Dorothy L. Sayers
Dorothy Leigh Sayers was a renowned English crime writer and poet. She was a student of classical and modern languages, she is best known for her mysteries, a series of novels and short stories set between the First and Second World Wars that feature English aristocrat and amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey, which remain popular to this day. However, Sayers herself considered her translation of Dante's Divine Comedy to be her best work, she is known for her plays, literary criticism, essays. Sayers, an only child, was born on 13 June 1893 to Helen Mary at the Headmaster's House, Christ Church Cathedral School, Oxford, her mother was born at "The Chestnuts", Hampshire, to Frederick Leigh, a solicitor whose family roots were in the Isle of Wight. Her father, the Rev. Henry Sayers, M. A. from Littlehampton, West Sussex, was a chaplain of Christ Church and headmaster of the Choir School. When Sayers was six, her father started teaching her Latin, she grew up in the tiny village of Bluntisham-cum-Earith in Huntingdonshire after her father was given the living there as rector.
The church graveyard next to the elegant Regency-style rectory features the surnames of several characters from her mystery The Nine Tailors. From 1909, she was educated at a boarding school in Salisbury, her father moved to the simpler living of Christchurch, in Cambridgeshire. In 1912, Sayers won a scholarship to Somerville College, Oxford where she studied modern languages and medieval literature and was taught by Mildred Pope, she finished with first-class honours in 1915. Women were not awarded degrees at that time, but Sayers was among the first to receive a degree when the position changed a few years later, her experience of Oxford academic life inspired her penultimate Peter Wimsey novel, Gaudy Night. Sayers's first book of poetry was published in 1916 as OP. I by Blackwell Publishing in Oxford, her second book of poems, "Catholic Tales and Christian Songs", was published in 1918 by Blackwell. Sayers worked for Blackwell's and as a teacher in several locations, including Normandy, France.
She published a number of poems in the Oxford Magazine. Sayers's longest employment was from 1922 to 1931 as a copywriter at S. H. Benson's advertising agency, located at International Buildings, London. A colleague of hers at the agency was Albert Henry Ross, better known by his literary pseudonym Frank Morison, he wrote the best-selling Christian apologetics book Who Moved the Stone? which explored the historicity of the trial and resurrection of Jesus. Sayers relied on his book when she composed the trial scene of Jesus in her play The Man Born to Be King. Sayers was quite successful as an advertiser, her collaboration with artist John Gilroy resulted in "The Mustard Club" for Colman's Mustard and the Guinness "Zoo" advertisements, variations of which still appear today. One famous example was the Toucan, his bill arching under a glass of Guinness, with Sayers's jingle: Sayers is credited with coining the slogan "It pays to advertise!" She used the advertising industry as the setting of Murder Must Advertise, where she describes the role of truth in advertising:... the firm of Pym's Publicity, Ltd.
Advertising Agents... "Now, Mr. Pym is a man of rigid morality—except, of course, as regards his profession, whose essence is to tell plausible lies for money—" "How about truth in advertising?" "Of course, there is some truth in advertising. There's yeast in bread. Truth in advertising... is like leaven. It provides a suitable quantity of gas, with which to blow out a mass of crude misrepresentation into a form that the public can swallow." Sayers began working out the plot of her first novel some time in 1920–21. The seeds of the plot for Whose Body? can be seen in a letter that Sayers wrote on 22 January 1921: My detective story begins brightly, with a fat lady found dead in her bath with nothing on but her pince-nez. Now why did she wear pince-nez in her bath? If you can guess, you will be in a position to lay hands upon the murderer, but he's a cool and cunning fellow... Lord Peter Wimsey burst upon the world of detective fiction with an explosive "Oh, damn!" and continued to engage readers in eleven novels and two sets of short stories, the final novel ending with a different "Oh, damn!".
