1.
Manhattan
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Manhattan is the most densely populated borough of New York City, its economic and administrative center, and the citys historical birthplace. The borough is coextensive with New York County, founded on November 1,1683, Manhattan is often described as the cultural and financial capital of the world and hosts the United Nations Headquarters. Many multinational media conglomerates are based in the borough and it is historically documented to have been purchased by Dutch colonists from Native Americans in 1626 for 60 guilders which equals US$1062 today. New York County is the United States second-smallest county by land area, on business days, the influx of commuters increases that number to over 3.9 million, or more than 170,000 people per square mile. Manhattan has the third-largest population of New York Citys five boroughs, after Brooklyn and Queens, the City of New York was founded at the southern tip of Manhattan, and the borough houses New York City Hall, the seat of the citys government. The name Manhattan derives from the word Manna-hata, as written in the 1609 logbook of Robert Juet, a 1610 map depicts the name as Manna-hata, twice, on both the west and east sides of the Mauritius River. The word Manhattan has been translated as island of hills from the Lenape language. The United States Postal Service prefers that mail addressed to Manhattan use New York, NY rather than Manhattan, the area that is now Manhattan was long inhabited by the Lenape Native Americans. In 1524, Florentine explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano – sailing in service of King Francis I of France – was the first European to visit the area that would become New York City. It was not until the voyage of Henry Hudson, an Englishman who worked for the Dutch East India Company, a permanent European presence in New Netherland began in 1624 with the founding of a Dutch fur trading settlement on Governors Island. In 1625, construction was started on the citadel of Fort Amsterdam on Manhattan Island, later called New Amsterdam, the 1625 establishment of Fort Amsterdam at the southern tip of Manhattan Island is recognized as the birth of New York City. In 1846, New York historian John Romeyn Brodhead converted the figure of Fl 60 to US$23, variable-rate myth being a contradiction in terms, the purchase price remains forever frozen at twenty-four dollars, as Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace remarked in their history of New York. Sixty guilders in 1626 was valued at approximately $1,000 in 2006, based on the price of silver, Straight Dope author Cecil Adams calculated an equivalent of $72 in 1992. In 1647, Peter Stuyvesant was appointed as the last Dutch Director General of the colony, New Amsterdam was formally incorporated as a city on February 2,1653. In 1664, the English conquered New Netherland and renamed it New York after the English Duke of York and Albany, the Dutch Republic regained it in August 1673 with a fleet of 21 ships, renaming the city New Orange. Manhattan was at the heart of the New York Campaign, a series of battles in the early American Revolutionary War. The Continental Army was forced to abandon Manhattan after the Battle of Fort Washington on November 16,1776. The city, greatly damaged by the Great Fire of New York during the campaign, became the British political, British occupation lasted until November 25,1783, when George Washington returned to Manhattan, as the last British forces left the city
2.
