Jean-Philippe Léo Smet, better known by his stage name Johnny Hallyday, was a French rock and roll and pop singer and actor, credited for having brought rock and roll to France. During a career spanning 57 years, he released 79 albums and sold more than 110 million records worldwide in the French-speaking world, making him one of the best-selling artists in the world, he won 40 golden albums, 22 platinum albums and 10 Music Victories. He performed 540 duets with 187 artists. Credited for his strong voice and his spectacular shows, he sometimes arrived by entering a stadium through the crowd and once by jumping from a helicopter above the Stade de France, where he performed 9 times. Among his 3,257 shows completed in 187 tours, the most memorable were at Parc des Princes in 1993, at the Stade de France in 1998, just after France's win in the 1998 FIFA World Cup, as well as at the Eiffel Tower in 2000, which had record-breaking ticket sales for a French artist. A million spectators gathered to see his performance at the Eiffel Tower, with some 10 million watching on television.

Working with the best French artists and musicians of his time, he collaborated with Charles Aznavour, Michel Berger and Jean-Jacques Goldman, while his shows were produced by Jean-Claude Camus, considered to be one of the greatest producers in France. Hugely popular in France, he was referred to as "Johnny" and seen as a "national monument" and a part of the French cultural legacy, he was a symbol of the Trente Glorieuses when he emerged in 1960 and a familiar figure to four generations. More than 2,500 magazine covers and 190 books were dedicated to him during his lifetime, making him one of the persons most covered by the media in France, his death from cancer in 2017 was followed by a "popular tribute" during which a million people attended the procession and 15 million others watched the ceremony on TV. He remained unknown in the English-speaking world, where he was dubbed "the biggest rock star you've never heard of" and introduced as the French version of Elvis Presley. Jean-Philippe Smet was born in the 9th arrondissement of Paris, on 15 June 1943 to a Belgian father, Léon Smet, a French mother, Huguette Eugénie Pierrette Clerc.

Léon Smet, who worked as a nightclub performer, left his son a few months later. Huguette Clerc started a modeling career, which left her with little time to care for her son. Hallyday grew up with his aunt, Hélène Mar, took his stage name from a cousin-in-law from Oklahoma who performed as Lee Halliday; the latter became a father figure, introducing him to American music. Influenced by Elvis Presley and the 1950s rock n' roll revolution, Hallyday became known for singing rock'n' roll in French, his debut single, "Laisse les filles" was released on the Vogue label in March 1960. His first album, Hello Johnny, was released in 1960. In 1961 his cover of "Let's Twist Again" was awarded a gold disc, it topped every European chart, although the track did not appear in the UK Singles Chart. He appeared on the American The Ed Sullivan Show with American singing star Connie Francis in a show, taped at the Moulin Rouge nightclub in Paris, he staged many appearances in the Paris Olympia under the management of Bruno Coquatrix.

For their first concert, The Jimi Hendrix Experience opened for Johnny Hallyday in Nancy on 14 October 1966. Film footage from October 1966, exists of Hallyday partying with Hendrix, his manager Chas Chandler and others, he socialised with Keith Richards and Bob Dylan. At the end of the 1960s, Hallyday made a string of albums with Foreigner's Mick Jones and Tommy Brown as musical directors, Big Jim Sullivan, Bobby Graham and Jimmy Page as session musicians; these are Jeune homme, Rivière... Ouvre ton Vie. On Je suis né dans la rue, Hallyday hired both Peter Frampton and the Small Faces. Amongst their contributions are the songs "Amen", "Reclamation", "Regarde pour moi", which are variations of Small Faces and Humble Pie songs—tracks and they all play on the album. Forgotten is Hallyday's non-LP single and EP track "Que je t'aime" from the same sessions. By 1969 alone, his record sales exceeded twelve million units. One of Hallyday's concerts, 100% Johnny: Live à la tour Eiffel in 2000, attracted an audience of 500,000 and 9.5 million television viewers.

In December 2005, Hallyday had his third number-one single on the French SNEP singles chart since its establishment in 1984, "Mon plus beau Noël", dedicated to his adopted daughter Jade. Shortly before announcing his retirement from touring in 2007, he released a blues-flavored album, Le Cœur d'un homme. In addition to the lead single "Always", Le Cœur d'un homme features "T'aimer si mal", a duet with blues musician Taj Mahal and "I Am the Blues", an English-language song written by U2's lead singer Bono, his next album, Ça ne finira jamais, released in 2008, another No. 1 on the French album chart, its lead single, "Ça n'finira jamais" reached No. 1. Hallyday's album Tour 66: Stade de France 2009 was a live set recorded at Stade de France during his farewell tour. In 2011 Hallyday released album Jamais seul, recorded with Matthieu Chedid, started touring again. In 2012 he gave concerts in different countries, including Rus