Sayers once commented that Lord Peter was a mixture of Fred Astaire and Bertie Wooster, most evident in the first five novels. However, it is evident through Lord Peter's development as a rounded character that he existed in Sayers's mind as a living, breathing human being. Sayers introduced the character of detective novelist Harriet Vane in Strong Poison, she remarked more than once that she had developed the "husky voiced, dark-eyed" Harriet to put an end to Lord Peter via matrimony. But in the course of writing Gaudy Night, Sayers imbued Lord Peter and Harriet with so much life that she was never able, as she put it, to "see Lord Peter exit the stage". Sayers did not content herself with writing pure detective stories. In Gaudy Night, Miss Barton writes a book attacking the Nazi doctrine of Kinder, Küche, which restricted women's roles to family activities, in many ways the no
The Adventures of Augie March
The Adventures of Augie March is a picaresque novel by Saul Bellow, published in 1953 by Viking Press. It features the eponymous Augie March who grows up during the Great Depression and it is an example of bildungsroman, tracing the development of an individual through a series of encounters and relationships from boyhood to manhood; the Adventures of Augie March won the 1954 U. S. National Book Award for Fiction. Both Time magazine and the Modern Library Board named it one of the hundred best novels in the English language; when the Swedish Academy awarded Bellow the 1976 Nobel Prize in literature, their press release noted that his novels, including Augie March, use a picaresque style that dates back to the earliest origins of the European novel. However, according to the Academy, Bellow uses this episodic traditional form to investigate modern concerns: "the outer and inner complications that drive us to act, or prevent us from acting, that can be called the dilemma of our age." With an intricate plot and allusive style, he explores contrasting themes of alienation and belonging and wealth, love and loss, with comic undertones.
Its protagonist may be said to represent the modern Everyman—an individual struggling to make sense of, succeed in, an alienating world. The novel is specific to the American literary canon in that it celebrates the capacity of the individual to progress in society by virtue of nothing more than his own "luck and pluck." This idea is stated explicitly in the opening and most famous lines of the novel, in which the narrator defines himself as an American. This was an important act of self-definition for the author and narrator, both immigrants to America, it establishes the dual meaning of "America" in the novel: that is, the physical and political "America," as well as the more figurative "American" as a state-of-mind: This celebration of the individual determines Bellow's presentation of fate in the novel. Unlike other picaresque novels, such as Henry Fielding's Tom Jones, the plot of Augie March is never pre-determined. Things happen to Augie, one after another, with no evident story arc or hint as to where his adventures are leading.
This contributes to the sense that Augie, as the Everyman, is lost in a chaotic world, but it enhances the sense that the Everyman, as an autonomous creation, is in control of his own fate. By turns, Bellow exposes the alienating forces of the American city, while revealing the great opportunities that it offers; the story describes Augie March's growth from childhood to a stable maturity. Augie, with his brother Simon and the mentally abnormal George have no father and are brought up by their mother, losing her eyesight, a tyrannical grandmother-like boarder in humble circumstances in the rough parts of Chicago. Augie drifts from one situation to another in a free-wheeling manner—jobs, homes and lifestyle. Augie March's path seems to be self-made and comes around through chance. In lifestyle he ranges from near adoption by a wealthy couple who spoil him, to a struggle for existence stealing books and helping out friends in desperate straits, his most unusual adventure is his flight to Mexico with the wild and irrepressible Thea who tries to catch lizards with an eagle.
Thea attempts to convince Augie to join her in this impossible task. His jobs include general assistance to the corrupt Einhorn, helping in a dog training parlor, working for his brother at a coal-tip, working for the Congress of Industrial Organizations until he joins the merchant navy in the war. Augie gets involved with a string of different women. Firstly a casual acquaintance as a youth, he gets engaged to a wealthy cousin of his brother's wife. However, through a scandal not of his fault, he is discarded. After a casual affair with Sophie, a Greek hotel maid, he is swept off by Thea, whom he had met when living with the rich Renlings and who forecast their relationship though he loved her sister. After the fiasco in Mexico, where he suffered a terrible accident on a horse, he and Thea began drifting apart, their inevitable split came the night he agreed to drive another woman, Stella, to another town to escape her troubled boyfriend. After the break-up, Augie returned to Chicago and picked back up with Sophie until joining the merchant navy and heading to New York.
