Jacques Tati was a French mime, filmmaker and screenwriter. Throughout his long career, he worked as a comic actor and director. In a poll conducted by Entertainment Weekly of the Greatest Movie Directors, Tati was voted the 46th greatest of all time. With only six feature-length films to his credit as director, he directed fewer films than any other director on this list of 50. Tati's Playtime ranked 43rd in the 2012 Sight & Sound critics' poll of the greatest films made; as David Bellos puts it, "Tati, from l'Ecole des facteurs to Playtime, is the epitome of what an auteur is supposed to be: the controlling mind behind a vision of the world on film". Jacques Tati was of Russian and Italian ancestry, his father, George Emmanuel Tatischeff, born in 1875 in Paris, was the son of Dmitry Tatishchev, General of the Imperial Russian Army and military attaché to the Russian Embassy in Paris. The Tatischeffs were a Russian noble family of patrilineal Rurikid descent. Whilst stationed in Paris Dmitri Tatischeff married a French woman, Rose Anathalie Alinquant.

Under suspicious circumstances Dmitri Tatischeff died from injuries sustained in a horse-riding accident shortly after the birth of George Emmanuel. As a child George Emmanuel experienced turbulent times, such as being forcibly removed from France and taken to Russia to live. In 1883 his mother brought him back to France where they settled on the estate of Le Pecq, near Saint-Germain-en-Laye on the outskirts of Paris. In 1903, Georges-Emmanuel Tatischeff married the Dutch-Italian Marcelle Claire van Hoof. Together they had two children and Jacques. Claire's Dutch father, a friend of van Gogh, whose clients included Toulouse-Lautrec, was the owner of a prestigious picture-framing company near the Place Vendôme in Paris, he brought Georges-Emmanuel into the family business. Subsequently, Georges-Emmanuel became the director of the company Cadres Van Hoof, the Tatischeff family enjoyed a high standard of living. Jacques Tatischeff appears to have been an indifferent student, yet excelled in the sports of tennis and horse riding.

He left school in 1923 at the age of 16 to take up an apprenticeship in the family business, where he was trained as a picture framer by his grandfather. Between 1927 and 1928 he completed his military national service at Saint-Germain-en-Laye with the Cavalry's 16th Regiment of Dragoons. Upon graduating the military he took on an apprenticeship in London where he was first introduced to the sport of rugby. Returning to Paris, he joined the semi-professional rugby team Racing Club de France, whose captain was Alfred Sauvy and whose supporters included Tristan Bernard, it was at the Racing Club de France that Jacques Tatischeff first discovered his comic talents, entertaining his teammates during intervals with hilarious impersonations of their sporting endeavours. He first met Jacques Broido, they would become lifelong friends. Between 1931 and 1932 the global economic crisis reached France at the same time he left both the Racing Club de France and, to his family's disapproval, his apprenticeship at Cadres Van Hoof.

Giving up a comfortable middle-class lifestyle for one of a struggling performing artist during this difficult economic time, he developed a collection of physical mimes that would become his Impressions Sportives. Each year from 1931 to 1934 he would participate in an amateur show organised by Alfred Sauvy. Although he had played music hall engagements before, his act was first mentioned in 1935, when he performed at the gala for the newspaper Le Journal to celebrate the French victory in the competition to set the transatlantic crossing record from Normandy. Among the honourable spectators was the influential writer Colette. Tati's act caught the attention of Max Trebor, who offered him an engagement at the Theatre-Michel, where he became the star act. After his success there, Tati tried to make it in London, playing a short season at the Finsbury Park Empire in March 1936. Upon his return to Paris in the same year, he was hired as top billing at the ABC Théâtre alongside the singer Marie Dubas, where he would work uninterrupted until the outbreak of the Second World War.

It was for Tati's performances of his now finely tuned Impressions Sportives at the ABC that the impressed Colette wrote, "From now on no celebration, no artistic or acrobatic spectacle can do without this amazing performer, who has invented something quite his own... His act is ballet and sport satire and a charade, he has devised a way of being both the player, the ball and the tennis racquet, of being the football and the goalkeeper, the boxer and his opponent, the bicycle and the cyclist. Without any props, he conjures up his partners, he has suggestive powers of all great artists. How gratifying it was to see the audience's warm reaction! Tati's success says a lot about the sophistication of the "uncouth" public, about its taste for novelty and its appreciation of style. Jacques Tati, the horse and rider conjured, will show all of Paris the living image of that legendary creature, the centaur." During the 1930s he performed at the Scala in Berlin between 1937 and 1938, began to experiment with film acting in the following shorts: 1932: Oscar, champion de tennis directed by Jack Forrester written by and starring Jacques Tati.

