: Falstaff and his page]] Sir John Falstaff is a fictional character who appears in three plays by William Shakespeare. In the two Henry IV plays, he is a companion to Prince Hal, the future King Henry V. A fat, vain, boastful, and cowardly knight, Falstaff leads the apparently wayward Prince Hal into trouble, and is ultimately repudiated after Hal becomes king. Falstaff also appears in The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Shakespearean scholar Edmond Malone claimed, on uncertain authority, that John Heminges was the actor Shakespeare had in mind to portray Falstaff; an alternative is that Falstaff was written for Will Kempe, the clown of Shakespeare's company. The original actor was later succeeded by John Lowin, another comic actor. It is also asserted that Thomas Pope played the role of Falstaff after Kempe left the troupe.

The character of Falstaff first appears in Henry IV, Part 1, but was at first called Sir John Oldcastle. Shakespeare changed the name when protests were made by Oldcastle's descendants. He adapted the new name from the historical Sir John Fastolf, a Norfolk knight who had appeared in his earlier play Henry VI.

Though primarily a comic figure, Falstaff still embodies a kind of depth common to Shakespeare's tricky comedy. In Act II, Scene III of Henry V, his death is described by the character "Hostess", possibly the Mistress Quickly of Henry IV, who describes his body in terms that echo the death of Socrates.

Appearances

) and Falstaff (John Rousseau) in "The Merry Wives of Windsor", staged by Pacific Repertory Theatre at the Golden Bough Playhouse in Carmel, Ca., in 1999.]] He appears in the following plays:

Henry IV, part 1

Henry IV, part 2

The Merry Wives of Windsor

His death is mentioned in Henry V but he has no lines, nor is it directed that he appear on stage. However, many stage and film adaptations have seen it necessary to include Falstaff for the insight he provides into King Henry V's character. The most notable examples in cinema are Laurence Olivier's 1944 version and Kenneth Branagh's 1989 film, both of which draw additional material from the Henry IV plays.

There are several works about Falstaff, inspired by Shakespeare's plays:

Orson Welles's Chimes at Midnight (1966) compiles the two Henry IV plays into a single, condensed storyline, while adding a handful of scenes from Richard II and Henry V. The movie, also known as Falstaff, features Welles himself in the title role.

Falstaff (1893), Giuseppe Verdi's last opera, with a libretto by Arrigo Boito. It is mostly based upon The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Falstaff (1799), Antonio Salieri's opera, with a libretto by Carlo Prospers Defranchesi, which is also based upon The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Falstaff (1913), a "symphonic study" by Elgar, which is a sympathetic and programmatic musical portrait.

Falstaff, a Hungarian TV movie based on Henry IV, part 1 and Henry IV, part 2, prepared by László Vámos and Péter Müller

Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor (1849) by Carl Otto Nicolai, based upon The Merry Wives of Windsor.

Sir John in Love, 1924–1928, an opera by composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, based upon The Merry Wives of Windsor, and notable for including an arrangement of the tune "Greensleeves".

The opera Plump Jack (1984) by Gordon Getty.

The Tragically Hip song "Fiddler's Green" mentions Falstaff.

The Gus Van Sant film My Own Private Idaho offers a version of the two parts of Henry IV in which Falstaff is Bob, a derelict and petty thief.

The novel Falstaff by Robert Nye.

Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next series, where Falstaff is an operative of Jurisfiction, the policing agency that operates within fiction to safeguard the stability of the written word. He is presented as a ladies' man.

The poem Geckos in Obscure Light by William Logan contains a line "beneath bellies distended as Falstaff’s". The poem appeared in the New Yorker in April 2007 and can be read on The New Yorker's web site.

The Marvel Comics character Volstagg was modeled after Falstaff.

Character

Falstaff is a central element in the two parts of Henry IV, a natural portion of their structure. Yet he does at times seem to be mainly a fun-maker, a character whom we both laugh with and laugh at, and almost in the same breath. Nothing has helped more to give this impression than the fat knight’s account of the double robbery at Gadshill. Even his name invites humor, as it is a sort of pun on impotence, brought on by the character's excessive consumption of alcohol. Scholars also note the potential for a pun on the author himself - Fall-Staff; Shake-Spear.

The character of Falstaff seems to have been inspired by the theatrical forerunners Vice and miles gloriosus, but Falstaff has a unique, and undeniable depth of character. Beneath Falstaff’s contagious panache, he is a Homeric burlesque, an iconoclast, a philosopher, and a paradox. Falstaff is hailed by Harold Bloom and other literary scholars as one of Shakespeare’s greatest creations. Falstaff is closely scrutinized because his character is a revolution on the stage; he represents the transition from flamboyant, 'carnivalesque' comedy to the modern, aesthetic character. He’s a point of ‘transcendent subjectivity’³ from which we see roots of the modern, western human.

Origins

One theory is that Shakespeare originally named Falstaff "John Oldcastle", and that Lord Cobham, a descendant of the historical John Oldcastle, complained, forcing Shakespeare to change the name. There is both textual and external evidence for this belief. In Henry IV, Part One, Falstaff's name is always unmetrical, suggesting a name change after the original composition; Prince Hal refers to Falstaff as "my old lad of the castle" in the first act of the play; the epilogue to Henry IV, Part II, moreover, explicitly disavows any connection between Falstaff and Oldcastle.

The historical Oldcastle was unlike Falstaff; in particular, he was a Lollard who was executed for his beliefs, and he was respected by many Protestants as a martyr. Shakespeare knew an anonymous play of the 1580s, The Famous Victories of Henry V, in which Oldcastle is Henry V's companion, and Oldcastle's history is described in Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles, Shakespeare's usual source for his histories.

It is not clear, however, if Shakespeare characterized Falstaff as he did for dramatic purposes, or because of a specific desire to satirize Oldcastle or the Cobhams. Cobham was a common butt of veiled satire in Elizabethan popular literature; he figures in Ben Jonson's Every Man in His Humour and may have been part of the reason The Isle of Dogs was suppressed. Shakespeare's desire to burlesque a hero of early English Protestantism could indicate Catholic sympathies, but Henry Brooke, 11th Baron Cobham was sufficiently sympathetic to Catholicism that in 1603, he was imprisoned as part of the Main Plot to place Arbella Stuart on the English throne, so if Shakespeare wished to use Oldcastle to embarrass the Cobhams, he seems unlikely to have done so on religious grounds.

The Cobhams appear to have intervened while Shakespeare was in the process of writing either The Merry Wives of Windsor or the second part of Henry IV. The first part of Henry IV was probably written and performed in 1596, and the name Oldcastle had almost certainly been allowed by Master of the Revels Edmund Tilney. William Brooke, 10th Baron Cobham may have become aware of the offensive representation after a public performance; he may also have learned of it while it was being prepared for a court performance (Cobham was at that time Lord Chamberlain). As father-in-law to the newly-widowed Robert Cecil, Cobham certainly possessed the influence at court to get his complaint heard quickly. Shakespeare may have included a sly retaliation against the complaint in his play The Merry Wives of Windsor (published after the Henry IV series). In the play, the paranoid, jealous Master Ford uses the alias "Brook" to fool Falstaff, perhaps in reference to William Brooke. At any rate, The name is Falstaff in the Henry IV, part 1 quarto, of 1598, and the epilogue to the second part, published in 1600, contains this clarification: :One more word, I beseech you. If you be not too much cloyed with fat meat, our humble author will continue the story, with Sir John in it, and make you merry with fair Katharine of France where, for any thing I know, Falstaff shall die of a sweat, unless already a' be killed with your hard opinions; for Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man.

Another theory is that the new name "Falstaff" could have been derived from the medieval knight Sir John Fastolf (who was also a Lollard). Changing a few letters gave Shakespeare the name by which his invention is known today. There was a historical Sir John Fastolf who fought at the Battle of Patay against Joan of Arc, which the English lost. Fastolf's previous actions as a soldier had earned him wide respect, but he seems to have become a scapegoat after the debacle. He was among the few English military leaders to avoid death or capture during the battle, and although there is no evidence that he acted with cowardice, he was temporarily stripped of his knighthood. Fastolf's role in Henry VI, Part I loosely follows these events.

Stephen Greenblatt has suggested that writer Robert Greene may also have been an inspiration for the character of Falstaff. Notorious for a life of dissipation and debauchery somewhat similar to Falstaff, he was among the first to mention Shakespeare in his work (in Greene's Groats-Worth of Wit), suggesting to Greenblatt that the older writer may have influenced Shakespeare's characterization.

In Stratford-upon-Avon, the owners of Shrieves House, the former Three Tunns Tavern and now a museum, claim William Shakespeare based the character Falstaff on William Rogers, one of the Sargeants of the mace and close friend of the Shakespeares. This was suggested in circumstantial research by Petra Rees in her book The Shrieves House.

Notable Falstaffs

as Falstaff (1802)]] Stephen Kemble of the famous Kemble family at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London, 1802

Victor Buono at the Mark Taper Forum

Pat Carroll at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C.

Delaney Williams at the Folger Shakespeare Library

Maurice Evans on Broadway

Kevin Kline at Lincoln Center Theater and The Colbert Report

Samuel Phelps at Sadler's Wells Theatre

Anthony Quayle at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre

George Robey in Laurence Olivier's Henry V

Robbie Coltrane, in Kenneth Branagh's Henry V

Ralph Richardson at the Old Vic Theatre

Joss Ackland at the Old Vic and at the Barbican Theatre for the Royal Shakespeare Company

Orson Welles in the film Chimes at Midnight

Robert Stephens at the Royal Shakespeare Company

Desmond Barrit at the Royal Shakespeare Company

William Hutt at the Stratford Festival of Canada

Douglas Campbell at the Stratford Festival of Canada

Simon Callow at the Royal Shakespeare Company

David Warner at the Royal Shakespeare Company

James Keegan at the American Shakespeare Center

Roger Allam at Shakespeare's Globe

See also

Sir John Fastolf

Sir John Oldcastle

Battle of Patay

Falstaff (opera)

Toby Belch

PlumpJack Winery

In Modern/Pop Culture

Falstaff as an archetype may be related to modern pop culture characters like Tony Hancock, Arthur Daley, Del Boy, Homer Simpson, and may explain their appeal.

References

Endnotes

Secondary Sources

Caldwell, Ellen M. ""Banish All the Wor(l)d": Falstaff's Iconoclastic Threat to Kingship in I Henry IV." Renasence 59 (2007).

Doloff, Steven. "FALSTAFF'S 'HONOUR': HOMERIC BURLESQUE IN 1 HENRY IV (1597-8)." Notes & Queries 55 (2008).

Grady, Hugh. "Falstaff: Subjectivity between the Carnival and the Aesthetic." The Modern Language Review 96 (2001).

Bloom, Harold, editor. Falstaff. New York: Chelsea House, 1992.

Taylor, Gary. "William Shakespeare, Richard James, and the House of Cobham." Review of English Studies 58 (1987).

Wilson, John Dover. The Fortunes of Falstaff. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1943.

Stephen Cooper The Real Falstaff (a biography of Sir John Fastolf) (Pen & Sword, 2010)

Category:Literary archetypes by name Category:Male Shakespearean characters

Name	Orson Welles
Caption	Welles in 1937 (age 21)photographed by Carl Van Vechten
Birth name	George Orson Welles
Birth date	May 06, 1915
Birth place	Kenosha, Wisconsin,
Death date	October 10, 1985
Death place	Los Angeles, California,
Occupation	Actor, director, writer, producer, voice actor
Years active	1934–1985
Spouse	Virginia Nicholson (1934–1940)Rita Hayworth (1943–1948)Paola Mori (1955–1985)
Partner	Dolores del Río (1938–1941)Oja Kodar (1966–1985)
Awards	1941 Best Writing (Original Screenplay) for Citizen Kane 1970 Academy Honorary Award

George Orson Welles (May 6, 1915 – October 10, 1985), best known as Orson Welles, was an American filmmaker, actor, theatre director, screenwriter, and producer, who worked extensively in film, theatre, television and radio. Noted for his innovative dramatic productions as well as his distinctive voice and personality, Welles is widely acknowledged as one of the most accomplished dramatic artists of the twentieth century, especially for his significant and influential early work—despite his notoriously contentious relationship with Hollywood. His distinctive directorial style featured layered, nonlinear narrative forms, innovative uses of lighting such as chiaroscuro, unique camera angles, sound techniques borrowed from radio, deep focus shots, and long takes. Welles's long career in film is noted for his struggle for artistic control in the face of pressure from studios. Many of his films were severely edited and others left unreleased. He has therefore been praised as a major creative force and as "the ultimate auteur."

Welles first found national and international fame as the director and narrator of a 1938 radio adaptation of H. G. Wells's novel The War of the Worlds performed for the radio drama anthology series Mercury Theatre on the Air. It was reported to have caused widespread panic when listeners thought that an invasion by beings from another world was occurring. Although these reports of panic were mostly false and overstated, they rocketed Welles to instant notoriety.

Citizen Kane (1941), his first film with RKO, in which he starred in the role of Charles Foster Kane, is often considered the greatest film ever made. Several of his other films, including The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), Touch of Evil (1958), Chimes at Midnight (1965), and F for Fake (1974), are also widely considered to be masterpieces.

In 2002, he was voted the greatest film director of all time in two separate British Film Institute polls among directors and critics Well known for his baritone voice, Welles was also an extremely well regarded actor and was voted number 16 in AFI's 100 Years... 100 Stars list of the greatest American film actors of all time. He was also a celebrated Shakespearean stage actor and an accomplished magician, starring in troop variety shows in the war years.

Youth and early career (1915–1934)

Welles was born May 5, 1915, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, son of Richard Hodgdon Head Welles (1873, Missouri - December 28, 1930, Chicago, Illinois) and Beatrice Ives (1882 or 1883, Springfield, Illinois - May 10, 1924, Chicago, Illinois). His family was raised Roman Catholic. Despite his parents' affluence, Welles encountered many hardships in childhood. In 1919, his parents separated and moved to Chicago. His father, who had made a fortune as the inventor of a popular bicycle lamp, became an alcoholic and stopped working. Welles's mother, a concert pianist, played during lectures by Dudley Crafts Watson at the Chicago Art Institute to support her son and herself (the oldest Welles boy, "Dickie", had been institutionalized at an early age because he had learning difficulties). Beatrice died of jaundice in 1924 in a Chicago hospital a few days after Welles's ninth birthday. After his mother's death, Welles ceased pursuing his interest in music. He was taken in by Dudley Crafts Watson and lived with the family at Watson's family home, "Trillium Dell", on Marshman Avenue in Highland Park, Illinois. At the age of ten, Orson with Watson's third daughter, Marjorie (of the same age), ran away from home. They were found a week later, singing and dancing for money on a street corner in Milwaukee. His father died when Orson was 15 during the summer after Orson's graduation from Todd School for Boys, an independent school in Woodstock, Illinois. Maurice Bernstein, a physician from Chicago, became his guardian.

At Todd School, Welles came under the influence of Roger Hill, a teacher who later became Todd's headmaster. Hill provided Welles with an ad hoc educational environment that proved invaluable to his creative experience, allowing Welles to concentrate on subjects that interested him. Welles performed and staged his first theatrical experiments and productions there.

After his father's death, Welles traveled to Europe with the aid of a small inheritance. Welles later reported that while on a walking and painting trip through Ireland, he strode into the Gate Theatre in Dublin and claimed he was a Broadway star. The manager of Gate, Hilton Edwards, later said he didn't believe him but was impressed by his brashness and some impassioned quality in his audition. Welles made his stage debut at the Gate in 1931, appearing in Jew Suss as the Duke. He acted to great acclaim, which reached the United States. He performed smaller supporting roles as well. On returning to the United States he found his fame ephemeral and turned to a writing project at Todd School that would become the immensely successful Everybody's Shakespeare and subsequently, The Mercury Shakespeare. Welles traveled to North Africa while working on thousands of illustrations for the Everybody's Shakespeare series of educational books, a series that remained in print for decades.

An introduction by Thornton Wilder led Welles to the New York stage. In 1933, he toured in three off-Broadway productions with Katharine Cornell's company, including two roles in Romeo and Juliet. Restless and impatient when the planned Broadway opening of Romeo and Juliet was canceled, Welles staged a drama festival of his own with the Todd School, inviting Micheál MacLíammóir and Hilton Edwards from Dublin's Gate Theatre to appear, along with New York stage luminaries. It was a roaring success. The subsequent revival of Cornell's Romeo and Juliet brought Welles to the notice of John Houseman, who was casting for an unusual lead actor for the lead role in the Federal Theatre Project.

By 1935 Welles was supplementing his earnings in the theater as a radio actor in Manhattan, working with many of the actors who would later form the core of his Mercury Theatre. He married Chicago actress Virginia Nicholson in 1934 and that year he shot an eight-minute silent short film, The Hearts of Age with her. The couple had one daughter, Christopher. She made her only film appearance in 1948, taking the role of Macduff's son in Welles's film Macbeth and later became known as Chris Welles Feder, an author of educational materials for children.

Theatre and Radio (1936–1940)

Federal Theatre Project

Macbeth

In 1936, the Federal Theatre Project (part of Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration) put unemployed theater performers and employees to work. Welles was hired by John Houseman and assigned to direct a play for the Federal Theatre Project's Negro Theater Unit. He offered them Macbeth, in a production that became known as the Voodoo Macbeth, because Welles set it in the Haitian court of King Henri Christophe, with voodoo witch doctors for the three Weird Sisters. Jack Carter played Macbeth. The incidental music was composed by Virgil Thomson. The play was received rapturously and later toured the nation. When the lead actor, Maurice Ellis, fell ill on tour, Welles quickly boarded an airplane to fly to the location and stepped into the part playing the role in blackface. At the age of twenty, Welles was hailed as a prodigy. A few minutes of the Welles production of Macbeth was recorded on film in a 1937 documentary called We Work Again.

Collaboration with Aaron Copland

The young actor/director was chosen by the American composer Aaron Copland in 1937 to direct what is one of Copland's least known works, the opera The Second Hurricane composed for high school students of The Henry Street Settlement Music School in New York. Among the few adult performers in the production was actor Joseph Cotten, Welles's longtime friend and collaborator, who was paid $10 for his performance.

The Cradle Will Rock

After the success of Macbeth, Welles mounted the absurd farce Horse Eats Hat. He consolidated his "White Hope" reputation with Dr Faustus which used light as a prime unifying scenic element in a nearly blacked-out stage. In 1937, he rehearsed Marc Blitzstein's highly political operetta, The Cradle Will Rock. Because of severe federal cutbacks in the Works Progress projects, the show's premiere at the Maxine Elliott Theatre was canceled. The theater was locked and guarded to prevent any of the government-purchased materials being used for a commercial production of the work. In a last-minute move Welles announced to waiting ticket-holders that the show was being transferred to the Venice, about twenty blocks away. Some cast, as well as some crew and audience, walked the distance on foot. The union musicians refused to perform in a commercial theater for lower non-union government wages. The actors' union stated that the production belonged to the federal theater project and could not be performed outside that context without permission. Lacking the participation of the union members, The Cradle Will Rock began with Blitzstein introducing the show and playing the piano accompaniment on stage with some cast members performing their parts from the audience. This impromptu performance was well received by its audience. It afterward played at the Venice for two weeks in the same informal way.

Mercury Theatre

Resigning from the Federal Theatre, Welles and Houseman formed the Mercury Theatre, of which Welles became executive producer and whose repertory company eventually included actors such as Agnes Moorehead, Joseph Cotten, Dolores del Río, Ray Collins, George Coulouris, Frank Readick, Everett Sloane, Eustace Wyatt and Erskine Sanford, all of whom would continue to work for Welles for years. The first Mercury Theatre production was a melodramatic and heavily edited version of William Shakespeare's tragedy Julius Caesar, set in a contemporary frame of fascist Italy. Cinna the Poet dies at the hands not of a mob but of a secret police force. According to Norman Lloyd, who played Cinna the Poet, "it stopped the show." The applause lasted more than ten minutes and the production was widely acclaimed.

In the second year of the Mercury Theater, Welles shifted his interests to radio as an actor, director and producer. He played Hamlet for CBS on The Columbia Workshop, while adapting and directing the play. The Mutual Network gave him a seven-week series to adapt Les Misérables, which he did with great success. In late 1937, Mutual chose Welles to play Lamont Cranston, aka The Shadow, anonymously and in the summer of 1938 CBS gave him (and the Mercury Theatre) a weekly hour-long show to broadcast radio plays based on classic literary works. The show was titled The Mercury Theatre on the Air, with original music by Bernard Herrmann, who would continue working with Welles on radio and in films for years.

The War of the Worlds broadcast

Their October 30, 1938 radio adaptation of The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells brought Welles instant fame. The combination of the news bulletin form of the performance with the between-breaks dial spinning habits of listeners from the rival and far more popular Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarthy program, was later reported in the media to have created widespread confusion among listeners who failed to hear the introduction, although the extent of this confusion has recently come into question. Panic was reported to have spread (after citation from rumors) among many listeners who believed the news reports of a Martian invasion. The myth of the result created by the combination was reported as fact around the world and disparagingly mentioned by Adolf Hitler in a public speech a few months later. The 1970s "docu-drama" The Night That Panicked America was based on events centering around the production of, and events that resulted from, the program.

Welles's growing fame soon drew Hollywood offers, lures which the independent-minded Welles resisted at first. The Mercury Theatre on the Air, which had been a "sustaining show" (without sponsorship) was picked up by Campbell Soup and renamed The Campbell Playhouse.

On October 28, 1940, Welles met H.G. Wells in San Antonio, Texas; a local radio station KTSA recorded the conversation, which was likely the only meeting between the two.

Hollywood (1939–1948)

RKO Radio Pictures president George Schaefer eventually offered Welles what generally is considered the greatest contract ever offered to an untried director: complete artistic control. RKO signed Welles in a two-picture deal; including script, cast, crew, and most importantly, final cut, although Welles had a budget limit for his projects. With this contract in hand, Welles (and nearly the entire Mercury Theatre troupe) moved to Hollywood. He commuted weekly to New York to maintain his commitment to The Campbell Playhouse.

Welles toyed with various ideas for his first project for RKO Radio Pictures, settling on an adaptation of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, which he worked on in great detail. He planned to film the action with a subjective camera. When a budget was drawn up, RKO's enthusiasm cooled because it was greater than the previously agreed limit. RKO also declined to approve another Welles project, The Smiler with the Knife, ostensibly because they lacked faith in Lucille Ball's ability to carry the leading lady role.

In a sign of things to come, Welles left The Campbell Playhouse in 1940 due to creative differences with the sponsor. The show continued without him, produced by John Houseman. In perhaps another sign of things to come, Welles's first experience on a Hollywood film was narrator for RKO's 1940 production of The Swiss Family Robinson.