There he married her. All through the book, Augie is encouraged into education, but never quite seems to make it. Something or somebody always tends to crop up, turning his path before Augie considers returning to education. During the war, his ship is sunk and he suffers a difficult episode in a lifeboat with a man who turns out to be a lunatic. After rescue, he returns to Stella and the book ends with them living a dubious existence in France, he involved in some shady business deals and she attempting to pursue a career in acting. In some ways, The Adventures of Augie March is seen as a dispelling of the traditional idea of an American hero, he is "the American chasing after self-exploration." He is given a background common of protagonists in inspirational American stories. However, despite these advantages, Augie does not live out the life of a hero, he has no commitments of his own, goes along with plans and schemes developed by others. He never decides wh
Robert Taylor (actor)
Robert Taylor was an American film and television actor, one of the most popular leading men of his time. Taylor began his career in films in 1934, he won his first leading role the following year in Magnificent Obsession. His popularity increased during the late 1930s and 1940s with appearances in A Yank at Oxford, Waterloo Bridge, Bataan. During World War II, he served in the United States Naval Air Corps, where he worked as a flight instructor and appeared in instructional films. From 1959 to 1962, he starred in the series The Detectives Starring Robert Taylor. In 1966, he took over hosting duties from his friend Ronald Reagan on the series Death Valley Days. Taylor was married to actress Barbara Stanwyck from 1939 to 1951, he married actress Ursula Thiess in 1954, they had two children. A chain smoker, Taylor was diagnosed with lung cancer in October 1968, he died of the disease on June 8, 1969 at the age of 57. Born Spangler Arlington Brugh in Filley, Taylor was the only child of Ruth Adaline and Spangler Andrew Brugh, a farmer turned doctor.
During his early life, the family moved several times, living in Oklahoma. By September 1917, the Brughs had moved to Beatrice, where they remained for 16 years; as a teenager, Taylor played the cello in his high school orchestra. Upon graduation, he enrolled at Doane College in Nebraska. While at Doane, he took cello lessons from Professor Herbert E. Gray, whom he idolized. After Professor Gray announced he was accepting a new position at Pomona College in Claremont, Taylor moved to California and enrolled at Pomona, he joined the campus theater group and was spotted by an MGM talent scout in 1932 after a production of Journey's End. He signed a seven-year contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer with an initial salary of $35 per week, which rose to $2500 by 1936; the studio changed his name to Robert Taylor. He made his film debut in the 1934 comedy Handy Andy, his first leading role was in 1935 in the MGM crime short Buried Loot. The same year, Irene Dunne requested him for her leading man in Magnificent Obsession.
This was followed by Camille with Greta Garbo. Throughout the late 1930s, Taylor appeared in films of varying genres including the musicals Broadway Melody of 1936 and Broadway Melody of 1938, the British comedy A Yank at Oxford with Vivien Leigh. In 1940, he reteamed with Leigh in Mervyn LeRoy's drama Waterloo Bridge. After being given the nickname "The Man with the Perfect Profile", Taylor began breaking away from his perfect leading man image and began appearing in darker roles beginning in 1941; that year, he portrayed Billy Bonney in Billy the Kid. The next year, he played the title role in the film noir Johnny Eager with Lana Turner. After playing a tough sergeant in Bataan in 1943, Taylor contributed to the war effort by becoming a flying instructor in the U. S. Naval Air Corps. During this time, he starred in instructional films and narrated the 1944 documentary The Fighting Lady. After the war he appeared including Undercurrent and High Wall. In 1949, he co-starred with Elizabeth Taylor in Conspirator.