Broadway (Manhattan)
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Broadway /ˈbrɔːdweɪ/ is a road in the U. S. state of New York. It is the oldest north–south main thoroughfare in New York City, dating to the first New Amsterdam settlement, the name Broadway is the English language literal translation of the Dutch name, Brede weg. Broadway is known widely as the heart of the American theatre industry, Broadway was originally the Wickquasgeck Trail, carved into the brush of Manhattan by its Native American inhabitants. Wickquasgeck means birch-bark country in the Algonquian language and this trail originally snaked through swamps and rocks along the length of Manhattan Island. Upon the arrival of the Dutch, the trail became the main road through the island from Nieuw Amsterdam at the southern tip. The Dutch explorer and entrepreneur David Pietersz. de Vries gives the first mention of it in his journal for the year 1642, the Dutch named the road Heerestraat. Although current street signs are simply labeled as Broadway, in a 1776 map of New York City, in the mid-eighteenth century, part of Broadway in what is now lower Manhattan was known as Great George Street. An 1897 City Map shows a segment of Broadway as Kingsbridge Road in the vicinity of what is now the George Washington Bridge. In the 18th century, Broadway ended at the town north of Wall Street, where traffic continued up the East Side of the island via Eastern Post Road. The western Bloomingdale Road would be widened and paved during the 19th century, on February 14,1899, the name Broadway was extended to the entire Broadway/Bloomingdale/Boulevard road. Broadway once was a street for its entire length. The present status, in which it runs one-way southbound south of Columbus Circle, on 6 June 1954, Seventh Avenue became southbound and Eighth Avenue became northbound south of Broadway. On 3 June 1962, Broadway became one-way south of Canal Street, with Trinity Place, northbound traffic on Broadway now needs to take Amsterdam Avenue to 73rd Street, make a sharp turn on the very narrow 73rd and then right turn on Broadway. Otherwise, and effectively, the traffic on Broadway has been diverted into Amsterdam Avenue. In August 2008, two lanes from 42nd to 35th Streets were taken out of service and converted to public plazas. Additionally, bike lanes were added on Broadway from 42nd Street down to Union Square, the city decided that the experiment was successful and decided to make the change permanent in February 2010. Additionally, portions of Broadway in the Madison Square and Union Square have been dramatically narrowed, Broadway runs the length of Manhattan Island, roughly parallel to the North River, from Bowling Green at the south to Inwood at the northern tip of the island. South of Columbus Circle, it is a southbound street
3.
Opera house
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An opera house is a theatre building used for opera performances that consists of a stage, an orchestra pit, audience seating, and backstage facilities for costumes and set building. While some venues are constructed specifically for operas, other houses are part of larger performing arts centers. In contrast, there was no house in London when Henry Purcell was composing. Early United States opera houses served a variety of functions in towns and cities, hosting community dances, fairs, plays, with the rise of bourgeois and capitalist social forms in the 19th century, European culture moved away from its patronage system to a publicly supported system. In the 2000s, most opera and theatre companies raise funds from a combination of government and institutional grants, ticket sales, the Teatro San Carlo in Naples introduces the plant horseshoe, the oldest in the world, a model for the Italian theater. On this model were built following theaters of Italy and Europe, among others, the theater of the Palace of Caserta. Given the popularity of opera in 18th and 19th century Europe, opera houses are large, with generally more than 1,000 seats. Modern opera houses of the century such as New Yorks Metropolitan Opera. Many operas are better suited to being presented in smaller theatres, in a traditional opera house, the auditorium is U-shaped, with the length of the sides determining the audience capacity. Around this are tiers of balconies, and often, nearer to the stage, are boxes and this is especially true of Wagners Bayreuth Festspielhaus where the pit is almost completely covered. The size of an opera orchestra varies, but for some operas, oratorios and other works, it may be large, for some romantic period works. Similarly, an opera may have a large cast of characters, chorus, dancers, therefore, a major opera house will have extensive dressing room facilities. Opera houses often have on-premises set and costume building shops and facilities for storage of costumes, make-up, masks, and stage properties, major opera houses throughout the world often have highly mechanized stages, with large stage elevators permitting heavy sets to be changed rapidly. At the Metropolitan Opera, for instance, sets are changed during the action, as the audience watches. This occurs in the Mets productions of such as Aida. Much the same happened in the remodeling of Milans La Scala opera house between 2002 and 2004, since the 1990s, however, many opera houses have begun using a subtle form of sound reinforcement called acoustic enhancement. Often, operas are presented in their languages, which may be different from the first language of the audience. For example, a Wagnerian opera presented in London may be in German, therefore, since the 1980s modern opera houses have assisted the audience by providing translated supertitles, projections of the words above or near to the stage
4.
