School fights to revive native Canadian language

OHSWEKEN, Ontario (Reuters) – In a grey, shed-like building on the Six Nations of the Grand River reserve in southern Ontario, Esenogwas Jacobs is getting her kindergarten students ready to head home for the day.

“Gao dehswe,” Jacobs says, calling her students to the door.

“Gyahde:dih,” she adds, it’s time to go.

Her students answer with assertive “ehes.”

No one speaks a word of English.

“I just use Cayuga with them,” Jacobs said. “Mostly they can respond back in Cayuga, so it’s pretty cool.”

The eight children of this kindergarten class carry on their shoulders the hopes for preserving the language of the Cayugas, one of the six nations that make up the Iroquois Confederacy of southeastern Canada and the northeastern United States.

Since the 19th Century and until recently, Canada has pushed for the assimilation of its native population, sending aboriginal children to boarding schools where they were taught the language, culture and spirituality of Canadian society.

While the effort to assimilate aboriginal people into Canadian culture failed, the schools, the last of which closed in 1996, were effective at stunting aboriginal languages.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has promised to set up a commission to look into the schools, which could lead to a statement of apology similar to one issued by Australia to its aboriginal people this week.

Less than a quarter of aboriginal people in Canada use their ancestral tongue, the government says. The number of fluent Cayuga speakers has dropped from 376 in the 1970s to only 79 today.

“The number of speakers, they’re dying off all the time, like every year,” said Elva Jamieson, who learned the language as a child from her family, but wasn’t allowed to speak it at school. “It gets lonely when you don’t have someone to talk to.”

Jamieson is a teacher at the Gaweni:yo High School, part of the same Cayuga language immersion program that also includes Jacobs’ kindergarten class, as well as a parallel Mohawk language program.

“I think the language speaks to their spirit,” Jamieson said of the 35 pupils at the high school, located about 70 miles southwest of the Ontario capital Toronto. “They’re able to grasp it and go with it.”

While the linguistic knowledge of native speakers like Jamieson is irreplaceable, Gaweni:yo — which means “nice-sounding words” — is helping to slow the erosion of the Cayuga language, and young people are becoming a viable population of fluent speakers.

The most dedicated meet up regularly to chat in Cayuga and practice new words and some even use Cayuga as the primary language at home.

Jacobs, 24, herself a graduate of Gaweni:yo, tries to speak only Cayuga with her boyfriend, another graduate, and she spends evenings visiting with elders to learn new words.

The program has been running since 1986, but this is the first year that it has included a kindergarten class. Many of her young students are the children of fellow Gaweni:yo graduates and Jacobs encourages them to use Cayuga at home, too.

While the dominant language on the reserve is still English, Jacobs is happy with the progress. The language is going through a rebirth, she said. “It feels good knowing these kids are coming up.”

LANGUAGE LOST

Not far from Jacobs’ kindergarten, a group of adults are also studying Cayuga in a crowded community centre classroom. One of them is Oklahoman Sally White, a descendant of the Seneca-Cayuga – a tribe that separated from the Cayuga of Six Nations in the 18th century.

The Seneca-Cayuga spoke a similar dialect, but their language has now been declared extinct, which means a man from Six Nations must go to Oklahoma each year to perform their traditional ceremonies.

“Without him, I don’t think we would have (our ceremonies),” said White, who hopes to learn enough Cayuga to teach the basics to her husband and other members of their community. “It’s just about gone. We’re losing a lot.”

But saving dying languages costs money and for many Canadians the price of immersion programs such as the one at Six Nations may be too steep.

Canada’s Conservative government, elected two years ago, has cut a 10-year, C$173 million ($173 million) language revitalization program, leaving the immersion programs at Six Nations dangling by a thread. School officials do not know if there will be funding to continue past the current year.

The death of the language would be a tragedy, according to linguist Marianne Mithun, who spent 10 years studying the decline of the Cayuga language at Six Nations.

“The loss of language is a devastating loss of identity,” said Mithun, a University of California Santa Barbara linguist who specializes in aboriginal languages in North America. “It is the disappearance of their heritage, a blacking out of their intellectual and cultural history.”

