Name	Opera
Caption	The Palais Garnier of the Paris Opéra, one of the world's most famous opera houses.
Ancestor	Drama
Culture	Italy
Era	late 1500s}}

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text (called a libretto) and musical score. Opera is part of the Western classical music tradition. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance. The performance is typically given in an opera house, accompanied by an orchestra or smaller musical ensemble.

Opera started in Italy at the end of the 16th century (with Jacopo Peri's lost Dafne, produced in Florence around 1597) and soon spread through the rest of Europe: Schütz in Germany, Lully in France, and Purcell in England all helped to establish their national traditions in the 17th century. However, in the 18th century, Italian opera continued to dominate most of Europe, except France, attracting foreign composers such as Handel. Opera seria was the most prestigious form of Italian opera, until Gluck reacted against its artificiality with his "reform" operas in the 1760s. Today the most renowned figure of late 18th century opera is Mozart, who began with opera seria but is most famous for his Italian comic operas, especially The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and Così fan tutte, as well as The Magic Flute, a landmark in the German tradition.

The first third of the 19th century saw the highpoint of the bel canto style, with Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini all creating works that are still performed today. It also saw the advent of Grand Opera typified by the works of Meyerbeer. The mid-to-late 19th century was a "golden age" of opera, led and dominated by Wagner in Germany and Verdi in Italy. The popularity of opera continued through the verismo era in Italy and contemporary French opera through to Puccini and Strauss in the early 20th century. During the 19th century, parallel operatic traditions emerged in central and eastern Europe, particularly in Russia and Bohemia. The 20th century saw many experiments with modern styles, such as atonality and serialism (Schoenberg and Berg), Neoclassicism (Stravinsky), and Minimalism (Philip Glass and John Adams). With the rise of recording technology, singers such as Enrico Caruso became known to audiences beyond the circle of opera fans. Operas were also performed on (and written for) radio and television.

Operatic terminology

The words of an opera are known as the libretto (literally "little book"). Some composers, notably Richard Wagner, have written their own libretti; others have worked in close collaboration with their librettists, e.g. Mozart with Lorenzo Da Ponte. Traditional opera, often referred to as "number opera", consists of two modes of singing: recitative, the plot-driving passages sung in a style designed to imitate and emphasize the inflections of speech, and aria (an "air" or formal song) in which the characters express their emotions in a more structured melodic style. Duets, trios and other ensembles often occur, and choruses are used to comment on the action. In some forms of opera, such as Singspiel, opéra comique, operetta, and semi-opera, the recitative is mostly replaced by spoken dialogue. Melodic or semi-melodic passages occurring in the midst of, or instead of, recitative, are also referred to as arioso. During the Baroque and Classical periods, recitative could appear in two basic forms: secco (dry) recitative, accompanied only by continuo, which was usually a harpsichord and a cello; or accompagnato (also known as strumentato) in which the orchestra provided accompaniment. By the 19th century, accompagnato had gained the upper hand, the orchestra played a much bigger role, and Richard Wagner revolutionised opera by abolishing almost all distinction between aria and recitative in his quest for what he termed "endless melody". Subsequent composers have tended to follow Wagner's example, though some, such as Stravinsky in his The Rake's Progress have bucked the trend. The terminology of the various kinds of operatic voices is described in below.

History

Origins

The word opera means "work" in Italian (it is the plural of Latin opus meaning "work" or "labour") suggesting that it combines the arts of solo and choral singing, declamation, acting and dancing in a staged spectacle. Dafne by Jacopo Peri was the earliest composition considered opera, as understood today. It was written around 1597, largely under the inspiration of an elite circle of literate Florentine humanists who gathered as the "Camerata de' Bardi". Significantly, Dafne was an attempt to revive the classical Greek drama, part of the wider revival of antiquity characteristic of the Renaissance. The members of the Camerata considered that the "chorus" parts of Greek dramas were originally sung, and possibly even the entire text of all roles; opera was thus conceived as a way of "restoring" this situation. Dafne is unfortunately lost. A later work by Peri, Euridice, dating from 1600, is the first opera score to have survived to the present day. The honour of being the first opera still to be regularly performed, however, goes to Claudio Monteverdi's L'Orfeo, composed for the court of Mantua in 1607.

Italian opera

The Baroque era

, 1733]] Opera did not remain confined to court audiences for long; in 1637 the idea of a "season" (Carnival) of publicly attended operas supported by ticket sales emerged in Venice. Monteverdi had moved to the city from Mantua and composed his last operas, Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria and L'incoronazione di Poppea, for the Venetian theatre in the 1640s. His most important follower Francesco Cavalli helped spread opera throughout Italy. In these early Baroque operas, broad comedy was blended with tragic elements in a mix that jarred some educated sensibilities, sparking the first of opera's many reform movements, sponsored by Venice's Arcadian Academy which came to be associated with the poet Metastasio, whose libretti helped crystallize the genre of opera seria, which became the leading form of Italian opera until the end of the 18th century. Once the Metastasian ideal had been firmly established, comedy in Baroque-era opera was reserved for what came to be called opera buffa.

Before such elements were forced out of opera seria, many libretti had featured a separately unfolding comic plot as sort of an "opera-within-an-opera." One reason for this was an attempt to attract members of the growing merchant class, newly wealthy, but still less cultured than the nobility, to the public opera houses. These separate plots were almost immediately resurrected in a separately developing tradition that partly derived from the commedia dell'arte, (as indeed, such plots had always been) a long-flourishing improvisatory stage tradition of Italy. Just as intermedi had once been performed in-between the acts of stage plays, operas in the new comic genre of "intermezzi", which developed largely in Naples in the 1710s and '20s, were initially staged during the intermissions of opera seria. They became so popular, however, that they were soon being offered as separate productions.

Opera seria was elevated in tone and highly stylised in form, usually consisting of secco recitative interspersed with long da capo arias. These afforded great opportunity for virtuosic singing and during the golden age of opera seria the singer really became the star. The role of the hero was usually written for the castrato voice; castrati such as Farinelli and Senesino, as well as female sopranos such as Faustina Bordoni, became in great demand throughout Europe as opera seria ruled the stage in every country except France. Indeed, Farinelli was the most famous singer of the 18th century. Italian opera set the Baroque standard. Italian libretti were the norm, even when a German composer like Handel found himself writing for London audiences. Italian libretti remained dominant in the classical period as well, for example in the operas of Mozart, who wrote in Vienna near the century's close. Leading Italian-born composers of opera seria include Alessandro Scarlatti, Vivaldi and Porpora.

Reform: Gluck, the attack on the Metastasian ideal, and Mozart

]] Opera seria had its weaknesses and critics. The taste for embellishment on behalf of the superbly trained singers, and the use of spectacle as a replacement for dramatic purity and unity drew attacks. Francesco Algarotti's Essay on the Opera (1754) proved to be an inspiration for Christoph Willibald Gluck's reforms. He advocated that opera seria had to return to basics and that all the various elements —music (both instrumental and vocal), ballet, and staging— must be subservient to the overriding drama. Several composers of the period, including Niccolò Jommelli and Tommaso Traetta, attempted to put these ideals into practice. The first to succeed however, was Gluck. Gluck strove to achieve a "beautiful simplicity". This is evident in his first reform opera, Orfeo ed Euridice, where his non-virtuosic vocal melodies are supported by simple harmonies and a richer orchestra presence throughout.

Gluck's reforms have had resonance throughout operatic history. Weber, Mozart and Wagner, in particular, were influenced by his ideals. Mozart, in many ways Gluck's successor, combined a superb sense of drama, harmony, melody, and counterpoint to write a series of comedies, notably Così fan tutte, The Marriage of Figaro, and Don Giovanni (in collaboration with Lorenzo Da Ponte) which remain among the most-loved, popular and well-known operas today. But Mozart's contribution to opera seria was more mixed; by his time it was dying away, and in spite of such fine works as Idomeneo and La clemenza di Tito, he would not succeed in bringing the art form back to life again.

Bel canto, Verdi and verismo

, 1886 (National Gallery of Modern Art, Rome)]] The bel canto opera movement flourished in the early 19th century and is exemplified by the operas of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Pacini, Mercadante and many others. Literally "beautiful singing", bel canto opera derives from the Italian stylistic singing school of the same name. Bel canto lines are typically florid and intricate, requiring supreme agility and pitch control.

Following the bel canto era, a more direct, forceful style was rapidly popularized by Giuseppe Verdi, beginning with his biblical opera Nabucco. Verdi's operas resonated with the growing spirit of Italian nationalism in the post-Napoleonic era, and he quickly became an icon of the patriotic movement (although his own politics were perhaps not quite so radical). In the early 1850s, Verdi produced his three most popular operas: Rigoletto, Il trovatore and La traviata. But he continued to develop his style, composing perhaps the greatest French Grand Opera, Don Carlos, and ending his career with two Shakespeare-inspired works, Otello and Falstaff, which reveal how far Italian opera had grown in sophistication since the early 19th century.

After Verdi, the sentimental "realistic" melodrama of verismo appeared in Italy. This was a style introduced by Pietro Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana and Ruggero Leoncavallo's Pagliacci that came virtually to dominate the world's opera stages with such popular works as Giacomo Puccini's La bohème, Tosca, and Madama Butterfly. Later Italian composers, such as Berio and Nono, have experimented with modernism.

German-language opera

music drama Das Rheingold]] The first German opera was Dafne, composed by Heinrich Schütz in 1627, but the music score has not survived. Italian opera held a great sway over German-speaking countries until the late 18th century. Nevertheless, native forms developed too. In 1644 Sigmund Staden produced the first Singspiel, a popular form of German-language opera in which singing alternates with spoken dialogue. In the late 17th century and early 18th century, the Theater am Gänsemarkt in Hamburg presented German operas by Keiser, Telemann and Handel. Yet many of the major German composers of the time, including Handel himself, as well as Graun, Hasse and later Gluck, chose to write most of their operas in foreign languages, especially Italian.

Mozart's Singspiele, Die Entführung aus dem Serail (1782) and Die Zauberflöte (1791) were an important breakthrough in achieving international recognition for German opera. The tradition was developed in the 19th century by Beethoven with his Fidelio, inspired by the climate of the French Revolution. Carl Maria von Weber established German Romantic opera in opposition to the dominance of Italian bel canto. His Der Freischütz (1821) shows his genius for creating a supernatural atmosphere. Other opera composers of the time include Marschner, Schubert, Schumann and Lortzing, but the most significant figure was undoubtedly Wagner.

Wagner was one of the most revolutionary and controversial composers in musical history. Starting under the influence of Weber and Meyerbeer, he gradually evolved a new concept of opera as a Gesamtkunstwerk (a "complete work of art"), a fusion of music, poetry and painting. In his mature music dramas, Tristan und Isolde, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Der Ring des Nibelungen and Parsifal, he abolished the distinction between aria and recitative in favour of a seamless flow of "endless melody". He greatly increased the role and power of the orchestra, creating scores with a complex web of leitmotivs, recurring themes often associated with the characters and concepts of the drama; and he was prepared to violate accepted musical conventions, such as tonality, in his quest for greater expressivity. Wagner also brought a new philosophical dimension to opera in his works, which were usually based on stories from Germanic or Arthurian legend. Finally, Wagner built his own opera house at Bayreuth, exclusively dedicated to performing his own works in the style he wanted.

Opera would never be the same after Wagner and for many composers his legacy proved a heavy burden. On the other hand, Richard Strauss accepted Wagnerian ideas but took them in wholly new directions. He first won fame with the scandalous Salome and the dark tragedy Elektra, in which tonality was pushed to the limits. Then Strauss changed tack in his greatest success, Der Rosenkavalier, where Mozart and Viennese waltzes became as important an influence as Wagner. Strauss continued to produce a highly varied body of operatic works, often with libretti by the poet Hugo von Hofmannsthal, right up until Capriccio in 1942. Other composers who made individual contributions to German opera in the early 20th century include Zemlinsky, Hindemith, Kurt Weill and the Italian-born Ferruccio Busoni. The operatic innovations of Arnold Schoenberg and his successors are discussed in the section on modernism.

French opera

at the Palais-Royal in 1761]] In rivalry with imported Italian opera productions, a separate French tradition was founded by the Italian Jean-Baptiste Lully at the court of King Louis XIV. Despite his foreign origin, Lully established an Academy of Music and monopolised French opera from 1672. Starting with Cadmus et Hermione, Lully and his librettist Quinault created tragédie en musique, a form in which dance music and choral writing were particularly prominent. Lully's operas also show a concern for expressive recitative which matched the contours of the French language. In the 18th century, Lully's most important successor was Jean-Philippe Rameau, who composed five tragédies en musique as well as numerous works in other genres such as opéra-ballet, all notable for their rich orchestration and harmonic daring. After Rameau's death, the German Gluck was persuaded to produce six operas for the Parisian stage in the 1770s. They show the influence of Rameau, but simplified and with greater focus on the drama. At the same time, by the middle of the 18th century another genre was gaining popularity in France: opéra comique. This was the equivalent of the German singspiel, where arias alternated with spoken dialogue. Notable examples in this style were produced by Monsigny, Philidor and, above all, Grétry. During the Revolutionary period, composers such as Méhul and Cherubini, who were followers of Gluck, brought a new seriousness to the genre, which had never been wholly "comic" in any case.

By the 1820s, Gluckian influence in France had given way to a taste for Italian bel canto, especially after the arrival of Rossini in Paris. Rossini's Guillaume Tell helped found the new genre of Grand Opera, a form whose most famous exponent was another foreigner, Giacomo Meyerbeer. Meyerbeer's works, such as Les Huguenots emphasised virtuoso singing and extraordinary stage effects. Lighter opéra comique also enjoyed tremendous success in the hands of Boïeldieu, Auber, Hérold and Adolphe Adam. In this climate, the operas of the French-born composer Hector Berlioz struggled to gain a hearing. Berlioz's epic masterpiece Les Troyens, the culmination of the Gluckian tradition, was not given a full performance for almost a hundred years.

In the second half of the 19th century, Jacques Offenbach created operetta with witty and cynical works such as Orphée aux enfers, as well as the opera Les Contes d'Hoffmann; Charles Gounod scored a massive success with Faust; and Bizet composed Carmen, which, once audiences learned to accept its blend of Romanticism and realism, became the most popular of all opéra comiques. Massenet, Saint-Saëns and Delibes all composed works which are still part of the standard repertory. At the same time, the influence of Richard Wagner was felt as a challenge to the French tradition. Many French critics angrily rejected Wagner's music dramas while many French composers closely imitated them with variable success. Perhaps the most interesting response came from Claude Debussy. As in Wagner's works, the orchestra plays a leading role in Debussy's unique opera Pelléas et Mélisande (1902) and there are no real arias, only recitative. But the drama is understated, enigmatic and completely unWagnerian.

Other notable 20th century names include Ravel, Dukas, Roussel and Milhaud. Francis Poulenc is one of the very few post-war composers of any nationality whose operas (which include Dialogues des carmélites) have gained a foothold in the international repertory. Olivier Messiaen's lengthy sacred drama Saint François d'Assise (1983) has also attracted widespread attention.

English-language opera

In England, opera's antecedent was the 17th century jig. This was an afterpiece which came at the end of a play. It was frequently libellous and scandalous and consisted in the main of dialogue set to music arranged from popular tunes. In this respect, jigs anticipate the ballad operas of the 18th century. At the same time, the French masque was gaining a firm hold at the English Court, with even more lavish splendour and highly realistic scenery than had been seen before. Inigo Jones became the quintessential designer of these productions, and this style was to dominate the English stage for three centuries. These masques contained songs and dances. In Ben Jonson's Lovers Made Men (1617), "the whole masque was sung after the Italian manner, stilo recitativo". The approach of the English Commonwealth closed theatres and halted any developments that may have led to the establishment of English opera. However, in 1656, the dramatist Sir William Davenant produced The Siege of Rhodes. Since his theatre was not licensed to produce drama, he asked several of the leading composers (Lawes, Cooke, Locke, Coleman and Hudson) to set sections of it to music. This success was followed by The Cruelty of the Spaniards in Peru (1658) and The History of Sir Francis Drake (1659). These pieces were encouraged by Oliver Cromwell because they were critical of Spain. With the English Restoration, foreign (especially French) musicians were welcomed back. In 1673, Thomas Shadwell's Psyche, patterned on the 1671 'comédie-ballet' of the same name produced by Molière and Jean-Baptiste Lully. William Davenant produced The Tempest in the same year, which was the first musical adaption of a Shakespeare play (composed by Locke and Johnson).

In the 20th century, English opera began to assert more independence, with works of Ralph Vaughan Williams and in particular Benjamin Britten, who in a series of works that remain in standard repertory today, revealed an excellent flair for the dramatic and superb musicality. Today composers such as Thomas Adès continue to export English opera abroad. More recently Sir Harrison Birtwistle has emerged as one of Britain's most significant contemporary composers from his first opera Punch and Judy to his most recent critical success in The Minotaur. In the first decade of the 21st century, the librettist of an early Birtwistle opera, Michael Nyman, has been focusing on composing operas, including Facing Goya, , and Love Counts.

Also in the 20th century, American composers like Leonard Bernstein, George Gershwin, Gian Carlo Menotti, Douglas Moore, and Carlisle Floyd began to contribute English-language operas infused with touches of popular musical styles. They were followed by composers such as Philip Glass, Mark Adamo, John Corigliano, Robert Moran, John Coolidge Adams, and Jake Heggie.

