1.
King's College London
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Kings College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom, and a founding constituent college of the federal University of London. Kings was established in 1829 by King George IV and the Duke of Wellington, in 1836, Kings became one of the two founding colleges of the University of London. It is a member of organisations such as the Association of Commonwealth Universities, the European University Association. Kings has five campuses, its main campus on the Strand in central London. In 2015/16, Kings had an income of £738.4 million, of which £193.2 million was from research grants and contracts and as of 2014/15. It has the fifth largest endowment of any university in the United Kingdom, and its academic activities are organised into nine faculties which are subdivided into numerous departments, centres and research divisions. Kings is home to six Medical Research Council centres and is a member of the Kings Health Partners academic health sciences centre, Francis Crick Institute. Kings College London, so named to indicate the patronage of King George IV, was founded in 1829 in response to the controversy surrounding the founding of London University in 1826. The need for such an institution was a result of the religious and social nature of the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, which then educated solely the sons of wealthy Anglicans. The secular nature of London University was disapproved by The Establishment, indeed, thus, the creation of a rival institution represented a Tory response to reassert the educational values of The Establishment. Winchilsea and about 150 other contributors withdrew their support of Kings College London in response to Wellingtons support of Catholic emancipation. In a letter to Wellington he accused the Duke to have in mind insidious designs for the infringement of our liberty, the letter provoked a furious exchange of correspondence and Wellington accused Winchilsea of imputing him with disgraceful and criminal motives in setting up Kings College London. The result was a duel in Battersea Fields on 21 March 1829, Winchilsea did not fire, a plan he and his second almost certainly decided upon before the duel, Wellington took aim and fired wide to the right. Accounts differ as to whether Wellington missed on purpose, Wellington, noted for his poor aim, claimed he did, other reports more sympathetic to Winchilsea claimed he had aimed to kill. Honour was saved and Winchilsea wrote Wellington an apology, duel Day is still celebrated on the first Thursday after 21 March every year, marked by various events throughout Kings, including reenactments. Kings opened in October 1831 with the cleric William Otter appointed as first principal, despite the attempts to make Kings Anglican-only, the initial prospectus permitted, nonconformists of all sorts to enter the college freely. William Howley, the governors and the professors, except the linguists, had to be members of the Church of England but the students did not, though attendance at chapel was compulsory. Kings was divided into a department and a junior department, also known as Kings College School
2.
's-Hertogenbosch
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S-Hertogenbosch, colloquially known as Den Bosch, is a city and municipality in the southern Netherlands. It is the capital of the province of North Brabant, the citys official name is a contraction of the Dutch des Hertogen bosch—the Dukes forest. The duke in question was Duke Henry I of Brabant, whose family had owned an estate at nearby Orthen for at least four centuries. He founded a new town located on some forested dunes in the middle of a marsh, at age 26, he granted s-Hertogenbosch city rights and the corresponding trade privileges in 1185. This is, however, the date given by later chroniclers. The original charter has been lost and his reason for founding the city was to protect his own interests against encroachment from Gelre and Holland, from its first days, he conceived of the city as a fortress. It was destroyed in 1203 in a joint expedition of Gelre and Holland, some remnants of the original city walls may still be seen. In the late 14th century, a larger wall was erected to protect the greatly expanded settled area. Artificial waterways were dug to serve as a city moat, through which the rivers Dommel, until 1520, the city flourished, becoming the second largest population centre in the territory of the present Netherlands, after Utrecht. The city was also a center of music, and composers, such as Jheronimus Clibano, the wars of the Reformation changed the course of the citys history. During the Eighty Years War, the city took the side of the Habsburg authorities and it was besieged several times by Prince Maurice of Orange, stadtholder of most of the Dutch Republic, who wanted to bring s-Hertogenbosch under the rule of the rebel United Provinces. The city was defended by Claude de Berlaymont, also known as Haultpenne. In the years of Truce, before the fighting after 1618. The surrounding marshes made a siege of the conventional type impossible, after a siege of three months, the city had to surrender—an enormous blow to Habsburg geo-political strategy during the Thirty Years War. This surrender cut the town off from the rest of the duchy, after the Peace of Westphalia, the fortifications were again expanded. In 1672, the Dutch rampjaar, the city held against the army of Louis XIV of France. In 1794, French revolutionary troops under command of Charles Pichegru took the city with hardly a fight, in the Batavian Republic, from 1806, the city became part of the Kingdom of Holland and from 1810, it was incorporated into the First French Empire. It was captured by the Prussians in 1814, the next year,1815, when the United Kingdom of the Netherlands was established, it became the capital of North Brabant
3.
