1.
Paris
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Paris is the capital and most populous city of France. It has an area of 105 square kilometres and a population of 2,229,621 in 2013 within its administrative limits, the agglomeration has grown well beyond the citys administrative limits. By the 17th century, Paris was one of Europes major centres of finance, commerce, fashion, science, and the arts, and it retains that position still today. The aire urbaine de Paris, a measure of area, spans most of the Île-de-France region and has a population of 12,405,426. It is therefore the second largest metropolitan area in the European Union after London, the Metropole of Grand Paris was created in 2016, combining the commune and its nearest suburbs into a single area for economic and environmental co-operation. Grand Paris covers 814 square kilometres and has a population of 7 million persons, the Paris Region had a GDP of €624 billion in 2012, accounting for 30.0 percent of the GDP of France and ranking it as one of the wealthiest regions in Europe. The city is also a rail, highway, and air-transport hub served by two international airports, Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly. Opened in 1900, the subway system, the Paris Métro. It is the second busiest metro system in Europe after Moscow Metro, notably, Paris Gare du Nord is the busiest railway station in the world outside of Japan, with 262 millions passengers in 2015. In 2015, Paris received 22.2 million visitors, making it one of the top tourist destinations. The association football club Paris Saint-Germain and the rugby union club Stade Français are based in Paris, the 80, 000-seat Stade de France, built for the 1998 FIFA World Cup, is located just north of Paris in the neighbouring commune of Saint-Denis. Paris hosts the annual French Open Grand Slam tennis tournament on the red clay of Roland Garros, Paris hosted the 1900 and 1924 Summer Olympics and is bidding to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. The name Paris is derived from its inhabitants, the Celtic Parisii tribe. Thus, though written the same, the name is not related to the Paris of Greek mythology. In the 1860s, the boulevards and streets of Paris were illuminated by 56,000 gas lamps, since the late 19th century, Paris has also been known as Panam in French slang. Inhabitants are known in English as Parisians and in French as Parisiens and they are also pejoratively called Parigots. The Parisii, a sub-tribe of the Celtic Senones, inhabited the Paris area from around the middle of the 3rd century BC. One of the areas major north-south trade routes crossed the Seine on the île de la Cité, this place of land and water trade routes gradually became a town
2.
Contemporary R&B
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Contemporary R&B, also known as simply R&B, is a music genre that combines elements of rhythm and blues, soul, funk, pop, hip hop and dance. The genre features a record production style, drum machine-backed rhythms, an occasional saxophone-laced beat to give a jazz feel. Electronic influences are becoming a trend and the use of hip hop or dance-inspired beats are typical, although the roughness. Contemporary R&B vocalists are often known for their use of melisma, popularized by such as Michael Jackson, R. Kelly, Craig David, Stevie Wonder, Whitney Houston. That same year, Teddy Riley began producing R&B recordings that included hip hop influences and this combination of R&B style and hip hop rhythms was termed new jack swing and was applied to artists such as Bobby Brown, Keith Sweat, Al B. Guy, Jodeci and Bell Biv DeVoe, the style became less popular by the end of the 1990s, but later experienced a resurgence. In 1990 Mariah Carey released Vision of Love as her debut single and it was immensely popular peaking at number 1 in many worldwide charts including the Billboard Hot 100, and it propelled Mariahs carrier. The song is said to have popularized the use of melisma. During the mid-1990s, Whitney Houstons The Bodyguard, Original Soundtrack Album sold over 40 million copies becoming the best-selling soundtrack of all time. Janet Jacksons self-titled fifth studio album janet. which came after her historic multimillion-dollar contract with Virgin Records, sold over twenty million copies worldwide. Boyz II Men and Mariah Carey recorded several Billboard Hot 100 No.1 hits, including One Sweet Day, Carey also released a remix of her 1995 single Fantasy, with Ol Dirty Bastard as a feature, a collaboration format that was unheard of at this point. Carey, Boyz II Men and TLC released albums in 1994 and 1995—Daydream, II and CrazySexyCool. In the late 1990s, neo soul, which added 1970s soul influences to the hip hop soul blend, arose, led by such as DAngelo, Erykah Badu. Hill and Missy Elliott further blurred the line between R&B and hip hop by recording both styles, beginning in 1995, the Grammy Awards enacted the Grammy Award for Best R&B Album, with II by Boyz II Men becoming the first recipient. The award was received by TLC for CrazySexyCool in 1996, Tony Rich for Words in 1997, Erykah Badu for Baduizm in 1998. At the end of 1999, Billboard magazine ranked Mariah Carey and Janet Jackson as the first, simultaneously, in the second half of the 1990s, The Neptunes and Timbaland set influential precedence on contemporary R&B and hip hop music. R&B acts such as Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Janet Jackson, Mariah Carey, Usher, in 2001, Alicia Keys released Fallin as her debut single. It peaking at one on the Billboard Hot 100, Mainstream Top 40
3.