Russian opera

as Ivan Susanin in Glinka's A Life for the Tsar]] Opera was brought to Russia in the 1730s by the Italian operatic troupes and soon it became an important part of entertainment for the Russian Imperial Court and aristocracy. Many foreign composers such as Baldassare Galuppi, Giovanni Paisiello, Giuseppe Sarti, and Domenico Cimarosa (as well as various others) were invited to Russia to compose new operas, mostly in the Italian language. Simultaneously some domestic musicians like Maksym Berezovsky and Dmitry Bortniansky were sent abroad to learn to write operas. The first opera written in Russian was Tsefal i Prokris by the Italian composer Francesco Araja (1755). The development of Russian-language opera was supported by the Russian composers Vasily Pashkevich, Yevstigney Fomin and Alexey Verstovsky.

However, the real birth of Russian opera came with Mikhail Glinka and his two great operas A Life for the Tsar (1836) and Ruslan and Lyudmila (1842). After him in the 19th century in Russia there were written such operatic masterpieces as Rusalka and The Stone Guest by Alexander Dargomyzhsky, Boris Godunov and Khovanshchina by Modest Mussorgsky, Prince Igor by Alexander Borodin, Eugene Onegin and The Queen of Spades by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, and The Snow Maiden and Sadko by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. These developments mirrored the growth of Russian nationalism across the artistic spectrum, as part of the more general Slavophilism movement.

In the 20th century the traditions of Russian opera were developed by many composers including Sergei Rachmaninoff in his works The Miserly Knight and Francesca da Rimini, Igor Stravinsky in Le Rossignol, Mavra, Oedipus rex, and The Rake's Progress, Sergei Prokofiev in The Gambler, The Love for Three Oranges, The Fiery Angel, Betrothal in a Monastery, and War and Peace; as well as Dmitri Shostakovich in The Nose and Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, Edison Denisov in L'écume des jours, and Alfred Schnittke in Life with an Idiot and Historia von D. Johann Fausten.

Other national operas

Spain also produced its own distinctive form of opera, known as zarzuela, which had two separate flowerings: one from the mid-17th century through the mid-18th century, and another beginning around 1850. During the late 18th century up until the mid-19th century, Italian opera was immensely popular in Spain, supplanting the native form.

Czech composers also developed a thriving national opera movement of their own in the 19th century, starting with Bedřich Smetana, who wrote eight operas including the internationally popular The Bartered Bride. Antonín Dvořák, most famous for Rusalka, wrote 13 operas; and Leoš Janáček gained international recognition in the 20th century for his innovative works including Jenůfa, The Cunning Little Vixen, and Káťa Kabanová.

The key figure of Hungarian national opera in the 19th century was Ferenc Erkel, whose works mostly dealt with historical themes. Among his most often performed operas are Hunyadi László and Bánk bán. The most famous modern Hungarian opera is Béla Bartók's Duke Bluebeard's Castle.

The best-known composer of Polish national opera was Stanisław Moniuszko, most celebrated for the opera Straszny Dwór (in English The Haunted Manor). In the 20th century, other operas created by Polish composers included King Roger by Karol Szymanowski and Ubu Rex by Krzysztof Penderecki.

Contemporary, recent, and Modernist trends

Modernism

Perhaps the most obvious stylistic manifestation of modernism in opera is the development of atonality. The move away from traditional tonality in opera had begun with Richard Wagner, and in particular the Tristan chord. Composers such as Richard Strauss, Claude Debussy, Giacomo Puccini, Paul Hindemith and Hans Pfitzner pushed Wagnerian harmony further with a more extreme use of chromaticism and greater use of dissonance.

.]] Operatic modernism truly began in the operas of two Viennese composers, Arnold Schoenberg and his student Alban Berg, both composers and advocates of atonality and its later development (as worked out by Schoenberg), dodecaphony. Schoenberg's early musico-dramatic works, Erwartung (1909, premiered in 1924) and Die glückliche Hand display heavy use of chromatic harmony and dissonance in general. Schoenberg also occasionally used Sprechstimme, which he described as: "The voice rising and falling relative to the indicated intervals, and everything being bound together with the time and rhythm of the music except where a pause is indicated".

The two operas of Schoenberg's pupil Alban Berg, Wozzeck (1925) and Lulu (incomplete at his death in 1935) share many of the same characteristics as described above, though Berg combined his highly personal interpretation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique with melodic passages of a more traditionally tonal nature (quite Mahlerian in character) which perhaps partially explains why his operas have remained in standard repertory, despite their controversial music and plots. Schoenberg's theories have influenced (either directly or indirectly) significant numbers of opera composers ever since, even if they themselves did not compose using his techniques. Composers thus influenced include the Englishman Benjamin Britten, the German Hans Werner Henze, and the Russian Dmitri Shostakovich. (Philip Glass also makes use of atonality, though his style is generally described as minimalist, usually thought of as another 20th century development.)

However, operatic modernism's use of atonality also sparked a backlash in the form of neoclassicism. An early leader of this movement was Ferruccio Busoni, who in 1913 wrote the libretto for his neoclassical number opera Arlecchino (first performed in 1917). Also among the vanguard was the Russian Igor Stravinsky. After composing music for the Diaghilev-produced ballets Petrushka (1911) and The Rite of Spring (1913), Stravinsky turned to neoclassicism, a development culminating in his opera-oratorio Oedipus Rex (1927). Well after his Rimsky-Korsakov-inspired works The Nightingale (1914), and Mavra (1922), Stravinsky continued to ignore serialist technique and eventually wrote a full-fledged 18th century-style diatonic number opera The Rake's Progress (1951). His resistance to serialism (which ended at the death of Schoenberg) proved to be an inspiration for many other composers.

Other trends

A common trend throughout the 20th century, in both opera and general orchestral repertoire, is the use of smaller orchestras as a cost-cutting measure; the grand Romantic-era orchestras with huge string sections, multiple harps, extra horns, and exotic percussion instruments were no longer feasible. As government and private patronage of the arts decreased throughout the 20th century, new works were often commissioned and performed with smaller budgets, very often resulting in chamber-sized works, and short, one-act operas. Many of Benjamin Britten's operas are scored for as few as 13 instrumentalists; Mark Adamo's two-act realization of Little Women is scored for 18 instrumentalists.

Another feature of 20th century opera is the emergence of contemporary historical operas. The Death of Klinghoffer, Nixon in China and Doctor Atomic by John Adams, and Dead Man Walking by Jake Heggie exemplify the dramatisation on stage of events in recent living memory, where characters portrayed in the opera were alive at the time of the premiere performance. Earlier models of opera generally stuck to more distant history, re-telling contemporary fictional stories (reworkings of popular plays), or mythical/legendary stories.

The Metropolitan Opera in the US reports that the average age of its audience is now 60. Many opera companies have experienced a similar trend, and opera company websites are replete with attempts to attract a younger audience. This trend is part of the larger trend of greying audiences for classical music since the last decades of the 20th century. In an effort to attract younger audiences, the Metropolitan Opera offers a student discount on ticket purchases. Major opera companies have been better able to weather the funding cutbacks, because they can afford to hire star singers which draw substantial audiences who want to see if their favourite singer will be able to hit their high "money notes" in the show.

Smaller companies in the US have a more fragile existence, and they usually depend on a "patchwork quilt" of support from state and local governments, local businesses, and fundraisers. Nevertheless, some smaller companies have found ways of drawing new audiences. Opera Carolina offer discounts and happy hour events to the 21–40 year old demographic. In addition to radio and television broadcasts of opera performances, which have had some success in gaining new audiences, broadcasts of live performances in HD to movie theatres have shown the potential to reach new audiences. Since 2006, the Met has broadcast live performances to several hundred movie screens all over the world.

From musicals back towards opera

Also by the late 1930s, some musicals began to be written with a more operatic structure. These works include complex polyphonic ensembles and reflect musical developments of their times. Porgy and Bess (1935), influenced by jazz styles, and Candide (1956), with its sweeping, lyrical passages and farcical parodies of opera, both opened on Broadway but became accepted as part of the opera repertory. Show Boat, West Side Story, Brigadoon, , Evita, The Light in the Piazza, The Phantom of the Opera and others tell dramatic stories through complex music and are now sometimes seen in opera houses. Some musicals, beginning with Tommy (1969) and Jesus Christ Superstar (1971) and continuing through Les Misérables (1980), Rent (1996) and Spring Awakening (2006), use various operatic conventions, such as through composition, recitative instead of dialogue, leitmotifs and dramatic stories told predominantly through rock, pop or contemporary music.

Acoustic enhancement with speakers

A subtle type of sound electronic reinforcement called acoustic enhancement is used in some concert halls where operas are performed. Acoustic enhancement systems help give a more even sound in the hall and prevent "dead spots" in the audience seating area by "...augment[ing] a hall's intrinsic acoustic characteristics." The systems use "...an array of microphones connected to a computer [which is] connected to an array of loudspeakers." However, as concertgoers have become aware of the use of these systems, debates have arisen, because some "...purists maintain that the natural acoustic sound of [Classical] voices [or] instruments in a given hall should not be altered."

Kai Harada's article "Opera's Dirty Little Secret" states that opera houses began using electronic acoustic enhancement systems in the 1990s "...to compensate for flaws in a venue's acoustical architecture." Despite the uproar that has arisen amongst operagoers, Harada points out that none of the major opera houses using acoustic enhancement systems "...use traditional, Broadway-style sound reinforcement, in which most if not all singers are equipped with radio microphones mixed to a series of unsightly loudspeakers scattered throughout the theatre." Instead, most opera houses use the sound reinforcement system for acoustic enhancement, and for subtle boosting of offstage voices, child singers, onstage dialogue, and sound effects (e.g., church bells in Tosca or thunder effects in Wagnerian operas).

Operatic voices

First of all Operatic voices needed enough volume to compete with the overwhelming volume of the orchestra. In times without electronic devices nor microphones that could amplify them they needed special techniques to make sure the people in the end rows of the theatre could enjoy them as much as the front rows did. Therefore a singing technique was developed to make sure they could stand out in the bombast of the orchestra, without the musicians having to compromise in volume.

Vocal classifications

Singers and the roles they play are classified by voice type, based on the tessitura, agility, power and timbre of their voices. Male singers can be loosely classified by vocal range as bass, bass-baritone, baritone, tenor and countertenor, and female singers as contralto, mezzo-soprano and soprano. (Men sometimes sing in the "female" vocal ranges, in which case they are termed sopranist or countertenor. Of these, only the countertenor is commonly encountered in opera, sometimes singing parts written for castrati – men neutered at a young age specifically to give them a higher singing range.) Singers are then classified by voice type – for instance, a soprano can be described as a lyric soprano, coloratura, soubrette, spinto, or dramatic soprano. These terms, although not fully describing a singing voice, associate the singer's voice with the roles most suitable to the singer's vocal characteristics. A particular singer's voice may change drastically over his or her lifetime, rarely reaching vocal maturity until the third decade, and sometimes not until middle age.

Historical use of voice parts

:The following is only intended as a brief overview. For the main articles, see soprano, mezzo-soprano, alto, tenor, baritone, bass, countertenor and castrato.

The soprano voice has typically been used as the voice of choice for the female protagonist of the opera since the latter half of the 18th century. Earlier, it was common for that part to be sung by any female voice, or even a castrato. The current emphasis on a wide vocal range was primarily an invention of the Classical period. Before that, the vocal virtuosity, not range, was the priority, with soprano parts rarely extending above a high A (Handel, for example, only wrote one role extending to a high C), though the castrato Farinelli was alleged to possess a top D (his lower range was also extraordinary, extending to tenor C). The mezzo-soprano, a term of comparatively recent origin, also has a large repertoire, ranging from the female lead in Purcell's Dido and Aeneas to such heavyweight roles as Brangäne in Wagner's Tristan und Isolde (these are both roles sometimes sung by sopranos; there is quite a lot of movement between these two voice-types). For the true contralto, the range of parts is more limited, which has given rise to the insider joke that contraltos only sing "witches, bitches, and britches" roles. In recent years many of the "trouser roles" from the Baroque era, originally written for women, and those originally sung by castrati, have been reassigned to countertenors.

The tenor voice, from the Classical era onwards, has traditionally been assigned the role of male protagonist. Many of the most challenging tenor roles in the repertory were written during the bel canto era, such as Donizetti's sequence of 9 Cs above middle C during La fille du régiment. With Wagner came an emphasis on vocal heft for his protagonist roles, with this vocal category described as Heldentenor; this heroic voice had its more Italianate counterpart in such roles as Calaf in Puccini's Turandot. Basses have a long history in opera, having been used in opera seria in supporting roles, and sometimes for comic relief (as well as providing a contrast to the preponderance of high voices in this genre). The bass repertoire is wide and varied, stretching from the comedy of Leporello in Don Giovanni to the nobility of Wotan in Wagner's Ring Cycle. In between the bass and the tenor is the baritone, which also varies in weight from say, Guglielmo in Mozart's Così fan tutte to Posa in Verdi's Don Carlos; the actual designation "baritone" was not used until the mid-19th century.

Famous singers

, c. 1720]] Early performances of opera were too infrequent for singers to make a living exclusively from the style, but with the birth of commercial opera in the mid-17th century, professional performers began to emerge. The role of the male hero was usually entrusted to a castrato, and by the 18th century, when Italian opera was performed throughout Europe, leading castrati who possessed extraordinary vocal virtuosity, such as Senesino and Farinelli, became international stars. The career of the first major female star (or prima donna), Anna Renzi, dates to the mid-17th century. In the 18th century, a number of Italian sopranos gained international renown and often engaged in fierce rivalry, as was the case with Faustina Bordoni and Francesca Cuzzoni, who started a fist fight with one another during a performance of a Handel opera. The French disliked castrati, preferring their male heroes to be sung by a haute-contre (a high tenor), of which Joseph Legros was a leading example.

Though opera patronage has decreased in the last century in favor of other arts and media, such as musicals, cinema, radio, television and recordings, mass media and the advent of recording have supported the popularity of famous singers such as Maria Callas, Enrico Caruso, Kirsten Flagstad, Mario Del Monaco, Franco Corelli, Kathleen Ferrier, Montserrat Caballé, Joan Sutherland, Birgit Nilsson, Nellie Melba, Rosa Ponselle, Beniamino Gigli, Jussi Björling, Feodor Chaliapin, "The Three Tenors" (Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo, and José Carreras), and others.

Funding of opera

Outside the US, and especially in Europe, most opera houses receive public subsidies from taxpayers.

For example, in Milan, Italy, 60% of La Scala's annual budget of €115 million is from sales and private donations, with the remaining 40% coming from public funds. In 2005, La Scala received 25% of Italy's total state subsidy of €464 million for the performing arts.

Cinema

Major opera houses and production companies have begun broadcasting their performances to local cinemas throughout the United States and in many other countries. The Metropolitan Opera, first opened in 1883, began high-definition television transmissions in 2006. Many of its performances are also shown live in movie theaters around the world. In 2007, Met performances were shown in over 424 theaters in 350 U.S. cities. La bohème went out to 671 screens worldwide. The Met remains the only company that transmits all of its performances live, although in many cases this is only via radio broadcast. San Francisco Opera, founded in 1923, began prerecorded broadcasts in March 2008. As of June 2008, approximately 125 theaters in 117 U.S. cities carry the broadcast. Their distribution company, Bigger Picture, screens the operas with the same HD digital cinema projectors used for major Hollywood films. European opera houses and festivals such as La Scala in Milan, the Salzburg Festival, La Fenice in Venice and the Maggio Musicale in Florence have also broadcast their productions to 91 theaters in 90 U.S. cities since 2006. The emergence of the Internet is also seemingly affecting the way in which audiences consume opera. In a first for the genre, in 2009 British Opera house Glyndebourne made available online a full digital video download of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, filmed two years previously.

See also

Outline of opera

Dance

Orchestral enhancement

Persian opera

List articles

Glossary of musical terminology

List of opera companies

List of important operas – an annotated, chronological, selected list of operas which are included for their historical significance, widespread popularity, or both.

List of major opera composers – an annotated compilation of the most frequently named composers on ten lists published by opera experts.

List of opera genres

List of opera directors

List of opera festivals

List of opera houses

List of operas by title – an alphabetical list by title of operas with Wikipedia articles.

The opera corpus – an extended list of more than 1900 works by more than 500 composers.

Voice type, the classification of singers by the tessitura, weight, and timbre of their voices.

Notes

References

Apel, Willi, ed. (1969). Harvard Dictionary of Music, Second Edition. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. SBN 674375017.

Cooke, Mervyn (2005). The Cambridge Companion to Twentieth-Century Opera. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-78009-8. See also Google Books partial preview. Accessed 3 October 2009.

Silke Leopold, "The Idea of National Opera, c. 1800", United and Diversity in European Culture c. 1800, ed. Tim Blanning and Hagen Schulze (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 19–34.

The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, edited by Stanley Sadie (1992), 5,448 pages, is the best, and by far the largest, general reference in the English language. ISBN 0-333-73432-7 and ISBN 1-56159-228-5

The Viking Opera Guide (1994), 1,328 pages, ISBN 0-670-81292-7

The Oxford Illustrated History of Opera, ed. Roger Parker (1994)

The Oxford Dictionary of Opera, by John Warrack and Ewan West (1992), 782 pages, ISBN 0-19-869164-5

Opera, the Rough Guide, by Matthew Boyden et al. (1997), 672 pages, ISBN 1-85828-138-5

Opera: A Concise History, by Leslie Orrey and Rodney Milnes, World of Art, Thames & Hudson

Further reading

DiGaetani, John Louis: An Invitation to the Opera, Anchor Books, 1986/91. ISBN 0-385-26339-2.

MacMurray, Jessica M. and Allison Brewster Franzetti: The Book of 101 Opera Librettos: Complete Original Language Texts with English Translations, Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, 1996. ISBN 9781884822797

Simon, Henry W.: A Treasury of Grand Opera, Simon and Schuster, New York, 1946.