Royal Army Medical Corps
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The Royal Army Medical Corps is a specialist corps in the British Army which provides medical services to all Army personnel and their families, in war and in peace. Together with the Royal Army Veterinary Corps, the Royal Army Dental Corps and Queen Alexandras Royal Army Nursing Corps, because it is not a fighting arm, under the Geneva Conventions, members of the RAMC may only use their weapons for self-defence. Other ranks do not fix bayonets, neither do they prefix Surgeon in front of their rank as medical officers of the Royal Navy do. The RAMC, like every other British regiment, has its own distinctive unit insignia, dark blue beret, the default Army colour worn by units without distinctive coloured berets. There is also a small attachment to Special Forces, the Medical Support Unit who wear the beret of the SAS. Cap badge depicting the Rod of Asclepius, surmounted by a crown, enclosed within a wreath, with the regimental motto In Arduis Fidelis. The cap badge is worn 1 inch above the eye on the beret. The cap badge of the ranks must also be backed by an oval patch of dull cherry-red coloured cloth measuring 3.81 cm wide and 6.35 cm high sewn directly to the beret. Officers do not use the backing, but have a cloth cap badge instead. Silver regimental collar badges, a miniature of the cap badge, stable belt comprising equal horizontal bands of dull cherry, royal blue, and old gold, reflecting the old uniform worn in the 1900s, the gold depicting the royal in the title. Silver belt buckle with engraved regimental badge, Medical services in the British armed services go as far back as the formation of the Standing Regular Army after the Restoration of Charles II in 1660. This was the first time a career was provided for a Medical Officer, known as the Regimental Surgeon, both in peacetime and in war. The Army was formed entirely on a basis, and an MO with a Warrant Officer as his Assistant Surgeon was appointed to each regiment. The MO was also for the first time concerned in the health of his troops. This regimental basis of appointment for MOs continued until 1873, when an army medical service was set up. There was much unhappiness in the Army Medical Service in the following years, for medical officers did not actually have military rank but advantages corresponding to relative military rank. They had inferior pay in India, excessive amounts of Indian and colonial service and they did not have their own identity as did the Army Service Corps, whose officers did have military rank. A number of complaints were published, and the British Medical Journal campaigned loudly, for over two years after 27 July 1887 there were no recruits to the Army Medical Department
4.
Crimean War
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The Crimean War was a military conflict fought from October 1853 to March 1856 in which the Russian Empire lost to an alliance of France, Britain, the Ottoman Empire, and Sardinia. The immediate cause involved the rights of Christian minorities in the Holy Land, the French promoted the rights of Roman Catholics, while Russia promoted those of the Eastern Orthodox Church. The longer-term causes involved the decline of the Ottoman Empire and the unwillingness of Britain and France to allow Russia to gain territory and power at Ottoman expense. While the churches eventually worked out their differences and came to an agreement, Nicholas I of Russia, Nicholas issued an ultimatum that the Orthodox subjects of the Empire be placed under his protection. Britain attempted to mediate and arranged a compromise that Nicholas agreed to, when the Ottomans demanded changes, Nicholas refused and prepared for war. Having obtained promises of support from France and Britain, the Ottomans declared war on Russia in October 1853. The war started in the Balkans, when Russian troops occupied the Danubian Principalities, until then under Ottoman suzerainty and now part of modern Romania, led by Omar Pasha, the Ottomans fought a strong defensive campaign and stopped the advance at Silistra. A separate action on the town of Kars in eastern Anatolia led to a siege. Fearing an Ottoman collapse, France and Britain rushed forces to Gallipoli and they then moved north to Varna in June, arriving just in time for the Russians to abandon Silistra. Aside from a skirmish at Köstence, there was little for the allies to do. Karl Marx quipped that there they are, the French doing nothing, after extended preparations, the forces landed on the peninsula in September 1854 and fought their way to a point south of Sevastopol after a series of successful battles. The Russians counterattacked on 25 October in what became the Battle of Balaclava and were repulsed, a second counterattack, ordered personally by Nicholas, was defeated by Omar Pasha. The front settled into a siege and led to conditions for troops on both sides. Smaller actions were carried out in the Baltic, the Caucasus, Sevastopol fell after eleven months, and neutral countries began to join the Allied cause. Isolated and facing a bleak prospect of invasion from the west if the war continued and this was welcomed by France and Britain, as their subjects were beginning to turn against their governments as the war dragged on. The war was ended by the Treaty of Paris, signed on 30 March 1856, Russia was forbidden from hosting warships in the Black Sea. The Ottoman vassal states of Wallachia and Moldavia became largely independent, Christians there were granted a degree of official equality, and the Orthodox Church regained control of the Christian churches in dispute. The Crimean War was one of the first conflicts to use technologies such as explosive naval shells, railways
5.