In 1950, Taylor landed the role of General Marcus Vinicius in Quo Vadis with Deborah Kerr. The epic film was a hit; the following year, he starred in the film version of Walter Scott's classic Ivanhoe, followed by 1953's Knights of the Round Table and The Adventures of Quentin Durward, all filmed in England. Taylor filmed Valley of the Kings in Egypt in 1954. By the mid-1950s, Taylor began to concentrate on his preferred genre, he starred in a comedy western Many Rivers to Cross in 1955 co-starring Eleanor Parker. In 1958, he shared the lead with Richard Widmark in the edgy John Sturges western The Law and Jake Wade. In 1958, he left MGM and formed his own production company, Robert Taylor Productions, the following year, he starred in the hit television series The Detectives Starring Robert Taylor. Following the end of the series in 1962, Taylor continued to appear in films and television shows, including A House Is Not a Home and two episodes of Hondo. Robert Taylor received the 1953 World Film Favorite -- award at the Golden Globes.
In 1963, NBC filmed, but never aired, four episodes of what was to have been The Robert Taylor Show, a series based on case files from the United States Department of Health and Welfare. The project was dropped for lack of coordination with HEW. In 1964, Taylor co-starred with his former wife Barbara Stanwyck in William Castle's psychological horror film The Night Walker. In 1965, after filming Johnny Tiger in Florida, Taylor took over the role of narrator in the television series Death Valley Days when Ronald Reagan left to pursue a career in politics. Taylor would remain with the series until his death in 1969. After three years of dating, Taylor married Barbara Stanwyck on May 14, 1939 in San Diego, California. Zeppo Marx's wife Marion was Stanwyck's matron of honor and her godfather, actor Buck Mack, was Taylor's best man. Stanwyck divorced Taylor in February 1951; the couple had no children. Taylor met German actress Ursula Thiess in 1952, they married in Jackson Hole, Wyoming on May 23, 1954.
They had son Terrance and daughter Tessa. Taylor was stepfather to Thiess' two children from her previous marriage and Michael Thiess. On May 26, 1969, shortly before Taylor's death from lung
Jules Massenet
Jules Émile Frédéric Massenet was a French composer of the Romantic era best known for his operas, of which he wrote more than thirty. The two most staged are Manon and Werther, he composed oratorios, orchestral works, incidental music, piano pieces and other music. While still a schoolboy, Massenet was admitted to France's principal music college, the Paris Conservatoire. There he studied under Ambroise Thomas, whom he admired. After winning the country's top musical prize, the Prix de Rome, in 1863, he composed prolifically in many genres, but became best known for his operas. Between 1867 and his death forty-five years he wrote more than forty stage works in a wide variety of styles, from opéra-comique to grand-scale depictions of classical myths, romantic comedies, lyric dramas, as well as oratorios and ballets. Massenet had a good sense of what would succeed with the Parisian public. Despite some miscalculations, he produced a series of successes that made him the leading composer of opera in France in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Like many prominent French composers of the period, Massenet became a professor at the Conservatoire. He taught composition there from 1878 until 1896, when he resigned after the death of the director, Ambroise Thomas. Among his students were Gustave Charpentier, Ernest Chausson, Reynaldo Hahn and Gabriel Pierné. By the time of his death, Massenet was regarded by many critics as old-fashioned and unadventurous although his two best-known operas remained popular in France and abroad. After a few decades of neglect, his works began to be favourably reassessed during the mid-20th century, many of them have since been staged and recorded. Although critics do not rank him among the handful of outstanding operatic geniuses such as Mozart and Wagner, his operas are now accepted as well-crafted and intelligent products of the Belle Époque. Massenet was born at Montaud an outlying hamlet and now a part of the city of Saint-Étienne, in the Loire, he was the youngest of the four children of Alexis Massenet and his second wife Eléonore-Adelaïde née Royer de Marancour.
Massenet senior was a prosperous ironmonger. By early 1848 the family had moved to Paris. Massenet was educated at the Lycée Saint-Louis and, from either 1851 or 1853, the Paris Conservatoire. According to his colourful but unreliable memoirs, Massenet auditioned in October 1851, when he was nine, before a judging panel comprising Daniel Auber, Fromental Halévy, Ambroise Thomas and Michele Carafa, was admitted at once, his biographer Demar Irvine dates the audition and admission as January 1853. Both sources agree that Massenet continued his general education at the lycée in tandem with his musical studies. At the Conservatoire Massenet studied solfège with Augustin Savard and the piano with François Laurent, he pursued his studies, with modest distinction, until the beginning of 1855, when family concerns disrupted his education. Alexis Massenet's health was poor, on medical advice he moved from Paris to Chambéry in the south of France. Again, Massenet's own memoirs and the researches of his biographers are at variance: the composer recalled his exile in Chambéry as lasting for two years.