Citizen Kane

Production

RKO, having rejected Welles's first two movie proposals, agreed on the third offer Citizen Kane, for which Welles co-wrote, produced, directed, and performed the lead role.

Welles found a suitable film project in an idea he conceived with screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, (who was then writing radio plays for The Campbell Playhouse). Initially entitled The American, it eventually became Welles's first feature film (also his most famous and honored role), Citizen Kane (1941).

Mankiewicz based his original notion on an exposé of the life of William Randolph Hearst whom he knew socially but now hated, having once been great friends with Hearst's mistress, Marion Davies. Mankiewicz had been banished from her company because of his perpetual drunkenness. Mankiewicz, a notorious gossip, exacted revenge with his unflattering depiction of Davies in Citizen Kane for which Welles bore most of the criticisms. Welles also had a connection with Davies through his first wife.

Kane's megalomania was modeled loosely on Robert McCormick, Howard Hughes, and Joseph Pulitzer as Welles wanted to create a broad, complex character, intending to show him in the same scenes from several points of view. The use of multiple narrative perspectives in Conrad's Heart of Darkness influenced the treatment.

Supplying Mankiewicz with 300 pages of notes, Welles urged him to write the first draft of a screenplay under John Houseman, who was posted to ensure Mankiewicz stayed sober. On Welles's instruction, Houseman wrote the opening narration as a pastiche of The March of Time newsreels. Orson Welles explained to Peter Bogdanovich about the writers working separately by saying, "I left him on his own finally, because we'd started to waste too much time haggling. So, after mutual agreements on storyline and character, Mank went off with Houseman and did his version, while I stayed in Hollywood and wrote mine."

Charles Foster Kane is based loosely on parts of Hearst's life. Nonetheless, autobiographical allusions to Welles were worked in, most noticeably in the treatment of Kane's childhood and particularly, regarding his guardianship. Welles then added features from other famous American lives to create a general and mysterious personality rather than the narrow journalistic portrait intended by Mankiewicz, whose first drafts included scandalous claims about the death of the film director Thomas Ince.

Once the script was completed, Welles attracted some of Hollywood's best technicians, including cinematographer Gregg Toland, who walked into Welles's office and announced he wanted to work on the picture. Welles later described Toland as "the fastest cameraman who ever lived.". By the time it reached the general public, though the publicity had waned. It garnered nine Academy Award nominations (Orson nominated as a producer, director, writer, and actor), but won only for Best Original Screenplay, shared by Mankiewicz and Welles. Although it basically was ignored at the Academy Awards, Citizen Kane now is hailed as one of the greatest films ever made. Andrew Sarris called it "the work that influenced the cinema more profoundly than any American film since The Birth of a Nation." Floyd Odlum took over control of RKO and began changing its direction. Rockefeller, the most significant backer of the Brazil project, left the RKO board of directors. Around the same time, the principal sponsor of Welles at RKO, studio president George Schaefer, resigned. The changes throughout RKO caused reevaluations of many projects. RKO took control of Ambersons, formed a committee which was ordered to edit the film into what the studio considered a commercial format. They removed fifty minutes of Welles's footage, re-shot sequences, rearranged the scene order, and added a happy ending. Koerner released the shortened film on the bottom of a double-bill with the Lupe Vélez comedy, Mexican Spitfire Sees a Ghost. Ambersons was an expensive flop for RKO, although it received four Academy Award nominations including Best Picture and Best Supporting Actress for Agnes Moorehead.

Welles's South American documentary, entitled It's All True, budgeted at one million dollars with half of its budget coming from the U.S. Government upon completion, grew in ambition and budget while Welles was in South America. While the film originally was to be a documentary on Carnaval, Welles added a new story which recreated the journey of the jangadeiros, four poor fishermen who had made a journey on their open raft to petition Brazilian President Vargas about their working conditions. The four had become national folk heroes; Welles first read of their journey in Time. Their leader, Jacare, died during a filming mishap. RKO, in limited contact with Welles, attempted to rein in the production. Most of the crew and budget were withdrawn from the film. In addition, the Mercury staff was removed from the studio in the U.S.

Welles requested resources to finish the film. He was given a limited amount of black-and-white stock and a silent camera. He completed the sequence, but RKO refused to support any further production on the film. Surviving footage was released in 1993, including a rough reconstruction of the "Four Men on a Raft" segment. Meanwhile, RKO asserted in public that Welles had gone to Brazil without a screenplay and that he had squandered a million dollars. Their official company slogan for the next year was, "Showmanship in place of Genius" -- which was taken as a slight against Welles.

Director for hire (1943–1946)

On returning to Hollywood, Welles found no studios interested in hiring him as a film director after the twin disasters of The Magnificent Ambersons and It's All True. Welles next worked on radio. CBS offered him two weekly series, Hello Americans, based on the research he'd done in Brazil, and Ceiling Unlimited, sponsored by Lockheed, a wartime salute to advances in aviation. Both featured several members of his original Mercury Theatre troupe. Within a few months, Hello Americans was canceled and Welles was replaced as host of Ceiling Unlimited by Joseph Cotten. Welles guest-starred on a great variety of shows, notably guest-hosting Jack Benny shows for a month in 1943. He took an increasingly active role in American and international politics and used journalism to communicate his forceful ideas widely.

In 1943, Welles married Rita Hayworth. They had one child, Rebecca Welles, and divorced five years later in 1948. In between, Welles found work as an actor in other directors' films. He starred in the 1944 film adaptation of Jane Eyre, trading credit as associate producer for top billing over Joan Fontaine. He also had a cameo in the 1944 wartime salute Follow the Boys, in which he performed his Mercury Wonder Show magic act and "sawed" Marlene Dietrich in half after Columbia Pictures head Harry Cohn refused to allow Hayworth to perform.

In 1944, Welles was offered a new radio show, broadcast only in California, Orson Welles' Almanac. It was another half-hour variety show, with Mobil Oil as sponsor. After the success of his stand-in hosting on The Jack Benny Show, the focus was primarily on comedy. His hosting on the Jack Benny show included several self-deprecating jokes and story lines about his being a "genius" and overriding any ideas advanced by other cast members. The trade papers were not eager to accept Welles as a comedian, and Welles often complained on-air about the poor quality of the scripts. When Welles started his Mercury Wonder Show a few months later, traveling to Armed Forces camps and performing magic tricks and doing comedy, the radio show was broadcast live from the camps and the material took on a decidedly wartime flavor. Of his original Mercury actors, only Agnes Moorehead remained working with him. The series was cancelled by year's end due to poor ratings.

While he found no studio willing to hire him as a film director, Welles's popularity as an actor continued. Pabst Blue Ribbon gave Welles their radio series This Is My Best to direct, but after one month he was fired for creative differences. He started writing a political column for the New York Post, again called Orson Welles's Almanac. While the paper wanted Welles to write about Hollywood gossip, Welles explored serious political issues. His activism for world peace took considerable amounts of his time. The Post column eventually failed in syndication because of contradictory expectations and was dropped by the Post.

Post-war work (1946–1948)

The Stranger

In 1946, International Pictures released Welles's film, The Stranger, starring Edward G. Robinson, Loretta Young, and Welles. Sam Spiegel produced the film, which follows the hunt for a Nazi war criminal living under an alias in America. While Anthony Veiller was credited with the screenplay, it had been rewritten by Welles and John Huston. Disputes occurred during the editing process between Spiegel and Welles. The film became a box office success and it helped his standing with the studios.

In the summer of 1946, Welles directed a musical stage version of Around the World in Eighty Days, with a comedic and ironic rewriting of the Jules Verne novel by Welles, incidental music and songs by Cole Porter, and production by Mike Todd, who would later produce the successful film version with David Niven. When Todd pulled out from the lavish and expensive production, Welles alone supported the finances. When he ran out of money at one point, he convinced Columbia president Harry Cohn to send him enough to continue the show, and in exchange, Welles promised to write, produce, direct, and star in a film for Cohn for no further fee. The stage show soon failed, due to poor box-office, with Welles unable to claim the losses on his taxes. The complicated financial arrangements concerning the show, its losses, and Welles's arrangement with Cohn, resulted in a tax dispute with the IRS.

At the same time in 1946 he began two new radio series, The Mercury Summer Theatre for CBS and Orson Welles Commentaries for ABC. While Summer Theatre featured half-hour adaptations of some of the classic Mercury radio shows from the 1930s, the first episode was a condensation of his Around the World stage play, and remains the only record of Cole Porter's music for the project. Several original Mercury actors returned for the series, as well as Bernard Herrmann. It only was scheduled for the summer months, and Welles invested his earnings into his failing stage play. Commentaries was a political vehicle for him, continuing the themes from his New York Post column. Again, Welles lacked a clear focus, until the NAACP brought to his attention the case of Isaac Woodard. Welles brought significant attention to Woodard's cause. Soon Welles was being hanged in effigy in the South and theaters refused to show The Stranger in several southern states.

The Lady from Shanghai

The film Welles was obliged to make for Cohn helping him complete Around the World in Eighty Days ended up being The Lady from Shanghai, filmed in 1947 for Columbia Pictures. Intended to be a modest thriller, the budget skyrocketed after Cohn suggested that Welles's then-estranged second wife Rita Hayworth co-star. Cohn disliked Welles's rough-cut, particularly the confusing plot and lack of close-ups, and was not in sympathy with Welles's Brechtian use of irony and black comedy, especially in a farcical courtroom scene. Cohn ordered extensive editing and re-shoots. After heavy editing by the studio, approximately one hour of Welles's first cut had been removed, including much of a climactic confrontation scene in an amusement park funhouse. While expressing displeasure at the cuts, Welles was appalled particularly at the musical score. The film was considered a disaster in America at the time of release, though the closing shootout in a hall of mirrors has since become one of the touchstones of film noir. Not long after release, Welles and Hayworth finalized their divorce. Although The Lady From Shanghai was acclaimed in Europe, it was not embraced in the U.S. for several decades. Influential modern critics including David Kehr have subsequently declared it a masterpiece, with Kehr calling it "the weirdest great movie ever made." A similar situation occurred when Welles suggested to Charlie Chaplin that he star in a film directed by Welles based on the life of the French serial killer, Henri Désiré Landru. Instead, Chaplin adapted the idea for his own film, Monsieur Verdoux, with Welles officially credited for the idea.

Macbeth

In 1948 Welles convinced Republic Pictures to let him direct a low-budget version of Macbeth, which featured extremely stylized sets and costumes, and a cast of actors lip-syncing to a prerecorded soundtrack, one of many innovative cost-cutting techniques Welles deployed in an attempt to make an epic film from B-movie resources. The script, adapted by Welles, is a violent reworking of the Shakespearean original, freely cutting and pasting lines into new contexts via a collage technique, and recasting Macbeth as a clash of pagan and proto-Christian ideologies. Some of the voodoo trappings of the famous Welles/Houseman Negro Theatre stage adaptation are also visible, especially in the film's characterization of the Weird Sisters, who create an effigy of Macbeth as a charm to enchant him. Of all Welles's post-Kane Hollywood productions, Macbeth is closest to Citizen Kane in its use of long takes and deep focus photography. Shots of the increasingly isolated Scottish king looming in the foreground while other characters address him from deep in the background overtly reference Kane.

Republic initially trumpeted the film as an important work but decided it did not care for the Scottish accents on the soundtrack and held up general release for almost a year after early negative press reaction, which included Life Magazine's comment that Welles's film "doth foully slaughter Shakespeare.'" Welles left for Europe, while his co-producer and life-long supporter Richard Wilson reworked the soundtrack. Welles ultimately returned and cut twenty minutes from the film at Republic's request and recorded narration to cover the gaps. The film was decried as another disaster. Macbeth had its share of influential fans in Europe, especially the French poet and filmmaker Jean Cocteau, who hailed the film's "crude, irreverent power" and careful shot design, and described the characters as haunting "the corridors of some dreamlike subway, an abandoned coal mine, and ruined cellars oozing with water." In the late 1970s, a fully restored version of Macbeth was released that followed Welles's original vision, and all prints of the truncated continuity have gradually been withdrawn from circulation, turning Welles compulsory recut, which has the distinction of being created by the director himself, into something of a lost work.

Welles in Europe (1948–1956)

Welles left Hollywood for Europe in late 1947, enigmatically saying that he had chosen "freedom." In Italy he starred as Cagliostro in the 1948 film Black Magic. His co-star, Akim Tamiroff, impressed Welles so much that Tamiroff would appear in four of Welles's own productions during the 1950s and 1960s.

The Third Man

The following year, Welles starred as Harry Lime in Carol Reed's The Third Man, alongside Joseph Cotten, his good friend and co-star from Citizen Kane, with a script by Graham Greene and a memorable zither score by Anton Karas. The film was an international smash hit, but unfortunately Welles had turned down a percentage of the gross in exchange for a lump-sum advance. A few years later British radio producer Harry Alan Towers would resurrect the Lime character for radio in the series The Lives of Harry Lime. The 1951 series included new recordings by Karas, was very successful, and ran for 52 weeks. Welles claimed to write a handful of episodes—a claim disputed by Towers, who maintains they were written by Ernest Borneman—which later would serve as the basis for the screenplay by Welles, Mr. Arkadin (1955).

Welles also appeared as Cesare Borgia in the 1949 Italian film Prince of Foxes, with Tyrone Power and Mercury Theatre alumnus Everett Sloane, and as the Mongol warrior Bayan in the 1950 film version of the novel The Black Rose (again with Tyrone Power).

Othello

During this time, Welles was channeling his money from acting jobs into a self-financed film version of Shakespeare's play Othello. From 1949 to 1951, Welles worked on Othello, filming on location in Europe and Morocco. The film featured Welles's old friends, Micheál MacLíammóir as Iago and Hilton Edwards as Desdemona's father Brabantio. Suzanne Cloutier starred as Desdemona and Campbell Playhouse alumnus Robert Coote appeared as Iago's associate Roderigo.

in the 1952 film Othello.]]

Filming was suspended several times as Welles ran out of funds and left to find other acting jobs, accounted in detail in MacLiammóir's published memoir Put Money in Thy Purse. When it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival it won the Palme d'Or, but was not given a general release in the United States until 1955 (by which time Welles had re-cut the first reel and re-dubbed most of the film, removing Cloutier's voice entirely), and it played only in New York and Los Angeles. The American release prints had a technically flawed soundtrack, suffering from a complete drop-out of sound at every quiet moment. It was one of these flawed prints that was restored by Welles's daughter, Beatrice Welles-Smith in 1992 for a wide re-release. The restoration included reconstructing Angelo Francesco Lavagnino's original musical score (which was inaudible) and adding ambient stereo sound effects (which weren't in the original film). The subject of great controversy among film scholars, the restoration went on to a successful theatrical run in America. A print of the U.S. version was released on laser-disc in 1995 and soon withdrawn after a legal challenge by Beatrice Welles-Smith. The original Cannes version has survived, but is not available commercially.

In 1952 Welles continued finding work in England, after the success of the Harry Lime radio show. Harry Alan Towers offered Welles another series, The Black Museum, with Welles as host and narrator, and this would also run 52 weeks. Director Herbert Wilcox offered him the part of the murdered victim in Trent's Last Case, based on the novel by E. C. Bentley. In 1953 the BBC hired Welles to read an hour of selections from Walt Whitman's epic poem Song of Myself. Towers hired Welles again, to play Professor Moriarty in the radio series, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, starring John Gielgud, and Ralph Richardson.

Late in 1953, Welles returned to America to star in a live CBS Omnibus television presentation of Shakespeare's King Lear. The cast included MacLiammóir and the British actor, Alan Badel. While Welles received good notices, he was guarded by IRS agents, prohibited to leave his hotel room when not at the studio, prevented from making any purchases, and the entire sum (less expenses) he earned went to his tax bill. Welles returned to England after the broadcast.

In 1954, director George More O'Ferrall offered Welles the title role in the 'Lord Mountdrago' segment of Three Cases of Murder, co-starring Badel. Herbert Wilcox cast him as the antagonist in Trouble in the Glen opposite Margaret Lockwood, Forrest Tucker, and Victor McLaglen. Old friend John Huston cast him as Father Mapple in his 1956 film adaptation of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, starring Gregory Peck.

Mr. Arkadin

Welles's next turn as director was the film Mr. Arkadin (1955), which was produced by his political mentor from the 1940s, Louis Dolivet. It was filmed in France, Germany, Spain, and Italy on a very limited budget. Based loosely on several episodes of the Harry Lime radio show, it stars Welles as a billionaire who hires a man to delve into the secrets of his past. The film stars Robert Arden, who had worked on the Harry Lime series, Welles's third wife, Paola Mori, whose voice was completely dubbed by actress Billie Whitelaw, and guest stars Akim Tamiroff, Michael Redgrave, Katina Paxinou, and Mischa Auer. Frustrated by his slow progress in the editing room, producer Dolivet removed Welles from the project and finished the film without him. Eventually five different versions of the film would be released, two in Spanish and three in English. The version which Dolivet completed was retitled Confidential Report. In 2005 Stefan Droessler of the Munich Filmmuseum oversaw a reconstruction of the surviving film elements. Released on DVD by the Criterion Company, it is considered by Welles scholar and director Peter Bogdanovich to be the best version of Welles's original intentions for the film.

In 1955 Welles also directed two television series for the BBC. The first was The Orson Welles Sketchbook, a series of six 15-minute shows featuring Welles drawing in a sketchbook to illustrate his reminiscences for the camera (including such topics as the filming of It's All True and the Isaac Woodard case), and the second was Around the World with Orson Welles, a series of six travelogues set in different locations around Europe (such as Venice, the Basque Country between France and Spain, and England). Welles served as host and interviewer, his commentary including documentary facts and his own personal observations (a technique he would continue to explore). A seventh episode of this series, based on the Gaston Dominici case, was suppressed at the time by the French government, but was reconstructed after Welles's death and released to video in 1999.

In 1956 Welles completed Portrait of Gina, posthumously aired on German television under the title Viva Italia, a 30-minute personal essay on Gina Lollobrigida and the general subject of Italian sex symbols. Dissatisfied with the results—Welles recalled he had worked on it a lot and the result looked like it—he left the only print behind at the Ritz Hotel in Paris. The film cans would remain in a lost-and-found locker at the hotel for several decades, where they were discovered after Welles's death.

Return to Hollywood (1956–1959)

In 1956, Welles returned to Hollywood, guesting on radio shows (notably as narrator of Tomorrow, a nuclear holocaust drama produced by the Federal Civil Defense Administration). He guest starred on television shows, including I Love Lucy, and began filming a projected pilot for Desilu, owned by Lucille Ball and her husband Desi Arnaz, who had recently purchased the former RKO studios. The film was The Fountain of Youth, based on a story by John Collier. Originally deemed not viable as a pilot, the film wasn't aired until 1958. It won the Peabody Award for excellence. Welles's next feature film role was in Man in the Shadow for Universal Pictures in 1957, starring Jeff Chandler. Around this time period, however, Welles began to suffer from weight problems that would eventually deteriorate his health conditions.

Touch of Evil

Welles stayed on at Universal to direct (and co-star with) Charlton Heston in the 1958 film Touch of Evil, based on Whit Masterson's novel Badge of Evil (Welles, who wrote the screenplay for the film, claimed never to have read the book). Originally only hired as an actor, Welles was promoted to director by Universal Studios at the suggestion (and insistence) of Charlton Heston. Reuniting many actors and technicians with whom he'd worked in Hollywood in the 1940s (including cameraman Russell Metty (The Stranger), make-up artist Maurice Siederman (Citizen Kane), and actors Joseph Cotten, Marlene Dietrich, and Akim Tamiroff), filming proceeded smoothly, with Welles finishing on schedule and on budget, and the studio bosses praising the daily rushes. After the end of production, the studio re-edited the film, re-shot scenes, and shot new exposition scenes to clarify the plot. Welles wrote a 58-page memo outlining suggestions and objections. The studio followed a few of the ideas, but cut another 30 minutes from the film and released it. The film was widely praised across Europe, awarded the top prize at the Brussels World's Fair. In 1978, the long preview version of the film was rediscovered and released. In 1998, editor Walter Murch and producer Rick Schmidlin, consulting the original memo, used a workprint version to attempt to create a version of the film as close as possible to that outlined in the memo. This is at best a compromise that should not be mistaken for Welles's original intent. Welles stated in that memo that the film was no longer his version—it was the studio's, but as such, he was still prepared to help them with it.

As Universal reworked Touch of Evil, Welles began filming his adaptation of Miguel de Cervantes' novel Don Quixote in Mexico, starring Mischa Auer as Quixote and Akim Tamiroff as Sancho Panza. While filming would continue in fits and starts for several years, Welles would never complete the project.

Welles continued acting, notably in The Long, Hot Summer (1958) and Compulsion (1959), but soon returned to Europe.

Return to Europe (1959–1970)

He continued shooting Don Quixote in Spain, but replaced Mischa Auer with Francisco Reiguera, and resumed acting jobs. In Italy in 1959, Welles directed his own scenes as King Saul in Richard Pottier's film David and Goliath. In Hong Kong he co-starred with Curd Jürgens in Lewis Gilbert's film Ferry to Hong Kong. In 1960, in Paris he co-starred in Richard Fleischer's film Crack in the Mirror. In Yugoslavia he starred in Richard Thorpe's film The Tartars.

By this time he had ceased filming Quixote. Though he would continue toying with the editing well into the 1970s, he never completed the film. As the process went on, Welles gradually voiced all of the characters himself and provided narration. In 1992, the director Jesús Franco constructed a film out of the portions of Quixote left behind by Welles. Some of the film stock had decayed badly. While the Welles footage was greeted with interest, the post-production by Franco was met with harsh criticism.

In 1961 Welles directed In the Land of Don Quixote, a series of eight half-hour episodes for the Italian television network RAI. Similar to the Around the World with Orson Welles series, they presented travelogues of Spain and included Welles's wife, Paola, and their daughter, Beatrice. Though Welles was fluent in Italian, the network was not interested in him providing Italian narration because of his accent, and the series sat unreleased until 1964, by which time the network had added Italian narration of its own. Ultimately, versions of the episodes were released with the original musical score Welles had approved, but without the narration.