Cabaret
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Cabaret is a form of entertainment featuring music, song, dance, recitation, or drama. It is mainly distinguished by the venue, which might be a pub. The audience, often dining or drinking, does not typically dance, performances are usually introduced by a master of ceremonies or MC. The entertainment, as done by an ensemble of actors and according to its European origins, is oriented towards adult audiences. In the United States striptease, burlesque, drag shows, or a solo vocalist with a pianist, the word cabaret was first used in 1655. It is derived from tavern probably from Middle Dutch cambret, the word cabaret came to mean a restaurant or night club by 1912. Cabaret can be divided in 10 different types. However, these are artificial dividing lines, cabaret shows are most of the time a compound of elements from the different types, the cabaret performer plays with language, sometimes poetic, but often is he or she rock hard and hateful. The cabaret performer analyses in his/her stubborn manner actual, social and political topics, the cabaret performer tells an often slightly absurd story with a moral packed in it. The cabaret performer plays with music, for example by twisting or combining familiar melodies, the cabaret performer tells nonsensical and absurd stories and plays idiotic types. The emphasis is less on text in the show of cabaret performer. Here the cabaret performer eludes on his liberating through laughter role, an iteration of storytelling cabaret The cabaret performer quickly switches between the different styles/types of cabaret, types, or songs. In this the cabaret performer is a guest at a government, institution or a company, cabarets existed in Paris in the 16th century, they were ancestors of the modern restaurant. Unlike taverns they sold wine not by itself but only with a meal, customers might sing if they had drunk enough wine, but early cabarets did not have formal programs of entertainment. Cabarets were frequently used as meeting places for writers and artists, in 1773 French poets, painters, musicians and writers began to meet in a cabaret called Le Caveau on rue de Buci, where they composed and sang songs. The Caveau continued until 1816, when it was forced to close because its clients wrote songs mocking the royal government, in the 18th century the café-concert or café-chantant appeared, which offered food along with music, singers, or magicians. The most famous was the Cafe des Aveugles in the cellars of the Palais-Royal, in the early 19th century many cafés-chantants appeared around the city, the most famous were the Café des Ambassadeurs on the Champs-Élysées and the Eldorado on boulevard Strasbourg. By 1900 there were more than 150 cafés-chantants in Paris, the first cabaret in the modern sense was Le Chat Noir in the Bohemian neighborhood of Montmartre, created in 1881 by Rodolphe Salis, a theatrical agent and entrepreneur
6.