On his return he resumed his studies. The family's finances were no longer comfortable, to support himself Massenet took private piano students and played as a percussionist in theatre orchestras, his work in the orchestra pit gave him a good working knowledge of the operas of Gounod and other composers and contemporary. Traditionally, many students at the Conservatoire went on to substantial careers as church organists, he gained some work as a piano accompanist, in the course of which he met Wagner who, along with Berlioz, was one of his two musical heroes. In 1861 Massenet's music was published for the first time, the Grande Fantasie de Concert sur le Pardon de Ploërmel de Meyerbeer, a virtuoso piano work in nine sections. Having graduated to the composition class under Ambroise Thomas, Massenet was entered for the Conservatoire's top musical honour, the Prix de Rome, previous winners of which included Berlioz, Thomas and Bizet; the first two of these were on the judging panel for the 1863 competition.
All the competitors had to set the same text by a cantata about David Rizzio. He recalled: Ambroise Thomas, my beloved master, came towards me and said, "Embrace Berlioz, you owe him a great deal for your prize." "The prize," I cried, bewildered, my face shining with joy. "I have the prize!!!" I was moved and I embraced Berlioz my master, Monsieur Auber. Monsieur Auber comforted me. Did I need comforting? He said to Berlioz pointing to me, "He'll go far, the young rascal, when he's had less experience!" The prize brought a well-subsidised three-year period of study, two-thirds of, spent at the French Academy in Rome, based at the Villa Medici. At that time the academy was dominated by painters rather than musicians.
La Dame aux Camélias
La Dame aux Camélias is a novel by Alexandre Dumas fils, first published in 1848 and subsequently adapted by Dumas for the stage. La Dame aux Camélias premiered at the Théâtre du Vaudeville in Paris, France on February 2, 1852; the play was an instant success, Giuseppe Verdi set about putting the story to music. His work became the 1853 opera La traviata, with the female protagonist, Marguerite Gautier, renamed Violetta Valéry. In the English-speaking world, La Dame aux Camélias became known as Camille and 16 versions have been performed at Broadway theatres alone; the title character is Marguerite Gautier, based on Marie Duplessis, the real-life lover of author Dumas, fils. Written by Alexandre Dumas fils when he was 23 years old, first published in 1848, La Dame aux Camélias is a semi-autobiographical novel based on the author's brief love affair with a courtesan, Marie Duplessis. Set in mid-19th-century France, the novel tells the tragic love story between fictional characters Marguerite Gautier, a demimondaine or courtesan suffering from consumption, Armand Duval, a young bourgeois.
Marguerite is nicknamed la dame aux camélias because she wears a red camellia when she is menstruating and unavailable for making love and a white camelia when she is available to her lovers. Armand falls in love with Marguerite and becomes her lover, he convinces her to leave her life as a courtesan and to live with him in the countryside. This idyllic existence is interrupted by Armand's father, concerned with the scandal created by the illicit relationship, fearful that it will destroy Armand's sister's chances of marriage, convinces Marguerite to leave. Up until Marguerite's death, Armand believes that she left him for another man. Marguerite's death is described as an unending agony, during which Marguerite, abandoned by everyone, regrets what might have been; the story is narrated after Marguerite's death by two male narrators, Armand and an unnamed frame narrator. Some scholars believe that Marguerite's illness and Duplessis's publicized cause of death, "consumption", was a 19th-century euphemism for syphilis.