The Trial

In 1962 Welles directed his adaptation of The Trial, based on the novel by Franz Kafka and produced by Alexander Salkind and Michael Salkind. The cast included Anthony Perkins as Josef K, Jeanne Moreau, Romy Schneider, Paola Mori and Akim Tamiroff. While filming exteriors in Zagreb, Welles was informed that the Salkinds had run out of money, meaning that there could be no set construction. No stranger to shooting on found locations, Welles soon filmed the interiors in the Gare d'Orsay, at that time an abandoned railway station in Paris. Welles thought the location possessed a "Jules Verne modernism" and a melancholy sense of "waiting", both suitable for Kafka. The film failed at the box-office. Peter Bogdanovich would later observe that Welles found the film riotously funny. During the filming, Welles met Oja Kodar, who would later become his muse, star and partner for the last twenty years of his life. Welles also stated in an interview with the BBC that it was his best film.

Welles played a film director in La Ricotta (1963)—Pier Paolo Pasolini's segment of the Ro.Go.Pa.G. movie, although his renowned voice was dubbed by Italian writer Giorgio Bassani. He continued taking what work he could find acting, narrating or hosting other people's work, and began filming Chimes at Midnight, which was completed in 1966. Filmed in Spain, it was a condensation of five Shakespeare plays, telling the story of Falstaff and his relationship with Prince Hal. The cast included Keith Baxter, John Gielgud, Jeanne Moreau, Fernando Rey and Margaret Rutherford, with narration by Ralph Richardson. Music was again by Angelo Francesco Lavagnino. Jess Franco served as second unit director.

Chimes at Midnight

Chimes at Midnight was based on Welles's play Five Kings which condensed five of Shakespeare's plays into one show in order to focus on the story of Falstaff. Welles produced the show in New York in 1939 but the opening night, where part 1 was acted, was a disaster and part 2 was never put on. He revamped the show and revisited it in 1960 at the Gate Theatre in Dublin. But again, it was not successful. However, this later production was used as the base for the movie. The script contained text from five history plays: primarily Henry IV, Part 1 and Henry IV, Part 2, but also Richard II, Henry V, and The Merry Wives of Windsor. Keith Baxter played Prince Hal, and internationally respected Shakespearean interpreter, John Gielgud, played the King, Henry IV. The film's narration, spoken by Ralph Richardson, is taken from the chronicler Raphael Holinshed. According to Jeanne Moreau, Welles delayed filming for two weeks due to stage fright. Welles held this film in high regard and considered it, along with The Trial, his best work. As he remarked in 1982, "If I wanted to get into heaven on the basis of one movie, that's the one I'd offer up."

In 1966, Welles directed a film for French television, an adaptation of The Immortal Story, by Karen Blixen. Released in 1968, it stars Jeanne Moreau, Roger Coggio and Norman Eshley. The film had a successful run in French theaters. At this time Welles met Kodar again, and gave her a letter he had written to her and had been keeping for four years; they would not be parted again. They immediately began a collaboration both personal and professional. The first of these was an adaptation of Isak Dinesen's The Heroine, meant to be a companion piece to The Immortal Story and starring Kodar. Unfortunately, funding disappeared after one day's shooting. After completing this film, he appeared in a brief cameo as Cardinal Wolsey in Fred Zinnemann's adaptation of A Man for All Seasons—a role for which he won considerable acclaim.

In 1967 Welles began directing The Deep, based on the novel Dead Calm by Charles F. Williams and filmed off the shore of Yugoslavia. The cast included Jeanne Moreau, Laurence Harvey and Kodar. Personally financed by Welles and Kodar, they could not obtain the funds to complete the project, and it was abandoned a few years later after the death of Harvey. The surviving footage was eventually edited and released by the Filmmuseum München. In 1968 Welles began filming a TV special for CBS under the title Orson's Bag, combining travelogue, comedy skits and a condensation of Shakespeare's play The Merchant of Venice with Welles as Shylock. Funding for the show sent by CBS to Welles in Switzerland was seized by the IRS. Without funding, the show was not completed. The surviving film clips portions were eventually released by the Filmmuseum München.

In 1969, Welles authorized the use of his name for a cinema in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Orson Welles Cinema remained in operation until 1986, with Welles making a personal appearance there in 1977. Also in 1969 he played a supporting role in John Huston's The Kremlin Letter. Drawn by the numerous offers he received to work in television and films, and upset by a tabloid scandal reporting his affair with Kodar, Welles abandoned the editing of Don Quixote and moved back to America in 1970.

Final years (1970–1985)

Welles returned to Hollywood, where he continued to self-finance his own film and television projects. While offers to act, narrate and host continued, Welles also found himself in great demand on talk shows, and made frequent appearances for Dick Cavett, Johnny Carson, Dean Martin, and Merv Griffin. Welles's primary focus in this period was filming The Other Side of the Wind, a project that took six years to film but has remained unfinished and unreleased. An early role was portraying Louis XVIII of France in Waterloo (1970). Welles also narrated the beginning and ending scenes of the Bud Yorkin historical comedy Start the Revolution Without Me, which starred Gene Wilder, Donald Sutherland, and Hugh Griffith, among others.

(1974)]] In 1971 Welles directed a short adaptation of Moby-Dick, a one-man performance on a bare stage, reminiscent of his stage production Moby Dick Rehearsed from the 1950s. Never completed, it was eventually released by the Filmmuseum München. He also appeared in La Décade prodigieuse, co-starring with Anthony Perkins and directed by Claude Chabrol, based on a detective novel by Ellery Queen. That same year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave him an honorary award "For superlative artistry and versatility in the creation of motion pictures". Welles pretended to be out of town and sent John Huston to claim the award. Huston criticized the Academy for awarding Welles while they refused to give him any work.

In 1972, Welles acted as on-screen narrator for the film documentary version of Alvin Toffler's 1970 book Future Shock.

The following year, Welles completed F for Fake, a personal essay film about art forger Elmyr de Hory and the biographer Clifford Irving. Based on an existing documentary by François Reichenbach, it included new material with Oja Kodar, Joseph Cotten, Paul Stewart and William Alland. An excerpt of Welles's 1930s War of the Worlds broadcast was recreated for this film, however none of the dialogue heard in the film actually matches what was originally broadcast. Welles filmed a five minute trailer, rejected in the US, that featured several shots of a topless Kodar.

Working again for a British producer, Welles played Long John Silver in director John Hough's Treasure Island (1972), an adaptation of the Robert Louis Stevenson novel, which had been the second story broadcast by The Mercury Theatre on the Air in 1938. Welles also contributed to the script, his writing credit was attributed to the pseudonym 'O. W. Jeeves'. Welles original recorded dialog was re dubbed by Robert Rietty. in the film Treasure Island]]

Welles hosted and narrated a syndicated anthology series, Orson Welles's Great Mysteries, over the 1973-1974 television season. It did not last beyond that season; however, the program could be perceived as a television revival of the Mercury Theatre whose executive producer Welles had been in the 1930s and 1940s.

In 1975, Welles narrated the documentary , focusing on Warner Bros. cartoons from the 1940s. Also in 1975, the American Film Institute presented Welles with its third Lifetime Achievement Award (the first two going to director John Ford and actor James Cagney). At the ceremony, Welles screened two scenes from the nearly finished The Other Side of the Wind. Filming had begun in 1972 and by 1976, Welles had almost completed the film. Financed by Iranian backers, ownership of the film fell into a legal quagmire after the Shah of Iran was deposed. Written by Welles, the story told of a destructive old film director looking for funds to complete his final film. It starred John Huston and the cast included Peter Bogdanovich, Susan Strasberg, Norman Foster, Edmond O'Brien, Cameron Mitchell, and Dennis Hopper. While there have been several reports of all the legal disputes concerning ownership of the film being settled, enough disputes still exist to prevent its release. The Showtime cable network has promised support for the project should the various entanglements associated with it be resolved.

In 1979 Welles completed his documentary Filming Othello, which featured Michael MacLiammoir and Hilton Edwards. Made for West German television, it was also released in theaters. That same year, Welles completed his self-produced pilot for The Orson Welles Show television series, featuring interviews with Burt Reynolds, Jim Henson and Frank Oz and guest-starring The Muppets and Angie Dickinson. Unable to find network interest, the pilot was never broadcast.

Beginning in the late 1970s, Welles participated in a series of famous television commercial advertisements, acting as the on-camera spokesman for the Paul Masson wine company. The sign-off phrase of the commercials—"We will sell no wine before its time"—became a national catchphrase. He was also the voice behind the long-running Carlsberg "Probably the best lager in the world" campaign. The "probably" tag is still in use today. In 1979 Welles also appeared in the biopic The Secret of Nikola Tesla, and a cameo in The Muppet Movie as Lew Lord.

In 1981, Welles hosted the documentary The Man Who Saw Tomorrow, about Renaissance-era prophet Nostradamus. In 1982 the BBC broadcast The Orson Welles Story in the Arena series. Interviewed by Leslie Megahey, Welles examined his past in great detail, and several people from his professional past were interviewed as well. It was reissued in 1990 as With Orson Welles: Stories of a Life in Film. Welles provided narration for the tracks "Defender" from Manowar's album Fighting the World and "Dark Avenger" on Manowar's 1982 album, Battle Hymns. His name was misspelled on the latter album, as he was credited as "Orson Wells".

During the 1980s, Welles worked on such film projects as The Dreamers, based on two stories by Isak Dinesen and starring Oja Kodar, and The Orson Welles Magic Show, which reused material from his failed TV pilot. Another project he worked on was Filming The Trial, the second in a proposed series of documentaries examining his feature films. While much was shot for these projects, none of them was completed. All of them were eventually released by the Filmmuseum München.

In 1984, Welles narrated the short-lived television series Scene of the Crime. During the early years of Magnum, P.I., Welles was the voice of the unseen character Robin Masters, a famous writer and playboy. Welles's death forced this minor character to largely be written out of the series. In an oblique homage to Welles, the Magnum, P.I. producers ambiguously concluded that story arc by having one character accuse another of having hired an actor to portray Robin Masters.

The last film roles before Welles's death included voice work in the animated films The Enchanted Journey (1984) and (1986), in which he played the planet-eating robot Unicron. His last film appearance was in Henry Jaglom's 1987 independent film Someone to Love, released after his death but produced before his voice-over in Transformers: The Movie. His last television appearance was on the television show Moonlighting. He recorded an introduction to an episode entitled "The Dream Sequence Always Rings Twice", which was partially filmed in black and white. The episode aired five days after his death and was dedicated to his memory.

Death

On October 10, 1985, Welles did his final interview on The Merv Griffin Show. He died two hours later of a heart attack at his home in the Hollywood area of Los Angeles, California. Welles' ashes were buried on the property of a long time friend, retired bullfighter Antonio Ordóñez, in Ronda, Spain.

Personal life

In 1932, Welles fell in love with the Mexican actress Dolores del Río. They lived a torrid romance between 1938 and 1942, though he was ten years her junior. They collaborated together in the movie Journey into Fear but the affair ended soon afterward.

In 1934, Welles eloped with Chicago-born actress and socialite Virginia Nicolson. They divorced in 1940 after Welles's affair with Vera Zorina was vaguely mentioned in Walter Winchell's column.

Welles married Rita Hayworth in 1943. The couple had been estranged during the making of The Lady from Shanghai. After five years, Rita filed for divorce, her reason to the press being, "I can't take his genius any more." During his last interview and only two hours before his death, Welles answered Merv Griffin's suggestive comment "But one of your wives--oh, I have envied you so many years for Rita Hayworth", by calling her "one of the dearest and sweetest women that ever lived" and saying that he was "lucky enough to have been with her longer than any of the other men in her life."

In 1955 Welles married Italian actress Paola Mori (Countess Paola Di Girifalco). Estranged for decades, the couple were never divorced. Croatian-born actress Oja Kodar became Welles's longtime companion both personally and professionally from 1966 on. They lived together for the last twenty-four years of his life. A year after Orson's death, Paola and Oja finally agreed on the settling of his will. On the way to their meeting to sign the papers, however, Paola was killed in a car accident.

Welles had three children: author Christopher Welles, or Chris Welles Feder (born in 1938, with Virginia Nicolson), Rebecca Welles Manning (born December 17, 1944 - died October 14, 2004, with Rita Hayworth) and Beatrice Welles (born in 1955, with Paola Mori).

According to a 1941 physical exam taken when he was 26, Welles was tall and weighed . His eyes were brown. Other sources cite that he was tall, but the slates from costume tests made during the 1940s show him as . Welles gained a significant amount of weight in his 40s, eventually rendering him morbidly obese, at one point weighing nearly four hundred pounds (181.4 kg). His obesity was severe to the point that it restricted his ability to travel, aggravated other health conditions, including his asthma, and even required him to go on a diet in order to play Sir John Falstaff. Some have attributed his over-eating and drinking to depression over his marginalization by the Hollywood system.

In April 1982, Merv Griffin interviewed Welles and asked about his religious beliefs. Welles replied, "I try to be a Christian, I don't pray really, because I don't want to bore God." After the success of his 1941 film Citizen Kane, Welles announced that his next film would be about the life of Jesus Christ, and that he would play the lead role. However, Welles never got around to making the film. He narrated the Christian–documentary The Late, Great Planet Earth as well as the 1961 Biblical film about the life of Christ, King of Kings.

Some of Welles's claimed familial ties have not held up under scrutiny. Despite the persistent urban legend, promoted by Welles himself, he was not the great-grandson of Abraham Lincoln's wartime Secretary of the Navy, Gideon Welles. Perhaps the genesis of the myth dates to a 1970 interview on The Dick Cavett Show during which Welles remarks about his venerable great-grandfather Gideon Welles. Orson Welles's father was Richard Head Welles, son of his paternal grandfather Richard Jones Welles; Gideon Welles had no son by that name. His sons were Hubert (1833–1862), John Arthur (1845–1883), Thomas G. (1846–1892), and Edgar Thaddeus Welles (1843–1914).

Politics

Welles was politically active from the beginning of his career. He remained a man of the left throughout his life, and always defined his political orientation as "progressive". He was a strong supporter of Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal, and often spoke out on radio in support of progressive politics. In particular, he was an early and outspoken critic of American racism and the practice of segregation. He campaigned heavily for Roosevelt in the 1944 election. For several years, he wrote a newspaper column on political issues and briefly toyed with running for office. In 1970, Welles narrated (but did not write) a satirical political record on the administration of President Richard Nixon entitled The Begatting of the President.

In the 2006 book, Whatever Happened to Orson Welles?, writer Joseph McBride made several controversial claims about Welles. Though Welles said otherwise during his lifetime, McBride claimed Welles left America in the late 1940s to escape McCarthyism and the blacklist. McBride also claimed, in spite of the sexual content of Welles's contemporary work (F for Fake and the unfinished Other Side of the Wind), that Welles was extremely puritanical about sex based on his comment to Peter Bogdanovich that The Last Picture Show was "a dirty movie"

Welles once told Cahiers du cinéma about sex in film, "In my opinion, there are two things that can absolutely not be carried to the screen: the realistic presentation of the sexual act and praying to God."

Unfinished projects

Welles's reliance on self-production meant that many of his later projects were filmed piecemeal or were not completed. Welles financed his later projects through his own fundraising activities. He often also took on other work to obtain money to fund his own films.

Don Quixote

In the mid-1950s, Welles began work on Don Quixote, initially a commission from CBS television. Welles expanded the film to feature length, developing the screenplay to take Quixote and Sancho Panza into the modern age. Filming stopped with the death of Francisco Reiguera, the actor playing Quixote, in 1969. Orson Welles continued editing the film into the early 1970s. At the time of his death, the film remained largely a collection of footage in various states of editing. The project and more importantly Welles's conception of the project changed radically over time. A version of the film was created from available fragments in 1992 and released to a very negative reception.

The Merchant of Venice

In 1969 Welles was given another TV commission to film a condensed adaptation of The Merchant of Venice. Although Welles had actually completed the film by 1970 the finished negative was later mysteriously stolen from his Rome production office.

The Other Side of the Wind

In 1970 Welles began shooting The Other Side of the Wind. The film relates the efforts of a film director (played by John Huston) to complete his last Hollywood picture and is largely set at a lavish party. By 1972 the filming was reported by Welles as being "96% complete", though it is likely that Welles had only edited about 40 minutes of the film by 1979. In that year, legal complications over the ownership of the film forced the negative into a Paris vault where it remained until 2004, when Peter Bogdanovich (who also acted in the film) announced his intention to complete the production. As of 2009, legal complications over the Welles estate have kept the film from being finished or released. Some footage is included in the documentary Working with Orson Welles (1993).

Other unfinished projects

Heart of Darkness - Welles' projected first film in 1940, planned in extreme detail and with some test shots filmed. (The footage is now lost) It was planned to be entirely shot in long takes from the narrator's point of view, who would be played by Welles seeing his own reflection in the window as his boat sailed down river. The project was abandoned because it could not be delivered on budget, and Citizen Kane was made instead. Mr. American Early 1940 drafts of Citizen Kane were based far more overtly on the life of Howard Hughes than on William Randolph Hearst, and would have made for a substantially different picture.

It's All True - see above for the genesis of this project. Welles did not originally want to direct this 1942 documentary on South America, but after its abandonment by RKO, he spent much of the 1940s attempting to buy the negative of his material from RKO, so that he could edit and release it in some form. The footage remained unseen in vaults for decades, and was assumed lost. Over 50 years later, some (but not all) of the surviving material saw release in the 1993 documentary It's All True: Based on an Unfinished Film by Orson Welles.

Cyrano de Bergerac - Welles spent around nine months c. 1947-8 co-writing the screenplay for this along with Ben Hecht, a project Welles was assigned to direct for Alexander Korda. He began scouting for locations in Europe whilst filming Black Magic, but Korda was short of money, so sold the rights to Columbia pictures, who eventually dismissed Welles from the project, and then sold the rights on to United Artists, who in turn made a film version in 1950, which was not based on Welles' script. Around the World in 80 Days - After Welles' elaborate musical stageshow of this Jules Verne novel, encompassing 38 different sets, he began shooting some test footage in Morocco for a film version in 1947. The footage was never edited, funding never came through, and Welles abandoned the project. Nine years later, the stage show's producer Mike Todd made his own award-winning film version of the book. Moby Dick Rehearsed - a film version of Welles' 1955 London metaplay, starring Gordon Jackson, Christopher Lee, Patrick McGoohan, and with Welles as Ahab. Using bare, minimalist sets, Welles alternated between a cast of nineteenth-century actors rehearsing a production of Moby Dick, with scenes from Moby Dick itself. Kenneth Williams, a cast member who was apprehensive about the entire project, recorded in his autobiography that Welles' dim, atmospheric stage lighting made some of the footage so dark as to be unwatchable. The entire play was filmed, but is now presumed lost. The recording was made during one weekend at the Hackney Empire theatre. The producers of Histoires extraordinaires, the 1968 anthology film based on short stories by Edgar Allan Poe, announced in June 1967 that Welles would direct one segment based on both "Masque of the Red Death" and "The Cask of Amontillado" for the omnibus film. Welles withdrew in September 1967 and was replaced. The script, written in English by Welles and Oja Kodar, is in the Filmmuseum Munchen collection. One-Man Band, a Monty Python-esque spoof in which Welles plays all but one of the characters (including two characters in drag), made c.1968-9. Welles intended this completed sketch to be one of several items in a television special on London. Other items filmed for this special - all included in the "One Man Band" documentary by his partner Oja Kodar - comprised a sketch on Winston Churchill (played in silhouette by Welles), a sketch on peers in a stately home, a feature on London gentlemen's clubs, and a sketch featuring Welles being mocked by his snide Savile Row tailor (played by Charles Gray).

Treasure Island - Welles wrote two screenplays for this in the 1960s, and was eager to seek financial backing to direct it. Eventually, his own screenplay (under the pseudonym of O.W. Jeeves) was further rewritten, and formed the basis of the 1972 film version directed by John Hough, in which Welles played Long John Silver.

The Deep, an adaptation of Charles Williams' Dead Calm. The picture was entirely set on two boats and shot mostly in close-ups, and was filmed off the coasts of Yugoslavia and the Bahamas, between 1966 and 1969, with all but one scene completed. Originally planned as commercially viable thriller, to show that Welles could make a popular, successful film. It was shelved in 1970 when Welles worried that critics would not respond favourably to this film as his theatrical follow-up to the much-lauded Chimes at Midnight, and Welles focussed instead on F for Fake. It was abandoned altogether in 1973 due to the death of its star Laurence Harvey. The Munich Film Museum holds a restored copy, with title cards filling out the missing scene.

Filming The Trial - after the success of his 1978 film Filming Othello made for West German television, and mostly consisting of a monologue to the camera, Welles began shooting scenes for this follow-up film, but never completed it.

The Big Brass Ring, the script of which was eventually adapted and filmed by George Hickenlooper in 1999 as a play-within-a-film, about Orson Welles' production of the play. Welles' complete screenplay was one of his last projects, written in 1985.

King Lear - at the time of his death, Welles was in talks with a French production company to direct a film version of the Shakespeare play, in which he would also play the title role.

An adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's novel Ada for which Welles flew to Paris to discuss the project personally with the Russian author.

Cultural depictions

The 1996 documentary The Battle Over Citizen Kane chronicles the battle between Welles and Hearst. A 1999 HBO docudrama, RKO 281, tells the story of the making of Citizen Kane, starring Liev Schreiber as Orson Welles.

Tim Robbins's 1999 film Cradle Will Rock chronicles the process and events surrounding Welles and John Houseman's production of the 1937 musical by Marc Blitzstein. In it Welles is played by actor Angus MacFadyen.

Playwright and actor Austin Pendleton wrote the play Orson's Shadow about Welles and his collaboration with Laurence Olivier. It deals with the time that Welles directed Laurence Olivier in a production of Eugène Ionesco's play Rhinoceros. According to this play, Welles privately disliked Olivier's film adaptations of Shakespeare's works (which were far more successful than Welles's), at one point stating that Olivier's film of Hamlet "looked like a Joan Crawford movie". Welles struggled with getting Olivier to play not merely someone lower-class (as he did in The Entertainer) but getting Olivier to play someone utterly non-descript.

Author Kim Newman has featured Orson Welles as a character in several stories from his Anno Dracula series.

In the Tim Burton-directed biopic Ed Wood (1994), Welles (played by Vincent D'Onofrio and dubbed by Maurice LaMarche) makes a brief "cameo appearance", giving advice to director Edward D. Wood, Jr. who idolises Welles. Inspired, Wood proceeds to finish his film Plan 9 from Outer Space, sometimes called one of the worst films of all time. Though Ed Wood is based on Wood's life, in reality the scene is entirely fictional: Wood never met Orson Welles. D'Onofrio would again portray Welles in the 2005 30-minute film Five Minutes Mr. Welles concerning Welles' role in the film The Third Man.

