Oscar (opera)

Oscar is an American opera in two acts, with music by composer Theodore Morrison and a libretto by Morrison and English opera director John Cox. The opera, Morrison's first, is based on the life of Oscar Wilde, focused on his trial and imprisonment in Reading Gaol. It was a co-commission and co-production between The Santa Fe Opera and Opera Philadelphia (formerly the Opera Company of Philadelphia). This work received its world premiere at The Santa Fe Opera on 27 July 2013. Opera Philadelphia first presented the revised version of the opera on 6 February 2015.

The genesis of the opera resulted from a 2004 meeting in London between Morrison and Cox, after the premiere of Morrison's James Joyce song cycle, Chamber Music, which he wrote for countertenor David Daniels, a former student of his. Upon learning that Morrison had never composed an opera, but wished to write one for Daniels, Cox encouraged that idea. This led to correspondence between Cox and Morrison, and an agreement to collaborate on an opera based on the subject of Oscar Wilde. Cox and Morrison had each read the biography of Wilde by Richard Ellmann, and settled on a plan for co-authorship of an opera libretto based on the writings of Oscar Wilde and his contemporaries, with Walt Whitman serving as a chorus speaking from the realm of immortality. The opera used Wilde's poem "The Ballad of Reading Gaol", documents, letters, conversations and remarks by Wilde's contemporaries as source material for the libretto. Cox also consulted Merlin Holland, the grandson of Oscar Wilde and a scholar on Oscar Wilde.

Oscar (1967 film)

Oscar is a French comedy of errors directed by Édouard Molinaro and starring Louis de Funès. In the movie, Louis de Funès plays an industrialist named Bertrand Barnier who discovers over the course of a single day that his daughter is pregnant, he has been robbed by an employee, and various other calamities have befallen his household and his business.

An English-language version of the movie was made in 1991, by John Landis, under the same name and starring Sylvester Stallone.

Plot

Christian Martin, a modest accountant in a large firm owned by Bertrand Barnier, surprises his boss by asking him for a 100% increase in his wages. Martin is on the point of proposing to a girl and doesn't want to ask for her hand in marriage while making a lowly accountant's salary.

After Barnier refuses to give him the raise, Martin tells him that he's stolen more than sixty million francs from him by falsifying the firm's accounting records. When Barnier threatens to report this to the police, Martin points out that as a consequence of the fraud Barnier has now submitted false income statements to the tax office, a serious crime. Barnier has no choice but to give in to blackmail and he agrees to give Martin the raise and name him vice-president of the firm.

Nakajima Ki-43

The Nakajima Ki-43 Hayabusa (隼, "Peregrine Falcon") was a single-engine land-based tactical fighter used by the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force in World War II. The Army designation was "Army Type 1 Fighter" (一式戦闘機); the Allied reporting name was "Oscar", but it was often called the "Army Zero" by American pilots for its side-view resemblance to the Mitsubishi A6M Zero that was flown by the Japanese Navy, using essentially the same radial engine as the Army's Oscar, and with the Oscar having much less framing for its all-around vision canopy than the Zero used.

Like the Mitsubishi-produced A6M Zero, the radial-engined Ki-43 was light and easy to fly and became legendary for its combat performance in East Asia in the early years of the war. It could outmaneuver any opponent, but did not have armor or self-sealing tanks, and its armament was poor until its final version, which was produced as late as 1945. Allied pilots often reported that the nimble Ki-43s were difficult targets but burned easily or broke apart with few hits. In spite of its drawbacks, the Ki-43 shot down more Allied aircraft than any other Japanese fighter and almost all the JAAF's aces achieved most of their kills in it.

Escape (1940 film)

Escape is a 1940 drama film about an American in pre-World War II Nazi Germany who discovers his mother is in a concentration camp and tries desperately to free her. It starred Norma Shearer, Robert Taylor, Conrad Veidt and Alla Nazimova. It was adapted from the novel of the same name by Grace Zaring Stone.

Plot

Famous German stage actress Emmy Ritter (Alla Nazimova) is held in a Nazi concentration camp. She is scheduled to be executed soon, but the sympathetic camp doctor, Ditten (Philip Dorn), has been a fan since childhood and offers to deliver a letter from her to her children...afterwards.

Emmy's son Mark Preysing (Robert Taylor), an American citizen, travels to Germany in search of his mother, but nobody, not even frightened old family friends, want anything to do with him. A German official tells Mark that she has been arrested and advises him to return to the United States.

The postmark of a returned letter guides Mark to the region where she is being held. There, he meets by chance Countess Ruby von Treck (Norma Shearer), an American-born widow, but she also does not want to become involved, at least at first. Then, she asks her lover, General Kurt von Kolb (Conrad Veidt), about Emmy and learns that she has been judged a traitor in a secret trial and sentenced to death.

Escape (Sirius XM)

Escape is a Sirius XM Satellite Radio music channel, available on XM channel 69,Sirius channel 69 and DISH Network channel 6069, as well as online and via a mobile app.

Escape features a beautiful music format, described as "Easy, Instrumental and vocal favorites and the great popular melodies popular over the last sixty years", and plays a music from such instrumental artists as Henry Mancini, Chet Atkins, Bert Kaempfert, Richard Clayderman, Ferrante & Teicher, Geoff Love, Jackie Gleason, Andre Kostelanetz, Paul Mauriat, and Percy Faith, as well as vocalists such as Andy Williams, Anne Murray, Barry Manilow, Perry Como, Neil Diamond, Barbra Streisand and The Carpenters.

XM had previously featured the beautiful music format on Sunny, channel 24. In early 2006, the Sunny channel, which was owned by Clear Channel Communications, changed formats and started airing commercial interruptions as the result of an arbitration settlement with Clear Channel. Due to the format change of Sunny and the commercial interruptions, XM created the Escape channel (channel 78, prior to the Sirius-XM merger, and channel 28 after) as a commercial-free beautiful music channel. After the merger with Sirius in 2008, Escape started incorporating more vocal tracks into its playlist (to compensate for the loss of Sirius' more soft-AC based Movin' Easy channel), but these were reduced after complaints.

Ride the Lightning

Ride the Lightning is the second studio album by American heavy metal band Metallica. The album was released on July 27, 1984, by the independent label Megaforce Records. The album was recorded in three weeks with producer Flemming Rasmussen at the Sweet Silence Studios in Copenhagen, Denmark. The artwork, based on the band's concept, represents an electric chair in the midst of a thunderstorm. The album title was taken from a passage in Stephen King's novel The Stand. Whilst still rooted in the thrash metal genre, the album showcased the band's musical maturity and lyrical sophistication. This was partially because bassist Cliff Burton introduced the basics of music theory to the rest of the band and because he had more input in the songwriting. The overall recording cost was paid by Metallica's European label Music for Nations because Megaforce was unable to cover it. It was the last album to feature songwriting contribution from former lead guitarist Dave Mustaine.