Rock music
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It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by blues, rhythm and blues and country music. Rock music also drew strongly on a number of genres such as electric blues and folk. Musically, rock has centered on the guitar, usually as part of a rock group with electric bass guitar. Typically, rock is song-based music usually with a 4/4 time signature using a verse-chorus form, like pop music, lyrics often stress romantic love but also address a wide variety of other themes that are frequently social or political in emphasis. Punk was an influence into the 1980s on the subsequent development of subgenres, including new wave, post-punk. From the 1990s alternative rock began to rock music and break through into the mainstream in the form of grunge, Britpop. Similarly, 1970s punk culture spawned the visually distinctive goth and emo subcultures and this trio of instruments has often been complemented by the inclusion of other instruments, particularly keyboards such as the piano, Hammond organ and synthesizers. The basic rock instrumentation was adapted from the blues band instrumentation. A group of musicians performing rock music is termed a rock band or rock group, Rock music is traditionally built on a foundation of simple unsyncopated rhythms in a 4/4 meter, with a repetitive snare drum back beat on beats two and four. Melodies are often derived from older musical modes, including the Dorian and Mixolydian, harmonies range from the common triad to parallel fourths and fifths and dissonant harmonic progressions. Critics have stressed the eclecticism and stylistic diversity of rock, because of its complex history and tendency to borrow from other musical and cultural forms, it has been argued that it is impossible to bind rock music to a rigidly delineated musical definition. These themes were inherited from a variety of sources, including the Tin Pan Alley pop tradition, folk music and rhythm, as a result, it has been seen as articulating the concerns of this group in both style and lyrics. Christgau, writing in 1972, said in spite of some exceptions, rock and roll usually implies an identification of male sexuality, according to Simon Frith rock was something more than pop, something more than rock and roll. Rock musicians combined an emphasis on skill and technique with the concept of art as artistic expression, original. The foundations of music are in rock and roll, which originated in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s. Its immediate origins lay in a melding of various musical genres of the time, including rhythm and blues and gospel music, with country. In 1951, Cleveland, Ohio disc jockey Alan Freed began playing rhythm and blues music for a multi-racial audience, debate surrounds which record should be considered the first rock and roll record. Other artists with rock and roll hits included Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, Fats Domino, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis
4.