External links

Operabase – Comprehensive opera performances database

StageAgent – synopses & character descriptions for most major operas

What's it about? - Opera plot summaries

Vocabulaire de l'Opéra

OperaGlass, a resource at Stanford University

HistoricOpera – historic operatic images

"America’s Opera Boom" By Jonathan Leaf, The American, July/August 2007 Issue

Opera~Opera article archives

Category:Opera history Category:Musical forms Category:Italian loanwords

Rinat Shaham () is an Israeli born mezzo-soprano who has received numerous accolades for her international operatic, concert and recital performances.

Life and career

Shaham was born in Haifa, Israel; her father was a music teacher. She developed an interest in theatre after attending an arts school. Shaham completed her Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the United States.

Rinat Shaham has sung leading roles with the New York City Opera, the Opera Company of Philadelphia, the Opéra de Montréal, the Aix-en-Provence Festival, the Glyndebourne Festival, the Berlin State Opera, Opera Australia and many more.

Shaham has performed as soloist with symphony orchestras including the Berlin Philharmonic, the Chicago Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, the London Philharmonic, the San Francisco Symphony, the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the Boston Symphony and the Minnesota Orchestra. She has performed with some of the most eminent conductors of the day, including Seiji Ozawa, Simon Rattle, André Previn, Christoph Eschenbach, Leonard Slatkin, Daniel Barenboim, Simone Young, Antonio Pappano, William Christie, David Robertson and Eiji Oue.

Rinat Shaham's many roles include the title role in Bizet's Carmen, Charlotte in Massenet's Werther, Dorabella in Mozart's Così fan tutte, Mélisande in Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, Cherubino in Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, Zerlina in Mozart's Don Giovanni, Rosina in Rossini's The Barber of Seville, and Blanche in Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites.

Shaham regularly appears in recitals, which play a central part in her schedule.

She is married to Australian-born violist and filmmaker Peter Bucknell. Her brother is violinist Hagai Shaham.

Recording and other media

Opera DVDs with Rinat Shaham have been produced for The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro. She has recorded excerpts from operas by Jean-Baptiste Lully for Erato and Deutsche Grammophon with William Christie, and Maurice Ravel's L'enfant et les sortilèges with André Previn. Shaham's solo CD of songs by George Gershwin and Henry Purcell, Fantasy in Blue with Fuoco e Cenere ("Fire and Ashes"), was published by ATMA Classique. Shaham made her feature film debut as "The Jazz Singer" in the 2001 István Szabó film, Taking Sides with Harvey Keitel.

Awards

A winner of numerous vocal competitions, Shaham worked closely with Marilyn Horne at the Music Academy of the West in Santa Barbara and was subsequently invited to participate in the Marilyn Horne Foundation Birthday Gala at Carnegie Hall. Shaham was presented by the Foundation in several recitals in New York City and Los Angeles in 2001.

References

External links

Rinat Shaham as Carmen – Video clip link

Category:Operatic mezzo-sopranos Category:Israeli female singers Category:Israeli opera singers Category:Israeli Jews Category:Curtis Institute of Music alumni Category:Living people Category:Year of birth missing (living people) Category:Jewish opera singers

Background	solo_singer
Name	Jackie Evancho
Birth name	Jacqueline Marie Evancho
Born	April 09, 2000
Origin	Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Voice type	Soprano
Occupation	Singer
Instrument	Vocals, violin, piano
Label	SYCO/Columbia Records (2010–present)
Years active	2009–present
Genre	Classical crossover
Url

Jacqueline Marie "Jackie" Evancho ( ; born April 9, 2000) is an American classical crossover Mezzo-soprano who gained popularity after performing in the fifth season of America's Got Talent, coming in second place. Her newest CD/DVD "O Holy Night" debuted at #2 on the Billboard charts. "O Holy Night" recently achieved Platinum status.

Evancho sings in the "classical crossover" style of singers such as Sarah Brightman and Hayley Westenra. She studies singing with a voice coach, and also plays the violin and piano. She started singing when she was seven years old, after she watched the musical The Phantom of the Opera on DVD. Her mother heard Evancho singing songs from the musical and allowed her to enter the 2008 Kean Idol, a local talent contest. She sang "Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again", finishing, at seven years old, as first runner-up; the winner was 20 years old. Eventually she participated in other talent contests and started a YouTube channel. Jackie began taking vocal lessons when she was 8, in June 2008, after her success in the 2008 Kean Idol contest. She was also a member of the Children's Festival Chorus of Pittsburgh during its 2008–09 season. Evancho lives in Richland Township, a suburb of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Career

Evancho has performed onstage with producer David Foster, was an invited performer on the PBS Special "Celebrate America" with conductor/composer Tim Janis, also feature video from CreationScapes, sang the US National Anthem at an event honoring aviation pioneer General Chuck Yeager, as well as performing the anthem to start the Pittsburgh Pirates 2010 home opener baseball game at PNC Park. At the invitation of Pennsylvania State Senator Jane Orie, Jackie has also performed. Jackie also performs at numerous events and charity functions in and around her hometown.

She competed in the 15th U.S.A. World Showcase Talent Competition in early 2009, which took place in Las Vegas in which the winner receives $100,000 and the opportunity to create a demo CD. Jackie was invited to perform at the U.S. Open Tennis Championships in New York City, but due to scheduling conflicts with America's Got Talent, had to cancel.

Jackie performed on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on September 23, 2010, after giving her first late night interview, with Jay Leno. In her appearance on the The Oprah Winfrey Show along with singers Susan Boyle and Debby Boone on October 19, 2010, she named Josh Groban, Charlotte Church, and Andrea Bocelli among the artists that she would like to collaborate with in the future. She sang "Pie Jesu" and said that writing is her favorite subject. The episode also showed tape that was shot by Oprah's crew at Evancho's home and school. Evancho performed in the My Macy's Holiday Parade presented by WPXI in Pittsburgh on November 27. Jackie performed on The Today Show on November 9, 2010 which also featured a brief interview. Jackie is also filming a spot on Wizards of Waverly Place'' and is currently shooting her first music video. She went on The View on November 15, 2010, and is currently ranked #1 on the British site Classical-Crossover.co.uk. On November 30, 2010, Evancho sang "Silent Night" with Katherine Jenkins on NBC's Christmas Tree Lighting Special, "Christmas in Rockefeller Center".

"She is just truly blessed with a voice that's phenomenal", says classical-crossover composer/conductor Tim Janis, who invited Evancho to perform in his American Christmas Carol show (Dec. 2, 2010) at Carnegie Hall in New York City. She is the youngest female vocal soloist ever to have performed there. Although Jackie describes herself as a Classical-Crossover singer, she currently holds the world record as the youngest Opera singer.

On January 1, 2011, Evancho performed the American national anthem at the NHL Winter Classic at Heinz Field in Pittsburgh, while Steven Page performed the Canadian national anthem. "I thought she was just lovely, sweetly compelling." "She is compelling," said Hahn. "It is quite unusual to hear a young girl with that level of warmth and roundness." Hahn called Jackie's performance of Pie Jesu strong, with seamless delivery. "Her phrasing was lovely, which she needed for that piece."

Composer Tim Janis said "[Jackie's] voice is so pure and natural, there's no flaw in it. People say 'I can hear her potential coming,' but no, it's here, it's now."

America's Got Talent judge, Piers Morgan said that Jackie has more talent than any act he has seen after witnessing her version of "Ave Maria": "I have never seen an act, on this show or the British show or any of the other talent shows in the world, with more potential than Jackie Evancho. That was perfection."

Claudia Benack, Assistant Professor of Musical Theater at Carnegie Mellon University said that "[Jackie] has an unusually adult feel for the repertoire...I think she's very good." Evancho performed O mio babbino caro by Giacomo Puccini. The aria is also on her debut album. She received a standing ovation after her performance, and was awarded a trip to Universal Studios Florida for receiving the most fan votes from the submissions to the show from YouTube. She was then voted into the semifinals by viewers. Her second performance was Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman's "Time To Say Goodbye" and once again received great critical reaction. In the Top 10, Jackie performed Pie Jesu by Andrew Lloyd Webber and advanced through to the Final 4.

After Evancho's initial performance on America's Got Talent, there were online accusations that her performance had been lip-synched. These rumors were quickly denounced. One judge, Howie Mandel, had her sing a random voice exercise on the next evening's live show as proof that it was her voice that was heard.

Evancho performed a celebrity duet with Sarah Brightman of "Time To Say Goodbye" during the final episode of the season, aired on September 15, 2010. During this same episode, it was revealed that she came in second place in the final voting results of season 5. Evancho performed in 10 of the 25 cities scheduled for the "America's Got Talent" road show.

Performances and results

{|class="wikitable" |- ! Week ! Round ! Song choice ! Original artist/Composer ! Performance order ! Result |- | Quarterfinals | YouTube | "O mio babbino caro" | Giacomo Puccini | Andrea Bocelli The album featured mainly covers of songs such as Andrea Bocelli's "Con Te Partiro" and "The Prayer", Josh Groban's "To Where You Are", Martina McBride's "Concrete Angel", and a cover of "Amazing Grace" among others. Schubert's "Ave Maria" heard on the album is not the original song, which is set to a secular text in German; instead, it's an arrangement of the Roman Catholic setting of the "Hail Mary" prayer in Latin. The album debuted on The Billboard 200 at #121 on the chart dated August 28, 2010. It also debuted at #2 on iTunes and Billboard Classical Albums Chart. Prelude to a Dream is no longer available. Her father has given the following reason for the withdrawal: "Because the CD was recorded about a year and half ago and her current voice no longer sounds like what it did then [due to vocal maturity...], we decided to withdraw "Prelude to a Dream" and will be concentrating on new material as part of her progress." It has become such a collector's item that copies of the CD have received final winning bids of over $1,500 on eBay auctions.

O Holy Night (2010)

Jackie's newest work with Columbia Records is the CD/DVD entitled O Holy Night. It was released on November 16, 2010 and reached rank #1 on Amazon's bestsellers in music during pre-orders on October 19, 2010. It is currently ranked #3 for the entire year 2010 on Amazon. "O Holy Night" debuted at #2 on the Billboard 200. This also makes her the top-selling debut artist for 2010, and the youngest female solo artist to debut in the top 10. Jackie also debuted at #1 on Billboard's Classical Albums Chart. The album has sold 381,000 copies in its first two weeks. On December 10th, 2010, the album was certified platinum by the RIAA with an excess of a million copies in the US, making her the youngest female solo artist to go platinum. 239,000 copies were sold in its first week and 142,000 in its second week. In Canada, it debuted at #1 on the Canadian Classical Albums Chart.

References

External links

Jackie Evancho at Classical Crossover UK

Category:2000 births Category:2000s singers Category:2010s singers Category:American child singers Category:American female singers Category:America's Got Talent contestants Category:American sopranos Category:Columbia Records artists Category:Living people Category:Musicians from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Category:Opera crossover singers Category:Participants in American reality television series Category:People from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Name	Danny Kaye
Birth name	David Daniel Kaminsky
Birth date	January 18, 1913
Birth place	Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
Death date	March 03, 1987
Death place	Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Occupation	Actor, singer, comedian
Years active	1935–1986
Spouse	Sylvia Fine (1940-1987) (his death) 1 child

David Daniel Kaminsky (January 18, 1913 – March 3, 1987) was an American actor, singer, dancer, and comedian. He became extremely popular in films with his bravura performances of patter songs and for children's favorites such as The Inch Worm and The Ugly Duckling. He was the first ambassador-at-large of UNICEF.

Early years

Born to Russian Empire Jewish immigrants in Brooklyn named Jacob and Clara Kaminsky, Kaye became one of the world's best-known comedians. He spent his early youth attending Public School 149 in East New York, Brooklyn, where he began entertaining his young classmates with songs and jokes, before moving to Thomas Jefferson High School, but he never graduated. Kaye held a succession of jobs after leaving school: a soda jerk, insurance investigator, office clerk. Most of them ended in Kaye's being fired. He lost the insurance job when he made an error that cost the insurance company $40,000. The dentist who had hired him to look after his office during his lunch hour did the same when he found Danny using his drill to create designs in the office woodwork. He learned his trade in his teenage years in the Catskills as a tummler in the Borscht Belt.

When he returned to the US, jobs were in short supply; Kaye struggled for bookings. One of the jobs was working with fan dancer Sally Rand. After the dancer dropped one of her fans while trying to chase away a fly, Kaye was hired to be in charge of the fans so they were always held in front of her. a remake of Goldwyn's Eddie Cantor comedy Whoopee! (1930). Kaye's rubber face and fast patter were an instant hit, and rival producer Robert M. Savini cashed in almost immediately by compiling three of Kaye's old Educational Pictures shorts into a makeshift feature, The Birth of a Star (1945).

Kaye starred in several movies with actress Virginia Mayo in the 1940s, and is well known for his roles in films such as The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947), The Inspector General (1949), On the Riviera (1951) co-starring Gene Tierney, Knock on Wood (1954), White Christmas (1954, in a role originally intended for Fred Astaire, then Donald O'Connor),The Court Jester (1956), and Merry Andrew (1958). Kaye starred in two pictures based on biographies, Hans Christian Andersen (1952) about the Danish story-teller, and The Five Pennies (1959) about jazz pioneer Red Nichols. His wife, writer/lyricist Sylvia Fine, wrote many of the witty, tongue-twisting songs Danny Kaye became famous for.

Other projects

Kaye starred in a radio program of his own, The Danny Kaye Show, on CBS in 1945–1946. It had a stellar cast (including Eve Arden, Lionel Stander, and Big Band leader Harry James), and was scripted by radio notables Goodman Ace and respected playwright-director Abe Burrows. The radio program's popularity rose quickly. Before Kaye had been on the air a year, he tied with Jimmy Durante for fifth place in the Radio Daily popularity poll. Kaye was the first actor to visit Tokyo; it was his first time there after touring there some ten years before with the vaudeville troupe. When Kaye asked to be released from his radio contract in mid 1946, he agreed not to accept another regular radio show for one year and also to limit his guest appearances on the radio programs of others. Many of the show's episodes survive today, and are notable for Kaye's opening "signature" patter.

He hosted the 24th Academy Awards in 1952. The program was broadcast only on radio. Telecasts of the Oscar ceremony would come later.

He hosted his own variety hour on CBS television, The Danny Kaye Show, from 1963 to 1967, which won four Emmy awards and a Peabody award. During this period, beginning in 1964, he acted as television host to the annual CBS telecasts of MGM's The Wizard of Oz. Kaye also did a stint as one of the What's My Line? Mystery Guests on the popular Sunday night CBS-TV quiz program. Kaye later served as a guest panelist on that show. He also appeared on the NBC interview program Here's Hollywood.

Danny Kaye was very fond of the legendary arranger Vic Schoen. Schoen had arranged for him on White Christmas, The Court Jester, and albums and concerts with the Andrews Sisters. In the 1960s Vic Schoen was working on a show in Las Vegas with Shirley Temple. He was injured in a car accident. When Danny Kaye heard about the accident, he immediately flew his own plane (Kaye was an avid pilot) to McCarran Airport to pick up Schoen and bring him back to Los Angeles to guarantee the best medical attention.

In 1976, he played the role of Mister Geppetto in a television musical adaptation of Pinocchio with Sandy Duncan in the title role. He guest-starred much later in his career in episodes of The Muppet Show, The Cosby Show Prior to that, the lifelong fan of the Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers recorded a song called "The D-O-D-G-E-R-S Song (Oh really? No, O'Malley!)", describing a fictitious encounter with the San Francisco Giants, which was a hit during those clubs' real-life pennant chase of 1962. That song is included on one of the Baseball's Greatest Hits compact discs. A good friend of Leo Durocher, he would often travel with the team.

During the 1950s, Kaye visited Australia, where he played "Buttons" in a production of Cinderella in Sydney. In the 1970s Kaye tore a ligament in his leg during the run of the Richard Rodgers musical Two by Two, but went on with the show, appearing with his leg in a cast and cavorting on stage from a wheelchair.

In many of his movies, as well as on stage, Kaye proved to be a very able actor, singer, dancer and comedian. He showed quite a different and serious side as Ambassador for UNICEF and in his dramatic role in the memorable TV movie Skokie, in which he played a Holocaust survivor. He supported many flying projects. In 1968, he was Honorary Chairman of the Las Vegas International Exposition of Flight, a major show that utilized most facets of the city’s entertainment industry while presenting a major air show. The operational show chairman was well-known aviation figure, Lynn Garrison.

In 1980, Kaye hosted and sang in the 25th Anniversary of Disneyland celebration, and hosted the opening celebration for Epcot in 1982 (EPCOT Center at the time), both of which were aired on prime-time American television.

In his later years he took to entertaining at home as chef – he had a special stove installed in his patio – and specialized in Chinese cooking. The theater and demonstration kitchen underneath the library at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York is named for him. All of Kaye's efforts in the kitchen did not turn out well. After flying to San Francisco for a recipe for sourdough bread, he came home and spent hours preparing loaves. When his daughter asked about the bread, Kaye tried showing her by hitting the bread on the kitchen table. His bread was hard enough to chip it.

.]]

Death

Kaye died of a heart attack in March 1987, following a bout with hepatitis. Kaye had quadruple bypass heart surgery in February 1983; he contracted hepatitis from a blood transfusion he received at that time. He left a widow, Sylvia Fine, and a daughter, Dena.

Personal life

Kaye and his wife, Sylvia, both grew up in Brooklyn, living only a few blocks apart, but they did not meet until they were both working on an off-Broadway show in 1939. Sylvia was an audition pianist at the time. Danny and Sylvia discovered that the dentist he had been hired to watch the office of was Sylvia's father, Dr. Samuel Fine. Danny, working in Florida at the time, proposed on the telephone; the couple was married in Fort Lauderdale. Their daughter, Dina, was born in 1946.

