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From today's featured article Jacques Offenbach Orpheus in the Underworld (Orphée aux enfers, 1858) is a comic opera with music by Jacques Offenbach (pictured) and words by Hector Crémieux and Ludovic Halévy. It was extensively revised and expanded in 1874 for a run that broke box-office records at the Théâtre de la Gaîté, Paris. In the opera, a lampoon of the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice, Orpheus is a rustic violin teacher who is glad to be rid of his wife when she is abducted by the god of the underworld. The reprehensible conduct of the gods of Olympus was widely seen as a veiled satire of the court and government of Napoleon III, Emperor of the French. Some critics expressed outrage at the librettists' disrespect for classic mythology and the composer's parody of Gluck's opera Orfeo ed Euridice; others praised the piece highly. It was Offenbach's first full-length opera and remains the one that is most often performed. Can-can cabaret acts still use its "Galop infernal", adopted later in the 19th century by the Moulin Rouge and Folies Bergère. (Full article...) Did you know....jpg) Elliot See and Charles Bassett
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The baptism of Jesus is one of the five major milestones in the gospel narrative of the life of Jesus, the others being the transfiguration, the crucifixion, the resurrection and the ascension. It is described in the gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke. John's gospel does not directly describe Jesus's baptism. Most modern theologians view the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist as a historical event to which a high degree of certainty can be assigned. Along with the crucifixion, most biblical scholars view it as one of the two historically certain facts about him and often use it as the starting point for the study of the historical Jesus. This picture is a tempera-on-poplar painting titled The Baptism of Christ, produced by Italian painter Piero della Francesca sometime after 1437. It is in the collection of the National Gallery in London. Painting credit: Piero della Francesca
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