While Cayuga still has enough mother-tongue speakers to document how the language should be spoken, a process that is taking place on Six Nations through video and audio archives, Mithun worries that once all the elders die, the living language will only be a pale shadow of what it once was.

“When you get to see a language like Cayuga, you just see other ways of looking at the world,” said Mithun, commenting on the language’s literal nature. “If we care about understanding the human mind, then we’re really missing the boat if we let these languages slip.”

* By Julie Gordon (15 Feb 2008)

 

White-painted bride honors Bulgarian rite

RIBNOVO, Bulgaria (Reuters) – Fikrie Sabrieva, 17, will marry with her eyes closed and her face painted white, dotted with bright sequins. She lives ‘at the end of the world’, tending a hardy Muslim culture in largely Christian Bulgaria.

The remote village of Ribnovo, set on a snowy mountainside in southwest Bulgaria, has kept its traditional winter marriage ceremony alive despite decades of Communist persecution, followed by poverty that forced many men to seek work abroad.

“Other nearby villages tried the traditional marriage after the ban was lifted, but then the custom somehow died away — women wanted to be modern,” said Ali Mustafa Bushnak, 61, whose daughter came to watch Fikrie’s wedding.

“Maybe we are at the end of the world. Or people in Ribnovo are very religious and proud of their traditions.”

Some experts say clinging to the traditional wedding ceremony is Ribnovo’s answer to the persecutions of the past.

Bulgaria is the only European Union nation where Muslims’ share is as high as 12 percent. The communist regime, which did not tolerate any religious rituals, tried to forcibly integrate Muslims into Bulgaria’s largely Christian Orthodox population, pressing them to abandon wearing their traditional outfits and adopt Slavonic names.

The wedding ritual was resurrected with vigor among the Pomaks — Slavs who converted to Islam under Ottoman rule and now make up 2.5 percent of Bulgaria’s 7.8 million population — after communism collapsed in 1989.

But today it is still performed only in the closed society of Ribnovo and one other village in the Balkan country. Young men return from abroad to the crisp mountain snows, just for the winter weddings.

People in Ribnovo identify themselves more by their religion, as Muslims, than by their ethnicity or nationality, and the wedding ceremony is an expression of their piety. The village has 10 clerics and two mosques for 3,500 inhabitants.

DOWRY ON DISPLAY

Fikrie’s family have been laboriously piling up her dowry since she was born — mostly handmade knit-work, quilts, coverlets, sheets, aprons, socks, carpets and rugs.

On a sunny Saturday winter morning they hang the items on a wooden scaffolding, 50 meters long and three meters high, erected specially for the occasion on the steep, muddy road of scruffy two-story houses that leads to her home.

Nearly everyone in the village comes to inspect the offerings: Fikrie’s tiny homeyard has been turned into a showroom for the furniture and household appliances the bride has to provide for her new household.

The girl and her husband-to-be, Moussa, 20, then lead a traditional horo dance on the central square, joined by most of the village’s youth.

But the highlight of the ceremony, the painting of the bride’s face, comes at the end of the second day.

In a private rite open only to female in-laws, Fikrie’s face is covered in thick, chalky white paint and decorated with colorful sequins. A long red veil covers her hair, her head is framed with tinsel, her painted face veiled with and silvery filaments.

Clad in baggy pants and bodice shimmering in all the colors of the rainbow, the bride is presented by her future husband, her mother and her grandmother to the waiting crowd.

Fikrie is not permitted to open her eyes wide until a Muslim priest blesses the young couple. Alcohol is forbidden at the wedding receptions and sex before marriage is taboo.

BANNED RITUALS

Ethnographers say it is hard to date the bridal painting ritual, as the communist regime did not encourage studies into minority ethnic and religious groups.

“It is very likely that it is an invented tradition. It’s their way to express who they are,” said Margarita Karamihova, an associate professor at the Ethnography Institute of the Bulgarian Academy of Science.

Experts say Pomaks had identity problems and faced more challenges than the majority of Muslims in Bulgaria, who are ethnic Turks.