Lenny Kravitz
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Leonard Albert Lenny Kravitz is a Bahamian American singer, songwriter, record producer, and actor. His retro style incorporates elements of rock, blues, soul, R&B, funk, jazz, reggae, hard rock, psychedelic, pop, folk, in addition to singing lead and backing vocals, Kravitz often plays all of the instruments himself when recording. He has been nominated for and won awards, including American Music Awards, MTV Video Music Awards, Radio Music Awards, Brit Awards. On December 1,2011, Kravitz was made an Officer of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres and he played Cinna in the Hunger Games film series. Kravitz was born in Manhattan, New York, the son of actress Roxie Roker and his father was from a Jewish family. His mother was of Bahamian and African-American descent, and was from a Christian family, Kravitz is the cousin of television weather presenter Al Roker. During his early years, Kravitz did not grow up in a religious environment, after a spiritual experience when he was 13, he started attending church, becoming a non-denominational Christian. Kravitz was named after his uncle, Private First Class Leonard M, in 2014, he posthumously received the Medal of Honor in a ceremony that awarded it to 23 other servicemen who were passed over because of their ethnicity. Kravitz grew up spending weekdays on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, with his parents,6 for elementary school, and weekends at his grandmother Bessie Rokers house in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Kravitz began banging on pots and pans in the kitchen, playing them as drums at the age of three, at the age of five, he wanted to be a musician. He began playing the drums and soon added guitar, Kravitz grew up listening to the music his parents listened to, R&B, jazz, classical, opera, gospel, and blues. My parents were supportive of the fact that I loved music early on. Around the age of seven, he saw The Jackson 5 perform at Madison Square Garden and his father, who was also a jazz promoter, was friends with Duke Ellington, Sarah Vaughan, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Bobby Short, Miles Davis and other jazz greats. Ellington even played Happy Birthday for him one year when he was about 5, Kravitz often went to see New York theater, where his mother worked. His mother encouraged his dreams of pursuing music, in 1974, the Kravitz family relocated to Los Angeles when Kravitzs mother landed her role on The Jeffersons. At his mothers urging, Kravitz joined the California Boys Choir for three years, where he performed a repertoire, and sang with the Metropolitan Opera. He took part in Mahlers Third Symphony at the Hollywood Bowl, I was attracted to the cool style, the girls, the rock n roll lifestyle, Kravitz said. Kravitzs other musical influences at the time included Fela Kuti, Bill Withers, Marvin Gaye, Pharoah Sanders and Miles Davis, John Lennon, Kravitz attended Beverly Hills High School
5.
Promotional model
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A promotional model is a model hired to drive consumer demand for a product, service, brand, or concept by directly interacting with potential customers. A majority of promotional models tend to be conventionally attractive in physical appearance. They serve to make a product or service more appealing and can provide information to journalists and consumers at trade show and convention events. While each model may not be employed by the company they represent, they can be trained to answer questions and provide customer feedback regarding products, services. Marketing campaigns that make use of models may take place in retail stores or shopping malls, at trade shows, special promotional events, clubs. They are often planned at high traffic locations to reach as many consumers as possible, the motorsports scene refers to promo models as race queens. In Japan, they are known as models and are being hired even by government agencies. Spokesmodel is a used for a model who is employed to be associated with a specific brand or product in advertisements. A spokesmodel may be a celebrity used only in advertisements, a classic example of such spokesmodels are the models engaged to be the Marlboro Man between 1954 and 1999, and the Clarion Girl since 1975. Contrary to what the term suggests, a spokesmodel is normally not expected to promote the brand. A trade show model is an assistant that works with a companys sales representatives at a trade show exhibit, working on the space or a booth. The models can be skilled at drawing attendees into the booth, engaging them in conversation, the slang term booth babe, coined in 1986, or booth bunny,1989, is widely used to refer to any female trade show model. The moniker booth babe is also controversial itself as it is considered offensive and degrading by some, the term nevertheless continues to be often used by journalists and by the people opposed to the presence of the models they define as booth babes. Changing social and business standards have resulted in a decrease in the use of models in trade shows. Partial nudity, the display of cleavage and the navel. Celebrity branding Cheerleading Cosplay Gravure idol Maid café Podium girl Pseudo-model Race queen Ring girl Video vixen
6.
