Les Troyens is a French grand opera in five acts by Hector Berlioz. The libretto was written by Berlioz himself from Virgil's epic poem the Aeneid. Les Troyens is Berlioz's most ambitious work, the summation of his entire artistic career, but he did not live to see it performed in its entirety. Under the title Les Troyens à Carthage, the last three acts were premièred with many cuts by Léon Carvalho's company, the Théâtre Lyrique, at their theatre on the Place du Châtelet in Paris on 4 November 1863, with 21 repeat performances. After decades of neglect, today the opera is considered by some music critics as one of the finest written. Berlioz began the libretto on 5 May 1856 and completed it toward the end of June 1856, he finished the full score on 12 April 1858. Berlioz had a keen affection for literature, he had admired Virgil since his childhood; the Princess Carolyne zu Sayn-Wittgenstein was a prime motivator to Berlioz to compose this opera. At that time I had completed the dramatic work I mentioned earlier Four years earlier I happened to be in Weimar at the home of Princess Wittgenstein – a devoted friend of Liszt, a woman of character and intelligence who has given me support in my darkest hours.
I was led to talk of my admiration for Virgil and of the idea I had formed of a great opera, designed on Shakespearean lines, for which Books Two and Four of the Aeneid would provide the subject-matter. I added that I was all too aware of the pain that such an undertaking would cause me to embark on it. "Indeed, the princess replied, the conjunction of your passion for Shakespeare and your love of antiquity must result in the creation of something grand and novel. You must write this lyric poem. You must start work on it and bring it to completion." As I persisted in my refusal: "Listen, said the princess, if you shrink before the hardships that it is bound to cause you, if you are so weak as to be afraid of the work and will not face everything for the sake of Dido and Cassandra never come back here, for I do not want to see you again." This was more than enough to decide me. Once back in Paris I started to write the lines for the poem of Les Troyens. I set to work on the score, after three and a half years of corrections, additions etc. everything was finished.
The work over and over again, after giving numerous readings of the poem in different places, listening to the comments made by various listeners and benefiting from them to the best of my ability On 3 May 1861, Berlioz wrote in a letter: "I am sure that I have written a great work and nobler than anything done hitherto." Elsewhere he wrote: "The principal merit of the work is, in my view, the truthfulness of the expression." For Berlioz, truthful representation of passion was the highest goal of a dramatic composer, in this respect he felt he had equalled the achievements of Gluck and Mozart. In his memoirs, Berlioz described in excruciating detail the intense frustrations he experienced in seeing the work performed. For five years, the Paris Opéra – the only suitable stage in Paris – vacillated. Tired of waiting, he agreed to let Léon Carvalho, director of the smaller Théâtre Lyrique, mount a production of the second half of the opera with the title Les Troyens à Carthage, it consisted of Acts 3 to 5, redivided by Berlioz into five acts, to which he added an orchestral introduction and a prologue.
As Berlioz noted bitterly, he agreed to let Carvalho do it "despite the manifest impossibility of his doing it properly. He had just obtained an annual subsidy of a hundred thousand francs from the government. Nonetheless the enterprise was beyond him, his theater was not large enough, his singers were not good enough, his chorus and orchestra were small and weak."Even with this truncated version of the opera, many compromises and cuts were made, some during rehearsals, some during the run. The new second act was the Chasse Royale et Orage, an elaborate pantomime ballet with nymphs and fauns and a chorus. Since the set change for this scene took nearly an hour, it was cut, despite the fact its staging had been simplified with a painted waterfall, rather than one with real water. Carvalho had planned to divert water from the nearby Seine, but during the rehearsals, a faulty switch nearly caused a disaster; the entries of the builders and farm-workers, were omitted because Carvalho found them dull.