England cricket team
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The England cricket team is the team that represents England and Wales in international cricket. Since 1 January 1997 it has been governed by the England and Wales Cricket Board, England and Australia were the first teams to play a Test match, and these two countries together with South Africa formed the Imperial Cricket Conference on 15 June 1909. England and Australia also played the first One Day International on 5 January 1971, Englands first Twenty20 International was played on 13 June 2005, once more against Australia. As of 9 March 2017, England has played 983 Test matches, winning 351, the team has won The Ashes on 32 occasions, the same number as their opponents Australia. England has played 683 ODIs, winning 332, and its record in major ODI tournaments includes finishing as runners-up in three Cricket World Cups, and also in two ICC Champions Trophys, England has also played 89 T20Is, winning 43. They won the ICC World Twenty20 in 2010, and were runners-up in 2016, England are currently ranked fourth in Tests, fifth in ODIs and fifth in T20Is by the ICC. England currently holds the record for the highest ever ODI total of 444, such matches were repeated on numerous occasions for the best part of a century. In 1846 William Clarke formed the All-England Eleven and this team would eventually compete against a United All-England Eleven with annual matches occurring between 1847 and 1856. These matches were arguably the most important contest of the English season if judged by the quality of the players, the first overseas tour occurred in September 1859 with England touring North America. This team had six players from the All-England Eleven, six from the United All-England Eleven and was captained by George Parr, with the outbreak of the American Civil War, attention turned elsewhere. English tourists visited Australia in 1861-62 with this first tour organised as a venture by Messrs Spiers and Pond. Most matches played during tours prior to 1877 were against odds and this first Australian tour were mostly against odds of at least 18/11. The tour was so successful that George Parr led a tour in 1863–64. James Lillywhite led a subsequent England team which sailed on the P&O steamship Poonah on 21 September 1876 and they would play a combined Australian XI, for once on even terms of 11 a side. The match, starting on 15 March 1877 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground came to be regarded as the inaugural Test match, the combined Australian XI won this Test match by 45 runs with Charles Bannerman of Australia scoring the first Test century. At the time, the match was promoted as James Lillywhites XI v Combined Victoria, the teams played a return match on the same ground at Easter,1877, when Lillywhites team avenged their loss with a victory by four wickets. The first Test match on English soil occurred in 1880 with England victorious, – The body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia. As a result of loss the tour of 1882–83 was dubbed by England captain Ivo Bligh as the quest to regain the ashes
7.
David Gower
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David Ivon Gower OBE is a former English cricketer who became the captain of the England cricket team during the 1980s. Described as one of the most stylish left-handed batsmen of his era, Gower played 117 Test matches and 114 One Day Internationals scoring 8,231 and 3170 runs and he was one of the most capped and high scoring players for England during his period. Gower led England during the 1985 Ashes, and his team was victorious, however and he was briefly reinstated for the 1989 Ashes series, before being replaced as captain by Graham Gooch. The strained relationship between the pair contributed to Gower retiring from cricket in 1993. Nevertheless, he ended with a record in first-class cricket, accumulating 26,339 runs at an average of 40.08. As of February 2013, he holds the record of 119 consecutive innings without registering a duck in Test cricket, following his retirement, Gower became a successful cricket commentator with Sky Sports, and on 16 July 2009 he was inducted into the ICC Cricket Hall of Fame. Gower was born in Tunbridge Wells in 1957, the family returned to England after Tanganyika was granted independence, when Gower was six years old, settling in Kent and later moving to Loughborough. Gower attended prep school at Marlborough House School in Hawkhurst from the age of 8 to 13 and he was awarded a scholarship to attend The Kings School in Canterbury—where his father was an earlier head boy—as a boarder. Gower made the school cricket First XI aged 14 and he was later to be made captain and he also played for the rugby First XV before being dropped from the team for lack of effort. While at school, Gower played representative cricket for Public Schools against English Schools at under-16 level, Gower finished school with eight O levels, three A levels and one S level in history. He sat the History exam for Oxford University and was offered an interview at St Edmund Hall, spurning a place at University College, London, Gower returned to school in an attempt to gain two more A levels but lost interest partway through the year. Having played some matches for the Leicestershire Second XI the previous summer, Gower tried his luck at the club as a professional for the remainder of the year, for £25 per week. In the summer, Gower returned to University College, where he studied law, Gower is nicknamed Lord Gower by his Sky Sports colleagues, in allusion to his aristocratic ancestry and public school education. He is a distant descendant of the Leveson-Gower family, Dukes of Sutherland, Gower enjoyed one of the most prolific first-class cricket careers in English history, in both domestic and international competitions. Gowers career run total is also the fourth highest by an English player, behind only Alec Stewart with 8,463, Graham Gooch with 8,900 and Alastair Cook with as of 5 November 2016,10,688. He played domestic cricket from 1975 until 1993, largely with Leicestershire until 1989, where he moved to Hampshire, Gower made his debut for Leicestershire on 30 July 1975, during that seasons County Championship, against Lancashire at Stanley Park, Blackpool. Winning the toss, Lancashire chose to bat first and amassed 259 thanks largely to a century by David Lloyd, Gower, batting at number seven, scored 32 before he was dismissed by Ken Shuttleworth, Leicestershire making 321 and taking a first-innings lead. Lloyd made 90 in the innings as Lancashire declared on 305
8.