“In the 1960s they would ban Islamic music at weddings, then they would not allow traditional clothes, and in the 1980s, the whole traditional Pomak wedding was banned,” said municipality mayor, Ahmed Bashev, born in Ribnovo.

Ribnovo’s inhabitants used to make a living from tobacco and agriculture, but low incomes in the poorest EU country forced men to start seeking jobs in cities in Bulgaria or in western Europe — not least to raise money for a wedding.

Outside influences have been slow to reach Ribnovo and young people rarely marry an outsider. Another Fikrie, 19-year-old Fikrie Inuzova, suggested the women, for whom the acceptable bridal age is up to 22, are not in a rush to modernize.

“My brother wants to travel, see the world… It’s different for men. They can do whatever. I want to stay here and marry.”

* By Tsvetelia Ilieva

 

Broadway Strike Threatens to Take a Toll on City

With Broadway theaters shutting down for the rest of the busy Thanksgiving week, and possibly longer, because of a strike, businesses around Times Square are bracing for what could be a major loss of customers and revenue during their busiest time of the year.

The city comptroller’s office estimates that lost revenue from disappearing ticket sales, shopping, dining, and other theater-related activities, is costing the city roughly $2 million a day. Those losses would climb if the strike were to last the rest of the year, prompting visitors who have not yet booked rooms or bought tickets to plan their vacations elsewhere, city officials say.

But as the strike continues, the economic fallout is also being muted, because many planning to visit New York during the busy holiday season already booked their trips in advance, and many are visiting from overseas to take advantage of the weak dollar. As much as the strike is hurting, some business owners say, the uptick in business for other reasons is helping them get by.

Definitely, our theater business is way off,” said Sandy Levine, a principal of Carnegie Deli, the landmark sandwich shop at the north end of Times Square. “But thank God we got a weak dollar. We have a lot of people coming in from overseas, especially Europe, and most of them aren’t coming in for theater — they’re coming in to shop.”

“So we’re dropping in one area of business, but seeing a lot of tourists in another,” he added.

A few blocks away, at John’s Pizzeria, another restaurant that typically draws large theater crowds, Rick Mancini, a manager, said business at the 400-seat location has dropped roughly 25 percent since the strike began. Large groups have been canceling, and the wait for a table has dropped to 15 minutes from 45 minutes on the busiest days, but business from holiday travelers may help soften the blow, he said.

“We’re coming up on one of the busiest weekends of the year, and a lot of people are coming in for Thanksgiving,” he said. City officials say that much of the economic loss so far has come from the absence of day trippers, theater-goers who come from outside Manhattan to see a show and then return home the same day. As a result, the hotels in Times Square have so far been barely affected by the strike.

“Right now, occupancy this time of year is expected to be high, and we really see no significant drop in room occupancy at any of our hotels,” said Kathleen Duffy, a spokeswoman for New York City Marriot Hotels, which operates several large hotels in Midtown and other parts of the city. “This week you’re going to see more leisure travelers because it’s a holiday, and then next week that compresses as our business travelers return.”

But that could change if the strike extends beyond six weeks. The report from the city comptroller suggested that hotels will see little impact right away, because many tourists have already booked airfares and hotels in New York for the holidays and they are unlikely to cancel their trips, even if the Broadway shows they planned to see have been shuttered. But after six weeks, said Frank Braconi, the chief economist for the comptroller’s office, the Broadway strike will “affect the vacation planning decisions of long-distance domestic and international tourists.”

The latest round of talks between the producers’ league and the stagehands’ union broke down last night, leaving no end in sight for the strike that has darkened most of Broadway for 10 days. Soon after the breakdown, the League of American Theaters and Producers announced that it was canceling performances of the 27 shows affected by the strike through Sunday.

No further talks have been scheduled. The producers of one of the shows that was expected to be particularly popular this season said today that it might reopen. The union has ordered that the picket line come down for “ Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas!,” which is playing at the St. James Theater, said James Sanna, one of the show’s producers.

But the Jujamcyn theater chain, which owns the St. James, said that its theaters would remain dark until a settlement was reached with the stagehands.

The negotiations over the weekend between the producers’ league and the stagehands’ union — which lasted for more than 13 hours Saturday and for 11 hours yesterday — came to a halt a little after 9 p.m.