Chanel
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Chanel S. A. is a French, privately held company owned by Alain and Gérard Wertheimer, grandsons of Pierre Wertheimer, who was an early business partner of the couturière Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel. Chanel S. A. is a fashion house that specializes in haute couture and ready-to-wear clothes, luxury goods. In her youth, Gabrielle Chanel gained the nickname Coco from her time as a chanteuse, the House of Chanel is known for the little black dress, the perfume No.5 de Chanel, and the Chanel Suit. Chanel’s use of jersey fabric produced garments that were comfortable and affordable, Chanel used colors traditionally associated with masculinity in Europe, such as grey and navy blue, to denote feminine boldness of character. An example of haute couture techniques is the woolen Chanel suit — a knee-length skirt. The complementary accessories were two-tone pump shoes and jewellry, usually a necklace of pearls, Coco Chanel thus could sell to them the hats she designed and made, she thus earned a living, independent of her financial sponsor, the socialite Balsan. Despite that social circumstance, Boy Capel perceived the businesswoman innate to Coco Chanel, because that locale already housed a dress shop, the business-lease limited Chanel to selling only millinery products, not couture. The First World War affected European fashion through scarcity of materials, in 1915 and in 1917, Harper’s Bazaar magazine reported that the garments of the House of Chanel were on the list of every buyer for the clothing factories of Europe. After the First World War, the House of Chanel, following the trends of the 1920s, produced beaded dresses. Originally, a bottle of No.5 de Chanel was a gift to clients of Chanel, the popularity of the perfume prompted the House of Chanel to offer it for retail sale in 1922. In 1923, to explain the success of her clothes, Coco Chanel told Harper’s Bazaar magazine that design simplicity is the keynote of all true elegance, business partners — late 1920s The success of the No. To that end, the businessman Théophile Bader introduced the venture capitalist Pierre Wertheimer to Coco Chanel, moreover, by 1937, the House of Chanel had expanded the range of its clothes to more women, and presented prêt-à-porter clothes designed and cut for the petite woman. Among fashion designers only the clothes created by Elsa Schiaparelli could compete with the clothes of Chanel. A. at 31 rue Cambon, meanwhile, because of the Nazi occupation’s official anti-Semitism, Pierre Wertheimer and family, had fled France to the U. S. in mid-1940. Later, in 1941, Coco Chanel attempted to assume control of Parfums Chanel. Occupied France abounded with rumours that Coco Chanel was a Nazi collaborator, her identity was secret agent 7124 of the Abwehr. At War’s end, upon the Allied liberation of France, Chanel was arrested for having collaborated with the Nazis, in Switzerland, the news revived Coco Chanel’s resentment at having been exploited by her business partner, for only ten per cent of the money. So she established a rival Swiss parfumerie to create, produce, in exchange Gabrielle Chanel closed her Swiss parfumerie enterprise, and sold to Parfums Chanel the full rights to the name Coco Chanel. As a post–War fashion that used some 20 yards of fabric, having decided to do business with Coco Chanel, Wertheimer’s negotiations to fund the resurgence of the House of Chanel, granted him commercial rights to all Chanel-brand products
7.
Johnny Depp
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John Christopher Johnny Depp II is an American actor, producer, and musician. He has won the Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild Award for Best Actor and he rose to prominence on the 1980s television series 21 Jump Street, becoming a teen idol. He has collaborated on nine films with director, producer, Depp is regarded as one of the worlds biggest film stars. Films featuring Depp have grossed over $3.2 billion at the United States box office, Depp has been nominated for major acting awards, including three nominations for Academy Award for Best Actor. He has been listed in the 2012 Guinness World Records as the highest paid actor, Depp was inducted as a Disney Legend in 2015. Depp was born in Owensboro, Kentucky, the youngest of four children of Betty Sue Palmer, a waitress, and John Christopher Depp, Depp is of mostly English ancestry, with some ancestors from elsewhere in Europe. He is descended from a French Huguenot immigrant, Pierre Deppe or Dieppe, Depp is a 20th cousin of Elizabeth II. Depp moved frequently during his childhood and he and his siblings lived in more than 20 different places, eventually settling in Miramar, Florida in 1970. Depps parents divorced in 1978 when he was 15 and his mother married Robert Palmer, whom Depp has called an inspiration to me. With the gift of a guitar from his mother when he was 12, a year after his parents divorce, he dropped out of high school to become a rock musician. He attempted to go back to two weeks later, but the principal told him to follow his dream of being a musician. He played with The Kids, a band that enjoyed modest local success, the Kids set out together for Los Angeles in pursuit of a record deal, changing their name to Six Gun Method, but the group split up before signing a record deal. Depp subsequently collaborated with the band Rock City Angels and co-wrote their song Mary, on December 20,1983, Depp married Lori Anne Allison, the sister of his bands bass player and singer. During their marriage she worked as a makeup artist while he worked a variety of odd jobs and his wife introduced him to actor Nicolas Cage, who advised him to pursue an acting career. Depp and his wife divorced in 1985, Depps first film role was in the horror film A Nightmare on Elm Street, in which he played the boyfriend of heroine Nancy Thompson and one of Freddy Kruegers victims. After a starring role in the comedy Private Resort, Depp was cast in the role of the skating drama Thrashin by the films director. Instead, Depp appeared in a supporting role as a Vietnamese-speaking private in Oliver Stones Vietnam War drama Platoon. He accepted this role to work with actor Frederic Forrest, who inspired him, despite his success, Depp felt that the series forced into the role of product
8.
