor-manager, actress-manager of the Victorian era, best remembered for creating the role of Lady Sangazure in the Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera ''The Sorcerer'' (1877). Her stage career began in 1853 in London in ballad operas, such as ''The Beggar's Opera''. In 1854 she married the American writer Henry Howard Paul, in whose comic entertainments the two performed for much of the next two decades, often on tour, both in Britain and America. She was popular for her musical impersonations of singers of the day. She also played in Victorian burlesque and other theatrical roles, among the best known of which was her Lady Macbeth at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in 1869. Various composers wrote songs for her to premiere. After ''The Sorcerer'', Gilbert and Sullivan cast Mrs Paul in their next opera, ''H.M.S. Pinafore'', but her vocal abilities had declined ...
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The Mountebanks
''The Mountebanks'' is a comic opera in two acts with music by Alfred Cellier and Ivan Caryll and a libretto by W. S. Gilbert. The story concerns a magic potion that causes the person to whom it is administered to become what he or she has pretended to be. It is similar to several "magic lozenge" plots that Gilbert had proposed to the composer Arthur Sullivan, but that Sullivan had rejected, earlier in their careers. To set his libretto to music, Gilbert turned to Cellier, who had previously been a musical director for Gilbert and Sullivan and had since become a successful composer. During the composition of the piece Cellier died, and the score was finished by the original production's musical director, Ivan Caryll, who became a successful composer of Edwardian Musical Comedy. The opera was first produced at the Lyric Theatre, London, on 4 January 1892, for a run of 229 performances. It also toured extensively, had a short Broadway run, in 1893, American tours and Australian ...
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Foggerty's Fairy
''Foggerty's Fairy'', subtitled "An Entirely Original Fairy Farce", is a three-act farce by W.S. Gilbert based loosely on Gilbert's short story, "The Story of a Twelfth Cake", which was published in the Christmas Number of ''The Graphic'' in 1874, and elements of other Gilbert plays. The story concerns a man who, with the help of a fairy, changes a small event in his past to try to save his engagement to the girl he loves. This leads to profound changes in his present, and he finds that matters are even worse than before. ''Foggerty's Fairy'' opened at the Criterion Theatre in London on 15 December 1881. Charles Wyndham (actor), Charles Wyndham, the manager of the Criterion, starred as the lead character, Frederick Foggerty. Despite Wyndham's star power, interest in the play's bold and original premise and reviews that were at least partly positive, the play was not a success. It closed on 6 January 1882 after about 25 performances. Disappointed, Gilbert turned back to writing c ...
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Dulcamara, Or The Little Duck And The Great Quack
''Dulcamara, or the Little Duck and the Great Quack'', is one of the earliest plays written by W.S. Gilbert, his first solo stage success. The work is a musical burlesque of Donizetti's ''L'Elisir d'Amore'', and the music was arranged by Mr. Van Hamme.Burgess, p. 307 It opened at the St James's Theatre on 29 December 1866, the last item in a long evening, following a farce and Dion Boucicault's new play ''Hunted Down''."The London Theatres", ''The London Review'', 5 January 1867, p. 18 ''Dulcamara'' ran for a successful 120 nights. The popularity of the piece encouraged further commissions for opera burlesques from Gilbert, who wrote four more between 1867 and 1869. ''Dulcamara'' and its successors all comply with the burlesque traditions of the day, with dialogue in rhyming couplets, convoluted puns throughout, and an array of attractive actresses in tights or short skirts, playing male roles, a practice Gilbert renounced as soon as he was sufficiently influential in the theatre ...
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The Times
''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (founded in 1821) are published by Times Newspapers, since 1981 a subsidiary of News UK, in turn wholly owned by News Corp. ''The Times'' and ''The Sunday Times'', which do not share editorial staff, were founded independently and have only had common ownership since 1966. In general, the political position of ''The Times'' is considered to be centre-right. ''The Times'' is the first newspaper to have borne that name, lending it to numerous other papers around the world, such as ''The Times of India'', ''The New York Times'', and more recently, digital-first publications such as TheTimesBlog.com (Since 2017). In countries where these other titles are popular, the newspaper is often referred to as , or as , although the newspaper is of nationa ...
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