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Zhou Xiaoyan
Zhou Xiaoyan (; August 17, 1917 – March 4, 2016) was a Chinese vocal pedagogue and classical soprano. Dubbed by ''The New York Times'' as "China's First Lady of Opera", she was considered to be the first important instructor of Western opera in China. As a vocalist, she performed in theaters and concert halls across Europe in 1946–1947; earning the nickname the "Chinese Nightingale". Under the directive of Premier Zhou Enlai, she began a career teaching voice at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music in 1949. She remained an instructor at the Shanghai Conservatory for more than 65 years. Many of her students went on to highly successful international opera careers. Early life in China Born in Wuhan, Zhou's father, Zhou Cangbai (also known as Chou Tsang-po), was a wealthy banker. She was educated at a Roman Catholic school in Shanghai which exposed her to studies in Western music. She was also influenced in her youth by the White Russian and Jewish musicians who were prevalent in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zhou (surname)
Zhōu () is a Chinese-language surname. In places which use the Wade–Giles romanization such as Taiwan, Zhou is usually spelled as "Chou" (ㄓㄡ), and it may also be spelled as "Chiau", "Chau", " Chao", "Chew", " Chow", "Chiu", "Cho", "Chu", "Jhou", "Jou", "Djou", "Jue", "Jow", or "Joe". Zhou ranks as the 10th most common surname in Mainland China . In 2013 it was found to be the 10th most common name, shared by 25,200,000 people or 1.900% of the population, with the province with the most being Hunan. Derived from the Zhou dynasty, it has been one of the ten most common surnames in China since the Yuan dynasty. It is the 5th name on the ''Hundred Family Surnames'' poem. The Korean surname, " Joo" or "Ju", and The Vietnamese surname, " Châu" or "Chu", are both derived from and written with the same Chinese character (周). The character also means "around". ''Zhōu'' can also stand for another, rare Chinese family name, 洲. History According to historical records, Zhou surn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nikolai Tcherepnin
Nikolai Nikolayevich Tcherepnin (Russian: Николай Николаевич Черепнин; – 26 June 1945) was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. He was born in Saint Petersburg and studied under Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. He conducted for the first Paris season of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. Life Nikolai Tcherepnin was born in 1873 to a well-known and wealthy physician of the same name. The elder Nikolai moved in elite circles of artists including Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Modest Mussorgsky. Young Nikolai's mother died when he was a baby, and when his father remarried, was replaced by an ambivalent stepmother. As a child, Nikolai's father beat him regularly and enforced a general code of strict discipline. At his father's insistence, Nikolai earned a law degree, though during this time he composed steadily. In 1895 he graduated with his degree in law from the University of Saint Petersburg. In 1898, he earned a degre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rigoletto
''Rigoletto'' is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi. The Italian libretto was written by Francesco Maria Piave based on the 1832 play ''Le roi s'amuse'' by Victor Hugo. Despite serious initial problems with the Austrian censors who had control over northern Italian theatres at the time, the opera had a triumphant premiere at La Fenice in Venice on 11 March 1851. The work, Verdi's sixteenth in the genre, is widely considered to be the first of the operatic masterpieces of Verdi's middle-to-late career. Its tragic story revolves around the licentious Duchy of Mantua, Duke of Mantua, his hunch-backed court jester Rigoletto, and Rigoletto's daughter Gilda. The opera's original title, ''La maledizione'' (The Curse), refers to a curse placed on both the Duke and Rigoletto by a courtier whose daughter the Duke has seduced with Rigoletto's encouragement. The curse comes to fruition when Gilda falls in love with the Duke and sacrifices her life to save him from the assassin hired by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Deng Xiaoping
Deng Xiaoping (22 August 1904 – 19 February 1997) was a Chinese revolutionary leader, military commander and statesman who served as the paramount leader of the People's Republic of China (PRC) from December 1978 to November 1989. After CCP chairman Mao Zedong's death in 1976, Deng gradually rose to supreme power and led China through a series of far-reaching market-economy reforms earning him the reputation as the "Architect of Modern China". He contributed to China becoming the world's second largest economy by GDP nominal in 2010. Born in the province of Sichuan in the Qing dynasty, Deng studied and worked in France in the 1920s, where he became a follower of Marxism–Leninism and joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1924. In early 1926, Deng travelled to Moscow to study Communist doctrines and became a political commissar for the Red Army upon returning to China. In late 1929, Deng led local Red Army uprisings in Guangxi. In 1931, he was demoted within the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Political Offences In China
This is a list of political offences in China. During the Maoist era, particularly during the Anti-Rightist Movement and the Cultural Revolution, the judicial system of China was often used for political persecution of rivals, and penalties such as jail terms or capital punishment were largely imposed on the authority's political enemies, or anyone who attempted to challenge it. During those times, vague accusations such as "counter-revolutionary" ( zh, 反革命), capitalist roader (), " running dog of the imperialist " () could have had the accused imprisoned, or shot by firing squad. These labels fell out of use following the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976. In more recent times, accusations such as “illegal possession of state secret” () and “inciting subversion of state power” () carry long jail terms. The vague charge of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” has also been frequently used to detain human rights activists. Former (1949-1990) Rightist " ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cultural Revolution