After Kaye and his wife became estranged, he was allegedly involved with a succession of women, though he and Fine never divorced. The best-known of these women was actress Eve Arden. A biography of Leigh states that the alleged relationship caused her to have a breakdown. The alleged relationship has been denied by Olivier's official biographer, Terry Coleman. Joan Plowright, Olivier's widow, has dealt with the matter in different ways on different occasions: she deflected the question (but alluded to Olivier's "demons") in a BBC interview and was reported saying on another occasion that "I have always resented the comments that it was I who was the homewrecker of Larry's marriage to Vivien Leigh. Danny Kaye was attached to Larry far earlier than I." However, in her memoirs Plowright denies that there had been an affair between the two men. Producer Perry Lafferty reported: “People would ask me, 'Is he gay? Is he gay?' I never saw anything to substantiate that in all the time I was with him.”

Kennedy Center Honor (1984)

The song I Wish I Was Danny Kaye on Miracle Legion's 1996 album Portrait of a Damaged Family

On June 23, 1987, Kaye was posthumously presented with the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Ronald Reagan. The award was received by his daughter Dena.

Filmography

Film

{| class=wikitable |- style="background:#b0c4de; text-align:center;" | # | Title | Year | Role | Director | Co-stars | style="width:150px;"|Filmed in |- | align=right|1. | Moon Over Manhattan | 1935 | Himself | Al Christie | Sylvia Froos, Marion Martin | Black and white |- | align=right|2. | Dime a Dance | 1937 | Eddie | Al Christie | Imogene Coca, June Allyson | Black and white |- | align=right|3. | Getting an Eyeful | 1938 | Russian | Al Christie | Charles Kemper, Sally Starr | Black and white |- | align=right|4. | Cupid Takes a Holiday | 1938 | Nikolai Nikolaevich (bride-seeker) | William Watson | Douglas Leavitt, Estelle Jayne | Black and white |- | align=right|5. | Money on Your Life | 1938 | Russian | William Watson | Charles Kemper, Sally Starr | Black and white |- | align=right|6. | Up in Arms | 1944 | Danny Weems | Elliott Nugent | Dinah Shore, Dana Andrews | Technicolor |- | align=right|7. | Wonder Man | 1945 | Edwin Dingle / Buzzy Bellew | H. Bruce Humberstone | Virginia Mayo, Vera-Ellen, Steve Cochran | Technicolor |- | align=right|8. | The Kid from Brooklyn | 1946 | Burleigh Hubert Sullivan | Norman Z. McLeod | Virginia Mayo, Vera-Ellen, Steve Cochran, Eve Arden | Technicolor |- | align=right|9. | The Secret Life of Walter Mitty | 1947 | Walter Mitty | Norman Z. McLeod | Virginia Mayo, Boris Karloff, Fay Bainter, Ann Rutherford | Technicolor |- | 10. | A Song Is Born | 1948 | Professor Hobart Frisbee | Howard Hawks | Virginia Mayo, Benny Goodman, Hugh Herbert, Steve Cochran | Technicolor |- | 11. | It's a Great Feeling | 1949 | Himself | David Bulter | Dennis Morgan, Doris Day, Jack Carson | Technicolor |- | 12. | The Inspector General | 1949 | Georgi | Henry Koster | Walter Slezak, Barbara Bates, Elsa Lanchester, Gene Lockhart | Technicolor |- | 13. | On the Riviera | 1951 | Jack Martin / Henri Duran | Walter Lang | Gene Tierney, Corinne Calvet | Technicolor |- | 14. | Hans Christian Andersen | 1952 | Hans Christian Andersen | Charles Vidor | Farley Granger, Zizi Jeanmaire | Technicolor |- | 15. | Knock on Wood | 1954 | Jerry Morgan / Papa Morgan | Norman PanamaMevin Frank | Mai Zetterling, Torin Thatcher | Technicolor |- | 16. | White Christmas | 1954 | Phil Davis | Michael Curtiz | Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney, Vera-Ellen, Dean Jagger | VistaVisionTechnicolor |- | 17. | The Court Jester | 1956 | Hubert Hawkins | Norman PanamaMevin Frank | Glynis Johns, Basil Rathbone, Angela Lansbury | VistaVisionTechnicolor |- | 18. | Merry Andrew | 1958 | Andrew Larabee | Michael Kidd | Anna Maria, Pier Angeli | CinemaScopeMetrocolor |- | 19. | Me and the Colonel | 1958 | Samuel L. Jacobowsky | Peter Glenville | Curd Jürgens, Nicole Maurey, Françoise Rosay, Akim Tamiroff | Black and white |- | 20. | The Five Pennies | 1959 | Red Nichols | Melville Shavelson | Barbara Bel Geddes, Louis Armstrong, Tuesday Weld | VistaVisionTechnicolor |- | 21. | On the Double | 1961 | Pfc. Ernie Williams | Melville Shavelson | Dana Wynter, Margaret Rutherford, Diana Dors | PanavisionTechnicolor |- | 22. | The Man from the Diner's Club | 1963 | Ernest Klenk | Frank Tashlin | Cara Williams, Martha Hyer | Black and white |- | 23. | The Madwoman of Chaillot | 1969 | The Ragpicker | Bryan Forbes | Katharine Hepburn, Charles Boyer | Technicolor |}

Television

Autumn Laughter (1938) (experimental telecast)

The Danny Kaye Show with Lucille Ball (1962) (special)

The Danny Kaye Show (1963–1967) (series)

The Lucy Show: "Lucy Meets Danny Kaye" (1964) (guest appearance)

Here Comes Peter Cottontail (1971) (voice)

The Enchanted World of Danny Kaye: The Emperor's New Clothes (1972) (special)

An Evening with John Denver (1975) (special)

Pinocchio (1976) (special)

Peter Pan (1976) (special)

The Muppet Show (1978) (guest appearance)

Disneyland's 25th Anniversary (1980) (special guest appearance)

An Evening with Danny Kaye (1981) (special)

Skokie (1981)

The New Twilight Zone: "Paladin of the Lost Hour" (1985) (guest appearance)

The Cosby Show: "The Dentist" (1986) (guest appearance)

References

Sources

Remarks at the Presentation Ceremony for the Presidential Medal of Freedom, June 23, 1987

External links

The Definitive The Danny Kaye (Radio) Show article and log

Danny Kaye tribute and fan website

Tribute to Danny Kaye in The Court Jester

Royal Engineers Museum Danny Kaye in Korea 1952

Literature on Danny Kaye

Category:1913 births Category:1987 deaths Category:Academy Honorary Award recipients Category:American aviators Category:American comedians Category:American film actors Category:American stage actors Category:American television actors Category:Major League Baseball owners Category:Best Musical or Comedy Actor Golden Globe (film) winners Category:Deaths from myocardial infarction Category:Deaths from hepatitis Category:Emmy Award winners Category:Jewish actors Category:Jewish comedians Category:Kennedy Center honorees Category:People from Brooklyn Category:Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients Category:Seattle Mariners owners Category:American people of Russian-Jewish descent Category:Vaudeville performers Category:Peabody Award winners

Name	Bugs Bunny
Caption	Bugs Bunny as seen today
First	Prototype: Porky's Hare Hunt Official: A Wild Hare
Creator	Ben Hardaway (prototype),Tex Avery (official character and early visual design),Bob Clampett (final visual design)
Voice	Mel Blanc (1940–1989),others (see below)

Bugs Bunny is an American fictional character who starred in the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of animated films produced by Leon Schlesinger Productions, which became Warner Bros. Cartoons in 1944. Bugs starred in 163 shorts in the Golden Age of American animation, and made cameos in three others along with a few appearances in non-animated films.

According to Bugs Bunny: 50 Years and Only One Grey Hare, he was born in 1940 in Brooklyn, New York in a warren under Ebbets Field, home of the Brooklyn Dodgers. He was actually created by many animators and staff, including Tex Avery, who directed A Wild Hare, Bugs Bunny's debut, and Robert McKimson, who created the definitive Bugs Bunny character design. According to Mel Blanc, the character's original voice actor, Bugs Bunny has a Flatbush accent. His catchphrase is a casual "Eh...what's up, doc?", usually said while chewing a carrot. Other popular phrases include "Of course you realize, this means war", "Ain't I a stinker?", "What a maroon!" (a twist on "moron"), "What a !", and "I knew I shoulda taken that left turn at Albuquerque." He is the most prominent of the Looney Tunes characters as his calm, flippant endeared him to American audiences during and after World War II. He is a mascot of the Looney Tunes series, and Warner Brothers in general.

History

The unnamed, prototype Warner Bros. rabbit

An unnamed rabbit with some of the personality of Bugs, though looking very different, first appears in the cartoon short Porky's Hare Hunt, released on April 30, 1938. Co-directed by Ben Hardaway and an uncredited Cal Dalton (who was responsible for the initial design of the rabbit), this short has an almost identical plot to Tex Avery's 1937 cartoon Porky's Duck Hunt, which had introduced Daffy Duck. Porky Pig is again cast as a hunter tracking a silly prey less interested in escape than in driving his pursuer insane. The latter short replaces the little black duck with a small white rabbit. The rabbit introduces himself with the odd expression "Jiggers, fellers", and Mel Blanc gave the rabbit a voice and laugh almost like that he would later use for Woody Woodpecker. This cartoon also first uses the famous Groucho Marx line, "Of course you realize, this means war!" This rabbit was so popular with its audience that the Schlesinger staff decided to use it again.

The rabbit appears again in 1939's Prest-O Change-O, directed by Chuck Jones, where he is the pet rabbit of unseen character Sham-Fu the Magician. Two dogs, fleeing the local dogcatcher, enter his absent master's house. The rabbit harasses them, but is ultimately bested by the bigger of the two dogs.

His third appearance is in another 1939 cartoon, Hare-um Scare-um, directed by Dalton and Hardaway. This short, the first where he is depicted as a gray bunny instead of a white one, is also notable for the rabbit's first singing role. Charlie Thorson, lead animator on the short, gave the character a name. He had written "Bugs' Bunny" on the model sheet that he drew for Hardaway, implying that he considered the rabbit model sheet to be Hardaway's property. In promotional material for the short, including a surviving 1939 presskit, the name on the model sheet was altered to become the rabbit's own name: "Bugs" Bunny (quotation marks only used at the very beginning). In his later years, Mel Blanc stated that a proposed name was "Happy Rabbit".

In Chuck Jones' Elmer's Candid Camera the rabbit first meets Elmer Fudd. This rabbit looks more like the present-day Bugs, taller and with a similar face. This rabbit, however, speaks with a rural drawl. The early version of Elmer is also different from the present-day one, much fatter and taller, although Arthur Q. Bryan's voice is the same as it would be later. In Robert Clampett's 1940 Patient Porky, a similar rabbit appears to trick the audience into thinking that 750 rabbits have been born.

Bugs Bunny emerges

A Wild Hare, directed by Tex Avery and released on July 27, 1940, is the first cartoon where both Elmer Fudd and Bugs are shown in their fully developed forms as hunter and tormentor. In this cartoon Mel Blanc first uses what would become the standard voice of Bugs. And Bugs first emerges from his rabbit hole to ask Elmer, "What's up, Doc?" Animation historian Joe Adamson counts A Wild Hare as the first "official" Bugs Bunny short.

Bugs's second appearance in Jones's Elmer's Pet Rabbit introduces the audience to the name Bugs Bunny, which until then had only been used among the Termite Terrace employees. It was also the first short where he received billing under his now-famous name, but the card, "featuring Bugs Bunny", was just slapped on the end of the completed short's opening titles when A Wild Hare proved an unexpected success. The rabbit here is in look and voice identical to the one in Jones' earlier Elmer's Candid Camera.

Bugs in his Wild Hare likeness appeared in five more shorts during 1941. Tortoise Beats Hare, directed by Tex Avery, features the first appearance of Cecil Turtle; Hiawatha's Rabbit Hunt, is the first Bugs Bunny short directed by Friz Freleng; All This and Rabbit Stew, directed by Avery, has Bugs tracked by a little African-American hunter (based heavily on racial stereotypes); The Heckling Hare was the final Bugs short Avery worked on before being fired (Avery and producer Schlesinger vehemently disagreed over the ending gag of The Heckling Hare, and Avery refused to compromise his creative principles) and leaving for MGM; and Wabbit Twouble, the first Bugs short directed by Robert Clampett. Wabbit Twouble was also the first of five Bugs shorts to feature a chubbier remodel of Elmer Fudd, a short-lived attempt to have Fudd more closely resemble his voice actor, comedian Arthur Q. Bryan.

World War II

By 1942, Bugs had become the number one star of Merrie Melodies. The series had originally been intended only for one-shot characters in shorts after several early attempts to introduce characters (Foxy, Goopy Geer and Piggy) failed under Harman–Ising. (In 1937, under Schlesinger, it had started introducing newer characters.) Bugs' 1942 shorts included Friz Freleng's The Wabbit Who Came to Supper, and the Robert Clampett shorts The Wacky Wabbit and Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid (which introduced Beaky Buzzard). Bugs Bunny Gets the Boid shows a slight redesign of Bugs, with less-prominent front teeth and a rounder head. The character was reworked by Robert McKimson, then an animator in Robert Clampett's unit. The redesign at first was only used in the shorts created by Clampett's unit, but in time it would be taken up by the other directors, with Freleng and Frank Tashlin the first. When McKimson was himself promoted to director, he created yet another version, with more slanted eyes, longer teeth and a much larger mouth. He used this version until 1949 (as did Art Davis for the one Bugs Bunny cartoon he directed) when he started using the version he had designed for Clampett. Jones would come up with his own slight modification, and the voice had slight variations between the units.

Bugs became more popular during World War II because of his free and easy attitude, and began receiving special star billing in his cartoons by 1943. By that time Warner Bros. had become the most profitable cartoon studio in the United States. In company with cartoon studios such as Disney and Famous Studios, Warners put its characters against the period's biggest enemies, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and the Japanese. The 1944 short Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips features Bugs at odds with a group of Japanese soldiers. This cartoon has since been pulled from distribution due to its racial stereotypes. He also faces off against Herman Goering and Hitler in Herr Meets Hare, which introduced his well-known reference to Albuquerque as he mistakenly winds up in the Black Forest of 'Joimany' instead of Las Vegas, Nevada.

Since Bugs' debut in A Wild Hare, he had appeared only in color Merrie Melodie cartoons (making him one of the few recurring characters created for that series in the Leon Schlesinger era prior to the full conversion to color), alongside Elmer's prototype Egghead, Inki, Sniffles, and Elmer himself—who was heard but not seen in the 1942 Looney Tunes cartoon Nutty News, and made his first formal appearance in that series in 1943's To Duck or Not to Duck. While he made a cameo appearance in the 1943 Porky and Daffy cartoon Porky Pig's Feat this was his only appearance in a black-and-white Looney Tune cartoon. He did not star in a cartoon in the Looney Tunes series until that series made its complete conversion to only color cartoons beginning with 1944 releases. Buckaroo Bugs was Bugs' first cartoon in the Looney Tunes series, and was also the last WB cartoon to credit Leon Schlesinger.

Among his most notable civilian shorts during this period are Bob Clampett's Tortoise Wins by a Hare (a sequel to 1941's Tortoise Beats Hare); A Corny Concerto, a spoof of Disney's Fantasia'); Falling Hare; What's Cookin' Doc?; Chuck Jones's Superman parody Super-Rabbit'; and Freleng's Little Red Riding Rabbit. The 1944 short Bugs Bunny and the Three Bears introduces Jones' The Three Bears characters.

At the end of the cartoon Super-Rabbit, Bugs appears wearing a United States Marine Corps dress blue uniform. As a result, the Marine Corps made Bugs an honorary Marine Master Sergeant. From 1943 to 1946, Bugs was the official mascot of Kingman Army Air Field, Kingman, Arizona, where thousands of aerial gunners were trained during World War II. Some notable trainees included Clark Gable and Charles Bronson. Bugs also served as the mascot for 530 Squadron of the 380th Bombardment Group, 5th Air Force, U.S. Air Force, which was attached to the Royal Australian Air Force and operated out of Australia's Northern Territory from 1943 to 1945, flying B-24 Liberator bombers.

In 1944, Bugs Bunny made a cameo appearance in Jasper Goes Hunting, a short produced by rival studio Paramount Pictures. In this cameo (animated by Robert McKimson, with Mel Blanc providing the voice), Bugs pops out of a rabbit hole, saying his usual catchphrase; Bugs then says, "I must be in the wrong picture" and then goes back in the hole.

A younger version of Bugs is the main character of Baby Looney Tunes, which debuted on Cartoon Network in 2002. In the action comedy Loonatics Unleashed, his definite descendant Ace Bunny is the leader of the Loonatics team and seems to have inherited his ancestor's Brooklyn accent and comic wit.

Bugs has appeared in numerous video games, including the Bugs Bunny's Crazy Castle series, Bugs Bunny Birthday Blowout, Bugs Bunny: Rabbit Rampage and the similar Bugs Bunny in Double Trouble, Looney Tunes B-Ball, Space Jam, Looney Tunes Racing, , Bugs Bunny Lost in Time, and its sequel, Bugs Bunny and Taz Time Busters, and Looney Tunes: Back in Action and the new video game . Bugs and the rest of the Looney Tunes gang will return to Cartoon Network in 2011 in a brand new show called The Looney Tunes Show, with Jeff Bergman returning to voice both Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck.

On August 13, 2010, Warner Bros. Pictures announced that they are planning a live-action/CG-animated combo feature film based on the Looney Tunes character.

