Minestrone is a thick soup of Italian origin made with vegetables with the addition of pasta or rice, sometimes both. Common ingredients include beans, celery, carrots and tomatoes. There is no set recipe for minestrone, since it can be made out of whatever vegetables one has, it can contain meat, or contain an animal bone-based stock. Angelo Pellegrini, argued that the base of minestrone is bean broth, that borlotti beans "are the beans to use for genuine minestrone"; some of the earliest origins of minestrone soup pre-date the expansion of the Latin tribes of Rome into what became the Roman Kingdom, when the local diet was "vegetarian by necessity" and consisted of vegetables, such as onions, cabbage, broad beans, carrots and turnips. During this time, the main dish of a meal would have been pulte, a simple but filling porridge of spelt flour cooked in salt water, to which whatever vegetables that were available would have been added, it was not until the 2nd century B. C. when Rome had conquered Italy and monopolized the commercial and road networks, that a huge diversity of products flooded the capital and began to change their diet, by association, the diet of Italy most notably with the more frequent inclusion of meats, including as a stock for soups.

Spelt flour was removed from soups, as bread had been introduced into the Roman diet by the Greeks, pulte became a meal for the poor. The ancient Romans recognized the health benefits of a simple or "frugal" diet and thick vegetable soups and vegetables remained a staple. Marcus Apicius's ancient cookbook De Re Coquinaria described polus, a Roman soup dating back to 30 AD made up of farro and fava beans, with onions, garlic and greens thrown in; as eating habits and ingredients changed in Italy, so did minestrone. Apicius updates the pulticulae with fancy trimmings such as cooked brains and wine; the introduction of tomatoes and potatoes from the Americas in the mid-16th century changed the soup by making available two ingredients which have since become staples. The tradition of not losing rural roots continues today, minestrone is now known in Italy as belonging to the style of cooking called "cucina povera" meaning dishes that have rustic, rural roots, as opposed to "cucina nobile" or the cooking style of the aristocracy and nobles.

The word minestrone, meaning a thick vegetable soup, is attested in English from 1871. It is from Italian minestrone, the augmentative form of minestra, "soup", or more "that, served", from minestrare, "to serve" and cognate with administer as in "to administer a remedy"; because of its unique origins and the absence of a fixed recipe, minestrone varies across Italy depending on traditional cooking times and season. Minestrone ranges from a thick and dense texture with boiled-down vegetables, to a more brothy soup with large quantities of diced and cooked vegetables. In modern Italian there are three words corresponding to the English word soup: zuppa, used in the sense of tomato soup, or fish soup. Minestrone alla Genovese is a variant typical of Liguria, which contains greater use of herbs, including pesto. Minestra is a variant from Malta, which prominently features kunserva, kohlrabi and sometimes spaghetti. Pasta e fagioli List of Italian soups List of legume dishes List of soups List of vegetable soups

Abilio dos Santos Diniz a Brazilian businessman. He is the chairman of the board of directors of Península Participações, chairman of the board of directors of BRF and member of the board of directors of both Carrefour Group and Carrefour Brasil. Through GPA, Diniz became one of the wealthiest individuals in Brazil. In 2016, Forbes ranked him 477th richest person in the 14th in Brazil. In 2009, Época magazine named him one of the 100 most influential Brazilians of the year, he served as a partner of Companhia Brasileira de Distribuição, a distribution company which owns the brands Varejo Alimentar, Pão de Açúcar and Extra, wholesaler Assaí, appliance company Ponto Frio. He was a shareholder of Casas Bahia, through Globex S/A. Diniz is the first of the six children born to Valentim Diniz, his father, was born in 1913 in the countryside of Portugal, immigrated to Brazil in November 1929. Diniz studied at Mackenzie high school, he graduated in 1956 from the School of Business Administration of Fundação Getúlio Vargas.

In 1965, Diniz traveled to the United States to study Marketing at Ohio University and Economics at Columbia University, in New York. Diniz's father, Valentim Diniz, founded the company Pão de Açúcar in September 1948. Abilio Diniz began to work for his father at Doceria Pão de Açúcar at the age of 12. In April 1959, the same year he graduated from FGV in Business Administration, he partnered with his father to create the first Pão de Açúcar supermarket store, located on Brigadeiro Luiz Antônio Avenue, in São Paulo. In 1960, after the first store was established, Diniz traveled for four months throughout Europe and the United States to observe the operation of the retail sector abroad; the second Pão de Açúcar location on Maria Antonia Street, downtown São Paulo, was established in 1963. One year Pão de Açúcar acquired Quiko and Tip Top supermarkets. During the 60's and 70's, Grupo Pão de Açúcar was the first supermarket chain to set up a store in a shopping mall, to have a 24-hour pharmacy, to set up a data processing center.