Dumas, fils, is careful to paint a favourable portrait of Marguerite, who despite her past is rendered virtuous by her love for Armand, the suffering of the two lovers, whose love is shattered by the need to conform to the morals of the times, is rendered touchingly. In contrast the Chevalier des Grieux's love for Manon in Manon Lescaut, a French novel by Abbé Prévost referenced at the beginning of La Dame aux Camélias, Armand's love is for a woman, ready to sacrifice her riches and her lifestyle for him, but, thwarted by the arrival of Armand's father; the novel is marked by the description of Parisian life during the 19th century and the fragile world of the courtesan. Dumas wrote a stage adaptation that premiered February 2, 1852, at the Théâtre du Vaudeville in Paris. Eugénie Doche created the role of Marguerite Gautier, opposite Charles Fechter as Armand Duval. "I played the role 617 times," Doche recalled not long before her death in 1900, "and I suppose I could not have played it badly, since Dumas wrote in his preface,'Mme.
Doche is not my interpreter, she is my collaborator'."In 1853, Jean Davenport starred in the first United States production of the play, a sanitized version that changed the name of the leading character to Camille—a practice adopted by most American actresses playing the role. The role of the tragic Marguerite Gautier became one of the most coveted amongst actresses and included performances by Sarah Bernhardt, Eleonora Duse, Margaret Anglin, Gabrielle Réjane, Tallulah Bankhead, Lillian Gish, Dolores del Río, Eva Le Gallienne, Isabelle Adjani, Cacilda Becker, Helena Modrzejewska. Bernhardt became associated with the role after starring in Camellias in Paris and several Broadway revivals, plus the 1911 film. Dancer/Impresario Ida Rubinstein recreated Bernhardt's interpretation of the role onstage in the mid-1920s, coached by the great actress herself before she died. Of all Dumas, fils's theatrical works, La Dame aux Camélias is the most popular around the world. In 1878 Scribner's Monthly reported that "not one other play by Dumas, fils has been received with favor out of France".
The success of the play inspired Giuseppe Verdi to put the story to music. His work became the 1853 opera La traviata, set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave; the female protagonist, Marguerite Gautier, is renamed Violetta Valéry. La Dame aux Camélias has been adapted for some 20 different motion pictures in numerous countries and in a wide variety of languages; the role of Marguerite Gautier has been played on screen by Sarah Bernhardt, María Félix, Clara Kimball Young, Theda Bara, Yvonne Printemps, Alla Nazimova, Greta Garbo, Micheline Presle, Francesca Bertini, Isabelle Huppert, others. There have been at least nine adaptations of La Dame aux Camélias entitled Camille. Camille, an American silent film adapted by Frances Marion, directed by Albert Capellani, starring Clara Kimball Young as Camille and Paul Capellani as Armand Camille, an American silent film adapted by Adrian Johnson, directed by J. Gordon Edwards, starring Theda Bara as Camille and Alan Roscoe as Armand Camille, an American silent film starring Alla Nazimova as Camille and Rudolph Valentino as Armand Camille, an American silent film directed by Fred Niblo, starring Norma Talmadge as Camille and Gilbert Roland as Armand Camille: The Fate of a Coquette, an American short film by Ralph Barton, compiled from his home movies, loosely based on La Dame aux Camélias Camille (1
Antoine François Prévost
Antoine François Prévost d'Exiles known as the Abbé Prévost, was a French author and novelist. He was born at Hesdin and first appears with the full name of Prévost d'Exiles, in a letter to the booksellers of Amsterdam in 1731, his father, Lievin Prévost, was a lawyer, several members of the family had embraced the ecclesiastical estate. Prévost was educated at the Jesuit school of Hesdin, in 1713 became a novice of the order in Paris, pursuing his studies at the same time at the college in La Flèche. At the end of 1716 he left the Jesuits to join the army, but soon tired of military life, returned to Paris in 1719 with the idea of resuming his novitiate, he is said to have travelled in the Netherlands about this time. Some biographers have assumed that he suffered some of the misfortunes assigned to his hero Des Grieux. Whatever the truth, he joined the learned community of the Benedictines of St Maur, with whom he found refuge, he himself says, after the unlucky termination of a love affair.