Lou Reed
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Lewis Allan Lou Reed was an American musician, singer and songwriter. He was the guitarist, vocalist, and principal songwriter of the Velvet Underground, the Velvet Underground was unsuccessful during their active years, but gained a significant cult following to become one of the most widely acclaimed and influential bands in rock history. Brian Eno famously stated that, while the Velvet Undergrounds debut album sold only 30,000 copies, Reeds solo career began in 1972. He had a hit the year with Walk on the Wild Side. Reed was known for his distinctive voice and poetic lyrics. Reed was born on March 2,1942 at Beth El Hospital in Brooklyn and grew up in Freeport, contrary to some sources, his birth name was Lewis Allan Reed, not Louis Firbanks, a name that was coined as a joke by Lester Bangs in Creem magazine. Reed was the son of Toby and Sidney Joseph Reed, an accountant and his family was Jewish, and although he said that he was Jewish, he added, My God is rocknroll. Its an obscure power that can change your life, the most important part of my religion is to play guitar. Reed attended Atkinson Elementary School in Freeport and went on to Freeport Junior High School and his sister said that as a teenager, he suffered panic attacks, became socially awkward and possessed a fragile temperament but was highly focused on things that he liked – principally music. Having learned to play the guitar from the radio, he developed an early interest in rock and roll and rhythm and blues, Reed began experimenting with drugs at the age of 16. His first recording was as a member of a group called the Jades. His love for playing music and his desire to play gigs brought him into confrontation with his anxious, visiting a psychologist, Reeds parents were made to feel guilty as inadequate parents, and consented to electroconvulsive therapy. Reed appeared to blame his father principally for what he had subjected to. He wrote about the experience in his 1974 song, Kill Your Sons, in an interview, Reed said of the experience, They put the thing down your throat so you dont swallow your tongue, and they put electrodes on your head. Thats what was recommended in Rockland County then to discourage homosexual feelings, the effect is that you lose your memory and become a vegetable. You cant read a book because you get to page 17 and have to go back to page one again. Upon his recovery from the bout of illness and associated treatment, Reed resumed his education at Syracuse University in 1960, studying journalism, film directing and he was a platoon leader in ROTC and was later expelled from the program for holding an unloaded gun to his superiors head. In 1961, he began hosting a radio program on WAER called Excursions On A Wobbly Rail
9.