Personality and catchphrases

Bugs has feuded with Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam, Willoughby the Dog, Marvin the Martian, Beaky Buzzard, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Tasmanian Devil, Cecil Turtle, Charlie Dog, Witch Hazel, Rocky and Mugsy, Wile E. Coyote, the Crusher, Gremlin, Big Bad Wolf, Count Blood Count and a host of others. Bugs almost always wins these conflicts, a plot pattern which recurs in Looney Tunes films directed by Chuck Jones. Concerned that viewers would lose sympathy for an aggressive protagonist who always won, Jones arranged for Bugs to be bullied, cheated, or threatened by the antagonists while minding his own business. He's also been known to break the fourth wall by "communicating" with the audience, either by explaining the situation (ex. "Be with you in a minute, folks!"), describing someone to the audience (ex. "Feisty, ain't they?"), clueing in on the story (ex. "This happens to him all during the picture, folks."), etc.

Bugs will usually try to placate the antagonist and avoid conflict, but when an antagonist pushes him too far, Bugs may address the audience and invoke his catchphrase "Of course you realize this means war!" before he retaliates, and the retaliation will be devastating. This line was taken from Groucho Marx and others in the 1933 film Duck Soup and was also used in the 1935 Marx film A Night at the Opera. Bugs would pay homage to Groucho in other ways, such as occasionally adopting his stooped walk or leering eyebrow-raising (in Hair-Raising Hare, for example) or sometimes with a direct impersonation (as in Slick Hare).

Other directors, such as Friz Freleng, characterized Bugs as altruistic. When Bugs meets other successful characters (such as Cecil Turtle in Tortoise Beats Hare, or, in World War II, the Gremlin of Falling Hare), his overconfidence becomes a disadvantage.

During the 1940s, Bugs was immature and wild, but starting in the 1950s his personality matured and his attitude was less frenetic. Though often shown as highly mischievous and violent, Bugs is never actually malicious, and only acts as such in self-defense against his aggressors; the only cartoon where Bugs ever served as a true villain was Buckaroo Bugs.

Bugs Bunny's nonchalant carrot-chewing standing position, as explained by Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng, and Bob Clampett, originated in a scene in the film It Happened One Night, in which Clark Gable's character leans against a fence, eating carrots rapidly and talking with his mouth full to Claudette Colbert's character. This scene was well known while the film was popular, and viewers at the time likely recognized Bugs Bunny's behavior as satire.

The carrot-chewing scenes are generally followed by Bugs Bunny's most well-known catchphrase, "What's up, Doc?", which was written by director Tex Avery for his first Bugs Bunny short, 1940's A Wild Hare. Avery explained later that it was a common expression in his native Texas and that he did not think much of the phrase. When the short was first screened in theaters, the "What's up, Doc?" scene generated a tremendously positive audience reaction. As a result, the scene became a recurring element in subsequent films and cartoons. The phrase was sometimes modified for a situation. For example, Bugs says "What's up, dogs?" to the antagonists in A Hare Grows in Manhattan, "What's up, Duke?" to the knight in Knight-mare Hare and "What's up, prune-face?" to the aged Elmer in The Old Grey Hare. He might also greet Daffy with "What's up, Duck?" He used one variation, "What's all the hub-bub, bub?" only once, in Falling Hare. Another variation is used in when he greets a lightsaber-wielding Marvin the Martian saying "What's up, Darth?"

Several Chuck Jones shorts in the late 1940s and 1950s depict Bugs travelling via cross-country (and, in some cases, intercontinental) tunnel-digging, ending up in places as varied as Mexico (Bully For Bugs, 1953), the Himalayas (The Abominable Snow Rabbit, 1960) and Antarctica (Frigid Hare, 1949) all because he "shoulda taken that left toin at Albukoikee." He first utters that phrase in Herr Meets Hare (1945), when he emerges in the Black Forest, a cartoon seldom seen today due to its blatantly topical subject matter. When Hermann Göring says to Bugs, "There is no Las Vegas in 'Chermany'" and takes a potshot at Bugs, Bugs dives into his hole and says, "Joimany! Yipe!", as Bugs realizes he's behind enemy lines. The confused response to his "left toin" comment also followed a pattern. For example, when he tunnels into Scotland in 1948's My Bunny Lies Over The Sea, while thinking he's heading for the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles, California, it provides another chance for an ethnic stereotype: "Therrre's no La Brrrea Tarrr Pits in Scotland!" (to which Bugs responds, "Uh...what's up, Mac-doc?"). A couple of late-1950s shorts of this ilk also featured Daffy Duck travelling with Bugs ("Since when is Pismo Beach inside a cave?!").

Bugs Bunny has some similarities to figures from mythology and folklore, such as Br'er Rabbit, Nanabozho, or Anansi, and might be seen as a modern trickster (for example, he repeatedly uses cross-dressing mischievously). Unlike most cartoon characters, however, Bugs Bunny is rarely defeated in his own games of trickery. One exception to this is the short Hare Brush, in which Elmer Fudd ultimately carries the day at the end; however, critics note that in this short, Elmer and Bugs assume each other's personalities—through mental illness and hypnosis, respectively—and it is only by becoming Bugs that Elmer can win. However, Bugs was beaten at his own game. In the short Duck Amuck he torments Daffy Duck as the unseen animator, ending with his line, "Ain't I a stinker?" Bugs feels the same wrath of an unseen animator in the short Rabbit Rampage where he is in turn tormented by Elmer Fudd. At the end of the clip Elmer gleefully exclaims, 'Well, I finally got even with that scwewy wabbit!"

Although it was usually Porky Pig who brought the WB cartoons to a close with his stuttering, "That's all, folks!", Bugs would occasionally appear, bursting through a drum just as Porky did, but munching a carrot and saying in his Bronx-Brooklyn accent, "And dat's de end!"

The name "Bugs" or "Bugsy" as an old-fashioned nickname means "crazy" (or "loopy"). Several famous people from the first half of the twentieth century had that nickname. It is now out of fashion as a nickname, but survives in 1950s-1960s expressions like "you're bugging me", as in "you're driving me crazy".

Bugs wears white gloves, which he is rarely seen without. One example is the episode Long-Haired Hare, where Bugs pretends to be the famed conductor Leopold Stokowski and instructs opera star "Giovanni Jones" to sing and to hold a high note. As Giovanni Jones is turning red with the strain, Bugs slips his left hand out of its glove, leaving the glove hovering in the air in order to command Jones to continue to hold the high note. Bugs then nips down to the mail drop to order, and then to receive, a pair of ear muffs. Bugs puts on the ear defenders and then zips back into the amphitheater and reinserts his hand into his glove as singer Jones is writhing on the stage, still holding that same high note.

Bugs Bunny is also a master of disguise: he can wear any disguise that he wants to confuse his enemies: in Bowery Bugs he uses diver disguises: fakir, gentleman, woman, baker and finally policeman. This ability of disguise makes Bugs famous because we can recognize him while at the same time realizing that his enemies are trapped. Bugs has a certain preference for the female disguise: Taz, Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam were fooled by this sexy bunny (woman) and in Hare Trimmed, Sam discovers the real face of "Granny" (Bugs's disguise) in the church where they attempt to get married. for some reason, Daffy Duck and Cecil turtle aren't fooled by the disguises.

Bugs Bunny may also have some mystical potential. In Knight-mare Hare he was able to return to his bunny form (after being transformed into a donkey) by removing his donkey form as if it were a suit. Merlin of Monroe (the wizard) was unable to do the same thing. Later Bugs Bunny defeated the Count Blood Count in a magical spell duel. However, the story was a dream and Bugs Bunny's victory over Count Blood Count was a result of his intellect, not innate magical power.

Rabbit or hare?

The animators throughout Bugs' history have treated the terms rabbit and hare as synonymous. Taxonomically they are not synonymous, being somewhat similar but observably different types of lagomorphs. Hares have much longer ears than rabbits, so Bugs might seem to be of the hare family, yet rabbits live in burrows, like Bugs is seen to do. Many more of the cartoon titles include the word "hare" rather than "rabbit", as "hare" lends itself easily to puns ("hair", "air", etc.)

Within the cartoons, although the term "hare" comes up sometimes, again typically as a pun (for example, Bugs drinking "hare tonic" to "stop falling hare" or being doused with "hare restorer" to bring him back from invisibility), Bugs as well as his antagonists most often refer to the character as a "rabbit". The word "bunny" is of no help in answering this question, as it is a synonym for both young hares and young rabbits.

In Nike commercials with Michael Jordan, Bugs had been referred to as "Hare Jordan."

The opening and closing

In the opening of many of the Bugs Bunny cartoons, the Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes rings contain Bugs Bunny's head after the Warner Bros. shield (generally from 1944 and 1949 onward). Others have Bugs Bunny relaxing on top of the Warner Bros. shield: He chews on his carrot, looks angrily at the camera and pulls down the next logo (Merrie Melodies or Looney Tunes) like a window shade (generally on cartoons between 1945 until early 1949). Then he lifts it back up, to now be seen lying on his own name, which then fades into the title of the specific short. In some other cases, the title card sometimes fades to him, already on his name and chewing his carrot then fade to the name of the short. At the finish of Hare Tonic and Baseball Bugs, Bugs breaks out of a drum (like Porky Pig) and says, "And that's the end". Also, at the end of Box Office Bunny, right after Daffy Duck and Elmer Fudd run out through the Looney Tunes "That's All Folks!" sequence, Bugs later comes in through the rings and says, "And that's all, folks!". He did the ending for the last time at the end of Space Jam but this time saying "Well, that's all, folks!".

Voice actors

The following are the many voice actors who have voiced the character Bugs Bunny over the last seventy years:

;Mel Blanc :Mel Blanc voiced the character for 49 years, from Bugs' debut in A Wild Hare (1940) until Blanc's death in 1989. Blanc described the voice as a combination of Bronx and Brooklyn accents; however, Tex Avery claimed that he asked Blanc to give the character not a New York accent per se, but a voice like that of actor Frank McHugh, who frequently appeared in supporting roles in the 1930s and whose voice might be described as New York Irish. In Bugs' second cartoon Elmer's Pet Rabbit, Blanc created a completely new voice for Bugs, which sounded like a Jimmy Stewart impression, but the directors decided the previous voice was better. Though his best-known character was the carrot-chomping rabbit, munching on the carrots interrupted the dialogue. Various substitutes, such as celery, were tried, but none of them sounded like a carrot. So for the sake of expedience, he would munch and then spit the carrot bits into a spittoon rather than swallowing them, and continue with the dialogue. One oft-repeated story, possibly originating from , is that he was allergic to carrots and had to spit them out to minimize any allergic reaction — but his autobiography makes no such claim; in fact, in a 1984 interview with Tim Lawson, co-author of The Magic Behind The Voices: A Who's Who of Cartoon Voice Actors (University Press of Mississippi, 2004), Blanc emphatically denied being allergic to carrots.

;Jeff Bergman :Jeff Bergman was the first to voice Bugs (and several other Looney Tunes characters) after Mel Blanc died in 1989. He got the job by impressing Warner Bros. higher-ups with a tape of himself re-creating the voices of several of Blanc's characters, including Bugs Bunny. He had rigged the tape player so that he could use a switch to instantly toggle back and forth between the original recording of Blanc and Bergman's recording of the same lines. Upon doing this, it was almost impossible for the producers to tell which voice was Blanc's and which voice was Bergman; thus his vocal ability was established and his career launched.

:Bergman first voiced Bugs during the 1990 Academy Awards and then in Box Office Bunny, a 4-minute Looney Tunes short released in 1990 to commemorate Bugs' fiftieth anniversary. Bergman would next voice Bugs Bunny in the 1991 short (Blooper) Bunny, a Greg Ford-directed cartoon also produced to coincide with Bugs Bunny's fiftieth anniversary. However, the short never received its intended theatrical release and was shelved for years, until Cartoon Network rediscovered it and broadcast it on their channel several years later. Other works for which Bergman provided Bugs' voice include Invasion of the Bunny Snatchers (an obvious parody of the 1950s sci-fi classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers), Tiny Toon Adventures (a popular television program of the early nineties that featured the classic Looney Tunes characters as mentors to their younger counterparts) in the first season, and Cartoon All-Stars to the Rescue (a television special exposing children to dangers of illegal drugs). Bergman would continue to do the voice of Bugs Bunny until 1993. In 2010, for the first time in nearly a decade, Bergman will return to voice Bugs Bunny for Cartoon Network's upcoming series, The Looney Tunes Show.

;Greg Burson :Greg Burson first voiced Bugs in later episodes of Tiny Toon Adventures. He was then given the responsibility of voicing Bugs in 1995's Carrotblanca, a well-received 8-minute Looney Tunes cartoon originally shown in cinemas alongside The Amazing Panda Adventure (US) and The Pebble and the Penguin (non-US); it has since been released on video packaged with older Looney Tunes cartoons and was even included in the special edition DVD release of Casablanca, of which it is both a parody and an homage. Burson next voiced Bugs in the 1996 short From Hare to Eternity; the film is notable for being dedicated to the memory of the then-just deceased Friz Freleng, and for being the final Looney Tunes cartoon that Chuck Jones directed. Greg Burson also provided Bugs' voice in The Bugs and Daffy Show, which ran on Cartoon Network from 1996 to 2003. He died in 2008.

;Billy West :Billy West has been in television since the late 1980s. His first role was for the 1988 revived version of Bob Clampett's Beany and Cecil. West's breakthrough role then came almost immediately, as the voice of Stimpy and later Ren in John Kricfalusi's Ren & Stimpy. West has since been the voice talent for close to 120 different characters, including some of the most iconic animated figures in television history. Perhaps West's most notable film work came in the 1996 movie Space Jam. Starring alongside Michael Jordan, West provided the voice of both Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd. West would go on to reprise the roles of Bugs in subsequent Looney Tunes productions, including his cameos on Histeria!, the Kids' WB! promotional spots, and the 2006 Christmas-themed special Bah, Humduck! A Looney Tunes Christmas and the DVD compilations "Reality Check" and "Stranger Than Fiction", along with several Looney Tunes-centric CDs, cartoons, and video games. Billy West is, along with fellow voice artist Joe Alaskey, credited as one of the current successors of Mel Blanc in impersonating the voice of Bugs Bunny.

;Joe Alaskey :Joe Alaskey, like Jeff Bergman, is well-known for his ability to successfully impersonate many Looney Tunes characters. In fact, Alaskey voiced Yosemite Sam in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, as original voice actor Mel Blanc had found it too hard on his vocal cords. (This makes Sam one of the few voices created by Blanc to be voiced by someone else during his lifetime.) Joe Alaskey's first performance as Bugs Bunny came in the 2003 feature film Looney Tunes: Back in Action, although he had tested performing the role in a few earlier projects, such as Tweety's High-Flying Adventure. While still best known for providing the voice of Daffy Duck, Alaskey has also gone on to do Bugs' voice in several subsequent productions, including Daffy Duck for President (which was released on The and dedicated to then-just deceased Chuck Jones) and several recent video games and Looney Tunes cartoons, including Hare and Loathing in Las Vegas. Joe Alaskey is, along with fellow voice actor Billy West, credited as one of the current successors of Mel Blanc in impersonating the voice of Bugs Bunny.

;Jess Harnell :Jess Harnell served as the voice of Bugs in the Cartoon Network TV series Baby Looney Tunes.

;Noel Blanc :Noel Blanc, Mel Blanc's son, voiced Bugs for the Tiny Toons special It's a Wonderful Tiny Toon Christmas Special. The elder Blanc claimed in his later years that Noel substituted for Mel in various cartoon studios, including doing Bugs at Warner Bros., while he was recovering from a near-fatal car wreck. Noel can also be seen doing Bugs' voice with his father in the documentary on the making of the film Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

Cameos

Bugs Bunny has had cameo appearances in several cartoons, including two Private SNAFU short.

Patient Porky (1940)

Crazy Cruise (1942)

Porky Pig's Feat (1943, Bugs' only appearance in a black-and-white Looney Tunes short)

Jasper Goes Hunting (1944, for Paramount)

Odor-able Kitty (1945)

The Goofy Gophers (1947, with a sped-up voice)

The Lion's Busy (1950)

Duck Amuck (1953)

(2008, voiced by Joe Alaskey, as one of the forms of The Martian Manhunter)

Current popularity

In 2002, TV Guide compiled a list of the 50 greatest cartoon characters of all time as part of the magazine's 50th anniversary. Bugs Bunny was given the honor of number 1. In a CNN broadcast on July 31, 2002, a TV Guide editor talked about the group that created the list. The editor also explained why Bugs pulled top billing: "His stock...has never gone down...Bugs is the best example...of the smart-aleck American comic. He not only is a great cartoon character, he's a great comedian. He was written well. He was drawn beautifully. He has thrilled and made many generations laugh. He is tops." Additionally, in Animal Planet's 50 Greatest Movie Animals (2004), Bugs was named #3, behind Mickey Mouse and Toto.

Bugs Bunny's enduring effect on comedic actors also cannot be overestimated. During an interview for Inside the Actors Studio, comedian Dave Chappelle cited Bugs Bunny as one of his earliest influences, praising voice actor Mel Blanc.

According to Time Warner, Bugs Bunny became the current official mascot for Six Flags theme parks beginning with their 45th anniversary.

Awards

Academy Awards

Knighty Knight Bugs (1958)

Academy Award nominations

A Wild Hare (1940)

Hiawatha's Rabbit Hunt (1941)

See also

The Golden Age of American animation

List of Bugs Bunny cartoons

Looney Tunes

List of Looney Tunes feature-length films

References

Bibliography

External links

Warner Bros. Studios

Category:Corporate mascots Category:DC Comics titles Category:Dell Comics titles Category:Fictional anthropomorphic characters Category:Fictional characters from New York City Category:Fictional hares and rabbits Category:Gold Key Comics titles Category:Honorary United States Marines Category:Looney Tunes characters Category:Fictional characters introduced in 1940

Beverly Sills (May 25, 1929July 2, 2007) was an American operatic soprano whose peak career was between the 1950s and 1970s. In her prime she was the only real rival to Joan Sutherland as the leading bel canto stylist.