Although the character Brain from the animated series Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain was not initially modeled after Welles, Maurice LaMarche was shown a picture of Brain and tasked with finding a voice for the character. LaMarche immediately thought of Welles and decided to do his Welles impersonation. LaMarche also played Welles in The Critic (where his "later work", ads for such products as 'Mrs. Pell's Fishsticks', is referenced) and in the Futurama episode "Lrrreconcilable Ndndifferences", in which he performs a WOTW-like play.

One of the recurring celebrity characters on the influential Canadian sketch comedy TV show Second City Television (SCTV) was John Candy's impersonation of Welles. ON SCTV, Candy-as-Welles appeared in an embarrassing array of commercials, talk shows, and other low-budget productions. It's unknown whether or not Welles ever saw Candy's impersonation.

Me and Orson Welles, released in November 2009, stars Zac Efron as a teenager who convinces Welles (Christian McKay) to cast him in Welles's 1937 production of Julius Caesar, based on Robert Kaplow's novel.

The final segment of The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror XVII features a parody of Welles's 1938 War Of The Worlds radio broadcast in which, having been fooled once, the people of Springfield refuse to believe that an actual alien invasion is taking place. Welles was again voiced by Maurice LaMarche in the episode.

Acclaim

Citizen Kane was nominated for numerous prizes at the 1941 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor in a Leading Role. The only Oscar won, however, was Best Original Screenplay, which Welles shared with Herman J. Mankiewicz. Welles later gave his statuette to cinematographer Gary Garver as payment for services rendered. Also, the film The Magnificent Ambersons was nominated for Best Picture, a year later.

The Stranger was nominated for the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1947. Welles himself was awarded a Career Golden Lion in 1970.

In 1952, Welles's Othello won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

Welles was nominated for Best Foreign Actor in a Leading Role at the 1968 BAFTA Awards for his performance in Chimes at Midnight.

Welles was given the first Career Golden Lion award in the Venice Film Festival in 1970.

In 1970, Welles won an Honorary Academy Award for "superlative and distinguished service in the making of motion pictures." In light of his poor treatment by the Academy and by the American film industry in general, Welles did not attend the ceremony. In 1970, he was awarded the French Légion d'honneur, the highest civilian decoration in France. Welles was also a distinguished Foreign Member of the Académie française, succeeded by Peter Ustinov.

Welles was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by the American Film Institute in 1975.

In 1978, Welles was presented with the Los Angeles Film Critics Career Achievement Award.

Welles was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1979.

In 1982, Welles was nominated for Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture at the Golden Globe Awards for his role in Butterfly, and won a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Recording for his role on Donovan's Brain.

Welles was awarded a Fellowship of the British Film Institute in 1983.

In 1984, Welles was given the D. W. Griffith Award of the Directors Guild of America.

In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Welles as the 16th Greatest Male Star of All Time.

When asked to describe Welles's influence, Jean-Luc Godard remarked: "Everyone will always owe him everything." (Ciment, 42)

A highly divergent genus of Hawaiian spiders "Orsonwelles" is named in his honor (Hormiga et al. 2003)

He won three Grammy Awards, each win in the category of Best Spoken Word Recording: in 1976, for "Great American Documents" (shared with Helen Hayes, Henry Fonda and James Earl Jones; in 1978, for the original motion picture soundtrack to Citizen Kane; and in 1981, for a recording of Donovan's Brain.

Filmography and awards

References

Bibliography

Anderegg, Michael: Orson Welles, Shakespeare and Popular Culture, New York: Columbia University Press, 1999

Bazin, Andre: Orson Welles, Harper and Row, 1978

Benamou, Catherine L.: It's All True: Orson Welles's Pan-American Odyssey, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007

Beja, Morris, ed.: Perspectives on Orson Welles, G. K. Hall, 1995

Berg, Chuck and Erskine, Tom, ed.: The Encyclopedia of Orson Welles, Checkmark Books, 2003

Bessy, Maurice: Orson Welles: An investigation into his films and philosophy, Crown, 1971

Bogdanovich, Peter and Welles, Orson This Is Orson Welles, HarperPerennial 1992, ISBN 0-06-092439-X

Brady, Frank: Citizen Welles, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1989

Callow, Simon: The Road to Xanadu. London: Jonathan Cape, 1995.

Callow, Simon: Hello Americans. London: Jonathan Cape, 2006.

Carringer, Robert: The Making of Citizen Kane, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985

Carringer, Robert: The Magnificent Ambersons: a Reconstruction, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993

Ciment, Michel: "Les Enfants Terribles" in American Film, December 1984

Comito, Terry, ed.: Touch of Evil, Rutgers, 1985

Conrad, Peter: Orson Welles: The Stories of His Life, London: Faber and Faber, 2003

Cowie, Peter: The Cinema of Orson Welles, Da Capo Press, 1973.

D'Angela, Toni (ed.), Nelle terre di Orson Welles, Alessandria: Edizioni Falsopiano 2004.

Davies, Anthony: Filming Shakespeare's Plays, Cambridge University Press, 1988

Drazin, Charles: In Search of the Third Man, Limelight, 2000

Estrin, Mark: Orson Welles Interviews, University Press of Mississippi, 2002

Feder, Chris Welles: In My Father's Shadow: a Daughter Remembers Orson Welles, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2009

France, Richard, ed.: Orson Welles on Shakespeare, London: Routledge, 2001

France, Richard: "The Theatre of Orson Welles", Bucknell University Press, 1977

Garis, Robert: "The Films of Orson Welles", Cambridge University Press, 2004

Gosling, John: "Waging the War of the Worlds", McFarland & Company, Inc, 2009

Gottesman, Ronald, ed.: Focus on Citizen Kane, Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1971

Gottesman, Ronald, ed.: Focus on Orson Welles, Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1976

Greene, Graham: The Third Man, London: Faber and Faber, 1991

Heyer, Paul: The Medium and the Magician: Orson Welles, the Radio Years, Totowa: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005

Heylin, Clinton. Despite the System: Orson Welles Versus the Hollywood Studios, Chicago Review Press, 2005

Higham, Charles: The Films of Orson Welles, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970

Higham, Charles: "Orson Welles: The Rise and Fall of an American Genius", New York: St. Martin's Press, 1985

Hormiga, G., M.A. Arnedo & R.G. Gillespie, 2003, "Speciation on a Conveyor Belt: Sequential Colonization of the Hawaiian Islands by "Orsonwelles" spiders (Araneae: Linyphiidae)., Syst. Biol. 52, 89-109.

Howard, James: "The Complete Films of Orson Welles", Citadel Press, 1991

Ishaghpour, Youssef: Orson Welles, cinéaste, une caméra visible, éditions de la différence, 2001

Jorgens, Jack J.: Shakespeare on Film, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977

Leaming, Barbara: Orson Welles, New York: Viking, 1985

Lyons, Bridget Gellert, ed.: Chimes at Midnight, Rutgers, 1988

Mac Liammóir, Micháel. Put Money in Thy Purse: The Filming of Orson Welles's Othello, Virgin, 1994

McBride, Joseph: Orson Welles, Harcourt Brace, 1977

McBride, Joseph: Orson Welles, Da Capo Press, 1996.

Mulvey, Laura: Citizen Kane, London: BFI, 1992

Naremore, James. The Magic World of Orson Welles, Southern Methodist University Press, 1989.

Naremore, James, ed.: Orson Welles's Citizen Kane: a Casebook, Oxford University Press, 2004

Noble, Peter: The Fabulous Orson Welles, London: Hutchinson and Co., 1956

Perkins, V. F.: The Magnificent Ambersons, London: BFI, 1999

Rosenbaum, Jonathan: "Orson Welles's Essay Films and Documentary Fictions", in Placing Movies, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995

Rosenbaum, Jonathan: "The Battle Over Orson Welles", in Essential Cinema, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004

Rosenbaum, Jonathan: "Orson Welles as Ideological Challenge" in Movie Wars, A Capella Books, 2000

Rosenbaum, Jonathan: Discovering Orson Welles, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007

Shakespeare Bulletin, Volume 23, Number 1, Spring 2005: Special Welles issue.

Simon, William G., ed.: "Special Welles issue", in: Persistence of Vision: the Journal of the Film Faculty of the City University of New York; Number 7, 1988

Simonson, Robert. "Orson's Shadow Talkback Series Continues May 4 with Welles's Daughter." 3 May 2005

Taylor, John Russell: Orson Welles: a Celebration, Pavilion, 1986

Taylor, John Russell: Orson Welles, Pavilion, 1998

Walsh, John Evangelist: Walking Shadows: Orson Welles, William Randolph Hearst and Citizen Kane, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004

Walters, Ben: Welles, London: Haus Publishing, 2004 ISBN 978-1-904341-80-2

Welles, Orson: Les Bravades, Workman, 1996

Welles, Orson and Bogdanovich, Peter: This is Orson Welles, Da Capo Press, 1998.

Welles, Orson: Mr. Arkadin, London: HarperCollins, 2006

Welles, Orson: The Big Brass Ring, Black Spring Press, 1991

Welles, Orson: The Cradle Will Rock, Santa Teresa Press, 1994

Welles, Orson: "The Other Side of the Wind", in: Cahiers du cinéma/ Festival International du Film de Locarno, 2005

White, Rob: The Third Man, London: BFI, 2003

Wood, Bret: Orson Welles: a Bio-Bibliography, Greenwood Blue, 1990

External links

Wellesnet

Orson Welles - The One Man Band (1995)

Senses of Cinema Great Directors Critical Database: Orson Welles

Orson Welles bibliography

Orsonwelles.co.uk

Mercury Theatre on the Air

The Unseen Welles

Guide to the Orson Welles Materials: Lily Library, Indiana University

Category:1915 births Category:1985 deaths Category:American expatriates in Spain Category:American film actors Category:American film directors Category:American film editors Category:American film producers Category:American magicians Category:American people of English descent Category:American radio actors Category:American radio personalities Category:American radio producers Category:American screenwriters Category:American theatre directors Category:Best Original Screenplay Academy Award winners Category:California Democrats Category:Deaths from myocardial infarction Category:Grammy Award winners Category:People from Kenosha, Wisconsin Category:School of the Art Institute of Chicago alumni Category:Shakespearean actors Category:Special effects people Category:Woodstock, Illinois Category:Academy Honorary Award recipients

Name	Roger Allam
Birthdate	October 26, 1953
Birthplace	London, England, UK
Occupation	Actor
Spouse	Rebecca Saire
Yearsactive	1981 – present
Website	http://www.rogerallam.co.uk
Olivierawards	Best Actor 2002 Privates on Parade

Roger Allam (born 26 October 1953) is an English actor, known primarily for his stage career, although he has performed in film and television. He played Inspector Javert in the original London production of the stage musical Les Misérables.

Biography

He has been nominated three times for the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor, winning once. He has also been nominated for, and won, the Laurence Olivier Award for Best Supporting Actor.

He played as Mercutio, in Royal Shakespeare Company, in 1983. He has also appeared in many radio dramas for the BBC. In 2001, he starred in BBC Radio 4's adaptation of Les Misérables, as Javert. In 2000 he played Hitler at the Royal National Theatre in David Edgar's Speer. He won an Olivier Award as Best Actor 2001, for his role as Captain Terri Denis in a revival of Privates on Parade, opening in December 2001 at the Donmar Warehouse, Covent Garden. In November 2002 at the Comedy Theatre he co-starred with Gillian Anderson in Michael Weller's romantic comedy What the Night Is For.

In 2003, he starred as former West German federal chancellor Willy Brandt in Michael Frayn's play Democracy which opened at the Cottesloe, in the Royal National Theatre. He stayed with the show for its transfer to the West End. In December 2004 and January 2005, Allam appeared as the villainous Abanazar in a pantomime of Aladdin at the Old Vic theatre, co-starring Ian McKellen, Maureen Lipman and Sam Kelly. He reprised this role at the Old Vic, once again with Ian McKellen and Frances Barber in 2006-7.

In August 2005, Allam appeared in Blackbird by David Harrower alongside Jodhi May at the Edinburgh Festival in a production by German star director Peter Stein. The play got a transfer to the Albery Theatre in London in February 2006. Blackbird subsequently won a best new play award.

He also found time in 2006 to appear in Stephen Frears' The Queen, starring Oscar-winner Dame Helen Mirren, as the Queen's private secretary.

His latest West End project in February 2007 was the 1960s farce Boeing Boeing at the Comedy Theatre, co-starring Mark Rylance, Frances de la Tour and Tamzin Outhwaite.

In January 2007 he appeared for the first time as Peter Mannion MP in the special episode of the BBC comedy The Thick of It. He went on to reprise his role in the second special aired in July 2007 and in the extra 15 minute episode shown via the BBC red button. He has carried on with this role as a regular character in the subsequent series.

In 2008 Allam played the role of Max Reinhardt, the Salzburg Festival impresario in Michael Frayn's play Afterlife, the production staged by Michael Blakemore on the National Theatre's Lyttelton stage.

In 2009 Allam played Albin/Zaza in La Cage aux Folles at the Playhouse in London.

Allam played Falstaff in Henry IV at Shakespeare's Globe, in the 2010 season.

Roger has also reteamed with Stephen Frears in Tamara Drewe, the film version of Posy Simmond's popular comic strip. Allam plays the self-centred and serially unfaithful crime novelist, Nicholas Hardiment, who is bewitched by London journalist Tamara Drewe, played by Gemma Arterton. The film received critical buzz at the 2010 Cannes film festival and the Mail on Sunday described his performance as 'wonderfully sleazy'. Tamara Drewe opens in British cinemas on 10 September.

In the closing chapter of his Timebends autobiography (1987) Arthur Miller writes of Allam: "To play Adrian....in the 1986 Royal Shakespeare Company production of The Archbishop's Ceiling, Roger Allam gave up the leading role as Javert in the monster hit Les Misérables because he had done it over sixty times and thought my play more challenging for him at that moment of his career. Nor did he consider his decision a particularly courageous one. This is part of what a theatre culture means and it is something few New York actors would have the sense of security even to dream of doing."

Filmography

Wilt (1989)

Ending Up (1989) (TV)

The fairy queen (La reine des fées) (1989) (TV)

(1990) (TV)

(1992) (mini series) TV Series (voice)

A Landing on the Sun (1994) (TV)

Heartbeat (1998)

Inspector Morse (1998)

The Creatives (1998) (TV)

Midsomer Murders (1998) (TV)

RKO 281 (1999) (TV)

Foyle's War (2002) (TV)

Strangers (2003/III)

The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (2003) (TV)

A Cock and Bull Story (2005)

(2005) (TV)

The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006)

The Queen (2006)

V for Vendetta (2006)

The Thick of It (special) (2007)

Speed Racer (2008)

The Curse of Steptoe (special) (2008) (TV)

The Old Guys (2009) (TV)

Margaret (2009)

Kröd Mändoon and the Flaming Sword of Fire (2009) (TV)

Ashes to Ashes (2009) (TV)

"The Thick of It" (2009) (TV)

Tamara Drewe (2010)

Radio

The Man In The Elephant Mask (1997 BBC Radio 4 series) Joseph Merrick. Cabin Pressure (2008 BBC Radio 4 series) First Officer Douglas Richardson.

References

External links

Roger Allam official website

darkestnight: the works of Alain Boubil & Claude-Michel Schönberg

Category:1953 births Category:Living people Category:Christ's Hospital Old Blues Category:English film actors Category:English musical theatre actors Category:English radio actors Category:English stage actors Category:English television actors Category:English voice actors Category:Olivier Award winners

Name	Jamie Parker
Birthdate
Birthplace	Middlesbrough, United Kingdom
- align	"center"
Name	Parker, Jamie
Short description	Actor
Date of birth	1979
Place of birth	Middlesbrough, United Kingdom

Category:Alumni of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art Category:English film actors Category:English radio actors Category:English stage actors Category:English television actors Category:1979 births Category:Living people

Name	Jack Bruce
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	John Symon Asher Bruce
Landscape	Yes
Birth date	May 14, 1943
Birth place	Bishopbriggs, East Dunbartonshire, Scotland, United Kingdom
Occupation	Musician, songwriter
Years active	1962–present
Instrument	Vocals, bass, double bass, cello, piano, harmonica, guitar, keyboards
Genre	Blues-rock, psychedelic rock, jazz fusion, hard rock, acid rock
Label	EMI, RSO
Associated acts	Cream, Blues Incorporated, The Graham Bond Organization, John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, Manfred Mann, West, Bruce and Laing, Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band, Bruce, Lordan and Trower, Kip Hanrahan, BBM
Url
Notable instruments	Fender Bass VI, Gibson EB-3, Gibson EB-1, Warwick Thumb Signature, Warwick Jack Bruce CRB

John Symon Asher "Jack" Bruce (born 14 May 1943, Bishopbriggs, Scotland) is a Scottish musician and songwriter, respected as a founding member of the British psychedelic rock power trio, Cream, for a solo career that spans several decades, and for his participation in several well-known musical ensembles. Best recognized as a memorable vocalist and electric fretless bassist, Bruce has been referred to as a "World-class pioneer in his main instrument; a composer of some of the most endurable and recognisable rock songs of our time; an accomplished classical, jazz and Latin musician and one of popular music's most distinctive and evocative voices." He is also trained as a classical cellist. The Sunday Times stated "... many consider him to be one of the greatest bass players of all time."

He lives in Suffolk, England.

Biography

Bruce was born to musical parents who moved frequently, resulting in the young Bruce attending 14 different schools, ending up at Bellahouston Academy. Bruce began playing the jazz bass in his teens, and won a scholarship studying cello and musical composition at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, while playing in Jim McHarg's Scotsville Jazzband to support himself. The Academy disapproved of its students playing jazz, however. "They found out," Bruce told Musician correspondent Jim Macnie, "and said 'you either stop, or leave college.' So I left college."

1960s before Cream

After leaving, he toured Italy, playing double bass with the Murray Campbell Big Band. In 1962, Jack Bruce became a member of the London-based band Blues Incorporated, led by Alexis Korner, in which he played the double bass. The band also included organist Graham Bond, saxophonist Dick Heckstall-Smith and drummer Ginger Baker. In 1963, the group broke up and Bruce went on to form the Graham Bond Quartet with Bond, Baker, and guitarist John McLaughlin.

After he left, Bruce recorded a solo single, "I'm Gettin Tired", for Polydor Records. The complete Manfred Mann recordings with Jack Bruce are available on the 4-CD EMI box set Down the Road Apiece.

Whilst with Manfred Mann, Bruce again collaborated with Eric Clapton as a member of Powerhouse, which also featured Manfred Mann's vocalist Paul Jones. The 3 tracks were featured on the Elektra sampler album What's Shakin'. Two of the songs, "Crossroads" and "Steppin' Out", were to become staples in the live set of his next band.

Cream

In July 1966 Bruce moved on to his role as bass player, main songwriter and lead vocalist with Ginger Baker and Eric Clapton in the power trio Cream.

While with Cream, Bruce played a Gibson EB-3 electric bass and became one of the most famous bassists in rock, winning musicians' polls and influencing the next generation of bassists such as Sting, Geddy Lee and Jeff Berlin. Jack co-wrote most of Cream's single releases with lyricist Pete Brown, including the hits, "Sunshine of Your Love", "White Room", and "I Feel Free".

By 1968, Cream were hugely successful; they grossed more than the next top six live acts of the day added together (including Jimi Hendrix and The Doors). They topped album charts all over the world, and received the first platinum discs for record sales, but the old enmity of Bruce and Baker resurfaced in 1968, and after a final tour, Cream broke up.

The solo years 1970s

Collaborative efforts with musicians, in many genres - heavy rock, jazz, blues, fusion, avant-garde, world music, and R&B; - has been a continuing theme of Bruce's career. Alongside these he has produced a long line of solo albums. In contrast to his collaborative works the solo albums usually maintain a common theme: melodic songs with a complex musical structure and lyrics by Pete Brown, based around a core band. This structure is loosened on his live solo albums and DVDs, where extended improvisations similar to those employed by Cream in live performance are sometimes still used.

In August 1968, before Cream split, Bruce recorded an acoustic free jazz album with John McLaughlin, Dick Heckstall-Smith and Jon Hiseman. but it ended with Taylor's departure, and no studio album was completed.

In 1977, Bruce formed a new band with drummer Simon Phillips and keyboardist Tony Hymas. The group recorded an album, called How's Tricks. A world tour followed, but the album was a commercial failure. He has since recovered, and in 2004 reappeared to perform "Sunshine of Your Love" at a Rock Legends concert in Germany organised by the singer Mandoki.

In May, 2005, he reunited with former Cream bandmates Clapton and Baker for a series of well-received concerts at London's Royal Albert Hall, released as the album Royal Albert Hall London May 2–3–5–6 2005, and New York's Madison Square Garden.

In between the UK and US Cream dates he also played live with Gary Moore and drummer Gary Husband at the Dick Heckstall-Smith tribute concert in London.

Subsequent concert appearances were sparse due to recovery after the transplant, but in 2006 Bruce returned to the live arena with a show of Cream and solo classics performed with the German HR (Hessischer Rundfunk) Big Band. This was released on CD in Germany in 2007 to critical acclaim. In 2007, he made a brief concert appearance, opening a new rehearsal hall named in his honour at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama, Glasgow with Clem Clempson, keyboard player Ronnie Leahy and Husband.

In 2008, Bruce collaborated again with guitarist Robin Trower on the album Seven Moons. It also featured Husband.

In May 2008 Bruce was 65 years old and to commemorate this milestone two box sets of recordings were released. Spirit is a three-CD collection of Bruce's BBC recordings from the 1970s. Can You Follow? is a six-CD retrospective anthology released by the Esoteric label in the UK. This anthology is a wide ranging collection covering his music from 1963 to 2003 and, aside from his work with Kip Hanrahan, is a comprehensive overview of his career.

Improved health led to Bruce playing a series of live outdoor concerts across the US starting in July 2008 as part of the Hippiefest Tour. He was supported by members of the late Who bassist's The John Entwistle Band, and headlined at a tribute concert to the bassist.

In November 2008 he recorded a concert in Birmingham, England for Radio Broadcast with the BBC Big Band, where he again played the Big Band arrangements of his classic songs. In December he was reunited with Ginger Baker at the drummer's Lifetime Achievement Award concert in London. They played jazz classics with saxophonist Courtney Pine and for the first time in 40 years played the Graham Bond–Cream classic "Traintime".

The same month, Bruce, with guitarist Vernon Reid, drummer Cindy Blackman and organist John Medeski played a series of Blue Note Club tribute concerts to The Tony Williams Lifetime in Japan. These shows were broadcast High Definition on television in Japan.