The sentries duet was omitted, because Carvalho had found its "homely style... out of place in an epic work". Iopas's stanzas disappeared with Berlioz's approval, the singer De Quercy "charged with the part being incapable of singing them well." The duet between Dido and Aeneas was cut because, as Berlioz himself realized, "Madame Charton's voice was unequal to the vehemence of this scene, which took so much out of her that she would not have had the strength left to deliver the tremendous recitative'Dieux immortels! il part!', the final aria, the scene on the pyre." The "Song of Hylas", "greatly liked at the early performances and was well sung", was cut while Berlioz was at home sick with bronchitis. The singer of the part, Edmond Cabel, was performing in a revival of Félicien David's La perle du Brésil, since his contract only required him to sing fifteen times per month, he would have to be paid an extra two hundred francs for each additional perfor
Cebuana Lhuillier Pawnshop known as Cebuana, is a Philippine-based pawnshop, the flagship brand of PJ Lhuillier Group of Companies. Jean Henri Lhuillier is the current President of CEO of Cebuana. Cebuana Lhuillier is a non-banking financial institution offering services such as pawn-brokering, money remittance, bills payment, remit-to-account, corporate payout, e-loading. Cebuana Lhuillier Pawnshop began with four pawnshop outlets in Metro Manila in the mid-1980s. In 1968, Henry Lhuillier's son, Philippe Jones Lhuillier went forth and opened the first Lhuillier pawnshop at Libertad Street in Pasay under the trade name Agencia Cebuana, it traces its roots in Cebu, where then-French Consul to the Philippines, Henry Lhuillier established his first chain of Agencias in 1935. Throughout the 70's and 80's, Philippe Jones Lhuillier opened more agencias in Metro Manila; the company pursued further nationwide expansion in 1987 and adopted the trade name, “Cebuana Lhuillier,” which it still carries to this day.
In 1998, Philippe Jones Lhuillier was appointed the Philippine Ambassador to Italy. Philippe Jones Lhuillier's son, Jean Henri Lhuillier, took the helm and became Cebuana Lhuillier Pawnshop's President and Chief Executive Officer in the same year. Jean Henri Lhuillier introduced in Cebuana Lhuillier Pawnshop's auxiliary services remittance, bills payment, money changer, e-load, remit-to-account, corporate payout, collections service, it became the first pawnshop and money remittance company to offer a membership rewards program for its loyal clients through the 24k card loyalty program in 2010. In the following year, Cebuana Lhuillier branches hit the 1500 mark; the 24k loyalty card had its 2,500,000th member in 2012, just reached five million members in 2014. In the same year, Cebuana Lhuillier started to reach out to potential customers in areas with limited access through its Cebuana Lhuillier On Wheels. Cebuana Lhuillier Pawnshop, through its President and CEO Jean Henri Lhuillier, is involved in sports development basketball and tennis.
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Solanum plastisexum is a species of bush tomato from the Australian monsoon tropics that exhibits "breeding system fluidity" – that is, it has no stable sexual expression. After its first description in 2019, the describers suggested the common name of Dungowan bush tomato, in reference to Dungowan Station where it was collected; the species is restricted to a small area in the central region of the Northern Territory of Australia on and around the Buchanan Highway. It confounded field botanists since at least the early 1970s because it does not conform to any one floral form and/or inflorescence type. Any given plant might consist of a andromonoecious inflorescence, a solitary bisexual flower, a solitary short-styled flower or an extended rachis of staminate flowers, it can therefore exhibit any of three breeding systems: andromonoecy, hermaphroditism or functional dioecy. The describers commented that Solanum plastisexum is "a new species that serves as an example of for the diversity of sexual/reproductive form, recognised amongst plants – it is evidence that attempts to recognise a “normative” sexual condition amongst the planet’s living creatures is problematic.
When considering the scope of life on Earth, the notion of a constant sexual binary consisting of distinct and disconnected forms is, fundamentally, a fallacy." McDonnell, Angela J.. "Solanum plastisexum, an enigmatic new bush tomato from the Australian Monsoon Tropics exhibiting breeding system fluidity". PhytoKeys. 124: 39–55. Doi:10.3897/phytokeys.124.33526. The present article incorporates text and images from this source, available under the Creative Commons Attribution License