Broadway theatre
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Along with Londons West End theatres, Broadway theatres are widely considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English-speaking world. The Theater District is a popular tourist attraction in New York City, the great majority of Broadway shows are musicals. They presented Shakespeare plays and ballad operas such as The Beggars Opera, in 1752, William Hallam sent a company of twelve actors from Britain to the colonies with his brother Lewis as their manager. They established a theatre in Williamsburg, Virginia and opened with The Merchant of Venice, the company moved to New York in the summer of 1753, performing ballad operas and ballad-farces like Damon and Phillida. The Revolutionary War suspended theatre in New York, but thereafter theatre resumed in 1798, the Bowery Theatre opened in 1826, followed by others. Blackface minstrel shows, a distinctly American form of entertainment, became popular in the 1830s, by the 1840s, P. T. Barnum was operating an entertainment complex in lower Manhattan. In 1829, at Broadway and Prince Street, Niblos Garden opened, the 3, 000-seat theatre presented all sorts of musical and non-musical entertainments. In 1844, Palmos Opera House opened and presented opera for four seasons before bankruptcy led to its rebranding as a venue for plays under the name Burtons Theatre. The Astor Opera House opened in 1847, booth played the role for a famous 100 consecutive performances at the Winter Garden Theatre in 1865, and would later revive the role at his own Booths Theatre. Other renowned Shakespeareans who appeared in New York in this era were Henry Irving, Tommaso Salvini, Fanny Davenport, lydia Thompson came to America in 1868 heading a small theatrical troupe, adapting popular English burlesques for middle-class New York audiences. Thompsons troupe called the British Blondes, was the most popular entertainment in New York during the 1868–1869 theatrical season, the six-month tour ran for almost six extremely profitable years. Theatre in New York moved from downtown gradually to midtown beginning around 1850, in 1870, the heart of Broadway was in Union Square, and by the end of the century, many theatres were near Madison Square. Broadways first long-run musical was a 50-performance hit called The Elves in 1857, New York runs continued to lag far behind those in London, but Laura Keenes musical burletta The Seven Sisters shattered previous New York records with a run of 253 performances. It was at a performance by Keenes troupe of Our American Cousin in Washington, the production was a staggering five-and-a-half hours long, but despite its length, it ran for a record-breaking 474 performances. The same year, The Black Domino/Between You, Me and the Post was the first show to call itself a musical comedy, Tony Pastor opened the first vaudeville theatre one block east of Union Square in 1881, where Lillian Russell performed. Comedians Edward Harrigan and Tony Hart produced and starred in musicals on Broadway between 1878 and 1890, with book and lyrics by Harrigan and music by his father-in-law David Braham. They starred high quality singers, instead of the women of repute who had starred in earlier musical forms. Plays could run longer and still draw in the audiences, leading to better profits, as in England, during the latter half of the century, the theatre began to be cleaned up, with less prostitution hindering the attendance of the theatre by women
5.
I puritani
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I puritani is an opera in by Vincenzo Bellini. It was originally written in two acts and later changed to three acts on the advice of Gioachino Rossini, with whom the composer had become friends. Taking from April until its premiere the following January, Bellini had time to ensure that the opera was as close to perfection as possible. In a word, my dear Florimo, it was an unheard of thing, upon his arrival in Paris, Bellini quickly entered into the fashionable world of the Parisian salons, including that run by Princess Belgiojoso whom he had met in Milan. In addition to the writers of the time, among the musical figures which he would have encountered were several Italians such as Michele Carafa and Luigi Cherubini. Thus, for most of the remainder of 1833, Bellinis musical activity was very limited and he pleaded guilty in the letter to Florimo in March 1834 noting that the citys attractions were immense. The contract to write a new opera for the Théâtre-Italien, which was signed in January 1834, in the same letter he tells of working towards finding a subject with the Italian émigré, Count Pepoli, who had not written a libretto before. The chosen source of the libretto was identified as a play performed in Paris only six months before in September 1833. When first shown the play and other subjects by Pepoli, in the opinion of writer