In spring 2009 a series of concerts was performed with Trower and Husband in Europe. Proposed dates in the US in April were cancelled due to a further bout of ill health. Bruce recovered and the band played summer concerts in Italy, Norway and the UK during 2009. This promoted the release of the Seven Moons live CD and DVD, recorded in February during the European leg of the tour in Nijmegen, Netherlands.

During the Scottish dates of the 2009 tour Bruce was presented with an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from Glasgow Caledonian University for services to the culture of Glasgow and music in general.

In August 2009, the 1983 Jack Bruce solo album Automatic was released on CD. With this release, all his solo albums from his 1969 debut Songs for a Tailor onwards have become available on CD as well. In addition, all the discs up to and including How's Tricks contain added, previously unreleased material.

The solo years 2010s

In October 2009, Bruce performed at the 50th anniversary of Ronnie Scott's Club with The Ronnie Scott's Blues Band. After garnering good reviews, three further dates at the club were added in March 2010.

Composing Himself: Jack Bruce The Authorised Biography by Harry Shapiro was released by Jawbone Press in February 2010. Shapiro has previously written biographies of Bruce collaborators Alexis Korner, Graham Bond and Eric Clapton. The book followed biographies from his Cream bandmates Clapton (Clapton 2007) and Baker (Hellraiser 2009.) His Songwriting partner, Pete Brown's, biography "White Rooms & Imaginary Westerns" was published in September 2010. They each have differing recollections of forming Cream; playing and writing together are not totally consistent, or complimentary, but considering their admitted drug use during the period in the biographies, that is hardly surprising.

In the Summer of 2010, Bruce again joined the Hippiefest tour of America with ex-members of the John Entwhistle Band. Whilst on tour, his children organised the internet release of previously unissued Bruce performances "The Lost Tapes" via CD and download from his own website.

The first release from his own website, Live at the Milkyway, Amsterdam 2001, features his Latin-based band of the time and was issued in October 2010. The album is to receive an official UK release by EMI in February 2011, and to support this release Bruce is again playing 4 dates at The London Ronnie Scott's Club with the Ronnie Scott's Blues Experience, followed by a further ten dates across the UK with the band. This is Bruce's 3rd successive year playing a series of gigs at Ronnie Scotts, and is reminiscent of Eric Clapton's annual series of Albert Hall blues concerts.

Prior to the UK dates the Lifetime Tribute Band featuring Jack Bruce which toured Japan in 2008, guitarist Vernon Reid, drummer Cindy Blackman and organist John Medeski, is reforming to play a further ten shows in high profile jazz clubs in North America. Unusually the dates have early & evening shows, something most Rock musicians stopped doing at the beginning of the 1970's.

Discography

The discographies of the individual bands and collaborations can be found in within their own profiles. Jack Bruce's solo albums are listed below

Solo album discography

{|class="wikitable" !Date !Album |- |September 1969 |Songs for a Tailor |- |December 1970 |Things We Like (recorded Aug 1968) |- |September 1971 |Harmony Row |- |November 1974 |Out of the Storm |- |(1975) |Live at Manchester Free Trade Hall '75 (2-CD released 2003) |- |March 1977 |How's Tricks |- |(1978) |Spirit- Live at the BBC 1971-1978 (3-CD released 2008) |- |(1978) |Jet Set Jewel (released 2003) |- |December 1980 |I've Always Wanted To Do This |- |January 1983 |Automatic |- |(1987) |Somethin Els (released March 1993) |- |January 1990 |A Question of Time |- |March 1994 |Cities of the Heart (live double album) |- |September 1995 |Monkjack |- |July 2001 |Shadows in the Air |- |September 2003 |More Jack Than God |- |December 2007 |Live with the HR Big Band |- |May 2008 |The Anthology - Can You Follow? (6-CD) |- |October 2010 |Live at the Milky Way |}

References

Bibliography

Brigitte Tast, Hans-Jürgen Tast „be bop - Die Wilhelmshöhe rockt. Disco und Konzerte in der Hölle" Verlag Gebrüder Gerstenberg GmbH & Co. KG, Hildesheim, ISBN 978-3-8067-8589-0.

External links

Official website

Original Smiles & Grins Jack Bruce Club

Jack Bruce at the Internet Movie Database

Category:1943 births Category:1960s singers Category:1970s singers Category:1980s singers Category:1990s singers Category:2000s singers Category:2010s singers Category:Living people Category:Jazz bass guitarists Category:British blues musicians Category:British blues singers Category:Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama alumni Category:Scottish male singers Category:Scottish double-bassists Category:Scottish bass guitarists Category:Scottish heavy metal bass guitarists Category:Scottish multi-instrumentalists Category:Scottish diarists Category:People from Bishopbriggs Category:Manfred Mann members Category:John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers members Category:Cream (band) members Category:The Golden Palominos members

, 1886]]

Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi (; 10 October 1813 – 27 January 1901) was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century. His works are frequently performed in opera houses throughout the world and, transcending the boundaries of the genre, some of his themes have long since taken root in popular culture - such as "La donna è mobile" from Rigoletto, "Va, pensiero" (The Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves) from Nabucco, "Libiamo ne' lieti calici" (The Drinking Song) from La traviata and the "Grand March" from Aida. Although his work was sometimes criticized for using a generally diatonic rather than a chromatic musical idiom and having a tendency toward melodrama, Verdi’s masterworks dominate the standard repertoire a century and a half after their composition.

Early life

(1879)]] Verdi was born the son of Carlo Giuseppe Verdi and Luigia Uttini in Le Roncole, a village near Busseto, then in the Département Taro which was a part of the First French Empire after the annexation of the Duchy of Parma and Piacenza. The baptismal register, on 11 October lists him as being "born yesterday", but since days were often considered to begin at sunset, this could have meant either 9 or 10 October. The next day, he was baptized in the Roman Catholic Church in Latin as Joseph Fortuninus Franciscus. The day after that (Tuesday), Verdi's father took his newborn the three miles to Busseto, where the baby was recorded as Joseph Fortunin Francois; the clerk wrote in French. "So it happened that for the civil and temporal world Verdi was born a Frenchman."

When he was still a child, Verdi's parents moved from Piacenza to Busseto, where the future composer's education was greatly facilitated by visits to the large library belonging to the local Jesuit school. Also in Busseto, Verdi was given his first lessons in composition.

Verdi went to Milan when he was twenty to continue his studies. He took private lessons in counterpoint while attending operatic performances, as well as concerts of, specifically, German music. Milan's beaumonde association convinced him that he should pursue a career as a theatre composer. During the mid 1830s, he attended the Salotto Maffei salons in Milan, hosted by Clara Maffei.

Returning to Busseto, he became the town music master and, with the support of Antonio Barezzi, a local merchant and music lover who had long supported Verdi's musical ambitions in Milan, Verdi gave his first public performance at Barezzi’s home in 1830.

Because he loved Verdi’s music, Barezzi invited Verdi to be his daughter Margherita's music teacher, and the two soon fell deeply in love. They were married on 4 May 1836 and Margherita gave birth to two children, Virginia Maria Luigia (26 March 1837 - 12 August 1838) and Icilio Romano (11 July 1838 - 22 October 1839). Both died in infancy while Verdi was working on his first opera and, shortly afterwards, Margherita died on 18 June 1840. Verdi adored his wife and children, and he was devastated by their untimely deaths.

Initial recognition

The production by Milan's La Scala of his first opera, Oberto in November 1839 achieved a degree of success, after which Bartolomeo Merelli, La Scala's impresario, offered Verdi a contract for two more works.

It was while he was working on his second opera, Un giorno di regno, that Verdi's wife died. The opera, given in September 1840, was a flop and he fell into despair and vowed to give up musical composition forever. However, Merelli persuaded him to write Nabucco and its opening performance in March 1842 made Verdi famous. Legend has it that it was the words of the famous Va pensiero chorus of the Hebrew slaves that inspired Verdi to write music again.

A large number of operas - 14 in all - followed in the decade after 1843, a period which Verdi was to describe as his "galley years". These included his I Lombardi in 1843, and Ernani in 1844. For some, the most original and important opera that Verdi wrote is Macbeth in 1847. For the first time, Verdi attempted an opera without a love story, breaking a basic convention in 19th century Italian opera.

In 1847, I Lombardi, which was revised and renamed Jerusalem, was produced by the Paris Opera. Due to a number of Parisian conventions that had to be honored (including extensive ballets), it became Verdi's first work in the French Grand opera style.

Middle years

Sometime in the mid-1840s, after the death of Margherita Barezzi, Verdi began an affair with Giuseppina Strepponi, a soprano in the twilight of her career. Their cohabitation before marriage was regarded as scandalous in some of the places they lived, but Verdi and Giuseppina married on 29 August 1859 at Collonges-sous-Salève, near Geneva. While living in Busseto with Strepponi, Verdi bought an estate two miles from the town in 1848. Initially, his parents lived there, but, after his mother's death in 1851, he made the Villa Verdi at Sant'Agata in Villanova sull'Arda his home until his death.

As the "galley years" were drawing to a close, Verdi created one of his greatest masterpieces, Rigoletto, which premiered in Venice in 1851. Based on a play by Victor Hugo (Le roi s'amuse), the libretto had to undergo substantial revisions in order to satisfy the epoch's censorship, and the composer was on the verge of giving it all up a number of times. The opera quickly became a great success.

With Rigoletto, Verdi sets up his original idea of musical drama as a cocktail of heterogeneous elements, embodying social and cultural complexity, and beginning from a distinctive mixture of comedy and tragedy. Rigoletto's musical range includes band-music such as the first scene or the song La donna è mobile, Italian melody such as the famous quartet "Bella figlia dell'amore", chamber music such as the duet between Rigoletto and Sparafucile and powerful and concise declamatos often based on key-notes like the C and C# notes in Rigoletto and Monterone's upper register.

There followed the second and third of the three major operas of Verdi's "middle period": in 1853 Il Trovatore was produced in Rome and La traviata in Venice. The latter was based on Alexandre Dumas, fils' play The Lady of the Camellias, and became the most popular of all Verdi's operas, placing third in the Opera America's list of 20 most performed operas in North America.

Later compositions

Between 1855 and 1867, an outpouring of great Verdi operas followed, among them such repertory staples as Un ballo in maschera (1859), La forza del destino (commissioned by the Imperial Theatre of Saint Petersburg for 1861 but not performed until 1862), and a revised version of Macbeth (1865). Other somewhat less often performed include Les vêpres siciliennes (1855) and Don Carlos (1867), both commissioned by the Paris Opera and initially given in French. Today, these latter two operas are most often performed in their revised Italian versions. Simon Boccanegra followed in 1857. In 1869, Verdi was asked to compose a section for a requiem mass in memory of Gioachino Rossini and proposed that this requiem should be a collection of sections composed by other Italian contemporaries of Rossini. The requiem was compiled and completed, but it was cancelled at the last minute (and was not performed in Verdi's lifetime). Verdi blamed this on the lack of enthusiasm for the project by the intended conductor, Angelo Mariani, who had been a longtime friend of his. The episode led to a permanent break in their personal relations. The soprano Teresa Stolz (who later had a strong professional - and, perhaps, romantic - relationship with Verdi) was at that time engaged to be married to Mariani, but she left him not long after. Five years later, Verdi reworked his "Libera Me" section of the Rossini Requiem and made it a part of his Requiem Mass, honoring the famous novelist and poet Alessandro Manzoni, who had died in 1873. The complete Requiem was first performed at the cathedral in Milan on 22 May 1874.

Verdi's grand opera, Aida, is sometimes thought to have been commissioned for the celebration of the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, but, according to one major critic, Verdi turned down the Khedive's invitation to write an "ode" for the new opera house he was planning to inaugurate as part of the canal opening festivities. The opera house actually opened with a production of Rigoletto. Later in 1869/70, the organizers again approached Verdi (this time with the idea of writing an opera), but he again turned them down. When they warned him that they would ask Charles Gounod instead and then threatened to engage Richard Wagner's services, Verdi began to show considerable interest, and agreements were signed in June 1870.

Teresa Stolz was associated with both Aida and the Requiem (as well as a number of other Verdi roles). The role of Aida was written for her, and although she did not appear in the world premiere in Cairo in 1871, she created Aida in the European premiere in Milan in February 1872. She was also the soprano soloist in the first and many later performances of the Requiem. It was widely believed that she and Verdi had an affair after she left Angelo Mariani, and a Florence newspaper criticised them for this in five strongly worded articles. Whether there is any truth to the accusation may never be known with any certainty. However, after Giuseppina Strepponi's death, Teresa Stolz became a close companion of Verdi until his own death.

Verdi and Wagner, who were the leaders of their respective schools of music, seemed to resent each other greatly. They never met. Verdi's comments on Wagner and his music are few and hardly benevolent ("He invariably chooses, unnecessarily, the untrodden path, attempting to fly where a rational person would walk with better results"), but at least one of them is kind: upon learning of Wagner's death, Verdi lamented, "Sad, sad, sad! ... a name that will leave a most powerful impression on the history of art." Of Wagner's comments on Verdi, only one is well-known. After listening to Verdi's Requiem, the German, prolific and eloquent in his comments on some other composers, stated, "It would be best not to say anything."

Final years and death

During the following years, Verdi worked on revising some of his earlier scores, most notably new versions of Don Carlos, La forza del destino, and Simon Boccanegra.

Otello, based on William Shakespeare's play, with a libretto written by the younger composer of Mefistofele, Arrigo Boito, premiered in Milan in 1887. Its music is "continuous" and cannot easily be divided into separate "numbers" to be performed in concert. Some feel that although masterfully orchestrated, it lacks the melodic lustre so characteristic of Verdi's earlier, great, operas, while many critics consider it Verdi's greatest tragic opera, containing some of his most beautiful, expressive music and some of his richest characterizations. In addition, it lacks a prelude, something Verdi listeners are not accustomed to. Arturo Toscanini performed as cellist in the orchestra at the world premiere and began his friendship with Verdi (a composer he revered as highly as Beethoven). Verdi's last opera, Falstaff, whose libretto was also by Boito, was based on Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor and Victor Hugo's subsequent translation. It was an international success and is one of the supreme comic operas which shows Verdi's genius as a contrapuntist.

In 1894, Verdi composed a short ballet for a French production of Otello, his last purely orchestral composition. Years later, Arturo Toscanini recorded the music for RCA Victor with the NBC Symphony Orchestra which complements the 1947 Toscanini performance of the complete opera.

In 1897, Verdi completed his last composition, a setting of the traditional Latin text Stabat Mater. This was the last of four sacred works that Verdi composed, Quattro Pezzi Sacri, which are often performed together or separately. The first performance of the four works was on 7 April 1898, at the Grande Opéra, Paris. The four works are: Ave Maria for mixed chorus; Stabat Mater for mixed chorus and orchestra; Laudi alla Vergine Maria for female chorus; and Te Deum for double chorus and orchestra.

On 29 July 1900, King Umberto I of Italy was assassinated, a deed that horrified the aged composer.

While staying at the Grand Hotel et de Milan in Milan, Verdi had a stroke on 21 January 1901. He grew gradually more feeble and died six days later, on 27 January. Arturo Toscanini conducted the vast forces of combined orchestras and choirs composed of musicians from throughout Italy at the state funeral for Verdi in Milan. To date, it remains the largest public assembly of any event in the history of Italy.

Role in the Risorgimento

in Palermo, Italy by Antonio Ugo.]]

Music historians have long perpetuated a myth about the famous Va, pensiero chorus sung in the third act of Nabucco. The myth reports that, when the Va, pensiero chorus was sung in Milan, then belonging to the large part of Italy under Austrian domination, the audience, responding with nationalistic fervor to the exiled slaves' lament for their lost homeland, demanded an encore of the piece. As encores were expressly forbidden by the government at the time, such a gesture would have been extremely significant. However, recent scholarship puts this to rest. Although the audience did indeed demand an encore, it was not for Va, pensiero but rather for the hymn Immenso Jehova, sung by the Hebrew slaves to thank God for saving His people. In light of these new revelations, Verdi's position as the musical figurehead of the Risorgimento has been correspondingly downplayed.

On the other hand, during rehearsals, workmen in the theater stopped what they were doing during Va, pensiero and applauded at the conclusion of this haunting melody while the growth of the "identification of Verdi's music with Italian nationalist politics" is judged to have begun in the summer 1846 in relation to a chorus from Ernani in which the name of one of its characters, "Carlo", was changed to "Pio", a reference to Pope Pius IX's grant of an amnesty to political prisoners.

After Italy was unified in 1861, many of Verdi's early operas were re-interpreted as Risorgimento works with hidden Revolutionary messages that probably had not been intended by either the composer or librettist. Beginning in Naples in 1859 and spreading throughout Italy, the slogan "Viva VERDI" was used as an acronym for ''Viva Vittorio Emanuele Re D'Italia (Victor Emmanuel King of Italy), referring to Victor Emmanuel II, then king of Sardinia.

The Chorus of the Hebrews (the English title for Va, pensiero) has another appearance in Verdi folklore. Prior to Verdi's body being driven from the cemetery to the official memorial service and its final resting place at the Casa di Riposo per Musicisti, Arturo Toscanini conducted a chorus of 820 singers in "Va, pensiero". At the Casa, the Miserere from Il trovatore was sung.

Verdi was elected as a member of the Chamber of Deputies in 1861 following a request of Prime Minister Cavour but in 1865 he resigned from the office. In 1874 he was named Senator of the Kingdom by King Victor Emanuel II.

Style

(1860)]] Verdi's predecessors who influenced his music were Rossini, Bellini, Giacomo Meyerbeer and, most notably, Gaetano Donizetti and Saverio Mercadante. With the exception of Otello and Aida, he was free of Wagner's influence. Although respectful of Gounod, Verdi was careful not to learn anything from the Frenchman whom many of Verdi's contemporaries regarded as the greatest living composer. Some strains in Aida suggest at least a superficial familiarity with the works of the Russian composer Mikhail Glinka, whom Franz Liszt, after his tour of the Russian Empire as a pianist, popularized in Western Europe.

Throughout his career, Verdi rarely utilised the high C in his tenor arias, citing the fact that the opportunity to sing that particular note in front of an audience distracts the performer before and after the note appears. However, he did provide high Cs to Duprez in Jérusalem and to Tamberlick in the original version of La forza del destino. The high C often heard in the aria Di quella pira does not appear in Verdi's score.

Some critics maintain he paid insufficient attention to the technical aspect of composition, lacking as he did schooling and refinement. Verdi himself once said, "Of all composers, past and present, I am the least learned." He hastened to add, however, "I mean that in all seriousness, and by learning I do not mean knowledge of music."

However, it would be incorrect to assume that Verdi underestimated the expressive power of the orchestra or failed to use it to its full capacity where necessary. Moreover, orchestral and contrapuntal innovation is characteristic of his style: for instance, the strings producing a rapid ascending scale in Monterone's scene in Rigoletto accentuate the drama, and, in the same opera, the chorus humming six closely grouped notes backstage portrays, very effectively, the brief ominous wails of the approaching tempest. Verdi's innovations are so distinctive that other composers do not use them; they remain, to this day, some of Verdi's signatures.

Verdi was one of the first composers who insisted on patiently seeking out plots to suit his particular talents. Working closely with his librettists and well aware that dramatic expression was his forte, he made certain that the initial work upon which the libretto was based was stripped of all "unnecessary" detail and "superfluous" participants, and only characters brimming with passion and scenes rich in drama remained.

Many of his operas, especially the later ones from 1851 onwards, are a staple of the standard repertoire. No composer of Italian opera has managed to match Verdi's popularity, perhaps with the exception of Giacomo Puccini.

Works

Verdi's operas, and their date of première are:

Oberto, 17 November 1839

Un giorno di regno, 5 September 1840

Nabucco, 9 March 1842

I Lombardi alla prima crociata, 11 February 1843

Ernani, 9 March 1844

I due Foscari, 3 November 1844

Giovanna d'Arco, 15 February 1845

Alzira, 12 August 1845

Attila, 17 March 1846

Macbeth, 14 March 1847

I masnadieri, 22 July 1847

Jérusalem (a revision and translation of I Lombardi alla prima crociata) 26 November 1847

Il corsaro, 25 October 1848

La battaglia di Legnano, 27 January 1849

Luisa Miller, 8 December 1849

Stiffelio, 16 November 1850

Rigoletto, 11 March 1851

Il trovatore, 19 January 1853

La traviata, 6 March 1853

Les vêpres siciliennes, 13 June 1855

Simon Boccanegra, 12 March 1857

Aroldo (A major revision of Stiffelio), 16 August 1857

Un ballo in maschera, 17 February 1859

La forza del destino, 10 November 1862

Don Carlos, 11 March 1867

Aida, 24 December 1871

Otello, 5 February 1887

Falstaff, 9 February 1893

Political Significance

Unlike most of the visual arts, opera was commercially profitable, accessible to most classes of society, and thus an effective means of reaching the 19th-century public. Verdi used musical theater to contrast noble ideals with the corrosive effects of power, love of country with the inevitable call for sacrifice and death, and the lure of passion with the need for social order.

Media

Cultural depictions and references

The 1985 play After Aida is a play-with-music similar to Amadeus. It is an accurate and learned, yet dramatic and humorous, depiction of Verdi's relationship with his librettist Arrigo Boito, and the attempts of Giulio Ricordi and Franco Faccio to get the two to collaborate on a project, Otello.

Eponyms

There are many theatres named after Verdi in Italy.

The Verdi Inlet on the Beethoven Peninsula of Alexander Island just off Antarctica

Verdi Square at Broadway and West 72nd Street in Manhattan features the Giuseppe Verdi Monument.

Asteroid 3975 Verdi

Verdi's name literally translates as "Joseph Green" in English (although verdi is the plural form of "green"). Musical comedian Victor Borge often referred to the famous composer as "Joe Green" in his act, saying that "Giuseppe Verdi" was merely his "stage name". The same joke-translation is mentioned in Agatha Christie's Evil Under the Sun by Patrick Redfern to Hercule Poirot — a prank which inadvertedly gives Poirot the answer to the murder.

Notes

References

Life in and around Busseto

Associazione Amici di Verdi (ed.), Con Verdi nella sua terra, Busseto, 1997, (in English)

Maestrelli, Maurizio, Guida alla Villa e al Parco (in Italian), publication of Villa Verdi, 2001

Mordacci, Alessandra, An Itinerary of the History and Art in the Places of Verdi, Busseto: Busseto Tourist Office, 2001 (in English)

Villa Verdi': the Visit and Villa Verdi: The Park; the Villa; the Room (pamphlets in English), publications of the Villa Verdi

External links

Giuseppe Verdi Official Site

Stanford University list of Verdi operas, premiere locations and dates, etc.