Bruce Cohen, a spokesman for the stagehands’ union, Local 1 of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, said in a statement that “producers informed Local 1 that what Local 1 offered was not good enough, and they left.”

Charlotte St. Martin, the executive director of the producers’ league, said: “We presented a comprehensive proposal that responded to the union’s concerns about loss of jobs and earnings and attempted to address our need for some flexibilities in running our business. The union rejected our effort to compromise and continues to require us to hire more people than we need.”

The producers decided to cancel the performances, she said, so that tourists coming to town for the Thanksgiving weekend could make other plans.

The breakdown in talks came as a disappointment to the actors, musicians and other theater professionals who are now living on strike pay, as well as the Broadway-dependent workers — bartenders, waiters, pedicab drivers and others — who have been coping with the shutdown since Nov. 10.

The latest round of negotiations, which took place at the Westin New York hotel on 43rd Street, was announced Wednesday, and some in the industry were optimistic that the stagehands’ strike could come to a close before Thanksgiving.

Robert W. Johnson, a senior labor relations executive from Disney, came to New York to help with the talks. Though Mr. Johnson was sitting on the side of the table with the League of American Theaters and Producers, Disney is not a member of the league, and Mr. Johnson has had a long relationship with union officials. He helped negotiate the stagehands’ contract at the Disney-owned New Amsterdam Theater 10 years ago.
Thomas C. Short, the president of Local 1’s parent union, also attended the talks.

The league and the union have been negotiating since July, when the contract expired. Producers have been trying to add some flexibility to the rules on when stagehands are needed for work, how many are needed and what tasks they performed. The union has said it is open to changes, as long as they come with benefits of equal value.

The talks over the weekend were the first since the two sides broke off negotiations on Nov. 8. But there was a sense yesterday that things were not going to turn out well.
Hundreds of Local 1 members arrived at the Westin yesterday morning for a scheduled monthly business meeting. Little was said about the progress of the talks, other than that they were tough.

About 9:20 p.m., a group of union negotiators walked out of the hotel, and shortly afterward, the negotiating team representing the theater owners and producers followed.
“It’s a big disappointment,” said Paul Libin, a producing director and part owner of the Jujamcyn theater chain.

By ANAHAD O’CONNOR and CAMPBELL ROBERTSON

 

Paint Moscow Art Project

Moscow recently hosted Rozamira ’07, an annual international modern art festival, whose name means “the rose of the world.” The Paint Moscow project, one of its most spectacular events, brought “Brazilian brightness” to the “gloomy, introverted, and workaholic” urban environment.

Dutch, Icelandic, American and Russian artists presented their works in Moscow during the Rozamira ’07 modern art festival. Their paintings are seen from afar – each painting is the size of a multi-storey house and needs to be appreciated from a distance.

The Rozamira ’07 modern art festival decorated twelve residential buildings in Moscow with murals of glowing colors.

Each mural occupies four stories of a residential house, and catches the eye from afar.

Local people were rather skeptical at the start. They thought foreign artists had come to make standard drab inscriptions on houses and transformer pillars. Spirits rose when they saw the beautiful murals.

 

Machu Picchu relics (Photos)

Yale University has agreed to return to Peru thousands of Inca relics that were excavated at Machu Picchu. (Images courtesy of Yale Peabody Museum)

The relics were excavated from 1911-15 by a Yale history professor, Hiram Bingham.

During three trips to Machu Picchu, Bingham dug up thousands of objects, including mummies, ceramics and bones. (Image: Michael Marsland/Yale University)

In 2003 the artefacts went on display in a touring exhibition and the Peruvian government launched negotiations to get them back.

In 2006 Peru threatened to take the case before a US court, saying it had agreed to the objects’ removal only on condition they would be returned.

Under the agreement Yale and Peru will co-sponsor a travelling expedition of the collection.

The Incas ruled Peru from the 1430s until the arrival of the Spaniards in 1532.

They built stone-block cities and roads, and developed a highly organized society that extended from modern-day Colombia to Chile.