Although she sang a repertoire from Handel and Mozart to Puccini, Massenet, Wagner, and Verdi, she was known for her performances in coloratura soprano roles in live opera and recordings. Sills was largely associated with the operas of Donizetti, of which she performed and recorded many roles. Her signature roles include the title role in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, the title role in Massenet's Manon, Marie in Donizetti's La fille du régiment, the three heroines in Offenbach's Les contes d'Hoffmann, Rosina in Rossini's The Barber of Seville, and Violetta in Verdi's La traviata.

After retiring from singing in 1980, she became the general manager of the New York City Opera. In 1994, she became the Chairman of Lincoln Center and then, in 2002, of the Metropolitan Opera, stepping down in 2005. Sills lent her celebrity to further her charity work for the prevention and treatment of birth defects.

Biography

Sills was born Belle Miriam Silverman in Brooklyn, New York to Shirley Bahn (née Sonia Markovna), a musician, and Morris Silverman, an insurance broker. Her parents were Jewish immigrants from Odessa, Ukraine (then part of Russia) and Bucharest, Romania. She was raised in Brooklyn, where she was known, among friends, as "Bubbles" Silverman. As a child, she spoke Yiddish, Russian, Romanian, French and English. She attended Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn, as well as Manhattan's Professional Children's School.

At the age of three, Sills won a "Miss Beautiful Baby" contest, in which she sang "The Wedding of Jack and Jill". Beginning at age four, she performed professionally on the Saturday morning radio program, "Rainbow House", as "Bubbles" Silverman. Sills began taking singing lessons with Estelle Liebling at the age of seven and a year later sang in the short film Uncle Sol Solves It (filmed August 1937, released June 1938 by Educational Pictures), by which time she had adopted her stage name, Beverly Sills. Liebling encouraged her to audition for CBS Radio's Major Bowes' Amateur Hour, and on October 26, 1939 at the age of 10, Sills was the winner of that week's program. Bowes then asked her to appear on his Capitol Family Hour, a weekly variety show. Her first appearance was on November 19, 1939, the 17th anniversary of the show, and she appeared frequently on the program thereafter.

In 1945, Sills made her professional stage debut with a Gilbert and Sullivan touring company produced by Jacob J. Shubert, playing twelve cities in the US and Canada, offering seven different Gilbert and Sullivan operas. In her 1987 autobiography, she credits that tour with helping to develop the comic timing she soon became famous for: "I played the title role in Patience, and I absolutely loved the character, because Patience is a very funny, flaky girl.... I played her as a dumb Dora all the way through and really had fun with the role.... My Patience grew clumsier and clumsier with each performance, and audiences seemed to like her.... I found that I had a gift for slapstick humor, and it was fun to exercise it onstage." Sills sang in light operas for several more years.

On July 9, 1946, Sills appeared as a contestant on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts (radio). She sang under the pseudonym of "Vicki Lynn", as she was under contract to Shubert. Shubert did not want Godfrey to be able to say he had discovered "Beverly Sills" if she won the contest (although she did not ultimately win). Sills sang "Romany Life" from Victor Herbert's The Fortune Teller.

In 1947, she made her operatic stage debut as the Spanish gypsy Frasquita in Bizet's Carmen with the Philadelphia Civic Grand Opera Company. She toured North America with the Charles Wagner Opera Company, in the fall of 1951 singing Violetta in La traviata and, in the fall of 1952, singing Micaëla in Carmen. On September 15, 1953, she made her debut with the San Francisco Opera as Helen of Troy in Boito's Mefistofele and also sang Donna Elvira in Don Giovanni the same season. In a step outside of the repertoire she is commonly associated with, Sills gave four performances of the title role of Aida in July of 1954 in Salt Lake City. On October 29, 1955, she first appeared with the New York City Opera as Rosalinde in Johann Strauss II's Die Fledermaus, which received critical praise. As early as 1956 she performed before an audience of over 13,000 guests at the landmark Lewisohn Stadium with the noted operatic conductor Alfredo Antonini in an aria from Vincenzo Bellini's I puritani. Her reputation expanded with her performance of the title role in the New York premiere of Douglas Moore's The Ballad of Baby Doe in 1958.

On November 17, 1956, Sills married journalist Peter Greenough, of the Cleveland, Ohio newspaper The Plain Dealer and moved to Cleveland. She had two children with Greenough, Meredith ("Muffy") in 1959 and Peter, Jr. ("Bucky") in 1961. Muffy is profoundly deaf and has multiple sclerosis and Peter is severely mentally disabled. Sills restricted her performing schedule to care for her children.

In 1960, Sills and her family moved to Milton, Massachusetts, near Boston. In 1962, Sills sang the title role in Massenet's Manon with the Opera Company of Boston, the first of many roles for opera director Sarah Caldwell. Manon continued to be one of Sills' signature roles throughout most of her career. In January 1964, she sang her first Queen of the Night in Mozart's The Magic Flute for Caldwell. Although Sills drew critical praise for her coloratura technique and for her performance, she was not fond of the latter role; she observed that she often passed the time between the two arias and the finale addressing holiday cards.

Peak singing years

In 1966, the New York City Opera revived Handel's then virtually unknown opera seria Giulio Cesare (with Norman Treigle as Cæsar), and Sills' performance as Cleopatra made her an international opera star. Sills also made her "unofficial" Met debut in its "Opera in the Parks" program as Donna Anna in Don Giovanni, though nothing further came of this other than offers from Rudolf Bing for roles such as Flotow's Martha. In subsequent seasons at the NYCO, Sills had great successes in the roles of the Queen of Shemakha in Rimsky-Korsakov's The Golden Cockerel, the title role in Manon, Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor, and the three female leads Suor Angelica, Giorgetta, and Lauretta in Puccini's trilogy Il trittico.

In 1969, Sills sang Zerbinetta in the American premiere (in a concert version) of the 1912 version of Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos with the Boston Symphony. Her performance of the role, especially Zerbinetta's aria, "Grossmächtige Prinzessin", which she sang in the original higher key, won her acclaim. Home video-taped copies circulated among collectors for years afterwards, often commanding large sums on Internet auction sites (the performance was released commercially in 2006, garnering high praise). The second major event of the year was her debut as Pamira in Rossini's The Siege of Corinth at La Scala, a success that put her on the cover of Newsweek.

Sills's now high-profile career landed her on the cover of Time in 1971, where she was described as "America's Queen of Opera". The title was appropriate because Sills had purposely limited her overseas engagements because of her family. Her major overseas appearances include London's Covent Garden, Milan's La Scala, La Fenice in Venice, the Vienna State Opera, the Théâtre de Beaulieu in Lausanne, Switzerland, and concerts in Paris. In South America, she sang in the opera houses of Buenos Aires and Santiago, a concert in Lima, Peru, and appeared in several productions in Mexico City, including Lucia di Lammermoor with Luciano Pavarotti. On November 9, 1971, her performance in the New York City Opera's production of The Golden Cockerel was telecast live to cable TV subscribers.

During this period, she made her first television appearance as a talk-show personality on Virginia Graham's Girl Talk, a weekday series syndicated by ABC Films. An opera fan who was Talent Coordinator for the series persuaded the producer to put her on the air and she was a huge hit. Throughout the rest of her career she shone as a talk show guest, sometimes also functioning as a guest host. Sills underwent successful surgery for ovarian cancer in late October 1974 (sometimes misreported as breast cancer). Her recovery was so rapid and complete that she opened in Daughter of the Regiment at the San Francisco Opera a month later.

Following Sir Rudolf Bing's departure as director, Sills finally made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera on April 7, 1975 in The Siege of Corinth, receiving an eighteen-minute ovation. Other operas she sang at the Met include La traviata, Lucia di Lammermoor, Thaïs, and Don Pasquale (directed by John Dexter). In an interview after his retirement, Bing stated that his refusal to use Sills, as well as his preference for engaging, almost exclusively, Italian stars such as Renata Tebaldi - due to his notion that American audiences expected to see Italian stars - was the single biggest mistake of his career. Sills attempted to downplay her animosity towards Bing while she was still singing, and even in her two autobiographies. But in a 1997 interview, Sills spoke her mind plainly, "Oh, Mr. Bing is an ass. [W]hile everybody said what a great administrator he was and a great this, Mr. Bing was just an improbable, impossible General Manager of the Metropolitan Opera.... The arrogance of that man."

Sills was a recitalist, especially in the final decade of her career. She sang in mid-size cities and on college concert series, bringing her art to many who might never see her on stage in a fully staged opera. She also sang concerts with a number of symphony orchestras. Sills continued to perform for New York City Opera, her home opera house, essaying new roles right up to her retirement, including the leading roles in Rossini's Il Turco in Italia, Franz Lehár's Die lustige Witwe and Gian Carlo Menotti's La loca, a role written especially for her.

Although Sills' voice type was characterized as a "lyric coloratura", she took a number of heavier spinto and dramatic coloratura roles more associated with heavier voices as she grew older, including Donizetti's Lucrezia Borgia (with Susanne Marsee as Orsini) and the same composer's Tudor Queens, Anna Bolena, Maria Stuarda and Roberto Devereux (opposite Plácido Domingo in the title part). She was admired in those roles for transcending the lightness of her voice with dramatic interpretation, although it may have come at a cost: Sills later commented that Roberto Devereux shortened her career by at least four years.

Sills popularized opera through her talk show appearances, including Johnny Carson, Dick Cavett, David Frost, Mike Douglas, Merv Griffin, and Dinah Shore. Sills hosted her own talk show, Lifestyles with Beverly Sills, which ran on Sunday mornings on NBC for two years in the late 1970s; it won an Emmy Award. In 1979 she even . Down-to-earth and approachable, Sills helped dispel the traditional image of the temperamental opera diva.

Later years and death

In 1978, Sills announced she would retire on October 27, 1980, in a farewell gala at the New York City Opera. In the spring of 1979, she began acting as co-director of NYCO, and became its sole general director as of the fall season of that year, a post she held until 1989, although she remained on the NYCO board until 1991. During her time as general director, Sills helped turn what was then a financially struggling opera company into a viable enterprise. She also devoted herself to various arts causes and such charities as the March of Dimes and was sought after for speaking engagements on college campuses and for fund raisers.

From 1994 to 2002, Sills was chairman of Lincoln Center. In October 2002, she agreed to serve as chairman of the Metropolitan Opera, for which she had been a board member since 1991. She resigned as Met chairman in January 2005, citing family as the main reason (she had to place her husband, whom she had cared for over eight years, in a nursing home). She stayed long enough to supervise the appointment of Peter Gelb, formerly head of Sony Classical Records, as the Met's General Manager, to succeed Joseph Volpe in August 2006.

Peter Greenough, Sills's husband, died on September 6, 2006, at the age of 89. They would have had their 50th wedding anniversary on November 17, 2006.

She co-hosted The View for Best Friends Week on November 9, 2006, as Barbara Walters' best friend. She said that she didn't sing anymore, even in the shower, to preserve the memory of her voice.

She appeared on screen in movie theaters during HD transmissions live from the Met, interviewed during intermissions by the host Margaret Juntwait on January 6, 2007 (I puritani simulcast), as a backstage interviewer on February 24, 2007 (Eugene Onegin simulcast) and then, briefly, on April 28, 2007 (Il trittico simulcast).

On June 28, 2007, the Associated Press and CNN reported that Sills was hospitalized as "gravely ill", from lung cancer. With her daughter at her bedside, Beverly Sills succumbed to cancer on July 2, 2007, at the age of 78.

Operatic repertoire

These are the roles that Sills has performed on stage or for television or radio.

{|class="wikitable sortable" !Composer!!Opera!!Role!!In repertoire!!Performed with!!Recorded |- |Bellini||I Capuleti e i Montecchi||Guilietta||1975||Opera Company of Boston||Yes |- |Bellini||I puritani||Elvira||1972–1978||Philadelphia Lyric Opera Company, New York City Opera, San Francisco Opera, Tulsa Opera||Yes |- |Bellini||Norma||Norma||1972–1978||Opera Company of Boston, Opera Theatre of New Jersey, Connecticut Opera, Ravinia Festival, San Diego Opera, San Antonio Opera||Yes |- |Bizet||Carmen||Frasquita||1951||Philadelphia Civic Grand Opera Company||No |- |Bizet||Carmen||Micaela||1952–1958||Charles Wagner Opera Company, Robin Hood Dell West, Cosmopolitan Opera||No |- |Bizet||Carmen||Carmen||1956||Musicarnival||No |- |Bizet||Les pêcheurs de perles||Leila||1956||DuMont Television Network||Yes |- |Boito||Mefistofele||Helen of Troy||1953||San Francisco Opera||No |- |Charpentier||Louise||Louise||1962–1977||New York City Opera||Yes |- |Donizetti||Anna Bolena||Anna ||1973–1975||New York City Opera||Yes |- |Donizetti||Don Pasquale||Norina||1978–1980||Opera Company of Boston, Metropolitan Opera, Houston Grand Opera, San Diego Opera||Yes |- |Donizetti||La fille du régiment||Marie||1970–1977||Opera Company of Boston, Carnegie Hall, San Antonio Opera, Philadelphia Lyric Opera, San Diego Opera, Cincinnati Opera, Edmonton Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Wolf Trap Opera, San Francisco Opera, New York City Opera, Opera Memphis, Palm Beach Opera ||Yes |- |Donizetti||L'elisir d'amore||Adina||1964||Opera Company of Boston||No |- |Donizetti||Lucia di Lammermoor||Lucia||1968–1977||Fort Worth Opera, Cincinnati Opera, Edmonton Opera, Opera Company of Boston, New York City Opera, Palacio de Bellas Artes, La Scala, San Antonio Grand Opera, Ravinia Festival, Philadelphia Lyric Opera Company, Covent Garden, Tulsa Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Mississippi Opera Association, Zoo Opera, Wolf Trap Opera, New Orleans Opera, Pittsburgh Opera, Seattle Opera, Teatro Colón, San Francisco Opera, Opera Memphis, San Antonio Symphony, Florentine Opera, Opera Omaha, Metropolitan Opera ||Yes |- |Donizetti||Lucrezia Borgia||Lucrezia Borgia||1975–1976||New York City Opera ||Yes |- |Donizetti||Maria Stuarda||Maria Stuarda||1972–1974||New York City Opera ||Yes |- |Donizetti||Roberto Devereux||Elizabeth I||1970–1975||New York City Opera, Cincinnati Opera, Wolf Trap Opera ||Yes |- |Gounod||Faust||Marguerite||1963–1970||Boston Opera Group, New York City Opera, Cincinnati Opera, Orlando Opera, San Antonio Grand Opera Festival, Duluth Symphony Orchestra||Yes |- |Handel||Ariodante||Ginevra||1971||Kennedy Center||Yes |- |Handel||Giulio Cesare||Cleopatra||1966–1971||New York City Opera, Teatro Colón, Cincinnati May Festival ||Yes |- |Handel||Semele||Semele||1967–1969||Cleveland Orchestra, Caramoor Festival ||Yes |- |Hanson||Merry Mount||Lady Marigold Sandys||1964||San Antonio Symphony||No |- |Hindemith||Hin und zurück||Helene||1965||WGBH-TV||Yes |- |Kálmán||Gräfin Mariza||Countess Mariza||1946||Hartman Theatre in Columbus, Ohio||No |- |Lehár||The Merry Widow||Sonia||1956–1965||Musicarnival, New York City Opera, Casa Mañana, Robin Hood Dell||No |- |Leoncavallo||Pagliacci||Nedda||1965||Fort Worth Opera||No |- |Lehár||The Merry Widow||Hanna Glawari||1977–1979||San Diego Opera, Houston Grand Opera, New York City Opera||No |- |Massenet||Manon||Manon||1953–1978||Baltimore Opera Company, New York City Opera, Palacio de Bellas Artes, Teatro Colón, San Francisco Opera, Opera Company of Philadelphia||Yes |- |Massenet||Thaïs||Thaïs||1954–1978||DuMont Television Network, San Francisco Opera, Metropolitan Opera||Yes |- |Menotti||La Loca||Juana La Loca||1979||San Diego Opera, New York City Opera||Yes |- |Meyerbeer||Les Huguenots||Marguerite||1969||Carnegie Hall||Yes |- |Montemezzi||L'amore dei tre re||Fiora||1956||Philadelphia Grand Opera Company||No |- |Moore||The Ballad of Baby Doe||Baby Doe||1958–1969||New York City Opera, Musicarnival||Yes |- |Moore||The Wings of the Dove||Milly Theale||1962||New York City Opera||No |- |Mozart||Der Schauspieldirektor||Madame Goldentrill||1956||New York City Opera||No |- |Mozart||Die Entführung aus dem Serail||Konstanze||1965–1975||Boston Opera Group, New York City Opera, Fort Worth Opera, Grant Park, Tanglewood Music Festival, Frederic R. Mann Auditorium, Ravinia Festival||Yes |- |Mozart||Die Zauberflöte||Queen of the Night ||1964–1967||Boston Opera Group, Théâtre de Beaulieu, Tanglewood Music Festival, Houston Grand Opera, Vienna State Opera, New York City Opera, CBC Radio||Yes |- |Mozart||Don Giovanni||Donna Elvira||1953–1955||San Francisco Opera, Chattanooga Opera Association||No |- |Mozart||Don Giovanni||Donna Anna||1963–1967||New York City Opera, Opera Company of Boston, Metropolitan Opera, Palacio de Bellas Artes, Théâtre de Beaulieu, Baltimore Opera Company ||Yes |- |Mozart||Le nozze di Figaro||Countess||1965||Miami Opera||No |- |Offenbach||Les contes d'Hoffmann||Three Heroines||1964–1973||New Orleans Opera, Grant Park, Opera Company of Boston, Cincinnati Opera, New York City Opera, Baltimore Opera Company, Palacio de Bellas Artes, San Antonio Grand Opera, San Antonio Symphony, Shreveport Opera, Municipal Theater of Santiago, San Diego Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Florida Symphony ||Yes |- |Puccini||La bohème||Musetta||1958–1963||Cosmopolitan Opera, New York City Opera||No |- |Puccini||La bohème||Mimi||1965||Seattle Opera||No |- |Puccini||Gianni Schicchi||Lauretta||1967||New York City Opera||Yes |- |Puccini||Suor Angelica||Suor Angelica||1967||New York City Opera||Yes |- |Puccini||Il tabarro||Giorgetta||1967||New York City Opera||Yes |- |Puccini||Tosca||Tosca||1957–1960||Murrah High School Auditorium for the Jackson Opera Guild, Musicarnival|| No |- |Rameau||Hippolyte et Aricie||Aricie||1966||Opera Company of Boston||Yes |- |Rimsky-Korsakov||Le Coq d'Or||Queen Shemakha||1967–1971||New York City Opera||Yes |- |Romberg||The Student Prince||Kathie||1954||Chicago Theater of the Air||Yes |- |Rossini||The Barber of Seville||Rosina||1974–1980||Opera Company of Boston, San Antonio Symphony, New York City Opera, Kennedy Center, Fort Worth Opera, Palm Beach Opera, Festival Internacional Cervantino, Robin Hood Dell ||Yes |- |Rossini||Il turco in Italia||Fiorilla||1978–1979||New York City Opera||Yes |- |Rossini||The Siege of Corinth||Pamira||1969–1976|| La Scala, Metropolitan Opera||Yes |- |Johann Strauss II||Die Fledermaus||Rosalinda||1955–1980||Musicarnival, New York City Opera, Cincinnati Opera, Opera Company of Boston||Yes |- |Johann Strauss II||Die Fledermaus||Adele||1977–1980||New York City Opera, San Diego Opera||Yes |- |Richard Strauss||Ariadne auf Naxos||Zerbinetta||1969||Boston Symphony Orchestra||Yes |- |Richard Strauss||Elektra||Fifth Maidservant||1953||San Francisco Opera ||No |- |Sullivan||H.M.S. Pinafore||Josephine||1945||Providence, Rhode Island at the Metropolitan Theater and Hartford, Connecticut at the Bushnell Memorial Auditorium||No |- |Sullivan||The Pirates of Penzance||Mabel||1945||Hartford, Connecticut at the Bushnell Memorial Auditorium||No |- |Suppé||Die schöne Galathee||Galatea||1965||Fort Worth Opera||No |- |Tchaikovsky||Cherevichki (performed under the title The Golden Slipper)||Oxana||1955||New York City Opera||No |- |Thomas||Mignon||Philine||1956||New York City Opera||No |- |Verdi||Aida||Aida||1954–1960||University of Utah football stadium, Paterson, New Jersey, Central City Opera|| Yes |- |Verdi||La traviata||Violetta||1951–1977||Kingston High School (Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania), Charleston Municipal Auditorium, Orlando Municipal Auditorium, Saenger Theatre, Duke University, Academy of Music, Erie Philharmonic Orchestra, Portland Civic Opera Association, DuMont Television Network, New York City Opera, Fort Worth Opera, Tulsa Opera, Cincinnati Opera, San Antonio Symphony, Grant Park, Teatro di San Carlo, Connecticut Opera, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Opera Company of Boston, La Fenice, San Antonio Grand Opera, San Francisco Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Ravinia Festival, Palm Beach Opera, Metropolitan Opera, Wolf Trap Opera Company, San Diego Opera || Yes |- |Verdi||Rigoletto||Gilda||1957–1977|| Grant Park, Opera Company of Boston || Yes |- |Wagner||Die Walküre||Gerhilde||1953||San Francisco Opera||No |- |Weisgall||Six Characters in Search of an Author||Coloratura||1959–1960||New York City Opera||Yes |- |-class="sortbottom" |}