"Album Verdi" from the Digital Library of the National Library of Naples (Italy)

London Society for Verdi enthusiasts

Listen to a free MP3 recording of Ave Maria with Umeå Akademiska Kör

Free MP3 Verdi's operas

Free audio MP3 OnClassical - Creative Commons BY-NC-SA, 1.0 - licensed

Un ballo in Maschera Soprano (free MP3)

Detailed listing of "complete" recordings of Verdi's operas and of extended excerpts

"Verdi and Milan", lecture by Roger Parker on Verdi, given at Gresham College, London 14 May 2007

Verdi cylinder recordings, from the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara Library

Giuseppe Verdi MP3 Creative Commons Recordings

Category:1813 births Category:1901 deaths Category:Giuseppe Verdi Category:People from Busseto Category:Opera composers Category:Italian composers Category:Romantic composers Category:Recipients of the Pour le Mérite (civil class) Category:Senators of the Kingdom of Italy Category:Honorary Members of the Royal Philharmonic Society

Giuseppe Taddei (26 June 19162 June 2010) was an Italian baritone, who performed mostly the operas of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Giuseppe Verdi.

Taddei was born in Genoa, Italy, and studied in Rome, where he made his professional debut in 1936 as the Herald in Wagner's Lohengrin. He sang at the Rome Opera until he was conscripted into the army in 1942. After the war, he resumed his opera career and appeared for two seasons at the Vienna State Opera. He made his debut in London in 1947, at the Cambridge Theatre. The following year, 1948, saw his debut at the Salzburg Festival, La Scala in Milan, and the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples.

His American debut took place at the San Francisco Opera in 1957, followed by his appearance with Lyric Opera of Chicago in 1959. He sang regularly at the Royal Opera House in London from 1960 to 1967.

Taddei was equally effective in comedy and drama. His acting repertoire included the two Figaros, from The Marriage of Figaro and The Barber of Seville, both Leporello and Don Giovanni in Don Giovanni, both Belcore and Dulcamara in L'elisir d'amore, as well as Ernani, Macbeth, Rigoletto, Amonasro in Aida, Iago in Otello, Falstaff, Barnaba in La Gioconda, Gérard in Andrea Chénier, and Scarpia in Tosca, among others.

His vocal longevity allowed him to continue singing into old age, including a debut at the Metropolitan Opera, on 25 September 1985, in the title role of Falstaff, at the age of 69.

Taddei left many recordings, notably as Figaro in The Marriage of Figaro and Leporello in Don Giovanni in the Carlo Maria Giulini versions, as Macbeth, opposite Birgit Nilsson, conducted by Thomas Schippers, and as Scarpia in Tosca and as Falstaff, both conducted by Herbert von Karajan.

Discografia

Year - Opera - Composer - Director - Singer - Character

1940 - 1949

1941 - Andrea Chénier (Giordano) - Oliviero de Fabritiis: Giuseppe Taddei (Pietro Fléville)

1941 - Andrea Chénier (Giordano) - Oliviero de Fabritiis: Giuseppe Taddei (Fouquier-Tinville)

1949 - Gianni Schicchi (Puccini) - Alfredo Simonetto: Giuseppe Taddei (Gianni Schicchi)

1950 - 1959

1950 - Il barbiere di Siviglia (Rossini) - Fernando Previtali: Giuseppe Taddei (Figaro)

1950 - Falstaff (Verdi) - Mario Rossi: Giuseppe Taddei (John Falstaff)

1951 - La Bohème (Puccini) - Gabriele Santini: Giuseppe Taddei (Marcello)

1951 - Ernani (Verdi) - Fernando Previtali: Giuseppe Taddei (Don Carlo)

1951 - La traviata (Verdi) - Oliviero de Fabritiis: Giuseppe Taddei (Giorgio Germont)

1951 - Aida (Verdi) - Oliviero de Fabritiis: Giuseppe Taddei (Amonasro)

1952 - Guillaume Tell (Rossini) - Mario Rossi: Giuseppe Taddei (Guglielmo Tell)

1952 - Adriana Lecouvreur (Cilèa) - Gabriele Santini: Giuseppe Taddei (Michonnet)

1952 - La traviata (Verdi) - Gabriele Santini: Giuseppe Taddei (Giorgio Germont)

1953 - Madama Butterfly (Puccini) - Angelo Questa: Giuseppe Taddei (Sharpless)

1953 - Linda di Chamounix (Donizetti) - Alfredo Simonetto: Giuseppe Taddei (Antonio)

1953 - L'elisir d'amore (Donizetti) - Gianandrea Gavazzeni: Giuseppe Taddei (Belcore)

1953 - Die Zauberflöte (Mozart) - Herbert von Karajan: Giuseppe Taddei (Papageno)

1953 - Eugen Onegin (Tchaikovsky) - Nino Sanzogno: Giuseppe Taddei (Evgeni Oneguin)

1954 - Tosca (Puccini) - Oliviero de Fabritiis: Giuseppe Taddei (Baron Scarpia)

1954 - Rigoletto (Verdi) - Angelo Questa: Giuseppe Taddei (Rigoletto)

1954 - Otello (Verdi) - Franco Capuana: Giuseppe Taddei (Yago)

1954 - L'elisir d'amore (Donizetti) - Mario Rossi: Giuseppe Taddei (Il dottor Dulcamara) DVD

1955 - Don Giovanni (Mozart) - Max Rudolf: Giuseppe Taddei (Don Giovanni)

1955 - Les Huguenots (Meyerbeer) - Tullio Serafin: Giuseppe Taddei (Nevers)

1955 - Andrea Chénier (Giordano) - Angelo Questa: Giuseppe Taddei (Charles Gérard)

1955 - Tosca (Puccini) - Vincenzo Belleza: Giuseppe Taddei (Baron Scarpia)

1956 - Moïse et Pharaon (Rossini) - Tullio Serafin: Giuseppe Taddei (Faraone)

1956 - Linda di Chamounix (Donizetti) - Tullio Serafin: Giuseppe Taddei (Antonio)

1956 - Falstaff (Verdi) - Tullio Serafin: Giuseppe Taddei (John Falstaff) DVD

1957 - I vespri siciliani (Verdi) - Tullio Serafin: Giuseppe Taddei (Guido de Monforte)

1957 - Moïse et Pharaon (Rossini) - Tullio Serafin: Giuseppe Taddei (Faraone)

1957 - Tosca (Puccini) - Tullio Serafin: Giuseppe Taddei (Baron Scarpia)

1958 - Otello (Verdi) - Thomas Beecham: Giuseppe Taddei (Yago)

1958 - L'elisir d'amore (Donizetti) - Tullio Serafin: Giuseppe Taddei (Il dottor Dulcamara)

1959 - Le nozze di Figaro (Mozart) - Carlo Maria Giulini: Giuseppe Taddei (Figaro)

1959 - Don Giovanni (Mozart) - Carlo Maria Giulini: Giuseppe Taddei (Leporello)

1960 - 1969

1960 - Macbeth II (Verdi) - Vittorio Gui: Giuseppe Taddei (Macbeth)

1960 - Les Pêcheurs de perles (Bizet) - Armando La Rosa Parodi: Giuseppe Taddei (Zurga)

1961 - La forza del destino (Verdi) - Fernando Previtali: Giuseppe Taddei (Don Carlos de Vargas)

1961 - Le nozze di Figaro (Mozart) - Carlo Maria Giulini: Giuseppe Taddei (Figaro)

1962 - Tosca (Puccini) - Herbert von Karajan: Giuseppe Taddei (Baron Scarpia)

1962 - Tosca (Puccini) - Carlo Felice Cillario: Giuseppe Taddei (Baron Scarpia)

1962 - Così fan tutte (Mozart) - Karl Böhm: Giuseppe Taddei (Guglielmo)

1962 - Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (Wagner) - Lovro Von Matacic: Giuseppe Taddei (Sachs)

1963 - La Bohème (Puccini) - Herbert von Karajan: Giuseppe Taddei (Schaunard)

1964 - Macbeth II (Verdi) - Thomas Schippers: Giuseppe Taddei (Macbeth)

1964 - Knias Igor (Borodin) - Armando La Rosa Parodi: Giuseppe Taddei (Igor Sviatoslavich)

1965 - I Pagliacci (Leoncavallo) - Herbert von Karajan: Giuseppe Taddei (Tonio)

1966 - Simon Boccanegra (Verdi) - Giuseppe Patané: Giuseppe Taddei (Simon Bocanegra)

1967 - L'elisir d'amore (Donizetti) - Gianandrea Gavazzeni: Giuseppe Taddei (Belcore) DVD

1967 - L'elisir d'amore (Donizetti) - Gianandrea Gavazzeni: Giuseppe Taddei (Belcore)

1968 - Ernani (Verdi) - Manno Wolf-Ferrari: Giuseppe Taddei (Don Carlo)

1969 - Belisario (Donizetti) - Gianandrea Gavazzeni: Giuseppe Taddei (Belisario)

1970 - 1979

1973 - Caterina Cornaro (Donizetti) - Alfredo Silipigni: Giuseppe Taddei (Lusignano)

1974 - Luisa Miller (Verdi) - Alberto Erede: Giuseppe Taddei (Miller)

1974 - Guillaume Tell (Rossini) - Jacques Delacôte: Giuseppe Taddei (Guglielmo Tell)

1974 - Un giorno di regno ossial Il finto Stanislao (Verdi) - Piero Bellugi: Giuseppe Taddei (Barón di Kelbar)

1975 - Don Pasquale (Donizetti) - Carlo Franci: Giuseppe Taddei (Don Pasquale)

1976 - Le Convenienze ed Inconvenienze Teatrali (Donizetti) - Carlo Franci: Giuseppe Taddei (Mamma Agata)

1977 - Adriana Lecouvreur (Cilèa) - Gianandrea Gavazzeni: Giuseppe Taddei (Michonnet)

1980 - 1989

1980 - Falstaff (Verdi) - Herbert von Karajan: Giuseppe Taddei (John Falstaff)

1982 - Falstaff (Verdi) - Herbert von Karajan: Giuseppe Taddei (John Falstaff) DVD

1990 - 1999

1992 - Manon Lescaut (Puccini) - James Levine: Giuseppe Taddei (Geronte di Ravoir)

Sources

The Metropolitan Opera Encyclopedia, edited by David Hamilton ISBN 0-671-61732-X

The Metropolitan Opera Guide to Recorded Opera, edited by Paul Gruber ISBN 0-393-03444-5

Obituary in Der Standard (in German)

Footnotes

Category:Italian opera singers Category:Italian baritones Category:Operatic baritones Category:1916 births Category:2010 deaths

Gabriel Bacquier (born May 17, 1924) is a French operatic baritone. One of the leading baritones of the 20th century and particularly associated with the French and Italian repertories, he is considered a fine singing-actor equally at home in dramatic or comic roles.

Life and career

Gabriel Bacquier was born in Béziers, France and as a child was fascinated by everything to do with singing - records, broadcasts and photos of singers. After beginning studies in Montpellier as a commercial artist, and doing national service on the railways during the Occupation, he found a singing teacher, took classes at the Music School and in 1945 entered the Paris Conservatoire, graduating in 1950. He joined the opera company of José Beckmans from 1950 to 1952, and then became a member of La Monnaie in Brussels from 1953 until 1956. There he sang both the French repertory, opera (Faust, Lakmé, Manon, Werther) and operetta (Angélique, La belle Hélène, Les Cloches de Corneville, Miss Heylett, Monsieur Beaucaire); as well as Puccini (La Boheme, Madame Butterfly), the Barber of Seville and the Bartered Bride.

He made his debut at the Opéra-Comique in 1956, as Sharpless in Madama Butterfly, and at the Palais Garnier in 1958, as Germont in La traviata, followed by the Aix-en-Provence Festival in 1960, as Don Giovanni. The same year he stood in at short notice to sing Rigoletto at the Paris Opera leading to his engagement at that house, making his debut proper there in Tosca opposite Renata Tebaldi. That was the start of his international career. He was invited at the Glyndebourne Festival in 1962, as Count Almaviva in Le nozze di Figaro. From 1963, Bacquier sang regularly at the Vienna State Opera, La Scala, the Royal Opera House in London.

Bacquier made his American debut at the Lyric Opera of Chicago in 1962, as the High Priest in Samson et Dalila, which was also his debut role at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, on October 17, 1964, where he was one of the few French singers to sing there for 18 consecutive seasons. He also sang frequently at the Philadelphia Lyric Opera Company between 1963 and 1968, making his debut on February 22, 1963 as Zurga in Bizet's Les pêcheurs de perles with Ferruccio Tagliavini as Nadir and Adriana Maliponte as Leïla. His other roles in Philadelphia included Nilakantha inLakmé opposite Joan Sutherland in the title role, Germont with Sutherland as Violetta and John Alexander as Alfredo, Iago in Otello, Scarpia in Tosca, and Escamillo in Carmen. He made his debut at the San Francisco Opera in 1971 as Michele in Il tabarro.

Though closely associated with the French repertory, especially Golaud in Pelléas et Mélisande, Bacquier resisted being typecast as a 'French baritone' and added many Italian roles to his repertory, such as Riccardo in Ballo in maschera, Melitone in Forza del destino, Posa in Don Carlos, Scarpia in Tosca, as well as comic roles such as Bartolo in Il barbiere di Siviglia, Don Pasquale, Falstaff, Leporello in Don Giovanni, Alfonso in Cosi fan tutte, etc. Many of his roles are preserved in an impressive discography.

He also created the title roles of Jean-Pierre Rivière's Pour un Don Quichotte (La Scala, March 10, 1961) and Daniel-Lesur 's Andréa del Sarto (Opéra de Marseille, 1969), as well as singing in the world premieres of Maurice Thiriet 's La véridique histoire du Docteur and Gian Carlo Menotti's Le Dernier Sauvage at the Opéra-Comique. He retired from the stage in June 1994 (final performance as Don Pasquale at the Opéra-Comique).

In the field of mélodie, he made recordings of songs by Ravel, Déodat de Séverac, Poulenc and others. Two live recitals from 1961 and 1972 were issued on CD in 1987 on the Vogue label. He may be seen singing six Poulenc songs accompanied by Jacques Février in June 1964 on a DVD.

Bacquier appeared in the 1976 film La Grande récré, and in a cameo singing role in the wedding scene of the 1986 film Manon des Sources. He also starred in the 1979 film of Falstaff directed by Götz Friedrich (sound recorded Vienna 1978, filmed Berlin 1979).

Bacquier has also been active as a teacher, first at the vocal school of the Paris Opera, and later at the Paris Conservatory and since 2001 the Académie de Musique de Monaco where he has directed student productions. He is married to French soprano, Michèle Command, with whom he often gives masterclasses mostly in Europe.

In 2007 Gabriel Bacquier recorded for CD thirteen songs by actor and song-writer Pierre Louki, directed by Jacques Bolognesi.

He was one of the lead signatories to a petition in 2008 Appel à la Refondation des Troupes de Théâtre Lyrique to defend and promote French singing.

Awards and Distinctions

Bacquier has received numerous awards and distinctions in his native France, including Officier de L'Ordre national du Mérite, Commandeur de L'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur.

Recordings

The following is a selection of Bacquier's many recordings:

Mozart: Don Giovanni (Gabriel Bacquier (Giovanni), Joan Sutherland (Anna), Pilar Lorengar (Elvira) , Werner Krenn (Ottavio), Donald Gramm (Leporello), Marilyn Horne (Zerlina) , Leonardo Monreale (Masetto), Clifford Grant (Commendatore), Ambrosian Opera Chorus, English Chamber Orchestra). Conductor: Richard Bonynge. Decca 448 973-2

Offenbach: Les Contes d'Hoffmann (Placido Domingo, Joan Sutherland, Gabriel Bacquier (Lindorf, Coppélius, Dapertutto, Dr Miracle), Paul Plishka, Huguette Tourangeau, Hugues Cuénod, L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande). Conductor: Richard Bonynge. Decca.

Offenbach: Les Contes d'Hoffmann (Roberto Alagna, Natalie Dessay, Sumi Jo, Leontina Vaduva, Catherine Dubosc, José Van Dam, Michel Sénéchal, Ludovic Tezier, Gabriel Bacquier (Spalanzani, Schlemil, Crespel), Doris Lamprecht, Gilles Ragon, Jean-Marie Frémeau, Benoit Boutet, Gérard Théruel, Juanita Lascarro, Orchestre & Choeur de L'Opéra de Lyon). Conductor: Kent Nagano. Erato 0630143302

Massenet: Manon (Beverly Sills, Gabriel Bacquier (Comte des Grieux), Gérard Souzay, Michel Trempont, Nico Castel, New Philharmonia Orchestra). Conductor: Julius Rudel. Deutsche Grammophon 247002

Massenet: Thaïs (Anna Moffo, Gabriel Bacquier (Athanaël), Jose Carreras, Justino Diaz, Ambrosian Chorus, New Philharmonia Orchestra). Conductor: Julius Rudel. RCA Red Seal.

Debussy: Pelléas et Mélisande (Gabriel Bacquier (Golaud), Michèle Command, Claude Dormoy, Monique Pouradier-Duteil, Roger Soyer, Jocelyne Taillon, Xavier Tamalet, Orchestre de Lyon). Conductor: Serge Baudo. Eurodisc.

Bizet: La jolie fille de Perth (June Anderson, Alfredo Kraus, Gino Quilico, José Van Dam, Gabriel Bacquier (Glover), Margarita Zimmermann, Nouvel Orchestre Philharmonique). Conductor: Georges Prêtre. EMI 7475598

Bizet: Les pêcheurs de perles (Jeanine Micheau (Leila), Alain Vanzo (Nadir), Gabriel Bacquier (Zurga), Lucien Lovano (Nourabad), Chœur de la RTF, Orchestre Radio-Lyrique, Conductor: Manuel Rosenthal). Paris, June 25, 1959. GALA GL 100.504

Rossini: Guillaume Tell (Gabriel Bacquier (title role), Monserrat Caballé, Nicolai Gedda, Mady Mesplé, Jocelyne Taillon, Louis Hendrikx, Kolos Kovacs, Gwynne Howell, Charles Burles, Ricardo Cassinelli, Nicholas Christou, Ambrosian Opera Chorus, Royal Philharmonic Orchestra). Conductor: Lamberto Gardelli. EMI.

References

Further sources

Alain Pâris, Dictionnaire des interprètes et de l'interpretation musicale au XX siècle (2 vols), Ed. Robert Laffont (Bouquins, Paris 1982, 4th Edn. 1995, 5th Edn 2004). ISBN 2-221-06660-X

D. Hamilton (ed.),The Metropolitan Opera Encyclopedia: A Complete Guide to the World of Opera (Simon and Schuster, New York 1987). ISBN 0-671-16732-X

Roland Mancini and Jean-Jacques Rouveroux, (orig. H. Rosenthal and J. Warrack, French edition), Guide de l’opéra, Les indispensables de la musique (Fayard, 1995). ISBN 2-213-01563-6

Opera News, William V. Madison, July 2007.

Sadie, Stanley and Christina Bashford. (1992). The New Grove Dictionary of Opera. London: Macmillan Publishers Ltd. Vol. 1, p. 272. ISBN 0-935859-92-6.

Sadie, Stanley and John Tyrrell,(2001). The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. London: Macmillan Publishers Ltd. Vol. 2, p. 450-1. ISBN 0-333-60800-3.

Warrack, John and Ewan West. (1996 3rd ed.). The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Opera. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 28. ISBN 0-19-280028-0.

External links

Gabriel Bacquier Discography (Brian Capon's Lists of Opera Recordings)

Category:1924 births Category:Living people Category:French opera singers Category:Operatic baritones Category:Chevaliers of the Légion d'honneur Category:Commandeurs of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres Category:Officiers of the Ordre national du Mérite

Donald Gramm (26 February 1927 – 2 June 1983) was an American bass-baritone whose career was divided between opera and concert performances. His appearances were primarily limited to the United States, which at the time was unusual for an American singer. John Rockwell of The New York Times described Gramm as follows: "He had an unusually rich, noble tone, and although its volume may not have been large, it penetrated even the biggest theaters easily. Technically, he could handle bel-canto ornamentation fluently. But his real strengths lay in his aristocratic musicianship (impeccable phrasing that he polished by accompanying himself at the piano, and an easy command of five languages) and his instinctive acting." Among the most notable of his many operatic roles were the title role in Verdi's Falstaff, Leporello in Mozart's Don Giovanni, and Dr. Schön and Jack the Ripper in Berg's Lulu.

Early life and training

Gramm was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin of German ancestry with the surname Grambsch, which he later changed to Gramm. He received his early musical training at the Wisconsin College Conservatory of Music (1933–1944) and sang his operatic debut at age 17 at Chicago's Eighth Street Theater as Raimondo in Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor. He later studied at the Chicago Musical College and with Martial Singher.

Gramm also performed major roles frequently with Sarah Caldwell's Opera Company of Boston and John Crosby's Santa Fe Opera.

Metropolitan Opera performances

Gramm's Met Opera debut was on 10 January 1964, in the minor role of Truffaldino in Richard Straus's Ariadne auf Naxos. One of the most important roles Gramm performed during his career at the Met was Leporello in Mozart's Don Giovanni. He performed the part 24 times with the company between 1966 and 1981; of these only 5 were in New York, the remainder were on tour. He was otherwise, however, often confined to smaller parts. Roles performed in the 1964–65 season included the Maharajah in Menotti's The Last Savage (a part which rises to high F-sharp),

In the 1970–71 season he appeared again as Pedro in La Périchole and Leporello in Don Giovanni but also added Don Basilio in Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia and the Bailiff in Massenet's Werther. In the 1971–72 season he repeated the role of Bailiff in Werther, added Kothner in Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, but most importantly sang Sulpice in Donizetti's La fille du régiment (with Dame Joan Sutherland as Marie and Luciano Pavarotti as Tonio). In the 1972–73 season he was cast as Zuniga in Göran Gentele's new production of Bizet's Carmen (with Marilyn Horne as Carmen and James McCracken as Don José); he repeated his roles as the Speaker, Leporello, and Sulpice, and added Captain Balstrode in Britten's Peter Grimes (with Jon Vickers in the title role). In the 1973–74 season he performed Papageno in Die Zauberflöte. In the 1974–75 season he repeated the Doctor in Wozzeck and added Varlaam in Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov. In the 1975–76 season he repeated Papageno and added the roles of Dr. Schön and Jack the Ripper in Berg's Lulu, the Met's first production of the opera, directed by John Dexter. In the 1977–78 season he repeated Captain Balstrode and Leporello. In the 1978–79 season, on the Met's Spring Tour, he added the title role in Donizetti's Don Pasquale. He never performed this part at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. Gramm repeated the role 6 more times, giving his final performance at the Met in a matinee broadcast on 5 March 1983. In total he had appeared 230 times with the company.