· BBC set. 2007
·

 

The Impossible Dream

IMPOSSIBLE DREAM from MAN OF LA MANCHA
Broadway_To dream the impossible dream
To fight the unbeatable foe
To bear with unbearable sorrow
To run where the brave dare not go

To right the unrightable wrong
To love pure and chaste from afar
To try when your arms are too weary
To reach the unreachable star

This is my quest, to follow that star
No matter how hopeless,
No matter how far
To fight for the right
Without question or pause
To be willing to march into hell
For a heavenly cause

And I know if I’ll only be true
To this glorious quest
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm
When I’m laid to my rest

And the world would be better for this
That one man scorned and covered with scars
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To reach the unreachable star _The book was by Dale Wasserman, lyrics by Joe Darion, and music by Mitch Leigh: one song, “The Impossible Dream”, was particularly popular.

Man of La Mancha started its life as a non-musical teleplay written by Dale Wasserman for CBS’s Dupont Show of the Month program. This original staging starred Lee J. Cobb. The Dupont Corporation disliked the title Man of La Mancha, thinking that its viewing audience would not know what La Mancha actually meant, so a new title, I, Don Quixote, was chosen. Upon its telecast, the play won much critical acclaim.

Years after this television broadcast, and after the original teleplay had been unsuccessfully optioned as a non-musical Broadway play, director Albert Marre called Wasserman and suggested that he turn his play into a musical. Mitch Leigh was selected as composer. The original lyricist of the musical was poet W. H. Auden, but his lyrics were discarded, some of them overtly satiric and biting, attacking the bourgeois audience at times.

The musical first opened at the Goodspeed Opera House in Connecticut in 1964. Rex Harrison was to be the original star of this production, but soon lost interest when he discovered the songs must actually be sung. Michael Redgrave was also considered for the role.

The play finally opened on Broadway on November 22, 1965. Richard Kiley won a Tony Award for his performance as Cervantes/Quixote in the original production, and it made Kiley a bona fide Broadway star, but the role went to Peter O’Toole in the less-successful 1972 film. O’Toole, however, did not really sing his own songs; they were dubbed by tenor Simon Gilbert. All other actors in the film, however, from non-singers such as Sophia Loren, Brian Blessed, Harry Andrews, and Rosalie Crutchley, to Broadway musical stars such as Julie Gregg and Gino Conforti, did do their own singing. The only member of the original cast to reprise his role in the film was Conforti, repeating his hilarious portrayal of the amazed barber, whose shaving basin is mistaken by Don Quixote for the Golden Helmet of Mambrino. Although the bulk of the film was made on two enormous sound stages, the use of locations was much more explicit – Don Quixote is actually shown fighting the windmill, while onstage this had been merely suggested by having Quixote run offstage to agitated music, and then crawl back onstage a few seconds later, with his lance broken and his sword twisted. The film was produced and directed by Arthur Hiller, and photographed by Federico Fellini’s frequent cinematographer, Giuseppe Rotunno, with musical and fight staging provided by Gillian Lynne.

The play has been run on Broadway five times:

1965 – 1971 original production, opened November 22, 1965 with Richard Kiley as Miguel de Cervantes and Don Quixote and ran for 2,328 performances. John Cullum, José Ferrer, Hal Holbrook, and Lloyd Bridges also played the roles during this run.
1972 – revival, Richard Kiley as Cervantes and Quixote.
1977 – revival, Richard Kiley as Cervantes and Quixote, Tony Martinez as Sancho Panza and Emily Yancy as Dulcinea.
1992 – revival, Raúl Juliá as Cervantes and Quixote, Sheena Easton as Dulcinea.
2002 – revival, Brian Stokes Mitchell as Cervantes and Quixote, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio as Dulcinea, Ernie Sabella as Sancho Panza.

 

Luciano Pavarotti, Italian Tenor, Is Dead at 71

Luciano Pavarotti, the Italian singer whose ringing, pristine sound set a standard for operatic tenors of the postwar era, has died. He was 71.

His death was announced by his manager. The cause was pancreatic cancer. In July 2006 he underwent surgery for the cancer in New York and had made no public appearances since then. He was hospitalized again this summer and released on Aug. 25.