Tony Blair
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Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a British politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and the Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007. From 1983 to 2007, Blair was the MP for Sedgefield, under Blairs leadership, the party used the phrase New Labour, to distance it from previous Labour policies and the traditional conception of socialism. Critics of Blair denounced him for having the Labour Party abandon genuine socialism, in May 1997, the Labour Party won a landslide general election victory, the largest in its history, allowing Blair, at 43 years old, to become the youngest Prime Minister since 1812. In September 1997, Blair attained early personal popularity, receiving a 93% public approval rating, the Labour Party went on to win two more elections under his leadership, in 2001, in which it won another landslide victory, and in 2005, with a reduced majority. In the first years of the New Labour government, Blairs government introduced the National Minimum Wage Act, Human Rights Act, Blairs government also devolved power, establishing the Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales, and the Northern Ireland Assembly. In Northern Ireland, Blair was involved in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, Blair has faced strong criticism for his role in the invasion of Iraq, including calls for having him tried for war crimes and waging a war of aggression. In 2016, the Iraq Inquiry strongly criticised his actions and described the invasion of Iraq as unjustified, Blair also intervened militarily in Kosovo and Sierra Leone. Blair was succeeded as the leader of the Labour Party and as Prime Minister by Gordon Brown in June 2007. On the day that Blair resigned as Prime Minister, he was appointed the official Special Envoy of the Quartet on the Middle East and he now runs a consultancy business and has set up various foundations in his own name, including the Tony Blair Faith Foundation. Anthony Charles Lynton Blair was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on 6 May 1953 and he was the second son of Leo and Hazel Blair. Leo Blair was the son of two entertainers and adopted as a baby by Glasgow shipyard worker James Blair and his wife. Hazel Corscadden was the daughter of George Corscadden, a butcher, in 1923 he returned to Ballyshannon, County Donegal. In Ballyshannon Corscaddens wife, Sarah Margaret, gave birth above the grocery shop to Blairs mother. Blair has one brother, Sir William Blair, a High Court judge. Blairs first home was with his family at Paisley Terrace in the Willowbrae area of Edinburgh, during this period, his father worked as a junior tax inspector whilst also studying for a law degree from the University of Edinburgh. Blairs first relocation was when he was 19 months old, at the end of 1954 Blairs parents and their two sons moved from Paisley Terrace to Adelaide, South Australia. His father lectured in law at the University of Adelaide and it was when in Australia that Blairs sister Sarah was born. The Blairs lived in the suburb of Dulwich close to the university, the family returned to the UK in summer 1958
9.
Gordon Brown
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James Gordon Brown is a British politician who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and the Leader of the Labour Party from 2007 to 2010. He previously served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Blair Government from 1997 to 2007, Brown was a Member of Parliament from 1983 to 2015, first for Dunfermline East and later for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath. A doctoral graduate of the University of Edinburgh, Brown spent his career working as both a lecturer at a further education college and a television journalist. He entered Parliament in 1983 as the MP for Dunfermline East and he joined the Shadow Cabinet in 1989 as Shadow Secretary of State for Trade, and was later promoted to become Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1992. After Labours victory in 1997, he was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer, in 2007, Tony Blair resigned as Prime Minister and Labour Leader and Brown was chosen to replace him in an uncontested election. Brown remained in office as Labour negotiated to form a government with the Liberal Democrats. On 10 May 2010, Brown announced he would stand down as leader of the Labour Party, Labours attempts to retain power failed and on 11 May, he officially resigned as Prime Minister and Leader of the Labour Party. He was succeeded as Prime Minister by David Cameron, and as Leader of the Labour Party by Ed Miliband, later, Brown played a prominent role in the campaign surrounding the Scottish independence referendum of 2014, galvanising support behind maintaining the union. Brown was born at the Orchard Maternity Nursing Home in Giffnock, Renfrewshire and his father was John Ebenezer Brown, a minister of the Church of Scotland and a strong influence on Brown. He died in December 1998, aged 84 and his mother, Jessie Elizabeth Brown, known as Bunty, died on 19 September 2004, aged 86. She was the daughter of John Souter, a timber merchant, the family moved to Kirkcaldy – then the largest town in Fife, across the Firth of Forth from Edinburgh – when Gordon was three. Brown was brought up there with his elder brother John and younger brother Andrew Brown in a manse, in common with many other notable Scots, he is therefore often referred to as a son of the manse. At age sixteen he wrote that he loathed and resented this ludicrous experiment on young lives and he was accepted by the University of Edinburgh to study history at the same early age of sixteen. During an end-of-term rugby union match at his old school, he received a kick to the head and this left him blind in his left eye, despite treatment including several operations and weeks spent lying in a darkened room. Later at Edinburgh, while playing tennis, he noticed the symptoms in his right eye. Brown underwent experimental surgery at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary and his eye was saved. In his youth at the University of Edinburgh, Brown was involved in a relationship with Margarita. Margarita said about it, It was a solid and romantic story
10.