Mojave Firebrand is a 1944 American Western film directed by Spencer Gordon Bennet and written by Norman S. Hall; the film stars Wild Bill Elliott, George "Gabby" Hayes, Anne Jeffreys, LeRoy Mason, Jack Ingram and Harry McKim. The film was released on March 1944, by Republic Pictures. Wild Bill Elliott as Wild Bill Elliott George "Gabby" Hayes as Gabby Hayes Anne Jeffreys as Gail Holmes LeRoy Mason as Tracy Dalton, aka Turkey Dameron Jack Ingram as Henchman Matt Ganton Harry McKim as Johnny Taylor Karl Hackett as Miner Luke Reed Forrest Taylor as Sheriff Barker Hal Price as Mayor Prisbie Marshall Reed as Henchman Nate Bigelow Kenne Duncan as Henchman Bud Geary as Henchman Red Collins Jack Kirk as Miner Jeff Butler Mojave Firebrand on IMDb

Dorilla in Tempe is a melodramma eroico pastorale in three acts by composer Antonio Vivaldi with an Italian libretto by Antonio Maria Lucchini. The opera premiered at the Teatro San Angelo in Venice on 9 November 1726. Vivaldi revised the opera numerous times for several different performances throughout the second half of his career. Dorilla in Tempe became one of Vivaldi's personal favorites; the opera was the first work by Vivaldi to include in its cast the mezzo-soprano Anna Girò, who went on to form a lifelong friendship and professional partnership with the composer. The opera was noted for its visual aspects, boasting some of the most elaborate sets in the history of opera up to that point and for its beautiful choreography by Giovanni Galletto. In 1728 the opera was revived at the small Teatro San Margherita in Venice with an identical text, again in Prague at the Sporck Theatre in the spring of 1732, this time with substantial alterations to the libretto. During Carnival 1734 the opera was revived at the Teatro San Angelo, this time as a pastiche using recent music by other composers, including Hasse and Leo.

The only surviving score of Dorilla in Tempe, located in Turin, is from this 1734 pastiche production. The score includes not only the many insertions into the opera but a number of the deletions from earlier productions. Unusually for Vivaldi’s operatic scores, the sinfonia is linked with the main opera: it follows the title-page instead of preceding it, the music of its final movement – a C major version of the opening of the Spring concerto– reappears in the opera’s opening chorus, appropriately in praise of spring; the opera displays a pastoral nature in its choral and ballet music, at times mixed with heroic elements, as in the elaborate celebrations at the end of Act 2, where a hunt is enacted to the inevitable horn accompaniment. Https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorilla_in_Tempe Giacomelli Bel piacer saria d’un core - Nomio Rete, lacci, e strali adopra - Filindo Non vo che un infedele - Filindo Hasse Mi lusingha - Elmiro Sapro' ben con petto forte - Elmiro Non ha piu pace - Filindo Leo Vorrei dai lacci scogliere - Elmiro Sarro Se ostinata - Admeto The story takes place in Tempe.

Like the music, the plot intertwines pastoral and heroic elements and centers on the shepherd Nomio, in fact Apollo in disguise. Nomio falls in love with Dorilla, the daughter of Admeto, King of Thessaly, herself in love with the shepherd Elmiro. Admeto is forced by the gods to save his kingdom by offering his daughter as a sacrifice to the sea-serpent Pitone, but she is rescued just in time by Nomio. Nomio claims the hand of Dorilla as his reward; the pair are captured, Elmiro is sentenced to death. However, the intervention of Nomio, revealing his divine identity, saves the situation and Dorilla and Elmiro are reunited. 1994 Dorilla: María Cristina Kiehr, Elmiro: John Elwes, Admeto: Philippe Cantor, Nomio/Apollo: Jean Nirouët. Ensemble Baroque de Nice, Gilbert Bezzina Opéra de Nice 1994,2008 2017 Diego Fasolis, Romina Basso, Serena Malfi, Christian Senn, Marina De Liso, Sonia Prina, Lucia Cirillo. 2017 Naïve Records Notes Sources Cross, Eric, "Dorilla in Tempe", Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy