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Po-ca-hon-tas, Or The Gentle Savage
''Po-ca-hon-tas, or The Gentle Savage'' (subtitled "An Original Aboriginal Erratic Operatic Semi-civilized and Demi-savage Extravaganza") is a two- act musical burlesque by John Brougham (words) and James Gaspard Maeder (music). It debuted in 1855 and became an instant hit. ''Po-ca-hon-tas'' remained a staple of theatre troupes and blackface minstrel companies for the next 30 years, typically as an afterpiece. The piece was reinvented in London at St James's Theatre, where it opened on 27 November 1869 as ''La Belle Sauvage'', with music arranged by W. H. Montgomery. Mrs John Wood played Pocahontas, Lionel Brough was Captain Smith and A.W. Young appeared as Count Rolff (sic). The play parodies the Indian narratives that were popular at the time in the United States, particularly those featuring Indian heroines in the Noble Savage mould. The burlesque is usually credited with bringing the fad for Indian narratives to an end. The plot very loosely follows events in the life of the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Brougham
John Brougham (9 May 1814 – 7 June 1880) was an Irish-American actor and dramatist. Biography He was born at Dublin. His father was an amateur painter, and died young. His mother was the daughter of a Huguenot, whom political adversity had forced into exile. John was the eldest of three children. The other two died in youth, and, the father being dead and the widowed mother left penniless, the surviving boy was reared in the family and home of an uncle. He was prepared for college at an academy at Trim, County Meath, twenty miles from Dublin, and subsequently was sent to Trinity College Dublin. There he acquired classical learning, and formed interesting and useful associations and acquaintances; and there also he became interested in private theatricals. Brougham fell in with a crowd that put on their own shows, cast by drawing parts out of a hat. Though he most always traded off larger roles so he could pay attention to his studies, Brougham took quite an interest in actin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joke
A joke is a display of humour in which words are used within a specific and well-defined narrative structure to make people laughter, laugh and is usually not meant to be interpreted literally. It usually takes the form of a story, often with dialogue, and ends in a punch line, whereby the humorous element of the story is revealed; this can be done using a pun or other type of word play, irony or sarcasm, logical incompatibility, hyperbole, or other means. Linguist Robert Hetzron offers the definition: It is generally held that jokes benefit from brevity, containing no more detail than is needed to set the scene for the punchline at the end. In the case of riddle jokes or one-liners, the setting is implicitly understood, leaving only the dialogue and punchline to be verbalised. However, subverting these and other common guidelines can also be a source of humour—the shaggy dog story is an example of an anti-humor, anti-joke; although presented as a joke, it contains a long ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1855 Musicals
Events January–March * January 1 – Ottawa, Ontario, is incorporated as a city. * January 5 – Ramón Castilla begins his third term as President of Peru. * January 23 ** The first bridge over the Mississippi River opens in modern-day Minneapolis, a predecessor of the Father Louis Hennepin Bridge. ** The 8.2–8.3 Wairarapa earthquake claims between five and nine lives near the Cook Strait area of New Zealand. * January 26 – The Point No Point Treaty is signed in the Washington Territory. * January 27 – The Panama Railway becomes the first railroad to connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. * January 29 – Lord Aberdeen resigns as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, over the management of the Crimean War. * February 5 – Lord Palmerston becomes Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. * February 11 – Kassa Hailu is crowned Tewodros II, Emperor of Ethiopia. * February 12 – Michigan State University (the "pioneer" land-gra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Constance Rourke
Constance Mayfield Rourke (November 14, 1885 – March 29, 1941) was an American author and educator. She was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and attended Sorbonne and Vassar College. She taught at Vassar from 1910 to 1915. She died in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1941. Rourke specialized in American popular culture. She wrote numerous pieces of criticism for magazines like ''The Nation'' and ''The New Republic''. However, she made her name as a writer of biographies and biographical sketches of notable American figures, such as John James Audubon, P.T. Barnum, Lotta Crabtree, Davy Crockett, and Charles Sheeler, as well as books exploring different components of American culture and its history, of which ''American Humor: A Study of the National Character'', first published in 1931, is the most famous. During the 1930s she worked on the Index of American Design as part of the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration. Her work was essential in the formation of the schol ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zouave
The Zouaves were a class of light infantry regiments of the French Army serving between 1830 and 1962 and linked to French North Africa; as well as some units of other countries modelled upon them. The zouaves were among the most decorated units of the French Army. It was initially intended that the zouaves would be a regiment of Berber volunteers from the Zwawa group of tribes in Algeria ("Zwawa" being the origin of the French term '' zouave'') who had gained a martial reputation fighting for local rulers under the Ottoman Empire. The regiment was to consist of 1,600 Zwawa Berbers, French non-commissioned officers and French officers. 500 Zwawa were recruited in August and September 1830. However, twelve years later, this idea was dropped. More zouave regiments were raised and the men recruited to serve in them were almost exclusively French or people of French descent born in French Algeria (pied-noirs), a policy which continued until the final dissolution of said regiments ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dixie (song)
"Dixie", also known as "Dixie's Land", "I Wish I Was in Dixie", and other titles, is a song about the Southern United States first made in 1859. It is one of the most distinctively Southern musical products of the 19th century. It was not a folk song at its creation, but it has since entered the American folk vernacular. The song likely cemented the word " Dixie" in the American vocabulary as a nickname for the Southern U.S. Most sources credit Ohio-born Daniel Decatur Emmett with the song's composition, although other people have claimed credit, even during Emmett's lifetime. Compounding the problem are Emmett's own confused accounts of its writing and his tardiness in registering its copyright. "Dixie" originated in the minstrel shows of the 1850s and quickly became popular throughout the United States. During the American Civil War, it was adopted as a de facto national anthem of the Confederacy, along with " The Bonnie Blue Flag" and " God Save the South". New versio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
New Orleans
New Orleans ( , ,New Orleans . ; french: La Nouvelle-Orléans , es, Nueva Orleans) is a consolidated city-parish located along the in the southeastern region of the U.S. state of Louisiana. With a population of 383,997 according to the 2020 U.S. census, [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Theme (literature)
In contemporary literary studies, a theme is a central topic, subject, or message within a narrative. Themes can be divided into two categories: a work's ''thematic concept'' is what readers "think the work is about" and its ''thematic statement'' being "what the work says about the subject". Themes are often distinguished from premises. The most common contemporary understanding of theme is an idea or point that is central to a story, which can often be summed in a single word (for example, love, death, betrayal). Typical examples of themes of this type are conflict between the individual and society; coming of age; humans in conflict with technology; nostalgia; and the dangers of unchecked ambition. A theme may be exemplified by the actions, utterances, or thoughts of a character in a novel. An example of this would be the thematic idea of loneliness in John Steinbeck's ''Of Mice and Men'', wherein many of the characters seem to be lonely. It may differ from the thesis—the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Italian Opera
Italian opera is both the art of opera in Italy and opera in the Italian language. Opera was born in Italy around the year 1600 and Italian opera has continued to play a dominant role in the history of the form until the present day. Many famous operas in Italian were written by foreign composers, including Handel, Gluck and Mozart. Works by native Italian composers of the 19th and early 20th centuries, such as Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi and Puccini, are amongst the most famous operas ever written and today are performed in opera houses across the world. Origins '' Dafne'' by Jacopo Peri was the earliest composition considered opera, as understood today. Peri's works, however, did not arise out of a creative vacuum in the area of sung drama. An underlying prerequisite for the creation of opera proper was the practice of monody. Monody is the solo singing/setting of a dramatically conceived melody, designed to express the emotional content of the text it carrie ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Farce
Farce is a comedy that seeks to entertain an audience through situations that are highly exaggerated, extravagant, ridiculous, absurd, and improbable. Farce is also characterized by heavy use of physical humor; the use of deliberate absurdity or nonsense; satire, parody, and mockery of real-life situations, people, events, and interactions; unlikely and humorous instances of miscommunication; ludicrous, improbable, and exaggerated characters; and broadly stylized performances. Genre Despite involving absurd situations and characters, the genre generally maintains at least a slight degree of realism and narrative continuity within the context of the irrational or ludicrous situations, often distinguishing it from completely absurdist or fantastical genres. Farces are often episodic or short in duration, often being set in one specific location where all events occur. Farces have historically been performed for the stage and film. Historical context The term ''farce'' is der ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stage Directions
In theatre, blocking is the precise staging of actors to facilitate the performance of a play, ballet, film or opera. Historically, the expectations of staging/blocking have changed substantially over time in Western theater. Prior to the movements toward "realism" that occurred in the 19th century, most staging used a "tableau" approach, in which a stage picture was established whenever characters entered or left the stage, ensuring that leading performers were always shown to their best advantage. In more recent times, while nothing has changed about showing leading performers to their best advantage, there have been changing cultural expectations that have made blocking/staging more complicated. There are also artistic reasons why blocking can be crucial. Through careful use of positioning on the stage, a director or performer can establish or change the significance of a scene. Different artistic principles can inform blocking, including minimalism and naturalism. Etymology ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Banns
The banns of marriage, commonly known simply as the "banns" or "bans" (from a Middle English word meaning "proclamation", rooted in Frankish and thence in Old French), are the public announcement in a Christian parish church, or in the town council, of an impending marriage between two specified persons. It is commonly associated with the Catholic Church, the Church of Sweden (Lutheran), the Church of England (Anglican), and with other Christian denominations whose traditions are similar. In 1983, the Catholic Church removed the requirement for banns and left it to individual national bishops' conferences to decide whether to continue the practice, but in most Catholic countries the banns are still published. The purpose of banns is to enable anyone to raise any canonical or civil legal impediments to the marriage, so as to prevent marriages that are invalid. Impediments vary between legal jurisdictions, but would normally include a pre-existing marriage that has been neither ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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