Honors and awards

Sills received many honors and awards from the 1970s through her final years. Here are a list of her major awards, divided by category:

Grammy Award Nominations:

*1969 - Scenes and Arias from French Opera;

*1970 - Mozart and Strauss Arias;

*1976 - Music of Victor Herbert (WINNER)

Emmy Award Nominations:

*1975 - Profile in Music: Beverly Sills, Festival '75 (WINNER);

*1977 - Sills and Burnett at the Met;

*1978 - Lifestyles with Beverly Sills (WINNER);

*1980 - Beverly Sills in Concert;

*1981 - Great Performances: Beverly! Her Farewell Performance

Honorary Doctorates in Music:

*1972 - Temple University;

*1973 - New York University & New England Conservatory of Music;

*1974 - Harvard University

*1975 - California Institute of the Arts

Other Music-related awards:

*1970 - Musical America - Musician of the Year;

1971 - Inducted as a National Patroness of Delta Omicron, an international professional music fraternity on May 1

*1972 - Edison Award - Manon recording;

*1973 - Handel Medallion from New York City for artistic achievement;

*1979 - Recording Industry of America Cultural Award;

*1980 - Golden Baton, American Symphony Orchestra League;

*1985 - Kennedy Center Honors;

*1990 - National Medal of Arts from National Endowment for the Arts;

1996 - The 2nd Annual Heinz Award in Arts and Humanities

*2005 - Beverly Sills Artist Award established by the Metropolitan Opera ($50,000 annual award);

*2007 - Inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame

Charitable and Humanitarian Awards:

*1979 - Pearl S. Buck Women's Award;

*1980 - Presidential Medal of Freedom;

*1981 - Barnard College Medal of Distinction;

*1984 - Charles S. Hughes Gold Medal Award - Nat. Conf. of Christians and Jews;

*1985 - Gold Medal from National Institute of Social Sciences

Recordings and broadcasts

During her operatic career, Sills recorded eighteen full-length operas:

The Ballad of Baby Doe (Bible, Cassel; Buckley, 1959)

Giulio Cesare (Wolff, Forrester, Treigle; Rudel, 1967)

Roberto Devereux (Wolff, Ilosfalvy, Glossop; Mackerras, 1969)

Lucia di Lammermoor (Bergonzi, Cappuccilli, Díaz; Schippers, 1970)

Manon (Gedda, Souzay, Bacquier; Rudel, 1970)

La traviata (Gedda, Panerai; Ceccato, 1971)

Maria Stuarda (Farrell, Burrows, L.Quilico; Ceccato, 1971)

The Tales of Hoffmann (Marsee, Burrows, Treigle; Rudel, 1972)

Anna Bolena (Verrett, Burrows, Plishka; Rudel, 1972)

I puritani (Gedda, L.Quilico, Plishka; Rudel, 1973)

Norma (Verrett, di Giuseppe, Plishka; Levine, 1973)

The Siege of Corinth (Verrett, Theyard, Díaz; Schippers, 1974)

Il barbiere di Siviglia (Barbieri, Gedda, Milnes, Raimondi; Levine, 1974–75)

I Capuleti e i Montecchi (Baker, Gedda, Herincx, Lloyd; G.Patanè, 1975)

Thaïs (Gedda, Milnes; Maazel, 1976)

Louise (Gedda, van Dam; Rudel, 1977)

Don Pasquale (Kraus, Titus, Gramm; Caldwell, 1978)

Rigoletto (M.Dunn, Kraus, Milnes, Ramey; Rudel, 1978)

Sills also recorded nine solo recital albums of arias and songs, and was soprano soloist on a 1967 recording of Mahler's Symphony No. 2.

She starred in eight opera productions televised on PBS and several more on other public TV systems. She participated in such TV specials as A Look-in at the Met with Danny Kaye in 1975, Sills and Burnett at the Met, with Carol Burnett in 1976, and Profile in Music, which won an Emmy Award for its showing in the US in 1975, although it had been recorded in England in 1971.

Some of those televised performances have been commercially distributed on videotape and DVD:

Ariadne auf Naxos (Watson, Nagy; Leinsdorf, 1969) [Concert Version]

La fille du régiment (Costa-Greenspon, McDonald, Malas; Wendelken-Wilson, Mansouri, 1974)

Roberto Devereux (Marsee, Alexander, Fredricks; Rudel, Capobianco, 1975)

La traviata (H.Price, Fredricks; Rudel, Capobianco, 1976)

Il barbiere di Siviglia (H.Price, Titus, Gramm, Ramey; Caldwell, Caldwell, 1976)

Manon (H.Price, Fredricks, Ramey; Rudel, Capobianco, 1977)

Others not available commercially include:

The Magic Flute (Pracht, Shirley, Reardon; NN, NN, 1966)

Le coq d'or (Costa-Greenspon, di Giuseppe, Treigle; Rudel, Capobianco, 1971)

Die lustige Witwe (H.Price, Titus; Alcántara, Capobianco, 1977)

Il Turco in Italia (Marsee, H.Price, Gramm; Rudel, Capobianco, 1978)

Don Pasquale (Kraus, Hagegård, Bacquier; Rescigno, Dexter, 1979)

After her retirement from singing in 1980 up through 2006, Sills was the host for many of the PBS Live from Lincoln Center telecasts.

Further reading/listening/viewing

Sills, Beverly (1976). Bubbles: A Self-Portrait. New York: Bobbs-Merrill. ISBN 0-446-81520-9. A revised edition was issued in 1981 as Bubbles: An Encore.

Sills, Beverly (with Lawrence Linderman) (1987). Beverly: An Autobiography. New York: Bantam Books.ISBN

0-553-05173-3.

Sills, Beverly (1987). Beverly Sills: On My Own. ISBN 0-553-45743-8. An audio book designated as a companion to Beverly: An Autobiography, with Sills speaking in interview about her life, interspersed with narration and live musical excerpts. There is no direct text from the printed autobiography.

Paolucci, Bridget (1990). Beverly Sills. New York: Chelsea House Publishers. ISBN 1-55546-677-X.

Sargeant, Withrop (1973). Divas. New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan. ISBN 0-698-10489-7.

Beverly Sills: Made in America (2006). Deutsche Grammophon B0007999-09. A 90-minute documentary on Sills's singing career with many rare video performance and interview clips.

References

External links

Beverly Sills Online: tribute site with discography, bibliography, photo gallery, sound and video clips, timeline, press articles and other resources.

Beverly Sills:Special mother to the special children: summarizes Sills' charitable work for disabled children.

: Filmography

Beverly Sills: National Women's Hall of Fame profile

Beverly Sills at BrainyQuote: quotations

Beverly Sills: Made in America (PBS Great Performances)

Beverly Sills at OperaMom.com

NY Times five-page obituary, dated July 3, 2007

Category:1929 births Category:2007 deaths Category:American female singers Category:American Jews Category:American opera singers Category:American singers Category:American sopranos Category:American people of Romanian-Jewish descent Category:American people of Ukrainian-Jewish descent Category:Cancer deaths in New York Category:Deaths from lung cancer Category:Erasmus Hall High School alumni Category:Gilbert and Sullivan performers Category:Grammy Award winners Category:Jewish actors Category:Jewish American musicians Category:Jewish classical musicians Category:Jewish opera singers Category:Kennedy Center honorees Category:Opera managers Category:Operatic sopranos Category:People from Brooklyn Category:United States National Medal of Arts recipients

Name	Arnold Schwarzenegger
Caption	Schwarzenegger in June 2010.
Order	38th
Office	Governor of California
Lieutenant	Cruz BustamanteJohn GaramendiAbel Maldonado
Term start	November 17, 2003
Term end	January 3, 2011
Predecessor	Gray Davis
Successor	Jerry Brown
Birth date	July 30, 1947
Birth place	Thal, Austria
Party	Republican Party
Spouse	Maria Shriver (1986–present)
Children	Katherine (b. 1989)Christina (b. 1991)Patrick (b. 1993)Christopher (b. 1997)
Residence	Brentwood
Alma mater	Santa Monica CollegeUniversity of Wisconsin, Superior
Profession	BodybuilderActor
Religion	Roman Catholicism
Signature	Arnold Schwarzenegger Signature.svg
Website	Personal Website
Branch	Austrian Armed Forces
Serviceyears	1965

Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger (, ; born July 30, 1947) is an Austrian-American bodybuilder, actor, model, businessman and politician who served as the 38th Governor of California.

Schwarzenegger began weight training at 15. He was awarded the title of Mr. Universe at age 20 and went on to win the Mr. Olympia contest a total of seven times. Schwarzenegger has remained a prominent presence in the sport of bodybuilding and has written several books and numerous articles on the sport.

Schwarzenegger gained worldwide fame as a Hollywood action film icon, noted for his lead roles in such films as Conan the Barbarian, The Terminator and Commando. He was nicknamed the "Austrian Oak" and the "Styrian Oak" in his bodybuilding days, "Arnie" during his acting career and more recently the "Governator" (a portmanteau of "Governor" and "Terminator").

As a Republican, he was first elected on October 7, 2003, in a special recall election to replace then-Governor Gray Davis. Schwarzenegger was sworn in on November 17, 2003, to serve the remainder of Davis's term. Schwarzenegger was then re-elected on November 7, 2006, in California's 2006 gubernatorial election, to serve a full term as governor, defeating Democrat Phil Angelides, who was California State Treasurer at the time. Schwarzenegger was sworn in for his second term on January 5, 2007. Democrat Jerry Brown was elected to succeed him in 2010 and assumed the post in January 2011.

Early life

Schwarzenegger was born in Thal, Austria, a small village bordering the Styrian capital Graz, and was christened Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger. His parents were the local police chief Gustav Schwarzenegger (1907–1972) and Aurelia Jadrny (1922–1998). His father served in World War II with the German Army as a Hauptfeldwebel of the Feldgendarmerie and was discharged in 1943 after contracting malaria. They were married on October 20, 1945 – Gustav was 38, and Aurelia was a 23-year-old widow with a son named Meinhard. According to Schwarzenegger, both of his parents were very strict: "Back then in Austria it was a very different world, if we did something bad or we disobeyed our parents, the rod was not spared."

Gustav had a preference for Meinhard, the elder of the two sons. His favoritism was "strong and blatant," which stemmed from unfounded suspicion that Arnold was not his child. Schwarzenegger has said his father had "no patience for listening or understanding your problems... there was a wall; a real wall." In later life, Schwarzenegger commissioned the Simon Wiesenthal Center to research his father's wartime record, which came up with no evidence of atrocities despite Gustav's membership in the Nazi Party and SA. Schwarzenegger has responded to a question asking if he was 13 when he started weightlifting: "I actually started weight training when I was 15, but I'd been participating in sports, like soccer, for years, so I felt that although I was slim, I was well-developed, at least enough so that I could start going to the gym and start Olympic lifting." During a speech in 2001, he said, "My own plan formed when I was 14 years old. My father had wanted me to be a police officer like he was. My mother wanted me to go to trade school." Schwarzenegger took to visiting a gym in Graz, where he also frequented the local movie theaters to see bodybuilding idols such as Reg Park, Steve Reeves and Johnny Weissmuller on the big screen. "I was inspired by individuals like Reg Park and Steve Reeves." In 1961, Schwarzenegger met former Mr. Austria Kurt Marnul, who invited him to train at the gym in Graz.

In 1971, his brother Meinhard died in a car accident. Barbara Baker, his first serious girlfriend, has said he informed her of his father's death without emotion and that he never spoke of his brother. Over time, he has given at least three versions of why he was absent from his father's funeral.

Early adulthood

Schwarzenegger served in the Austrian army in 1965 to fulfill the one year of service required at the time of all 18-year-old Austrian males. Also in 1966, Schwarzenegger had the opportunity to meet childhood idol Reg Park, who became his friend and mentor. The training paid off and, in 1967, Schwarzenegger won the title for the first time, becoming the youngest ever Mr. Universe at the age of 20. realized his dream by moving to the United States in September 1968 at the age of 21, speaking little English. Schwarzenegger also became good friends with professional wrestler "Superstar" Billy Graham. In 1970, at age 23, he captured his first Mr. Olympia title in New York, and would go on to win the title a total of seven times. LA Weekly would later say in 2002 that Schwarzenegger is the most famous immigrant in America, who "overcame a thick Austrian accent and transcended the unlikely background of bodybuilding to become the biggest movie star in the world in the 1990s". Schwarzenegger talked about Barbara in his memoir in 1977: "Basically it came down to this: she was a well-balanced woman who wanted an ordinary, solid life, and I was not a well-balanced man, and hated the very idea of ordinary life." Baker published her memoir in 2006, entitled Arnold and Me: In the Shadow of the Austrian Oak. Although Baker, at times, painted an unflattering portrait of her former lover, Schwarzenegger actually contributed to the tell-all book with a foreword, and also met with Baker for three hours. |weight = 250 pounds (113 kg) |firstproshow = NABBA Mr. Universe |firstproshowyear = 1968 |bestwin = IFBB Mr. Olympia |bestwinyear = 1970–1975, 1980, Seven Times |predecessor = Sergio Oliva ('69), Frank Zane ('79) |successor = Franco Columbu ('76, '81) |yesorretiredyear = Retired 1980 }}

Schwarzenegger is considered among the most important figures in the history of bodybuilding, and his legacy is commemorated in the Arnold Classic annual bodybuilding competition. Schwarzenegger has remained a prominent face in the bodybuilding sport long after his retirement, in part because of his ownership of gyms and fitness magazines. He has presided over numerous contests and awards shows.

For many years, he wrote a monthly column for the bodybuilding magazines Muscle & Fitness and Flex. Shortly after being elected Governor, he was appointed executive editor of both magazines, in a largely symbolic capacity. The magazines agreed to donate $250,000 a year to the Governor's various physical fitness initiatives. The magazine MuscleMag International has a monthly two-page article on him, and refers to him as "The King".

One of the first competitions he won was the Junior Mr. Europe contest in 1965. He has called the drugs for "tissue building."