United Kingdom general election, 2010
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The United Kingdom general election of 2010 was held on Thursday,6 May 2010, with 45,597,461 registered voters entitled to vote to elect members to the House of Commons. The election took place in 650 constituencies across the United Kingdom under the first-past-the-post system, none of the parties achieved the 326 seats needed for an overall majority. The Conservative Party, led by David Cameron, won the largest number of votes and seats and this resulted in a hung parliament where no party was able to command a majority in the House of Commons. This was only the general election since World War II to return a hung parliament. The coalition government that was formed was the first coalition in British history to eventuate directly from an election outcome. The hung parliament came in spite of the Conservatives managing a higher share of the vote than the previous Labour government had done in 2005 that had a comfortable majority, Coalition talks began immediately between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats and lasted for five days. There was an attempt to put together a Labour/Liberal Democrat coalition. To facilitate this Gordon Brown announced on the evening of Monday 10 May that he would resign as Labour Party leader. Realising that a deal with the Conservatives was in reach, the day on Tuesday 11 May, Brown announced his resignation as Prime Minister. This was accepted by Queen Elizabeth II, who then invited David Cameron to form a government in her name and become Prime Minister, none of the three main party leaders had previously led a general election campaign, a situation which had not occurred since the 1979 election. During the campaign, the three party leaders engaged in a series of televised debates, the first such debates in a British general election campaign. The Liberal Democrats achieved a breakthrough in opinion polls after the first debate, nonetheless on polling day their share of the vote increased by only 1% over the previous general election, and they suffered a net loss of five seats. This was still the Liberal Democrats largest popular vote since the partys creation, the share of votes for parties other than Labour or the Conservatives was 35%, the largest since the 1918 general election. In terms of votes it was the most three-cornered election since 1923, the Green Party of England and Wales won its first ever seat in the Commons, and the Alliance Party of Northern Ireland also gained its first elected member. The General Election saw a 5. 1% national swing from Labour to the Conservatives, the result in one constituency, Oldham East and Saddleworth, was subsequently declared void on petition because of illegal practices during the campaign, the first such instance since 1910. The election took place on 6 May in 649 constituencies across the United Kingdom, under the first-past-the-post system, voting in the Thirsk and Malton constituency was postponed for three weeks because of the death of a candidate. The governing Labour Party had campaigned to secure a consecutive term in office. The Conservative Party sought to gain a dominant position in British politics after losses in the 1990s, the Liberal Democrats hoped to make gains from both sides and hoped to hold the balance of power in a hung parliament
11.
