Rebecca (musical)

Rebecca is a German-language musical based on the novel of the same name by Daphne du Maurier. It was written by Michael Kunze (book and lyrics) and Sylvester Levay (music), the authors of the musicals Elisabeth, Mozart! and Marie Antoinette. The plot, which adheres closely to the original novel, revolves around wealthy Maxim DeWinter, his naïve new wife, and Mrs. Danvers, the manipulative housekeeper of DeWinter's Cornish estate Manderley. Mrs. Danvers resents the new wife's intrusion and persuades the new wife that she is an unworthy replacement for the first Mrs. DeWinter, the glamorous and mysterious Rebecca, who perished in a drowning accident. The new Mrs. DeWinter struggles to find her identity and take control of her life among the shadows left by Rebecca.

The musical premiered on September 28, 2006 at the Raimund Theater in Vienna, Austria, where it ran for three years. Subsequent productions have been mounted in Finland, Japan and elsewhere.

Background

As a teenager, Michael Kunze had read Daphne du Maurier's novel Rebecca. In the 1990s, he re-read it and decided that the story would make a good musical. He traveled to Cornwall, England, to find du Maurier's son in an attempt to obtain the rights to musicalize the work, which had been denied to other librettists. Attending a performance of Kunze's long-running 1992 musical Elisabeth in Vienna persuaded du Maurier's son that the novel would be in good hands with Kunze and his musical partner Sylvester Levay.

List of Dune Bene Gesserit

The following is a comprehensive list of Bene Gesserit sisters (and rare male initiates), who are prominent characters from the fictional Dune universe created by Frank Herbert.

Anirul

A Bene Gesserit of Hidden Rank, Anirul is noted in Dune (1965) to be the wife of the 81st Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV and the mother of his five daughters, the Princesses Irulan, Chalice, Wensicia, Josifa and Rugi. Anirul is also featured in the Prelude to Dune prequel trilogy (1999–2001) by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson.

Anteac

Rebecca (1940 film)

Rebecca is a 1940 American psychological thriller-mystery film. Directed by Alfred Hitchcock, it was his first American project, and his first film produced under contract with David O. Selznick. The film's screenplay was a version by Joan Harrison and Robert E. Sherwood based on Philip MacDonald and Michael Hogan's adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's 1938 novel Rebecca. The film was produced by Selznick and stars Laurence Olivier as the brooding aristocratic widower Maxim de Winter and Joan Fontaine as the young woman who becomes his second wife, with Judith Anderson and George Sanders.

The film is shot in black and white, and is a gothic tale. We never see Maxim de Winter's first wife, Rebecca, who died before the story starts, but her reputation, and recollections about her, are a constant presence to Maxim, his new young second wife, and the housekeeper Danvers.

The film won two Academy Awards, Outstanding Production and Cinematography, out of a total 11 nominations. Olivier, Fontaine and Anderson were all Oscar nominated for their respective roles. However, since 1936 (when awards for actors in supporting roles were first introduced), Rebecca is the only film that, despite winning Best Picture, received no Academy Award for acting, directing or writing.

Farina

Farina may refer to:

Fictional characters

See also

List of Pearls Before Swine characters

This is a partial list of characters in the comic strip Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis.

Rat

Personality

Rat is a megalomaniacal, misanthropic rat, who is frequently critical of the strip's style and artwork, as well as the other characters in his and other strips, real life people, and almost all living (and often nonliving) things. He believes himself to be much more intelligent than he actually is, and thinks more or less anybody else is stupid with the only person he believes worthy of his respect being Leonardo da Vinci. He tends to irritate people, particularly his intelligent friend Goat, and is easily irritated by his naïve, dim-witted housemate Pig. Rat believes himself to be the wisdom of the strip, if not wisdom itself, and that anybody else is more or less dumb, whereas most other characters view him as "a loudmouth, pompous malcontent". He may or may not be a personification of the Seven Deadly Sins.

Rat is very prideful and arrogant (he once made a list of all the geniuses in the world that only said "Mozart, da Vinci, Me", and then said that he only put 'that music dude' there to be nice), and is constantly dreaming up schemes that invariably would keep him away from anyone and everyone else, though these inevitably backfire. He often appears incapable of seeing his own faults.

Farina, South Australia

Farina is a ghost town in South Australia. The mean annual rainfall is 163.6 mm, although it is highly variable. At the 2006 census, Farina had a population of 55.

On the edge of the desert, it is situated on the old alignment of the Ghan railway, 26 km north of Lyndhurst and 55 km south of Marree where the Oodnadatta Track and the Birdsville Track commence.

History

Originally called The Gums or Government Gums, Farina was settled in 1878 by optimistic farmers hoping that rain follows the plough. The town was the railhead for a time until 1884 before the railway was extended to Marree. During the wet years of the 1880s, plans were laid out for a town with 432 ¼-acre blocks. It was believed that it would be good for growing wheat and barley, however normal rainfall is nowhere near enough to grow these crops. Several silver and copper mines were dug in the surrounding area.

Farina grew to reach a peak population of approximately 600 in the late 1800s. In its heyday, the town had two hotels (the Transcontinental and the Exchange) and an underground bakery, a bank, two breweries, a general store, an Anglican church, five blacksmiths, a school and a brothel. In 1909, a 1143 kg iron meteorite was discovered north-east of the town.