He took his vows at Jumièges in 1721 after a year's novitiate, in 1726 took priest's orders at St Germer de Flaix. He spent seven years in various houses of the order, teaching and studying. In 1728 he was sent to the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, where he contributed to the Gallia Christiana, a work of historiographic documentation undertaken communally by the monks in continuation of the works of Denys de Sainte-Marthe, a member of their order, his restless spirit made. In London he acquired a wide knowledge of English history and literature, as can be seen in his writings. Before leaving the Benedictines Prévost had begun his most famous novel, Mémoires et aventures d'un homme de qualité qui s'est retiré du monde, the first four volumes of which were published in Paris in 1728, two years at Amsterdam. In 1729 he left England for the Netherlands, where he began to publish a novel, the material of which, at least, had been gathered in London Le Philosophe anglais, ou Histoire de Monsieur Cleveland, fils naturel de Cromwell, écrite par lui-même, et traduite de l'anglais.
A spurious fifth volume contained attacks on the Jesuits, an English translation of the whole appeared in 1734. Meanwhile, during his residence at the Hague, he engaged on a translation of De Thou's Historia, relying on the popularity of his first book, published at Amsterdam a Suite in three volumes, forming volumes v, vi, vii of the original Mémoires et aventures d'un homme de qualité; the seventh volume contained the famous Manon Lescaut, separately published in Paris in 1731 as Histoire du Chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut. The book was eagerly read, chiefly in pirated copies. In 1733 he left the Hague for London in company of a lady whose character, according to Prévost's enemies, was doubtful. In London he edited a weekly gazette on the model of Joseph Addison's Spectator, Le Pour et contre, which he continued to produce in collaboration with the playwright Charles-Hugues Le Febvre de Saint-Marc, with short intervals, until 1740. In the autumn of 1734 Prévost was reconciled with the Benedictines, returning to France, was received in the Benedictine monastery of La Croix-Saint-Leufroy in the diocese of Évreux to pass through a new, though brief, novitiate.
In 1735 he was dispensed from residence in a monastery by becoming almoner to the Prince de Conti, in 1754 obtained the priory of St Georges de Gesnes. He continued to produce novels and translations from the English, with the exception of a brief exile spent in Brussels and Frankfurt, he resided for the most part at Chantilly until his death, which took place while he was walking in the neighbouring woods; the cause of his death, the rupture of an aneurysm, is all, known. Stories of crime and disaster were related of Prévost by his enemies, diligently repeated, but appear to be apocryphal. Prévost's other works include: Le Doyen de Killerine, histoire morale composée sur les mémoires d'une illustre famille d'Irlande Tout pour l'amour, a translation of Dryden's tragedy Histoire d'une Grecque moderne Histoire de Marguerite d'Anjou Mémoires pour servir a l'histoire de Malte Campagnes philosophiques, ou mémoires... contenant l'histoire de la guerre d'Irlande Histoire de Guillaume le Conquérant Voyages du capitaine Robert Lade en differentes parties de l'Afrique, de l'Asie, et de l'Amerique, a fictional travel journal Histoire générale des voyages, continued by other writers Manuel Lexique, continued by other writers Translations from Samuel Richardson: Pamela ou la Vertu récompensée, Lettres anglaises ou Histoire de Miss Clarisse Harlovie, from Richardson's Clarissa, Nouvelles lettres anglaises, ou Histoire du chevalier Grandisson.
Mémoires pour servir a l'histoire de la vertu, from Mrs Sheridan's Memoires of Miss Sidney Bidulph Histoire de la maison de Stuart from Hume's History of England to 1688 Le Monde moral, ou Mémoires pour servir a l'histoire du coeur humain
Daniel Auber
Daniel François Esprit Auber was a French composer. The son of a Paris print-seller, Auber was born in Caen in Normandy. Though his father expected him to continue in the print-selling business, he allowed his son to learn how to play several musical instruments, his first teacher was the Tirolean composer, Josef Alois Ladurner. At the age of 20 Auber was sent to London for business training, but he was obliged to leave England in 1804 when the Treaty of Amiens was breached. Auber had attempted musical composition, at this period produced several concertos pour basse, modelled after the violoncellist Lamare, in whose name they were published; the praise given to his concerto for the violin, played at the Paris Conservatoire by Mazas, encouraged him to undertake a resetting of an old comic opera, Julie. He began to study with the renowned Luigi Cherubini. In 1813 the unfavourable reception of his one-act debut opera Le Séjour militaire put an end for some years to his attempts as composer, but his failure in business, the death of his father in 1819, compelled him once more to turn to music.