Kurt Weill
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Kurt Julian Weill was a German composer, active from the 1920s in his native country, and in his later years in the United States. He was a composer for the stage who was best known for his fruitful collaborations with Bertolt Brecht. With Brecht, he developed such as his best-known work The Threepenny Opera. Weill held the ideal of writing music that served a useful purpose. He also wrote works for the concert hall. He became a United States citizen on August 27,1943, Weill was born on March 2,1900, the third of four children to Albert Weill and Emma Weill. He grew up in a religious Jewish family in the Sandvorstadt, the Jewish quarter in Dessau, Germany, where his father was a cantor. At the age of twelve, Weill started taking lessons and made his first attempts at writing music. In 1915, Weill started taking lessons with Albert Bing, Kapellmeister at the Herzogliches Hoftheater zu Dessau, who taught him piano, composition, music theory. Weill performed publicly on piano for the first time in 1915, koch, and also attended philosophy lectures by Max Dessoir and Ernst Cassirer. The same year, he wrote his first string quartet, from May to September 1920, Weill spent a couple of months in Leipzig, where his father had become the new director of a Jewish orphanage. Before he returned to Berlin, in September 1920, he composed Sulamith, a fantasy for soprano, female choir. Back in Berlin, Weill had an interview with Ferruccio Busoni in December 1920, after examining some of Weills compositions, Busoni accepted him as one of five master students in composition at the Preußische Akademie der Künste in Berlin. From January 1921 to December 1923, Weill studied music composition with him, during his first year he composed his first symphony, Sinfonie in einem Satz, as well as the lieder Die Bekehrte and two Rilkelieder for voice and piano. To support his family in Leipzig, he worked as a pianist in a Bierkeller tavern. In spring of 1922, Weill joined the November Groups music faction and that year he composed a psalm, a divertimento for orchestra, and Sinfonia Sacra, Fantasia, Passacaglia, and Hymnus for Orchestra. On November 18,1922, his childrens pantomime Die Zaubernacht premiered at the Theater am Kurfürstendamm, out of financial need, Weill taught music theory and composition to private students from 1923 to 1925. Among his students were Claudio Arrau, Maurice Abravanel, Heinz Jolles, in December 1923, Weill finished his studies with Busoni
12.
Carmen
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Carmen is an opera in four acts by French composer Georges Bizet. The libretto was written by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on a novella of the title by Prosper Mérimée. The opera was first performed at the Opéra-Comique in Paris on 3 March 1875, Bizet died suddenly after the 33rd performance, unaware that the work would achieve international acclaim within the following ten years. The opera is written in the genre of opéra comique with musical numbers separated by dialogue and it is set in southern Spain and tells the story of the downfall of Don José, a naïve soldier who is seduced by the wiles of the fiery gypsy Carmen. José abandons his sweetheart and deserts from his military duties, yet loses Carmens love to the glamorous toreador Escamillo. The depictions of life, immorality, and lawlessness. After the premiere, most reviews were critical, and the French public was generally indifferent, Carmen initially gained its reputation through a series of productions outside France, and was not revived in Paris until 1883, thereafter it rapidly acquired popularity at home and abroad. Later commentators have asserted that Carmen forms the bridge between the tradition of opéra comique and the realism or verismo that characterised late 19th-century Italian opera. The opera has been recorded many times since the first acoustical recording in 1908, in the Paris of the 1860s, despite being a Prix de Rome laureate, Bizet struggled to get his stage works performed. The capitals two main state-funded opera houses—the Opéra and the Opéra-Comique—followed conservative repertoires that restricted opportunities for young native talent, Bizet was delighted with the Opéra-Comique commission, and expressed to his friend Edmund Galabert his satisfaction in the absolute certainty of having found my path. It was Bizet who first proposed an adaptation of Prosper Mérimées novella Carmen, Bizet may first have encountered the story during his Rome sojourn of 1858–60, since his journals record Mérimée as one of the writers whose works he absorbed in those years. Cast details are as provided by Mina Curtiss from the original piano, the stage designs are credited to Charles Ponchard. Place, Seville, Spain, and surrounding hills Time, Around 1820 Act 1 A square, on the right, a door to the tobacco factory. A group of soldiers relax in the square, waiting for the changing of the guard, moralès tells her that José is not yet on duty and invites her to wait with them. She declines, saying she will return later, José arrives with the new guard, which is greeted and imitated by a crowd of urchins. As the factory bell rings, the cigarette girls emerge and exchange banter with young men in the crowd, Carmen enters and sings her provocative habanera on the untameable nature of love. The men plead with her to choose a lover, and after some teasing she throws a flower to Don José, as the women go back to the factory, Micaëla returns and gives José a letter and a kiss from his mother. He reads that his mother wants him to home and marry Micaëla