Serge Gainsbourg
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Serge Gainsbourg was a French singer, songwriter, pianist, film composer, poet, painter, screenwriter, writer, actor, and director. His lyrical work incorporated a vast amount of word play to hoodwink the listener, often for humorous, provocative. Common types of play in his songs include mondegreen, onomatopoeia, rhyme, spoonerism, dysphemism, paraprosdokian. Through the course of his career, Gainsbourg wrote over 550 songs, since his death, Gainsbourgs music has reached legendary stature in France. He has also gained a following in the English-speaking world. Born in Paris, France, Gainsbourg was the son of Jewish Ukrainian migrants, Joseph Ginsburg and Olga, who fled to Paris after the 1917 Russian Revolution. Joseph Ginsburg was a trained musician whose profession was playing the piano in cabarets and casinos, he taught his children - Gainsbourg. Gainsbourgs childhood was affected by the occupation of France by Germany in World War II. The identifying yellow star Jews were required to wear haunted Gainsbourg, during the occupation, the Jewish Ginsburg family was able to make their way from Paris to Limoges, traveling under false papers. Limoges was in the Zone libre under the administration of the collaborationist Vichy government, after the war, Gainsbourg obtained work teaching music and drawing in a school outside of Paris, in Mesnil-Le-Roi. The school was set up under the auspices of local rabbis, here Gainsbourg heard the accounts of Nazi persecution and genocide, stories that resonated for Gainsbourg far into the future. Before he was 30 years old, Gainsbourg was a disillusioned painter, Gainsbourg changed his first name to Serge, feeling that this was representative of his Russian background and because, as Jane Birkin relates, Lucien reminded him of a hairdressers assistant. He chose Gainsbourg as his last name, in homage to the English painter Thomas Gainsborough and he married Elisabeth Lize Levitsky on 3 November 1951 and divorced in 1957. He married a second time on 7 January 1964, to Françoise-Antoinette Béatrice Pancrazzi and he divorced Béatrice in February 1966. In late 1967 he had a short but ardent love affair with Brigitte Bardot, to whom he dedicated the song, in mid-1968 Gainsbourg fell in love with the younger English singer and actress Jane Birkin, whom he met during the shooting of the film Slogan. Their relationship lasted over a decade, in 1971 they had a daughter, the actress and singer Charlotte Gainsbourg. Although many sources state that they were married, according to their daughter Charlotte this was not the case. Birkin remembers the beginning of her affair with Gainsbourg, he first took her to a nightclub, then to a transvestite club, Birkin left Gainsbourg when pregnant with her third daughter Lou by the film director Jacques Doillon
10.
Alain Delon
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Alain Fabien Maurice Marcel Delon is a French actor and businessman. Delon became one of Europes most prominent actors and screen sex symbols in the 1960s and he achieved critical acclaim for roles in films such as Rocco and His Brothers, Purple Noon, LEclisse, The Leopard, Lost Command and Le Samouraï. Over the course of his career Delon worked with well known directors, including Luchino Visconti, Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Melville, Michelangelo Antonioni. Delon acquired Swiss citizenship on 23 September 1999, and the company managing products sold under his name is based in Geneva and he resides in Chêne-Bougeries in the canton of Geneva. Delon was born in Sceaux, Seine, Île-de-France, a suburb of Paris and his parents, Édith and Fabien Delon, divorced when Delon was four. Both remarried, and Delon has a half-sister and two half-brothers and his paternal grandmother was Corsican, from Prunelli-di-Fiumorbo. When his parents divorced, Delon was sent to live with foster parents, when they died, his parents shared him but the arrangement proved unsatisfactory. He attended a Roman Catholic boarding school, the first of several schools from which he was expelled because of unruly behavior, teachers once tried to persuade him to enter the priesthood because of his aptitude in religious studies. At 14, Delon left school, and worked for a time at his stepfathers butcher shop. He enlisted in the French Navy three years later, and in 1953-54 he served as a fusilier marin in the First Indochina War, Delon has said that out of his four years of military service he spent 11 months in prison for being undisciplined. In 1956, after being discharged from the military, he returned to France. He had little money, and got by on whatever employment he could find and he spent time working as a waiter, a porter, a secretary and a sales assistant. During this time he became friends with the actress Brigitte Auber, and joined her on a trip to the Cannes Film Festival, at Cannes, Delon was seen by a talent scout for David O. Selznick. After a screen test Selznick offered him a contract, provided he learn English, Delon returned to Paris to study the language, but when he met French director Yves Allégret, he was convinced that he should stay in France to begin his career. Selznick allowed Delon to cancel his contract, and Allégret gave him his debut in the film with Edwige Feuillère, marc Allegret cast him in Be Beautiful But Shut Up, which also featured a young Jean Paul Belmondo. He was then given his first lead, supporting Romy Schneider in a romance, Christine. He and Schneider began a highly publicised romance in real life, the film was the seventeenth most popular movie at the French box office that year. Delon was given the lead in a comedy, Women are Weak and this was a big hit in France and was the first of Delons films to be seen in America
11.