Label: HMV (UK) ALP1225-7 (3 LPs, mono)

* "Magnificent! ... The Brander (presumably American) does the Song of the Rat effectively...." Gramophone review December 1955, p. 178. Retrieved 5 January 2010.

Label: RCA Victrola (UK) VIC6109/1-2 (mono) and VICS6109/1-2 (electronic stereo) (2 LPs)

* Re: electronic stereo: "I could detect no sense of direction, nor clarification of texture...." Gramophone review March 1969, p. 1332. Retrieved 5 January 2010.

Label: RCA Victor Gold Seal (UK) GD87940 (2 CDs, 141 minutes, ADD)

* Also includes Debussy's La damoiselle élue.

* "...Sir Colin Davis's electrifying Philips performance ... is not only unsurpassed but likely to remain so.... Munch ... shows a greater grasp of Berliozian nuance than Ozawa...." Gramophone comparative review of the Ozawa and Munch recordings February 1989, p. 1320. Retrieved 5 January 2010.

Mozart: Don Giovanni • English Chamber Orchestra, Ambrosian Singers

Recording date: 1969

Conductor: Richard Bonynge

Principal singers: Gabriel Bacquier (Don Giovanni); Joan Sutherland (Donna Anna); Pilar Lorengar (Donna Elvira); Marilyn Horne (Zerlina); Werner Krenn (Don Ottavio); Donald Gramm (Leporello); Leonardo Monreale (Masetto); Clifford Grant (Commendatore)

Label: Decca (UK) SET412-5 (4 LPs, stereo)

*"Donald Gramm's Leporello, distinctly darker-toned than [the] Giovanni, comes across well: good, unaffected singing, without exaggeration or coarseness ... [but] perhaps, not a strongly characterful reading." Gramophone review, February 1970, pp. 1312, 1319. Retrieved 5 January 2010.

Label: Decca Grand Opera (UK) 448 973-2DMO3 (3 CDs, 184 minutes, ADD)

* "Leporello (the excellent Donald Gramm) ... a landmark set in its way...." Gramophone review, May 1997, pp. 112-113. Retrieved 5 January 2010.

Donizetti: Don Pasquale • London Symphony Orchestra, Ambrosian Opera Chorus

Recording date: 1978

Conductor: Sarah Caldwell

Principal singers: Donald Gramm (Don Pasquale); Beverly Sills (Norina); Alfredo Kraus (Ernesto); Alan Titus (Dr. Malatesta); Henry Newman (Notary)

Label: Angel (USA) SBLX 3871 (2 LPs, issued 1978)

Label: EMI Classics 724356603028 (2 CDs, 122 minutes, ADD)

* "Donald Gramm is a well-mannered, vivid Pasquale...." Gramophone review, March 1997, p. 93. Retrieved 5 January 2010.

Video

Verdi: Falstaff • London Philharmonic Orchestra, Glyndbourne Chorus

Recording date: 1976 (live at the Opera Festival, Glyndbourne)

Conductor: John Pritchard

Stage Director: Jean-Pierre Ponnelle

Principal singers: Donald Gramm (Falstaff); Benjamin Luxon (Ford); Kay Griffel (Alice Ford); Elizabeth Gale (Nannetta); Max-René Cosotti (Fenton); Nucci Condò (Mistress Quickly); Reni Penkova (Meg Page); John Fryatt (Doctor Caius); Bernard Dickerson (Bardolph); Ugo Trama (Pistol)

Label: Arthaus Musik 101 083 (DVD, NTSC 4:3, PCM stereo, 118 min)

* "Gramm is a true cavaliere of a Falstaff: we can tell that here is an idealist manqué with a natural dignity of manner and mien, while the American baritone's singing, while not as ideally rounded as José van Dam (Cambreling) and Ambrogio Maestri (Muti) on the rival versions..., is always well-groomed and exact." Gramophone review July 2005, pp. 107, 109. Retrieved 5 January 2010.

References

Category:1927 births Category:1983 deaths Category:People from Milwaukee, Wisconsin Category:Operatic bass-baritones Category:American opera singers

Name	Dean Martin
Background	solo_singer
Birth name	Dino Paul Crocetti
Alias	Dean MartinThe King of CoolDinoDino Martini
Born	June 07, 1917 Steubenville, Ohio, United States
Died	December 25, 1995Beverly Hills, California, United States
Genre	Big band, pop, country
Years active	1939-1995 (His Death)
Occupation	Actor, comedian, singer, producer
Label	Capitol, Reprise

Dean Martin (June 7, 1917 – December 25, 1995) was an American singer, film actor and comedian. Martin's hit singles included "Memories Are Made of This", "That's Amore", "Everybody Loves Somebody", "Mambo Italiano", "Sway", "Volare" and smash hit "Ain't That a Kick in the Head?". Nicknamed the "King of Cool", he was one of the members of the "Rat Pack" and a major star in four areas of show business: concert stage/night clubs, recordings, motion pictures, and television.

Early life

Martin was born Dino Paul Crocetti in Steubenville, Ohio, to Italian parents, Gaetano and Angela Crocetti (née Barra). His father was from Abruzzo, Italy, and his mother was an Italian of part Neapolitan and part Sicilian ancestry. Martin was the younger of two sons. His brother was named Bill. Martin spoke only Italian until he started school. He attended Grant Elementary School in Steubenville, and took up the drums as a hobby as a teenager. He was the target of much ridicule for his broken English and ultimately dropped out of Steubenville High School in the 10th grade because he thought that he was smarter than his teachers. He delivered bootleg liquor, served as a speakeasy croupier, was a blackjack dealer, worked in a steel mill and boxed as welterweight. He grew up a neighbor to Jimmy the Greek.

At the age of 15, he was a boxer who billed himself as "Kid Crochet". His prizefighting years earned him a broken nose (later straightened), a scarred lip, and many sets of broken knuckles (a result of not being able to afford the tape used to wrap boxers' hands). Of his twelve bouts, he would later say "I won all but eleven." For a time, he roomed with Sonny King, who, like Martin, was just starting in show business and had little money. It is said that Martin and King held bare-knuckle matches in their apartment, fighting until one of them was knocked out; people paid to watch.

Eventually, Martin gave up boxing. He worked as a roulette stickman and croupier in an illegal casino behind a tobacco shop where he had started as a stock boy. At the same time, he sang with local bands. Calling himself "Dino Martini" (after the then-famous Metropolitan Opera tenor, Nino Martini), he got his first break working for the Ernie McKay Orchestra. He sang in a crooning style influenced by Harry Mills (of the Mills Brothers), among others. In the early 1940s, he started singing for bandleader Sammy Watkins, who suggested he change his name to Dean Martin.

In October 1941, Martin married Elizabeth Anne McDonald. During their marriage (ended by divorce in 1949), they had four children. Martin worked for various bands throughout the early 1940s, mostly on looks and personality until he developed his own singing style. Martin famously flopped at the Riobamba, a high class nightclub in New York, when he succeeded Frank Sinatra in 1943, but it was the setting for their meeting.

Martin repeatedly sold 10 percent shares of his earnings for up front cash. He apparently did this so often that he found he had sold over 100 percent of his income. Such was his charm that most of his lenders forgave his debts and remained friends.

Drafted into the United States Army in 1944 during World War II, Martin served a year stationed in Akron, Ohio. He was then reclassified as 4-F (possibly because of a double hernia; Jerry Lewis referred to the surgery Martin needed for this in his autobiography) and was discharged.

By 1946, Martin was doing relatively well, but was still little more than an East Coast nightclub singer with a common style, similar to that of Bing Crosby. He drew audiences to the clubs he played, but he inspired none of the fanatic popularity enjoyed by Sinatra.

Mafia connections

A biography on Martin entitled Dean Martin: King of the Road by Michael Freedland alleged he had links to the Mafia early in his career. According to this book, Martin was given help with his singing career by the Chicago Outfit who owned saloons in the city, and later performed in shows hosted by these bosses when he was a star. The mob bosses were Tony ("Joe Batters") Accardo and Sam Giancana. Freedland suggests Martin felt little sympathy for the Mafia and did them small favors only if it was not inconvenient for him. While in Las Vegas Martin was friendly with many mobsters, though not in business with them. Many Vegas entertainers knew the wiseguys and were cordial with them personally, without criminal involvement. Another book, The Animal in Hollywood by John L. Smith, depicted Martin's longtime friendship with Mafia mobsters "Handsome Johnny" Roselli and Anthony ("The Animal") Fiato. Smith suggests that Fiato did Martin many favors, such as getting back money from two swindlers who had cheated Martin's ex-wife Betty out of thousands of dollars of her alimony.

Teaming with Jerry Lewis

Martin attracted the attention of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Columbia Pictures, but a Hollywood contract was not forthcoming. He seemed destined to remain on the nightclub circuit until he met a comic named Jerry Lewis at the Glass Hat Club in New York, where both men were performing. Martin and Lewis formed a fast friendship which led to their participation in each other's acts and the ultimate formation of a music-comedy team. More than a few people dubbed them "The Organ Grinder and the Monkey".

Martin and Lewis's official debut together occurred at Atlantic City's 500 Club on July 24, 1946, and they were not well received. The owner, Skinny D'Amato, warned them that if they did not come up with a better act for their second show later that night, they would be fired. Huddling together in the alley behind the club, Lewis and Martin agreed to "go for broke", to throw out the pre-scripted gags and to improvise. Martin sang and Lewis came out dressed as a busboy, dropping plates and making a shambles of both Martin's performance and the club's sense of decorum until Lewis was chased from the room as Martin pelted him with breadrolls. They did slapstick, reeled off old vaudeville jokes, and did whatever else popped into their heads at the moment. This time, the audience doubled over in laughter. This success led to a series of well-paying engagements on the Eastern seaboard, culminating in a triumphant run at New York's Copacabana. Patrons were convulsed by the act, which consisted primarily of Lewis interrupting and heckling Martin while he was trying to sing, and ultimately the two of them chasing each other around the stage and having as much fun as possible. The secret, both said, is that they essentially ignored the audience and played to one another.

The team made its TV debut on the very first broadcast of CBS-TV network's Toast of the Town Program (later called the Ed Sullivan Show) with Ed Sullivan and Rogers & Hammerstein appearing on this same inaugural telecast of June 20, 1948 (photo archive and IMDB documentation confirmed). A radio series commenced in 1949, the same year Martin and Lewis were signed by Paramount producer Hal B. Wallis as comedy relief for the movie My Friend Irma.

Martin liked California which, because of its earth tremors, had few tall buildings. Suffering as he did from claustrophobia, Martin almost never used elevators, and climbing stairs in Manhattan's skyscrapers was not his idea of fun.

Their agent, Abby Greshler, negotiated for them one of Hollywood's best deals: although they received only a modest $75,000 between them for their films with Wallis, Martin and Lewis were free to do one outside film a year, which they would co-produce through their own York Productions. They also had complete control of their club, record, radio and television appearances, and it was through these endeavors that they earned millions of dollars.

Martin and Lewis were the hottest act in America during the early 1950s, but the pace and the pressure took its toll. Most critics underestimated Martin's contribution to the team, as he had the thankless job of the straight man, and his singing had yet to develop into the unique style of his later years. Critics praised Lewis, and while they admitted that Martin was the best partner he could have, most claimed Lewis was the real talent and could succeed with anyone. However, Lewis always praised his partner, and while he appreciated the attention he was getting, he has always said the act would never have worked without Martin. In Dean & Me, he calls Martin one of the great comic geniuses of all time. But the harsh comments from the critics, as well as frustration with the formulaic similarity of Martin & Lewis movies, which producer Hal Wallis stubbornly refused to change, led to Martin's dissatisfaction. He put less enthusiasm into the work, leading to escalating arguments with Lewis. They finally could not work together, especially after Martin told his partner he was "nothing to me but a dollar sign". The act broke up in 1956, 10 years to the day from the first official teaming.

Splitting up their partnership was not easy. It took months for lawyers to work out the details of terminating many of their club bookings, their television contracts, and the dissolution of York Productions. There was intense public pressure for them to stay together.

Lewis had no trouble maintaining his film popularity alone, but Martin, unfairly regarded by much of the public and the motion picture industry as something of a spare tire, found the going hard. His first solo film, Ten Thousand Bedrooms (1957), was a box office failure. He was still popular as a singer, but with rock and roll surging to the fore, the era of the pop crooner was waning. It looked like Martin's fate was to be limited to nightclubs and to be remembered as Lewis's former partner.

The CBS film, Martin and Lewis, a made-for-TV movie about the famous comedy duo, starred Jeremy Northam as Martin, and Sean Hayes as Lewis. It depicted the years from 1946-1956.

Solo career

Never totally comfortable in films, Martin wanted to be known as a real actor. Though offered a fraction of his former salary to co-star in a war drama, The Young Lions (1957), he was ecstatic to receive the part because it would be a dramatic showcase with the two most intriguing young actors of the period and he could learn from Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift. Tony Randall already had the part, but talent agency MCA realized that with this movie, Martin would become a triple threat: they could make money from his work in night clubs, movies, and records. Martin replaced Randall and the film turned out to be the beginning of Martin's spectacular comeback. Success would continue as Martin starred alongside Frank Sinatra for the first time in a highly acclaimed Vincente Minnelli drama, Some Came Running (1958). By the mid '60s, Martin was a top movie, recording, and nightclub star, while Lewis' film career declined. Martin was acclaimed for his performance as Dude in Rio Bravo (1959), directed by Howard Hawks and also starring John Wayne and singer Ricky Nelson. He teamed up again with Wayne in The Sons of Katie Elder (1965), somewhat unconvincingly cast as brothers.

In 1960, Martin was cast in the motion picture version of the Judy Holliday hit stage play Bells Are Ringing. Martin played a satiric variation of his own womanizing persona as Vegas singer "Dino" in Billy Wilder's comedy Kiss Me, Stupid (1964) with Kim Novak, and he was not above poking fun at his image in films such as the Matt Helm spy spoofs of the 1960s, in which he was a co-producer.

As a singer, Martin copied the styles of Harry Mills (of the Mills Brothers), Bing Crosby, and Perry Como until he developed his own and could hold his own in duets with Sinatra and Crosby. Like Sinatra, he could not read music, but he recorded more than 100 albums and 600 songs. His signature tune, "Everybody Loves Somebody", knocked The Beatles' "A Hard Day's Night" out of the number-one spot in the United States in 1964. This was followed by the similarly-styled "The Door is Still Open to My Heart", which reached number six later that year. Elvis Presley was said to have been influenced by Martin, and patterned "Love Me Tender" after his style. Martin, like Elvis, was influenced by country music. By 1965, some of Martin's albums, such as Dean "Tex" Martin, The Hit Sound Of Dean Martin, Welcome To My World and Gentle On My Mind were composed of country and western songs made famous by artists like Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, and Buck Owens. Martin hosted country performers on his TV show and was named "Man Of the Year" by the Country Music Association in 1966. "Ain't That a Kick in the Head", a song Martin performed in Ocean's Eleven that never became a hit at the time, has enjoyed a spectacular revival in the media and pop culture (which can be traced to its usage in 1993's A Bronx Tale and 1997's Fools Rush In).

For three decades, Martin was among the most popular acts in Las Vegas. Martin sang and was one of the smoothest comics in the business, benefiting from the decade of raucous comedy with Lewis. Martin's daughter, Gail, also sang in Vegas and on his TV show, co-hosting his summer replacement series on NBC. Though often thought of as a ladies' man, Martin spent a lot of time with his family; as second wife Jeanne put it, prior to the couple's divorce, "He was home every night for dinner."

The Rat Pack

As Martin's solo career grew, he and Frank Sinatra became close friends. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Martin and Sinatra, along with friends Joey Bishop, Peter Lawford, and Sammy Davis, Jr. formed the legendary Rat Pack, so called by the public after an earlier group of social friends, the Holmby Hills Rat Pack centered on Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, of which Sinatra had been a member.

The Martin-Sinatra-Davis-Lawford-Bishop group referred to themselves as "The Summit" or "The Clan" and never as "The Rat Pack", although this has remained their identity in the popular imagination. The men made films together, formed an important part of the Hollywood social scene in those years, and were politically influential (through Lawford's marriage to Patricia Kennedy, sister of President John F. Kennedy).

The Rat Pack were legendary for their Las Vegas performances. For example, the marquee at the Sands Hotel might read DEAN MARTIN---MAYBE FRANK---MAYBE SAMMY. Las Vegas rooms were at a premium when the Rat Pack would appear, with many visitors sleeping in hotel lobbies or cars to get a chance to see the three men together. Their act (always in tuxedo) consisted of each singing individual numbers, duets and trios, along with much seemingly improvised slapstick and chatter. In the socially-charged 1960s, their jokes revolved around adult themes, such as Sinatra's infamous womanizing and Martin's legendary drinking, as well as many at the expense of Davis's race and religion. Davis famously practiced Judaism and used Yiddish phrases onstage, eliciting much merriment from both his stage-mates and his audiences. It was all good-natured male bonding, never vicious, rarely foul-mouthed, and the three had great respect for each other. The Rat Pack was largely responsible for the integration of Las Vegas. Sinatra and Martin steadfastly refused to appear anywhere that barred Davis, forcing the casinos to open their doors to African-American entertainers and patrons, and to drop restrictive covenants against Jews.

Posthumously, the Rat Pack has experienced a popular revival, inspiring the George Clooney/Brad Pitt "Ocean's" trilogy. An HBO film, The Rat Pack, starred Joe Mantegna as Martin, Ray Liotta as Sinatra and Don Cheadle as Davis. It depicted their contribution to JFK's election in 1960.

The 1960s to 1980s

In 1965, Martin launched his weekly NBC comedy-variety series, The Dean Martin Show, which exploited his public image as a lazy, carefree boozer. There he perfected his famous laid-back persona of the half-drunk crooner suavely hitting on beautiful women with hilarious remarks that would get anyone else slapped, and making snappy if slurred remarks about fellow celebrities during his famous roasts. During an interview he stated, and this may have been tongue-in-cheek, that he had someone record them on cassette tape so he could listen to them; this is evidenced by his comments to this effect on the British TV documentary 'Wine, Women and Song' which was aired in 1983.

The TV show was a success. Martin prided himself on memorizing whole scripts – not merely his own lines. He disliked rehearsing because he firmly believed his best performances were his first. The show's loose format prompted quick-witted improvisation from Martin and the cast. On occasion, he made remarks in Italian, some mild obscenities that brought angry mail from offended, Italian-speaking viewers. This prompted a battle between Martin and NBC censors, who insisted on more scrutiny of the show's content. The show was often in the Top Ten. Martin, deeply appreciative of the efforts of the show's producer, his friend Greg Garrison, later made a handshake deal giving Garrison, a pioneer TV producer in the 1950s, 50% ownership of the show. However, the validity of that ownership is currently the subject of a lawsuit brought by NBC Universal.

Despite Martin's reputation as a heavy drinker — a reputation perpetuated via his vanity license plates reading 'DRUNKY' — he was remarkably self-disciplined. He was often the first to call it a night, and when not on tour or on a film location liked to go home to see his wife and children. Phyllis Diller recently confirmed that Martin was indeed drinking alcohol onstage and not apple juice. She also commented that he while not being drunk was not really sober either but had very strict rules when it came to performances. He borrowed the lovable-drunk shtick from Joe E. Lewis, but his convincing portrayals of heavy boozers in Some Came Running and Howard Hawks's Rio Bravo led to unsubstantiated claims of alcoholism. More often than not, Martin's idea of a good time was playing golf or watching TV, particularly westerns – not staying with Rat Pack friends Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis, Jr. into the early hours of the morning.

Martin starred in and co-produced a series of four Matt Helm superspy comedy adventures. A fifth, The Ravagers, was planned starring Sharon Tate and Martin in a dual role, one as a serial killer, but due to the murder of Tate and the decline of the spy genre the film was never made.

By the early 1970s, The Dean Martin Show was still earning solid ratings, and although he was no longer a Top 40 hitmaker, his record albums continued to sell steadily. His name on a marquee could guarantee casinos and nightclubs a standing-room-only crowd. He found a way to make his passion for golf profitable by offering his own signature line of golf balls. Shrewd investments had greatly increased Martin's personal wealth; at the time of his death, Martin was reportedly the single largest minority shareholder of RCA stock. Martin even managed to cure himself of his claustrophobia by reportedly locking himself in the elevator of a tall building and riding up and down for hours until he was no longer panic-stricken.

Martin retreated from show business. The final (1973–74) season of his variety show would be retooled into one of celebrity roasts, requiring less of Martin's involvement. After the show's cancellation, NBC continued to air the Dean Martin Celebrity Roast format in a series of TV specials through 1984. In those 11 years, Martin and his panel of pals successfully ridiculed and made fun of these legendary stars in this order: Ronald Reagan, Hugh Hefner, Ed McMahon, William Conrad, Kirk Douglas, Bette Davis, Barry Goldwater, Johnny Carson, Wilt Chamberlain, Hubert Humphrey, Carroll O'Connor, Monty Hall, Jack Klugman & Tony Randall, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Leo Durocher, Truman Capote, Don Rickles, Ralph Nader, Jack Benny, Redd Foxx, Bobby Riggs, George Washington, Dan Rowan & Dick Martin, Hank Aaron, Joe Namath, Bob Hope, Telly Savalas, Lucille Ball, Jackie Gleason, Sammy Davis Jr, Michael Landon, Evel Knievel, Valerie Harper, Muhammad Ali, Dean Martin, Dennis Weaver, Joe Garagiola, Danny Thomas, Angie Dickinson, Gabe Kaplan, Ted Knight, Peter Marshall, Dan Haggerty, Frank Sinatra, Jack Klugman, Jimmy Stewart, George Burns, Betty White, Suzanne Somers, Joan Collins, and Mr T. For nearly a decade, Martin had recorded as many as four albums a year for Reprise Records. That stopped in November 1974, when Martin recorded his final Reprise album - Once In A While, released in 1978. His last recording sessions were for Warner Brothers Records. An album titled The Nashville Sessions was released in 1983, from which he had a hit with "(I Think That I Just Wrote) My First Country Song", which was recorded with Conway Twitty and made a respectable showing on the country charts. A followup single "L.A. Is My Home" / "Drinking Champagne" came in 1985. The 1975 film Mr. Ricco marked Martin's final starring role, and Martin limited his live performances to Las Vegas and Atlantic City.