Diniz studied the operations of Paris-based Carrefour in 1967 after Luiz Carlos Bresser-Pereira, who worked at Pão de Açúcar, introduced him to Carrefour cofounder Marcel Fournier. Diniz was a co-founder of the Brazilian Association of Supermarkets in 1968. Inspired by the Carrefour hypermarket model, Diniz founded Jumbo, the first hypermarket in Brazil, in Santo André in 1971. In 1976 he acquired Eletroradiobraz, the second largest chain of supermarkets and hypermarkets in Brazil at the time; the company consisted of 26 hypermarkets, 16 stores and a warehouse. In 1979, Diniz moved away from Pão de Açúcar and became part of the National Monetary Council at the urging of the Minister of Planning, Mario Henrique Simonsen. There, he coordinated the production of economic bulletins. In 1989, Valentim asked Diniz to take over the leadership of Pão de Açúcar. Valentim remained part of the group's board of directors. In March 1990 the Collor government implemented an economic plan which put Pão de Açúcar on the verge of bankruptcy.

Diniz implemented the practice "cut and simplify" and made cuts across the company. He sold the building which had served as the company's headquarters since 1986 in 1992; the company, which had 626 stores in 1985, was reduced to 262 stores by 1992. However, family conflicts threatened the company. In an agreement signed in November 1993, Diniz was given the majority control of Grupo Pão de Açúcar, his parents received 36.5% of the company shares and his sister, Lucília, held 12% of the company shares. Diniz led Grupo Pão de Açúcar through an IPO in 1997 and it was listed on the New York Stock Exchange, it was the first 100% national controlled company to conduct a global stock issue. In 1999, the French group Casino acquired 24.5% of the voting capital of the group for $854 500 million. In 2000, Diniz transitioned the company into Companhia Brasileira de Distribuição, which became one of the largest retail chains in the country. In 2005, Diniz sold a large stake to the French company Casino Group for an estimated $860 million and stepped down as CEO, but remained as chairman.

In 2009, in one of the most expensive transactions of the Brazilian business history, Grupo Pão de Açúcar bought Casas Bahia from Samuel Klein, giving Abilio control of Pão de Açúcar, Casas Bahia, Ponto Frio and Extra Hipermercados. In 2012, Casino Group took control of Grupo Pão de Açúcar and Diniz no longer had operational functions within the group but remained as chairman. In 2003, Diniz became a member of the Economic and Social Development Council, a group of civil representatives which advise the President of the Republic of Brazil. In 2006, Diniz founded Península Participações, an investment company created to manage the assets of the Diniz family through private and liquid investments, he became the chairman of the company's board of directors. In April 2013, Diniz was elected as chairman of BRF, He helped lead the company through a broad restructuring; the company's profit went from R$700 million in 2012 to R$2.2 billion in 2014. The company's market value went from R$37 billion to R$55 billion.

In September 2013, Diniz signed an agreement with his partner Jean-Charles Naouri to leave Grupo Pão de Açúcar. His shares were converted into voting privileges and he resigned from his position as chairman and the position was filled by Naouri, he changed his focus to Península Participações, which managed more than 10 billion reais in assets by 2014. In April 2015, Diniz announced he was wrapping up talks to raise his 5.07 percent stake in Carrefour and that he had shareholder support to take a seat on the board of the supermarket

Jean-Pierre Armengaud is a French music educator, musicologist and pianist concertist. From 1967 to 1974, Armengaud seconded Germaine Arbeau-Bonnefoy in the presentation of the Musigrains, pedagogical cycles of concerts-lectures given at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. Armengaud is the author of several publications about Erik Satie, Jean Dubuffet, Henri Dutilleux, Edison Denisov, as well as numerous articles on French music, Russian music, musical creation, pianistic interpretation, some thirty or so discographic publications. Armengaud is director of the University of Évry festival "Les Friches musicales". "Comment interpréter Aliénor d'Aquitaine" in Revue 303, June 2004 Study "Pour un nouveau Projet Culturel et Patrimonial de L'Abbaye Royale de Fontevraud. Paris: Éditions Fayard. 2009. ISBN 9782213602523. Quintet version of La création du monde by Darius Milhaud Fantasy for violin and piano and Quatuor pour la fin du temps by Olivier Messiaen CD of unedited transcriptions by Maurice Ravel CD-book of late works for piano by Robert Schumann, written at the time of the meeting with Jean-Joseph Bonaventure Laurens Personal website Jean-Pierre Armangaud on Pianobleu.com Jean-Pierre Armangaud on France Culture Jean-Pierre Armangaud on Université Évry Val d'Essonne