He produced another opera, Le Testament et les billets-doux, no better received than the former. But he persevered, the next year was rewarded by the complete success of La Bergère châtelaine, an opera in three acts; this was the first in a long series of brilliant successes. In 1822 began his long association with librettist Eugène Scribe, their first opera, shows evidence of the influence of Gioachino Rossini in its musical style. Auber soon developed his own voice, however: light, vivacious and melodious—characteristically French. Le maçon was his first major triumph, staying in the repertory until the 20th century, with 525 performances at the Opéra-Comique alone. An ensemble from the latter found its way into Herold's ballet La Somnambule as an air parlante. Auber achieved another triumph in La muette de Portici known as Masaniello after its hero. Produced in Paris in 1828, it became a European favourite, the foundation work of a new genre, grand opera, consolidated by Rossini's Guillaume Tell the following year.
Its characteristic features are a private drama staged in the context of a significant historical event in which the chorus is engaged as a representative of the people and piquant musical textures, grandiloquent marches, spectacular scenic effects and a statutory ballet. The duet from La Muette, Amour sacré de la patrie, was welcomed as a new Marseillaise. La Muette broke ground in its use of a ballerina in a leading role, includes long passages of mime music. Official and other dignities testified to the public appreciation of Auber's works. In 1829 he was elected a member of the Institut de France. Fra Diavolo,which premiered on 28 January 1830, was his most successful opera; that same year, 1830, he was named director of the court concerts. Next year, on 20 June 1831, he had another big success, with Le Philtre, starring Adolphe Nourrit; the libretto was translated into Italian and set by Donizetti as L'elisir d'amore, one of the most successful comic operas of all time. Two years on 27 February 1833, Gustave III, his second grand opera triumphed and stayed in the repertory for years.
The libretto was to be used twice more, first by Saverio Mercadante for Il reggente, with the action transferred to Scotland, next by Giuseppe Verdi, as Un ballo in maschera, with the action transferred to Massachusetts. He enjoyed several more successes, all at the Opéra-Comique; these were Le cheval de bronze, L'Ambassadrice, Le domino noir, Les diamants de la couronne and La part du diable. In the meantime, in 1842, at the wish of King Louis Philippe, he succeeded Cherubini as director of the Conservatoire. Auber was a member of the Legion of Honour from 1825, attained the rank of commander in 1847; that year saw the premiere of Haydée, another opéra comique though it was on a serious subject. The tenor lead in Haydée was sung by the same Gustave-Hippolyte Roger who, two years created the title role in Giacomo Meyerbeer's Le prophète at the Opéra. Napoleon III made Auber his Imperial Maître de Chapelle in 1857. In his years, Auber's output slowed down considerably; the 1850s were marked by Manon Lescaut, an opéra comique with a tragic end, revisions of Le cheval de bronze and Fra Diavolo.
He had one major success in the 1860s: Le premier jour de bonheur. Despite his slowdown in composing, he remained a well-loved figure, known for witty sayings and personal generosity, he survived the German siege of Paris in 1870–71, but died during the upheaval of the Paris Commune on 12 or 13 May 1871. Today, the rue Auber leads up to the original Paris Opera House and the nearest RER station is called Auber. List of works by James Pradier Bust of Auber SourcesDaniel Auber at Find a Grave Kohut, Auber, in Musiker Biographien Leipzig, Volume XVII, 1895. Free scores by Daniel Auber at the International Music Score Library Project Free scores by Daniel Auber in the Choral Public Domain Library
Manon Lescaut public domain audiobook at LibriVox