The Cultural Revolution, formally known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, was a sociopolitical movement in the People's Republic of China (PRC) launched by Mao Zedong in 1966, and lasting until his death in 1976. Its stated goal was to preserve Chinese communism by purging remnants of capitalist and traditional elements from Chinese society. The Revolution marked the effective commanding return of Mao –who was still the Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)– to the centre of power, after a period of self-abstention and ceding to less radical leadership in the aftermath of the Mao-led Great Leap Forward debacle and the Great Chinese Famine (1959–1961). The Revolution failed to achieve its main goals. Launching the movement in May 1966 with the help of the Cultural Revolution Group, Mao charged that bourgeois elements had infiltrated the government and society with the aim of restoring capitalism. Mao called on young people to "bombard the headqu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ding Ling
Ding Ling (; October 12, 1904 – March 4, 1986), formerly romanized as Ting Ling, was the pen name of Jiang Bingzhi (), also known as Bin Zhi (彬芷 ''Bīn Zhǐ''), one of the most celebrated 20th-century Chinese women authors. She is known for her feminist and socialist realist literature. Ding was active in leftist literary circles connected to the Chinese Communist Party and was imprisoned by the Chinese Nationalist Party for her politics. She later became a leader in the literary community in the Communist base of Yan'an, and held high literature and culture positions in the early government of the People's Republic of China. She was awarded the Soviet Union's Stalin second prize for Literature in 1951 for her socialist-realist work ''The Sun Shines Over Sanggan River''. After the Anti-Rightist Campaign in 1958, Ding was denounced and purged and was sent to exile in Manchuria, to be rehabilitated only in 1979. She passed away in Beijing in 1986. Early life Ding Ling ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ba Jin
Ba Jin (Chinese: 巴金; pinyin: ''Bā Jīn''; 1904–2005) was a Chinese writer. In addition to his impact on Chinese literature, he also wrote three original works in Esperanto, and as a political activist he wrote '' The Family''. Name He was born as Li Yaotang, with alternate name Li Feigan. He used the pen name Ba Jin, for which he is most known. The first character of his pen name may have been taken from Ba Enbo, a classmate of his who committed suicide in Paris, and the last character of which is the Chinese equivalent of the last syllable of Peter Kropotkin (克鲁泡特金, Ke-lu-pao-te-jin). He was also sometimes known as Li Pei Kan. Biography Ba Jin was born in Chengdu, Sichuan. It was partly owing to boredom that Ba Jin began to write his first novel, ''Miewang'' (“Destruction”). In France, Ba Jin continued his anarchist activism, translating many anarchist works, including Kropotkin's ''Ethics'', into Chinese, which was mailed back to Shanghai's anarchist m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich, , group=n (9 August 1975) was a Soviet-era Russian composer and pianist who became internationally known after the premiere of his Symphony No. 1 (Shostakovich), First Symphony in 1926 and was regarded throughout his life as a major composer. Shostakovich achieved early fame in the Soviet Union, but had a complex relationship with its government. His 1934 opera ''Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (opera), Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk'' was initially a success, but eventually was Muddle Instead of Music, condemned by the Soviet government, putting his career at risk. In 1948 his work was #Second denunciation, denounced under the Zhdanov Doctrine, with professional consequences lasting several years. Even after his censure was On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences, rescinded in 1956, performances of his music were occasionally subject to state interventions, as with his Symphony No. 13 (Shostakovich), Thirteenth Symphony (1962). Shostakovich was a m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sviatoslav Richter
Sviatoslav Teofilovich Richter, group= ( – August 1, 1997) was a Soviet classical pianist. He is frequently regarded as one of the greatest pianists of all time, Great Pianists of the 20th Century and has been praised for the "depth of his interpretations, his virtuoso technique, and his vast repertoire." Biography Childhood Richter was born in Zhytomyr, Volhynian Governorate, in the Russian Empire (modern-day Ukraine), the hometown of his parents. His father, (1872–1941), was a pianist, organist and composer born to German expatriates; from 1893 to 1900 he studied at the Vienna Conservatory. His mother, Anna Pavlovna Richter (née Moskaleva; 1893–1963), came from a noble Russian landowning family, and at one point she studied under her future husband. In 1918, when Richter's parents were in Odessa, the Civil War separated them from their son, and Richter moved in with his aunt Tamara. He lived with her from 1918 to 1921, and it was then that his interest in art first ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Oistrakh
David Fyodorovich Oistrakh (; – 24 October 1974), was a Soviet classical violinist, violist and conductor. Oistrakh collaborated with major orchestras and musicians from many parts of the world and was the dedicatee of numerous violin works, including both of Dmitri Shostakovich's violin concerti and the violin concerto by Aram Khachaturian. He is considered one of the preeminent violinists of the 20th century. Life and career Early years Oistrakh was born to a Jewish family in Odessa, Kherson Governorate, Russian Empire (today part of Ukraine). His father was Fischl Eustrach, son of a second guild merchant, and his mother was Beyle Oistrakh. At the age of five, young Oistrakh began his studies of the violin and viola as a pupil of Pyotr Stolyarsky. In his studies with Stolyarsky he became very good friends with Iosif Brodsky, Nathan Milstein and other violinists with whom he collaborated numerous times after achieving fame since their beginnings as fellow students at ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein ( ; August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, pianist, music educator, author, and humanitarian. Considered to be one of the most important conductors of his time, he was the first American conductor to receive international acclaim. According to music critic Donal Henahan, he was "one of the most prodigiously talented and successful musicians in American history". Bernstein was the recipient of many honors, including seven Emmy Awards, two Tony Awards, sixteen Grammy Awards including the Lifetime Achievement Award, and the Kennedy Center Honors, Kennedy Center Honor. As a composer he wrote in many genres, including symphonic and orchestral music, ballet, film and theatre music, choral works, opera, chamber music and works for the piano. His best-known work is the Broadway theatre, Broadway musical ''West Side Story'', which continues to be regularly performed worldwide, and has been adapted into two (West Side Story (1961 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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