In 1999, Schwarzenegger sued Dr. Willi Heepe, a German doctor who publicly predicted his early death on the basis of a link between his steroid use and his later heart problems. As the doctor had never examined him personally, Schwarzenegger collected a US$10,000 libel judgment against him in a German court. In 1999, Schwarzenegger also sued and settled with The Globe, a U.S. tabloid which had made similar predictions about the bodybuilder's future health.

Acting career

Other names	Arnold StrongArnie
Years active	1970–2006, 2009–present (acting)
Occupation	Actor, Director, Producer}}

Schwarzenegger wanted to move from bodybuilding into acting, finally achieving it when he was chosen to play the role of Hercules in 1970's Hercules in New York. Credited under the name "Arnold Strong," his accent in the film was so thick that his lines were dubbed after production. Schwarzenegger auditioned for the title role of The Incredible Hulk, but did not win the role because of his height. Later, Lou Ferrigno got the part of Dr. David Banner's alter ego. Schwarzenegger appeared with Kirk Douglas and Ann-Margret in the 1979 comedy The Villain. In 1980 he starred in a biopic of the 1950s actress Jayne Mansfield as Mansfield's husband, Mickey Hargitay.

Schwarzenegger's breakthrough film was the sword-and-sorcery epic Conan the Barbarian in 1982, which was a box-office hit. In 1983, Schwarzenegger starred in the promotional video "Carnival in Rio".

In 1984, he made the first of three appearances as the titular character and what some would say was the signature role in his acting career in director James Cameron's science fiction thriller film The Terminator. Following The Terminator, Schwarzenegger made Red Sonja in 1985, which "sank without a trace."

His film appearances after becoming Governor of California include a 3-second cameo appearance in The Rundown (a.k.a., Welcome to the Jungle) with The Rock, and the 2004 remake of Around the World in 80 Days, where he appeared onscreen with action star Jackie Chan for the first time. In 2005 he appeared as himself in the film The Kid & I. Schwarzenegger voiced Baron von Steuben in Episode 24 ("Valley Forge") of Liberty's Kids.

Schwarzenegger had been rumored to be appearing in Terminator Salvation as the original T-800 model, alongside Roland Kickinger. Schwarzenegger denied his involvement, but it was later revealed that although he would appear briefly he would not be shooting new footage, and his image would be inserted into the movie from stock footage of the first Terminator movie.

Schwarzenegger's most recent appearance was in Sylvester Stallone's The Expendables, where he made a cameo appearance alongside Stallone and Bruce Willis.

Political career

meets with Schwarzenegger for the first time at the White House.]]

Early politics

Schwarzenegger has been a registered Republican for many years. As an actor, his political views were always well-known as they contrasted with those of many other prominent Hollywood stars, who are generally considered to be a liberal and Democratic-leaning community. At the 2004 Republican National Convention, Schwarzenegger gave a speech and explained why he was a Republican:

In 1985, Schwarzenegger appeared in Stop the Madness, an anti-drug music video sponsored by the Reagan administration. He first came to wide public notice as a Republican during the 1988 Presidential election, accompanying then-Vice President George H.W. Bush at a campaign rally.

Schwarzenegger's first political appointment was as chairman of the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, on which he served from 1990 to 1993.

Between 1993 and 1994, Schwarzenegger was a Red Cross ambassador (a mostly ceremonial role fulfilled by celebrities), recording several television/radio public service announcements to give blood. A small amount of interest was garnered by his wearing of a white t-shirt with the Red Cross on it, while posing with a flexed arm; the image made it into several celebrity magazines.

In an interview with Talk magazine in late 1999, Schwarzenegger was asked if he thought of running for office. He replied, "I think about it many times. The possibility is there, because I feel it inside." The Hollywood Reporter claimed shortly after that Schwarzenegger sought to end speculation that he might run for governor of California. meets with Schwarzenegger after his successful election to the California Governorship]]

On October 7, 2003, the recall election resulted in Governor Gray Davis being removed from office with 55.4% of the Yes vote in favor of a recall. Schwarzenegger was elected Governor of California under the second question on the ballot with 48.6% of the vote to choose a successor to Davis. Schwarzenegger defeated Democrat Cruz Bustamante, fellow Republican Tom McClintock, and others. His nearest rival, Bustamante, received 31% of the vote. In total, Schwarzenegger won the election by about 1.3 million votes. Under the regulations of the California Constitution, no runoff election was required. Schwarzenegger was the first foreign-born governor of California since Irish-born Governor John G. Downey in 1862.

As soon as Schwarzenegger was elected governor, Willie Brown said he would start a drive to recall the governor. Schwarzenegger was equally entrenched in what he considered to be his mandate in cleaning up gridlock. Building on a catchphrase from the sketch "Hans and Franz" from Saturday Night Live (which partly parodied his bodybuilding career), Schwarzenegger called the Democratic State politicians "girlie men".

Schwarzenegger's early victories included repealing an unpopular increase in the vehicle registration fee as well as preventing driver's licenses being given out to illegal immigrants, but later he began to feel the backlash when powerful state unions began to oppose his various initiatives. Key among his reckoning with political realities was a special election he called in November 2005, in which four ballot measures he sponsored were defeated. Schwarzenegger accepted personal responsibility for the defeats and vowed to continue to seek consensus for the people of California. He would later comment that "no one could win if the opposition raised 160 million dollars to defeat you".

Schwarzenegger then went against the advice of fellow Republican strategists and appointed a Democrat, Susan Kennedy, as his Chief of Staff. Schwarzenegger gradually moved towards a more politically moderate position, determined to build a winning legacy with only a short time to go until the next gubernatorial election.

Schwarzenegger ran for re-election against Democrat Phil Angelides, the California State Treasurer, in the 2006 elections, held on November 7, 2006. Despite a poor year nationally for the Republican party, Schwarzenegger won re-election with 56.0% of the vote compared with 38.9% for Angelides, a margin of well over one million votes. In recent years, many commentators have seen Schwarzenegger as moving away from the right and towards the center of the political spectrum. After hearing a speech by Schwarzenegger at the 2006 Martin Luther King, Jr. breakfast, San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom said that, "[H]e's becoming a Democrat [... H]e's running back, not even to the center. I would say center-left".

It was rumored that Schwarzenegger might run for the United States Senate in 2010, as his governorship would be term-limited by that time. This turned out to be false.

comments on wildfires and firefighting efforts in California, October 2007]] in Chaika]] Wendy Leigh, who wrote an unofficial biography on Schwarzenegger, claims he plotted his political rise from an early age using the movie business and bodybuilding as building blocks to escape a depressing home. He holds Austrian citizenship by birth and has held U.S. citizenship since becoming naturalized in 1983. Being Austrian and thus European, he was able to win the 2007 European Voice campaigner of the year award for taking action against climate change with the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 and plans to introduce an emissions trading scheme with other US states and possibly with the EU. Still, Schwarzenegger has always identified with his American citizenship, and has shown great affinity for the state of California beyond his foreign birth.

Because of his personal wealth from his acting career, Schwarzenegger does not accept his governor's salary of $175,000 per year.

Schwarzenegger's endorsement in the Republican primary of the 2008 U.S. Presidential election was highly sought; despite being good friends with candidates Rudy Giuliani and Senator John McCain, Schwarzenegger remained neutral throughout 2007 and early 2008. Giuliani dropped out of the Presidential race on January 30, 2008, largely because of a poor showing in Florida, and endorsed McCain. Later that night, Schwarzenegger was in the audience at a Republican debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California. The following day, he endorsed McCain, joking, "It's Rudy's fault!" (in reference to his friendships with both candidates and that he could not make up his mind). Schwarzenegger's endorsement was thought to be a boost for Senator McCain's campaign; both spoke about their concerns for the environment and economy.

In its April 2010 report, Progressive ethics watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington named Schwarzenegger one of 11 "worst governors" in the United States because of various ethics issues throughout Schwarzenegger's term as governor.

Amendment of Three Strikes Law

Governor Schwarzenegger played a significant role in opposing Proposition 66, a proposed amendment of the Californian Three Strikes Law, in November 2004. This amendment would have required the third felony to be either violent or serious to mandate a 25-years-to-life sentence. In the last week before the ballot, Schwarzenegger launched an intensive campaign against Proposition 66. He stated that "it would release 26,000 dangerous criminals and rapists".

Electoral history

Environmental record

On September 27, 2006 Schwarzenegger signed a bill creating the nation's first cap on greenhouse gas emissions. The law set new regulations on the amount of emissions utilities, refineries and manufacturing plants are allowed to release into the atmosphere. Schwarzenegger also signed a second global warming bill that prohibits large utilities and corporations in California from making long-term contracts with suppliers who do not meet the state's greenhouse gas emission standards. The two bills are part of a plan to reduce California's emissions by 25 percent to 1990's levels by 2020. In 2005, Schwarzenegger issued an executive order calling to reduce greenhouse gases to 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050.

Schwarzenegger signed another executive order on October 17, 2006 allowing California to work with the Northeast's Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. They plan to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by issuing a limited amount of carbon credits to each power plant in participating states. Any power plants that exceed emissions for the amount of carbon credits will have to purchase more credits to cover the difference. The plan is set to be in effect in 2009. In addition to using his political power to fight global warming, the governor has taken steps at his home to reduce his personal carbon footprint. Schwarzenegger has adapted one of his Hummers to run on hydrogen and another to run on biofuels. He has also installed solar panels to heat his home.

In respect of his contribution to the direction of the US motor industry, Schwarzenegger was invited to open the 2009 SAE World Congress in Detroit, on April 20, 2009.

Business career

Schwarzenegger has also had a highly successful business career. Schwarzenegger and Columbu used profits from their bricklaying venture to start a mail order business, selling bodybuilding and fitness-related equipment and instructional tapes. In 1992, Schwarzenegger and his wife opened a restaurant in Santa Monica called Schatzi On Main. Schatzi literally means "little treasure," colloquial for "honey" or "darling" in German. In 1998, he sold his restaurant. He invested in a shopping mall in Columbus, Ohio. He has talked about some of those who have helped him over the years in business: "I couldn't have learned about business without a parade of teachers guiding me... from Milton Friedman to Donald Trump... and now, Les Wexner and Warren Buffett. I even learned a thing or two from Planet Hollywood, such as when to get out! And I did!"

Planet Hollywood

Schwarzenegger was a founding celebrity investor in the Planet Hollywood chain of international theme restaurants (modeled after the Hard Rock Cafe) along with Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone and Demi Moore. Schwarzenegger severed his financial ties with the business in early 2000. Schwarzenegger said the company had not had the success he had hoped for, claiming he wanted to focus his attention on "new US global business ventures" and his movie career. Over the years, he invested his bodybuilding and movie earnings in an array of stocks, bonds, privately controlled companies and real estate holdings worldwide, so a more accurate estimation of his net worth is difficult to calculate, particularly in light of declining real estate values owing to economic recessions in the USA and Europe. In June 1997, Schwarzenegger spent $38 million of his own money on a private Gulfstream Jet. Schwarzenegger once said of his fortune, "Money doesn't make you happy. I now have $50 million, but I was just as happy when I had $48 million." Within the last five days before the election, news reports appeared in the Los Angeles Times recounting allegations of sexual misconduct from several individual women, six of whom eventually came forward with their personal stories.

Three of the women claimed he had grabbed their breasts, a fourth said he placed his hand under her skirt on her buttock. A fifth woman claimed Schwarzenegger tried to take off her bathing suit in a hotel elevator, and the last says he pulled her onto his lap and asked her about a particular sex act. Schwarzenegger is shown smoking a marijuana joint after winning Mr. Olympia in the 1975 documentary film Pumping Iron. In an interview with GQ magazine in October 2007, Schwarzenegger said, "[Marijuana] is not a drug. It's a leaf. My drug was pumping iron, trust me." His spokesperson later said the comment was meant to be a joke. A joint statement read: "The parties are content to put this matter behind them and are pleased that this legal dispute has now been settled." She claimed Walsh and Main libeled her in a Los Angeles Times article when they contended she encouraged his behavior. They have four children: Katherine Eunice Shriver Schwarzenegger (born December 13, 1989 in Los Angeles); Christina Maria Aurelia Schwarzenegger (born July 23, 1991 in Los Angeles); Patrick Arnold Schwarzenegger (born September 18, 1993 in Los Angeles); and Christopher Sargent Shriver Schwarzenegger (born September 27, 1997 in Los Angeles).

Schwarzenegger and his family currently live in their home in Brentwood. They used to own a home in the Pacific Palisades. The family owns vacation homes in Sun Valley, Idaho and Hyannis Port, Massachusetts.

On Sundays, the family attends Mass at St. Monica's Catholic Church.

Schwarzenegger has said he believes the secret of a good marriage is love and respect. However, in 1988 both the Daily Mail and Time Out magazine mentioned that Schwarzenegger appeared noticeably shorter. More recently, before running for Governor, Schwarzenegger's height was once again questioned in an article by the Chicago Reader. As Governor, Schwarzenegger engaged in a light-hearted exchange with Assemblyman Herb Wesson over their heights. At one point Wesson made an unsuccessful attempt to, in his own words, "[s]ettle this once and for all and find out how tall he is" by using a tailor's tape measure on the Governor. Schwarzenegger retaliated by placing a pillow stitched with the words "Need a lift?" on the five-foot-five inch (165 cm) Wesson's chair before a negotiating session in his office. Bob Mulholland also claimed Arnold was 5'10" and that he wore risers in his boots. The debate on Schwarzenegger's height has spawned a website solely dedicated to the issue, and his page remains one of the most active on CelebHeights.com, a website which discusses the heights of celebrities. It is now officially titled UPC-Arena.

The Sun Valley Resort has a short ski trail called Arnold's Run, named after Schwarzenegger (It was named after him in 2001). The trail is categorized as a black diamond, or most difficult, for its terrain.

He bought the first Hummer manufactured for civilian use in 1992, a model so large, 6,300 lbs and wide, that it is classified as a large truck and U.S. fuel economy regulations do not apply to it. During the Gubernatorial Recall campaign he announced that he would convert one of his Hummers to burn hydrogen. The conversion was reported to have cost about US$21,000. After the election, he signed an executive order to jump-start the building of hydrogen refueling plants called the California Hydrogen Highway Network, and gained a U.S. Department of Energy grant to help pay for its projected US$91,000,000 cost. California took delivery of the first H2H (Hydrogen Hummer) in October 2004.

People in Thal celebrated Schwarzenegger's 60th birthday by throwing a party. Officials proclaimed A Day for Arnold on July 30, 2007. Thal 145, the number of the house where Schwarzenegger was born, belonged to Schwarzenegger and no one will ever be assigned to that number.

On February 12, 2010, Schwarzenegger was the 18th runner on the 106th day of the Vancouver Olympic Torch relay. His leg was along the Stanley Park Seawall, and he exchanged a "torch kiss" with the next runner, Sebastian Coe.

Accidents and injuries

Schwarzenegger broke his right femur while skiing in Sun Valley, Idaho with his family on December 23, 2006. He tripped over his ski pole on Lower Warm Springs run on Bald Mountain, an 'easy' or green level run. He is an expert level skier. On December 26, 2006, he underwent a 90-minute operation in which cables and screws were used to wire the broken bone back together. He was released from the St. John's Health Center on December 30, 2006. Schwarzenegger did not delay his second oath of office on January 5, 2007, although he was still on crutches at the time.

Schwarzenegger has twice crashed motorcycles on public highways, injuring himself in the process. On January 8, 2006, while riding his Harley Davidson motorcycle in Los Angeles, with his son Patrick in the sidecar, another driver backed into the street he was riding on, causing him and his son to collide with the car at a low speed. While his son and the other driver were unharmed, the governor sustained a minor injury to his lip, forcing him to get 15 stitches. "No citations were issued", said Officer Jason Lee, a Los Angeles Police Department spokesman. Schwarzenegger, who famously rode motorcycles in the Terminator movies, has never obtained an M-1 or M-2 endorsement on his California driver's license that would allow him to legally ride a motorcycle without a sidecar on the street. Previously, on December 9, 2001, he broke six ribs and was hospitalized for four days after a motorcycle crash in Los Angeles.

Schwarzenegger was born with a bicuspid aortic valve, an aortic valve with only two leaflets (a normal aortic valve has three leaflets). Schwarzenegger opted in 1997 for a replacement heart valve made of his own transplanted tissue; medical experts predicted he would require heart valve replacement surgery in the following two to eight years as his valve would progressively degrade. Schwarzenegger apparently opted against a mechanical valve, the only permanent solution available at the time of his surgery, because it would have sharply limited his physical activity and capacity to exercise.

He saved a drowning man's life in 2004 while on vacation in Hawaii by swimming out and bringing him back to shore.

Schwarzenegger's private jet made an emergency landing at Van Nuys Airport on June 19, 2009 after the pilot reported smoke coming from the cockpit, according to a statement released by the governor's press secretary. No one was harmed in the incident.

References

Bibliography

 –  –  –  –

Interviews

Interview in Oui magazine, August 1977 at thesmokinggun.com

Excerpts from Time Out (London) interview, 1977 at time.com

Schwarzenegger Interview on The Hour with George Stroumboulopoulos

Film

"Arnold Schwarzenegger – Hollywood Hero" DVD ~ Todd Baker

"Pumping Iron" (25th Anniversary Special Edition) DVD ~ George Butler

External links

Arnold Schwarzenegger official constituency site

Complete text, audio, video of Governor Schwarzenegger's 2004 Republican National Convention Address AmericanRhetoric.com

Complete text and audio of Governor Schwarzenegger's Speech to the United Nations on Global Climate Change AmericanRhetoric.com, September 24, 2007

Archive of Correspondence pertaining to Governor Schwarzenegger and same-sex marriage AB 43 Project

;Business

Arnold Schwarzenegger's Official Website

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