William Weaver, it was clearly the heroines madness that attracted the composer. But a month later, he comments to Florimo on what it takes working on the libretto with Pepoli, keeping moving ahead costs me a lot of weariness, he lacks practice which is a great thing. Finally, Bellini stated that he did not want to negotiate with anybody until I see what success my opera will have and this included a proposal from the Opéra-Comique in Paris for a new opera for that company. Pepoli adopts a modern aesthetic agenda, condemning vocal ornamentation as a dilution of dramatic sense and attacking imitation as cheapening musics inherent, quoting Pepoli, Smart continues, for this song the people fight, win, triumph, Europe and the world shouted Liberty. It is beautiful to face death shouting liberty, then she recounts how Bellini reacted to what she describes as Pepoli’s “hotheaded patriotism which appears in librettist’s poetry. Around the middle of April 1834, Bellini became concerned when he learned that Gaetano Donizetti would be composing for the Théâtre-Italien during the season as the one for which he was writing. As it transpired, Bellinis total success and Donizettis moderate one with Marin Faliero was insignificant, throughout his stay in Paris, Bellini had cultivated the older composer and had maintained a friendship with him, I have always adored Rossini, and I succeeded, and happily. Tamed Rossinis hatred, I no longer was frightened and finished work of mine which won me so much honour. Later, the dress rehearsal, he wrote. With rehearsals planned for late December/early January, the dress rehearsal took place on 20 January 1835 and it was attended by all of high society, all the great artists, and everyone most distinguished in Paris were in the theatre, enthusiastic
6.
Beatrice di Tenda
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Beatrice di Tenda is a tragic opera in two acts by Vincenzo Bellini, from a libretto by Felice Romani, after the play of the same name by Carlo Tedaldi Fores. Initially, a play by Alexandre Dumas was chosen as the subject for the opera, Romani, who had his own concerns, the principal one being the close parallels with the story told in Donizettis Anna Bolena, an opera which had established that composers success in 1830. Against his better judgment, he agreed, although he failed to provide verses for many months. Although unsuccessful at its premiere in Venice in 1833, Bellini felt that he had counteracted the horror of its story by means of the music, colouring it now tremendously and now sadly. Later, after hearing of the success in Palermo, Bellini wrote to his Neapolitan friend Francesco Florimo. Also, it was Pastas performances in the role that overcame the publics hostility to the piece. The opera was Bellinis penultimate work, coming between Norma and I puritani and it was the one of his operas to be published in full score in his lifetime. With the leading role requiring a strong character to be written for Pasta, composer. However, within a month, Bellini had changed his mind and he was writing to Pasta stating that the subject has been changed, I had a hard time persuading Romani, but persuade him I did, and with good reasons. Knowing that the subject pleases you, as you told me the evening when you saw the ballet and he is a man of good will, and I want him to show it also in wanting to prepare at least the first act for me swiftly. Bellinis expectation that he would receive the first act turned out to be a mistake. In spite of Romanis contract deadlines, no progress towards the preparation of the libretto for Beatrice took place in November, Bellini announced that he would arrive in Venice in early December, but after the 10th, he became preoccupied with rehearsals for his stagings of Norma. However, the lack of any verses—for an opera which was supposed to be given its premiere in the half of February—caused him to have to take action against Romani. He lodged a complaint with the governor of Venice who then contacted the governor of Milan, the librettist finally arrived in Venice on 1 January 1833. He holed up to write Bellinis libretto, but, at the same time, when Norma opened on 26 December, it was a success but only because of Pasta, the other singers were not well received. This caused Bellini to fear for how Beatrice would turn out, writing to his friend Santocanale in Palermo on 12 January, the composer was in despair, complaining of the short time to write his opera, whose fault is that. That of my usual and original poet, the God of Sloth and their relationship quickly began to deteriorate, greetings including tu gave way to voi and they lived in different parts of Venice, unusual when they were working together outside their home city. However, by 14 February, Bellini was reporting that he had another three pieces of the opera to do
Media related to Palmo's Opera House at Wikimedia Commons