Martin seemed to suffer a mid-life crisis. In 1972, he filed for divorce from his second wife, Jeanne. A week later, his business partnership with the Riviera was dissolved amid reports of the casino's refusal to agree to Martin's request to perform only once a night. He was quickly snapped up by the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino, and signed a three-picture deal with MGM Studios. Less than a month after his second marriage had been legally dissolved, Martin married 26-year-old Catherine Hawn on April 25, 1973. Hawn had been the receptionist at the chic Gene Shacrove hair salon in Beverly Hills. They divorced November 10, 1976. He was also briefly engaged to Gail Renshaw, Miss World-U.S.A. 1969.

Eventually, Martin reconciled with Jeanne, though they never remarried. He also made a public reconciliation with Jerry Lewis on Lewis' Labor Day Muscular Dystrophy Association telethon in 1976. Frank Sinatra shocked Lewis and the world by bringing Martin out on stage. As Martin and Lewis embraced, the audience erupted in cheers and the phone banks lit up, resulting in one of the telethon's most profitable years. Lewis reported the event was one of the three most memorable of his life. Lewis brought down the house when he quipped, "So, you working?" Martin, playing drunk, replied that he was "at the Meggum" – this reference to the MGM Grand Hotel convulsed Lewis . This, along with the death of Martin's son Dean Paul Martin a few years later, helped to bring the two men together. They maintained a quiet friendship but only performed together again once, in 1989, on Martin's 72nd birthday.

Later years

On December 1, 1983 while gambling at the Golden Nugget casino in Atlantic City, Martin and Sinatra intimidated the dealer and several employees into breaking New Jersey laws by making the dealer deal the cards by hand instead of by a shoe, as is required by law. Although Sinatra and Martin were implicated as the cause of the violation, neither was fined by the New Jersey Casino Control Commission. The Golden Nugget, on the other hand, received a $25,000 fine (which Sinatra paid, stating that it was his responsibility as he and Martin were the cause of the fine) and four employees including the dealer, a supervisor and pit boss were suspended from their jobs without pay.

Martin returned to films briefly with appearances in the two star-laden yet critically panned Cannonball Run movies,. He also had a minor hit single with "Since I Met You Baby" and made his first music video, which appeared on MTV. The video was created by Martin's youngest son, Ricci.

On December 8, 1989, Martin attended Sammy Davis Jr.'s 60th Anniversary Special.

Decline and death

On March 21, 1987, Martin's son Dean Paul (formerly Dino of the '60s "teeny-bopper" rock group Dino, Desi & Billy) was killed when his F-4 Phantom II jet fighter crashed while flying with the California Air National Guard. A much-touted tour with Davis and Sinatra in 1988 sputtered. On one occasion, he infuriated Sinatra when he turned to him and muttered "Frank, what the hell are we doing up here?" Martin, who always responded best to a club audience, felt lost in the huge stadiums they were performing in (at Sinatra's insistence), and he was not the least bit interested in drinking until dawn after their performances. His final Vegas shows were at the Bally's Hotel in 1990. It was there he had his final reunion with Jerry Lewis on his 72nd birthday. Martin's last two TV appearances both involved tributes to his former Rat Pack members. In 1990, he joined many stars of the entertainment industry in Sammy Davis, Jr's 60th anniversary celebration, which aired only a few weeks before Davis died from throat cancer. In December 1990, he congratulated Frank Sinatra on his 75th birthday special. By Early 1995, Martin had officially retired from performing.

Martin, a life-long smoker, was diagnosed with lung cancer at Cedars Sinai Medical Center on 16 September 1993. He died of acute respiratory failure resulting from emphysema at his Beverly Hills home on Christmas morning 1995, at the age of 78. The lights of the Las Vegas Strip were dimmed in his honor.

Tributes

In 1996, Ohio Rte. 7, through Steubenville, was re-dedicated as "Dean Martin Boulevard." Road signs bearing an Al Hirschfeld caricature of Martin's likeness officially designate the stretch, along with a state historical marker, in the Gazebo Park at Route 7 and North Fourth Street.

An annual "Dean Martin Festival" celebration is held in Steubenville. Impersonators, friends and family of Martin, and various entertainers, many of Italian ancestry, appear.

In 2005, Las Vegas renamed Industrial Road as Dean Martin Drive. A similarly named street was dedicated in 2008 in Rancho Mirage, California.

Martin's family was presented a gold record in 2004 for Dino: The Essential Dean Martin, his fastest-selling album ever, which also hit the iTunes Top 10. For the week ending December 23, 2006, the Dean Martin and Martina McBride duet of "Baby, It's Cold Outside" reached #7 on the R&R; AC chart. It also went to #36 on the R&R; Country chart - the last time Martin had a song this high in the charts was in 1965, with the song "I Will", which reached #10 on the Pop chart.

An album of duets, Forever Cool, was released by Capitol/EMI in 2007. It features Martin's voice with Kevin Spacey, Shelby Lynne, Joss Stone, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, Robbie Williams, McBride and others.

His footprints were immortalized at Grauman's Chinese Theater in 1964. Martin has not one but three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: One at 6519 Hollywood Blvd. (for movies), one at 1817 Vine (for recordings) and one at 6651 Hollywood Boulevard (for television).

In February 2009, Martin was honored with a posthumous Grammy award for Lifetime Achievement. Four of his surviving children, Gail, Deana, Ricci and Gina, were on hand to accept on his behalf. In 2009, Martin was inducted into the Hit Parade Hall of Fame.

Personal life

Martin was married three times. Martin's first wife, Betty McDonald, tried by all accounts to be a good wife and mother to their four children, but her efforts were ultimately undone by her alcoholism. It remains a matter of speculation whether her alcoholism led to the failure of the marriage, or whether Martin's infidelities led to Betty's alcoholism. Subsequent to their divorce, Martin gained custody of their children; Betty lived out her life in quiet obscurity in San Francisco. Their children were Stephen Craig (born June 29, 1942), Claudia Dean (March 16, 1944 - 2001 from breast cancer), Barbara Gail (born April 11, 1945) and Deana (Dina) (born August 19, 1948).

Martin's second wife was Jeanne Biegger. A stunning blonde, Jeanne could sometimes be spotted in Martin's audience while he was still married to Betty. Their marriage lasted twenty-four years (1949–1973) and produced three children. Their children were Dean Paul (November 17, 1951 - March 21, 1987; plane crash), Ricci James (born September 20, 1953) and Gina Caroline (born December 20, 1956).

Martin's third marriage, to Catherine Hawn, lasted three years. One of Martin's managers had spotted her at the reception desk of a hair salon on Rodeo Drive, then arranged a meeting. Martin adopted Hawn's daughter, Sasha, but their marriage also failed. Martin initiated divorce proceedings. Martin's uncle was Leonard Barr, who appeared in several of his shows.

Popular culture

A number of Dean Martin songs have constantly been featured across popular culture for decades. Hit songs such as That's Amore, Ain't That A Kick in the Head,Sway and Martin's signature song Everybody Loves Somebody, (and many more), have been used in films (such as Goodfellas, Casino, A Bronx Tale and Return to Me), television series (such as Friends, House MD, and American Dad!) and even video games (such as , The Godfather II, and Mafia II).

Martin was portrayed by Joe Mantegna in an HBO movie about Sinatra and Martin titled The Rat Pack. Mantegna was nominated for both an Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award for the role.

In the movie Return to Me, two of his recordings are featured: Return to Me and Good Morning, Life.

In the movie A Bronx Tale, Martin's song, Ain't That A Kick In The Head?, was featured during the scene when C was playing dice.

British actor Jeremy Northam portrayed the entertainer in a made-for-TV movie called, Martin and Lewis, alongside Will & Grace's Sean Hayes as Jerry Lewis.

Danny Gans portrayed Martin in the miniseries, Sinatra

A compilation album called, Amore! debuted at Number One on Billboard magazine's Top Pop Catalog Albums chart in its February 21, 2009 issue.

In the pilot episode of White Collar Peter refers to Neal as "Dino" referencing the newly-found Sy Devore suits that Neal now wears - made famous by the 'Rat Pack.'

Martin is the subject of a slot machine, "Dean Martin's Wild Party", a video slot machine found in some casinos. The game features songs sung by Martin during the bonus game and the count-up of a player's winnings.

A Budweiser TV commercial that premiered during Super Bowl XLI featured Martin's "Ain't That A Kick In The Head?".

The 2010 Video Game, Fallout: New Vegas, features Martin's "Ain't that a Kick in the Head?" throughout the game. It can be listened to on the "New Vegas" radio channel and heard on the loud speakers when you enter the Vegas Strip. The first quest of the game is also named after the same song.

Discography

Filmography

Features: {|class="wikitable" style="font-size: 90%;" border="2" cellpadding="4" background: #f9f9f9; |- align="center" ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Year ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Film ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Role ! style="background:#B0C4DE;" | Notes |- |1946 |Film Vodvil: Art Mooney and Orchestra | |Short |- |1949 |My Friend Irma |Steve Laird | |- |rowspan=3|1950 |My Friend Irma Goes West |Steve Laird | |- |At War with the Army |1st Sgt. Vic Puccinelli | |- |Screen Snapshots: Thirtieth Anniversary Special | |Short |- |1951 |That's My Boy |Bill Baker | |- |rowspan=4|1952 |Sailor Beware |Al Crowthers | |- |Jumping Jacks |Corp. Chick Allen | |- |Road to Bali |Man in Lala's dream |Cameo (uncredited) |- |The Stooge |Bill Miller | |- |rowspan=3|1953 |Scared Stiff |Larry Todd | |- |The Caddy |Joe Anthony | |- |Money from Home |Herman 'Honey Talk' Nelson | |- |rowspan=2|1954 |Living It Up |Dr. Steve Harris | |- |3 Ring Circus |Peter 'Pete' Nelson | |- |rowspan=2|1955 |You're Never Too Young |Bob Miles | |- |Artists and Models |Rick Todd | |- |rowspan=3|1956 |Screen Snapshots: Hollywood, City of Stars | |Short |- |Pardners |Slim Mosely Jr. / Slim Mosely Sr. | |- |Hollywood or Bust |Steve Wiley | |- |1957 |Ten Thousand Bedrooms |Ray Hunter | |- |rowspan=2|1958 |The Young Lions |Michael Whiteacre | |- |Some Came Running |Bama Dillert (professional gambler) | |- |rowspan=2|1959 |Rio Bravo |Dude ('Borachón') | |- |Career |Maurice 'Maury' Novak | |- |rowspan=4|1960 |Who Was That Lady? |Michael Haney |Nominated — Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy |- |Bells Are Ringing |Jeffrey Moss | |- |Ocean's Eleven |Sam Harmon | |- |Pepe | |Cameo |- |rowspan=2|1961 |All in a Night's Work |Tony Ryder | |- |Ada |Bo Gillis | |- |rowspan=4|1962 |Something's Got to Give |Nicholas 'Nick' Arden |(unfinished) |- |Sergeants 3 |Sgt. Chip Deal | |- |The Road to Hong Kong |The 'Grape' on plutonium |Cameo (uncredited) |- |Who's Got the Action? |Steve Flood | |- |rowspan=5|1963 |38-24-36 |Self | |- |Come Blow Your Horn |The Bum |(uncredited) |- |Toys in the Attic |Julian Berniers | |- |4 for Texas |Joe Jarrett | |- |Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed? |Jason Steel | |- |rowspan=3|1964 |What a Way to Go! |Leonard 'Lennie' Crawley | |- |Robin and the 7 Hoods |Little John | |- |Kiss Me, Stupid |Dino | |- |rowspan=2|1965 |The Sons of Katie Elder |Tom Elder | |- |Marriage on the Rocks |Ernie Brewer | |- |rowspan=3|1966 |The Silencers |Matt Helm | |- |Texas Across the River |Sam Hollis | |- |Murderers' Row |Matt Helm | |- |rowspan=2|1967 |Rough Night in Jericho |Alex Flood | |- |The Ambushers |Matt Helm | |- |rowspan=4|1968 |How to Save a Marriage and Ruin Your Life |David Sloane | |- |Bandolero! |Dee Bishop | |- |Rowan & Martin at the Movies | |Short |- |5 Card Stud |Van Morgan | |- |1969 |The Wrecking Crew |Matt Helm | |- |1970 |Airport |Capt. Vernon Demerest | |- |1971 |Something Big |Joe Baker | |- |1973 |Showdown |Billy Massey | |- |1975 |Mr. Ricco |Joe Ricco | |- |1981 |The Cannonball Run |Jamie Blake | |- |rowspan=2|1984 |Cannonball Run II |Jamie Blake | |- |Terror in the Aisles | |archival footage |}

References

Further reading

Arthur Marx. Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime (Especially Himself): The story of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, New York, NY: Hawthorn Books, 1974, ISBN 978-0801524301

Lewis, Jerry and James Kaplan. Dean & Me (A Love Story). Doubleday, New York, 2005. ISBN 0-7679-2086-4

Tosches, Nick. Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams. Delta Trade Paperbacks, New York, 1992 (1st edition). ISBN 0-385-33429-X

Smith, John L. The Animal in Hollywood: Anthony Fiato's Life in the Mafia. Barricade Books, New York, 1998. ISBN 1-56980-126-6

External links

Dean Martin at The Biography Channel

Cleveland.com: Homegrown Heroes: Dean Martin Timeline

Dean Works the room at the Sands

Jerry Lewis interview for the Archive of American Television

Dean Martin biography/discography on The Interlude Era site

Radio interview with Deana Martin WSLR

Dean Martin Roasts Johnny Carson

Dean Martin Roast Frank Sinatra

Dean Martin Roasts Don Rickles

Category:1917 births Category:1995 deaths Category:Actors from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Category:American comedians Category:American crooners Category:American film actors Category:American male singers Category:Burials at Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery Category:Cancer deaths in California Category:Capitol Records artists Category:Deaths from emphysema Category:Deaths from lung cancer Category:Deaths from respiratory failure Category:American jazz musicians of Italian descent Category:American jazz musicians of Sicilian descent Category:American musicians of Italian descent Category:American people of Italian descent Category:American people of Sicilian descent Category:American baritones Category:Actors from Ohio Category:Musicians from Ohio Category:People from Steubenville, Ohio Category:Ohio Republicans Category:Republicans (United States) Category:California Republicans Category:Musicians from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Category:Traditional pop music singers

, 2009]] Angela Gheorghiu (; born Angela Burlacu) (born September 7, 1965) is a Romanian soprano opera singer. Since her professional debut in 1990, she has sung as soprano leading roles at New York's Metropolitan Opera, Covent Garden's Royal Opera House, the Vienna State Opera, Milan's La Scala, and many other opera houses in Europe and the United States. She has a substantial discography primarily with EMI Classics and Decca.

Biography

Gheorghiu was born in 1965 in Adjud, Romania. Along with her sister Elena Dan, she sang opera music from an early age. At age 14, Gheorghiu began to study singing at the National University of Music Bucharest, primarily under Mia Barbu. Her graduation in 1990 coincided with the overthrow and assassination of Nicolae Ceauşescu the previous year, enabling her to seek an international career immediately. Her professional opera debut took place at the Cluj Opera as Mimì in La bohème in 1990, the same year she won the Belvedere International Competition.

Gheorghiu made her international debut in 1992 at the Royal Opera House as Zerlina in Don Giovanni. She debuted at the Vienna State Opera as Adina in L'elisir d'amore and at the Metropolitan Opera as Mimi in La bohème. In 1994, she was auditioned by the conductor Sir Georg Solti for a new production of La traviata at the Royal Opera House. Her debut as Violetta led her to international stardom.

Gheorghiu has concentrated her repertoire on several different roles: Violetta, Mimì, Magda, Adina, and Juliette. In 2003, she debuted as Nedda in Pagliacci and as Marguerite in Faust. A soprano with a large range and a dark coloured voice, Gheorghiu is also able to sing spinto roles. She has recorded Tosca (also made into a film directed by the French Benoît Jacquot) and Leonora in Il trovatore for EMI and sang in her first Tosca at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in 2006. Her performance was an overall success, although because the famous Zeffirelli production of 1964 was replaced by a new production (which premiered with her), there was comparison between the Toscas of Gheorghiu and Maria Callas, for whom the Zeffirelli production was designed.

She has recorded many recital albums and complete opera recordings and often appears on television and in concerts. The EMI recording of Massenet's Manon with Angela Georghiu in the title role won the 2001 Gramophone Award for "Best Opera Recording", was nominated for "Best Opera Recording" in the 2002 Grammy Awards.

Gheorghiu at the Met and elsewhere

On occasion, Gheorghiu has had difficult relationships with opera house managements and directors. Some, but not all, of them have stemmed from her opposition to directors who, as she put it in an interview with ABC "want to express their own fantasies, forgetting about the characters. At times, she says, what they put on stage goes against both the story and the music." She has attributed her outspokenness to her upbringing in Romania under the totalitarian regime of Nicolae Ceausescu:

"Because I grew up in a country where there was no possibility of having an opinion, it makes me stronger now. Lots of singers are frightened about not getting invited back to an opera house if they speak out. But I have the courage to be, in a way, revolutionary. I want to fight for opera, for it to be taken seriously. Pop music is for the body, but opera is for the soul.".

Gheorghiu had a problematic relationship with former Metropolitan Opera General Manager Joseph Volpe after her debut there as Mimi in 1993. In 1996, Gheorghiu was cast as Micaela in a new production of Carmen, opposite Waltraud Meier and Plácido Domingo. The production by Franco Zeffirelli called for Micaela to wear a blonde wig, a nuance to which the soprano refused to wear it. Volpe famously declared, "The wig is going on, with you or without you". Gheorghiu eventually accepted and appeared in ten performances of Carmen that season, including the Met's tour to Japan, although she kept the hood of her cloak up to cover the wig as much as possible. She appeared at the Met again in 1998 for six performances of Roméo et Juliette with her husband, tenor Roberto Alagna as Roméo. Volpe had planned to engage Gheorghiu in Violetta Valery for a new production of La traviata, to premiere in November 1998 and directed by Zeffirelli. Alagna was to sing the role of Violetta's lover, Alfredo Germont. According to Volpe, Gheorghiu and Alagna argued with the staff and the director over production details and continually delayed signing the contract. They eventually signed their contracts, and faxed them to the Met one day past their deadline. Volpe refused to accept them. The production opened with Patricia Racette and Marcelo Álvarez as the lovers.

In September 2007, Gheorghiu was dismissed from Lyric Opera of Chicago's production of La bohème by General Manager William Mason, for missing rehearsals and costume fittings, and generally "unprofessional" behavior. Gheorghiu said in a statement that she had missed some rehearsals to spend time with her husband, who was singing at the Met in Roméo et Juliette and rehearsing for Puccini's Madama Butterfly and added "I have sung 'Boheme' hundreds of times, and thought missing a few rehearsals wouldn't be a tragedy. It was impossible to do the costume fitting at the same time I was in New York.

Six weeks later, Gheorghiu made her debut at San Francisco Opera receiving favorable reviews for her Magda in that company's new production of La rondine. The San Francisco Opera production originated with London's Royal Opera House, where it premiered on May 7, 2002 with Gheorghiu and Alagna as Magda and her lover Ruggero. It is one which she particularly admires:

"When the curtain opened on La rondine at Covent Garden, the audience gasped and applauded. People want to dream. If directors want to do something new with operas, why not do something beautiful?"

Despite these issues, Gheorghiu and Alagna returned to the Metropolitan Opera for five performances of L'elisir d'amore in 1999 and for four performances of Faust in 2003. Gheorghiu also performed at the Met as Liù in Turandot in 2000; as Violetta in La traviata opposite Jonas Kaufmann in 2006 and 2007; as Amelia in Simon Boccanegra in 2007; as Mimì in La bohème in 2008; as Magda in the 2008-09 season in the ROH/SFO production of La rondine, the Met's first performance of the opera since 1936; and for the 2009-10 season she appeared as Violetta, replacing her previous engagement as Marie Antoinette in a rare revival of John Corigliano's The Ghosts of Versailles which was replaced due to the recession.

In August, 2009, Gheorghiu canceled all her scheduled 2010 Met performances of Carmen, for "personal reasons". It was to be her first public performance of the title role (normally sung by mezzo-sopranos). She also cancelled other Met performances scheduled near the end of 2010.

Personal life

Divorced from her first husband, from whom she retained her surname, Gheorghiu married tenor Roberto Alagna in 1996. The couple have sung together often on stage and on studio recordings. She was once chosen the 74th "most beautiful" woman in the world by the magazine FHM. In October 2009, Alagna said in an interview in Le Figaro that he and Angela Gheorghiu had separated. This has been confirmed on Gheorghiu's website where she has made it clear that she and Alagna have not been in a relationship for over two years. Following the separation, she declined to appear opposite Alagna in Carmen at the Metropolitan Opera in December 2009.

Recordings

La traviata (Verdi) Decca 1994 CD/DVD

The Puccini Experience RCA 1995

L'elisir d'amore (Donizetti) Decca 1996 CD/DVD

Arias Decca 1996

La rondine (Puccini) EMI 1996

Carmen (Bizet) Teldec 1996

Duets and Arias EMI 1996

Roméo et Juliette (Gounod) EMI 1998

My World Decca 1998

Verdi per Due EMI 1998

La bohème (Puccini) Decca 1999

Il trittico (Puccini) EMI 1999

Werther (Massenet) EMI 1999

Verdi Heroines Decca 2000

Manon (Massenet) EMI 2000

Verdi: Messa da Requiem (Verdi) EMI 2001 CD/DVD

Casta Diva EMI 2001

Mysterium - Sacred Arias Decca 2001

Tosca soundtrack (Puccini) EMI 2001 CD/DVD

Live From Covent Garden EMI 2002 CD/DVD

Il trovatore (Verdi) EMI 2002

Proms at the Palace Opus Arte 2002 DVD

Roméo et Juliette (Gounod) Arthaus Musik 2003

Carmen (Bizet) EMI 2003

The Essential Angela Gheorghiu Decca 2004

Diva EMI 2004

Puccini EMI 2005

Art of Angela Gheorghiu Decca 2004 DVDx2

Live From La Scala EMI 2007

La traviata (Verdi) Arthaus Musik 2007 DVD/Blu-ray

Marius et Fanny Larghetto 2008

''Angela & Roberto Forever" EMI 2008

My Puccini EMI 2008

Madama Butterfly (Puccini) EMI 2009

La traviata (Live from La Scala) (Verdi) Arthaus-musik 2007 DVD

La bohème (Live from the Met) (Puccini) EMI 2008 DVD

References

External links

Angela Gheorghiu: Official website

Official Angela Gheorghiu page on EMI Classics (Biography, discography, schedule)

Category:1965 births Category:Living people Category:People from Adjud Category:Romanian female singers Category:Romanian opera singers Category:Romanian sopranos Category:Operatic sopranos