Jean-Paul Belmondo
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Jean-Paul Belmondo is a French actor initially associated with the New Wave of the 1960s and one of the biggest French film stars of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. His best known credits include Breathless and That Man from Rio, Belmondo was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, Hauts-de-Seine, west of Paris. Belmondos father, Paul Belmondo, was a Pied-Noir sculptor who was born in Algeria of Italian descent, whose parents were of Sicilian, as a boy he was more interested in sport than school, developing a particular interest in boxing and soccer. Belmondo made his boxing debut on 10 May 1949 in Paris when he knocked out Rene DesMarais in one round. Belmondos boxing career was undefeated, but brief and he won three straight first round knockout victories from 1949 to 1950. I stopped when the face I saw in the begin to change. As part of his military service, he served in Algeria as a private for six months. His last teenage years were spent at a drama school. He studied under Raymond Giraud then when to the Conservatoire of Dramatic Arts when he was twenty and he studied there for three years. The incident did make front page news, Belmondos acting career properly began in 1953, with two performances at Theatre deAtelier in Paris, Jean Anouilhs Medee and Georges Neveuxs Zamore. Belmondo began touring the provinces with friends including Annie Girardot and Guy Bedos, Belmondo first appeared in the short Moliere. Belmondo had a role in the comedy Be Beautiful But Shut Up, followed by a role as a gangster in Young Sinners. Jean Luc Godard directed him in a short, Charlotte and Her Boyfriend and he supported Bourvil and Arletty in Sunday Encounter. Belmondos first lead role was in Les copains du dimanche and he had a supporting part in An Angel on Wheels with Romy Schneider then appeared in Web of Passion for Claude Chabrol. He played Dartgnan in The Three Musketeers for French television, around this time he had a notable success on stage in Oscar in Paris which led to being offered the leads in star parts. The first of these was Consider All Risks, a story with Lino Ventura. The second was in Jean-Luc Godards Breathless, which him a major figure in the French New Wave. In the words of the New York Times it led to his having more acting assignments than he can handle and he followed it with Trapped by Fear, then the Italian film Letters By a Novice
12.
Royal Opera of Versailles
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The Royal Opera of Versailles is the main theatre and opera house of the Palace of Versailles. Designed by Ange-Jacques Gabriel, it is known as the Théâtre Gabriel. The interior decoration by Augustin Pajou is constructed almost entirely of wood, the excellent acoustics of the opera house are at least partly due to its wooden interior. The house is located at the extremity of the north wing of the palace. General public access to the theater is gained through the two-story vestibule, some parts of the Opéra, such as the Kings Loge and the Kings Boudoir represent some of the earliest expressions of what would become known as Louis XVI style. On these occasions, the Opéra can accommodate 1,200, during the French Enlightenment, the theatre became a place where political and social ideas were considered myths and superstitions were tested. The nobility had a lot to do with the uprising of theatre during this time, the Opera, which was built for Louis XV, however, was not built until later. His mistress, Marie de Pompadour, patronized artists, actors, meanwhile, the aristocracy and church paid no taxes, and the bourgeoisie picked up the tab for the monarchys tastes and fun. Yet, it was not until after the death of Louis mistress that the construction of the Opera began, long before the Opera Royal was dreamed of, theatre was becoming an important part of French society. Richelieu wanted to create an image of the king that displayed well roundedness in all thing, a society who dabbled not only in politics or court and he envisioned a force to lead the way, culturally. Attending a theatrical performance was becoming a sign of stature. Little divertissements for the court, they also were at times used by royalty for their own reasons. Louis XIV’s performance during the Ballet de la nuit, for example, was a statement of his power, his coming of age, indeed, his performance as Apollo is what earned him the name Sun King. Interestingly enough, stage productions such as operas and ballets were important during the reigns of the Bourbon monarchs in France. Louis XIV in particular employed these and similar art forms extensively not only to entertain the noblemen in his court but also to promote his own self-image and the gloire of his country. During the early years of his reign of Louis XIV, theatres were often temporary structures, built for a particular event, the first such theater was constructed for the fête of the Plaisirs de l’Île enchantée, which was held in 1664. In the area west of what is now the Bassin d’Apollon, none of these theatres survived this fête. As with the Plaisirs de l’Île enchantée, this theater was destroyed shortly after the end of the fête
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