55 Pegasi is a single star in the northern constellation of Pegasus. It is visible to the naked eye as a faint, reddish-hued point of light with a baseline apparent visual magnitude of 4.51. The star is located 302 light years away from the Sun based on parallax, but it is moving closer with a radial velocity of −5 km/s; this is an aging red giant star on the asymptotic giant branch with a stellar classification of M1IIIab, having exhausted the supply of hydrogen at its core expanded to 46 times the Sun's radius. It is a suspected variable, with an observed magnitude that ranges from 4.50 down to 4.56. The star is around two billion years old with 1.6 times the mass of the Sun. It is radiating 483 times the luminosity of the Sun from its swollen photosphere at an effective temperature of 3,994 K

Anatoly Alexandrovitch Vasiliev is a noted Russian theatre director and one of the leading European contemporary stage directors. He is artistic director of the Moscow Theatre "School of Dramatic Arts", Théâtre de l'Europe, professor of drama in Lyon, France. Vasiliev was born in the Soviet Union and graduated from the faculty of chemistry at Rostov State University. In 1973, he received a degree in directing from the State Institute of Dramatic Art, where he first worked with painter and sceneographer Igor Popov; this collaboration would continue throughout most of Vasiliev's professional life. As director-Intern for the institute, he staged A Solo for a Clock with Chimes, which first brought him to the attention of Moscow theatre-goers. Subsequent productions of The First Draught of Vassa Zheleznova, in 1978, The Grown Daughter of a Young Man, in 1979, sealed his fame in the theatre community. Vasiliev and the group of actors that had gathered around him left the Stanislavski theatre in 1982.

In 1985, Yuri Petrovich Lyubimov invited him to work at the Taganka Theatre. The result was that Vasiliev directed a production of Cerceau, by Victor Slavkin, voted best performance for the 1985–1986 Moscow theatre season. In 1987, Vasiliev founded the theatre "School of Dramatic Art", bringing with him many of the actors who had worked with him at the Stanislavski Theatre; the theatre's website sums up Vasiliev's vision for the theatre as follows: "The theatre'School of Dramatic Art' created by Anatoly Vasiliev is a unique model of theatre from the point of view of its artistic, intellectual and ethic relations. The concept of the'theatre – laboratory' gives the opportunity to make the research and experiment." Since its formation, Vasiliev has taken the theatre company on frequent tours, traveling to numerous cities around the world. Among these have been Berlin, Brussels, Helsinki, Munich, Rome and Stuttgart. Now in his 70s, Vasiliev still takes an active part in the workings of the theatre.

In 2010 Vasiliev started a three-year course for the training of theatre pedagogists. The course is based in Venice, takes place during two months each year and is for Italian professionals but combines pedagogists and directors from all over the world. In mid-2011 Vasiliev began a Research seminary on acting techniques at the Grotowski Institute in Wrocław, Poland; the seminary lasted two years and combined graduates of the Venice program and actors from various European countries. In 2016 Vasiliev will return to direct, for the first time in seven years, the play La Musica deuxième by French playwright Marguerite Duras, at the Comédie-Française in Paris, he is aided by his long time collaborator Natacha Isaeva, researcher of theatre and translator, Boaz Trinker, actor-training specialist graduated from the Venice program. Vasiliev was awarded the Laureate of Russian Stanislavsky Premium in 1988, he received the Order of the Cavalier of Art and Literature from France in 1989, the Premio Europa Nuove Realtà Teatrali of the Europe Theatre Prize in Taormina, Italy, in 1990, the Chaos and Pirandello prizes in Agrigento, Italy, in 1992.

In 1993, he received the Honoured Art Worker of Russia award, followed in 1995 by the Laureate of the Premium of Stanislasky Fund award for contributions in developing theatre pedagogics. With Igor Popov, he received the 1999 State Premium of Russia award in the field of Literature and Art for the creation of Moscow theatre School of Dramatic Art, the 2001 National Premium "Triumph" award. In December 2012 he was awarded the prestigious Italian UBU award, for his three-year Island of Pedagogy project in Venice. In March 2016 Vasiliev was selected by UNESCO's International Theatre Institute to address the world on World Theatre Day. Anatoly Vasiliev: Biography – from International University Global Theatre Experience History of the Theatre "School of Dramatic Art" – accessed on June 8, 2007 Tracing Roads Across, Entry for the Theatre "School of Dramatic Art" – Accessed June 8, 2007 Anatoly Vasiliev's Message on World Theatre Day 2016 - from UNESCO's International Theatre Institute Media related to Anatoly Vasiliev at Wikimedia Commons