Like Enrico Caruso and Jenny Lind before him, Mr. Pavarotti extended his presence far beyond the limits of Italian opera. He became a titan of pop culture. Millions saw him on television and found in his expansive personality, childlike charm and generous figure a link to an art form with which many had only a glancing familiarity.

Early in his career and into the 1970s he devoted himself with single-mindedness to his serious opera and recital career, quickly establishing his rich sound as the great male operatic voice of his generation — the “King of the High Cs,” as his popular nickname had it. By the 1980s he expanded his franchise exponentially with the Three Tenors projects, in which he shared the stage with Plácido Domingo and José Carreras, first in concerts associated with the World Cup and later in world tours. Most critics agreed that it was Mr. Pavarotti’s charisma that made the collaboration such a success. The Three Tenors phenomenon only broadened his already huge audience and sold millions of recordings and videos.

And in the early 1990s he began staging Pavarotti and Friends charity concerts, performing side by side with rock stars like Elton John, Sting and Bono and making recordings from these shows.
Throughout these years, despite his busy and vocally demanding schedule, his voice remained in unusually good condition well into middle age.

Even so, as his stadium concerts and pop collaborations brought him fame well beyond what contemporary opera stars have come to expect, Mr. Pavarotti seemed increasingly willing to accept pedestrian musical standards. By the 1980s he found it difficult to learn new opera roles or even new song repertory for his recitals.

And although he planned to spent his final years, in the operatic tradition, performing in a grand worldwide farewell tour, he completed only about half the tour, which began in 2004. Physical ailments, many occasioned by his weight and girth, limited his movement on stage and regularly forced him to cancel performances. By 1995, when he was at the Metropolitan Opera singing one of his favorite roles, Tonio in Donizetti’s “Daughter of the Regiment,” high notes sometimes failed him, and there were controversies over downward transpositions of a notoriously dangerous and high-flying part.

Yet his wholly natural stage manner and his wonderful way with the Italian language were completely intact. Mr. Pavarotti remained a darling of Met audiences until his retirement from that company’s roster in 2004, an occasion celebrated with a string of “Tosca” performances. At the last of them, on March 13, 2004, he received a 15-minute standing ovation and 10 curtain calls. All told, he sang 379 performances at the Met, of which 357 were in fully staged opera productions. In the late 1960s and 70s, when Mr. Pavarotti was at his best, he possessed a sound remarkable for its ability to penetrate large spaces easily. Yet he was able to encase that powerful sound in elegant, brilliant colors. His recordings of the Donizetti repertory are still models of natural grace and pristine sound. The clear Italian diction and his understanding of the emotional power of words in music were exemplary.

Mr. Pavarotti was perhaps the mirror opposite of his great rival among tenors, Mr. Domingo. Five years Mr. Domingo’s senior, Mr. Pavarotti had the natural range of a tenor, leaving him exposed to the stress and wear that ruin so many tenors’ careers before they have barely started. Mr. Pavarotti’s confidence and naturalness in the face of these dangers made his longevity all the more noteworthy.

Mr. Domingo, on the other hand, began his musical life as a baritone and later manufactured a tenor range above it through hard work and scrupulous intelligence. Mr. Pavarotti, although he could find the heart of a character, was not an intellectual presence. His ability to read music in the true sense of the word was in question. Mr. Domingo, in contrast, is an excellent pianist with an analytical mind and the ability to learn and retain scores by quiet reading.

Yet in the late 1980s, when both Mr. Pavarotti and Mr. Domingo were pursuing superstardom, it was Mr. Pavarotti who showed the dominant gift for soliciting adoration from large numbers of people. He joked on talk shows, rode horses on parade and played, improbably, a sex symbol in the movie “Yes, Giorgio.” In a series of concerts, some held in stadiums, Mr. Pavarotti entertained tens of thousands and earned six-figure fees. Presenters, who were able to tie a Pavarotti appearance to a subscription package of less glamorous concerts, found him a valuable loss leader.
The most enduring symbol of Mr. Pavarotti’s Midas touch, as a concert attraction and a recording artist, was the popular and profitable Three Tenors act created with Mr. Domingo and Mr. Carreras. Some praised these concerts and recordings as popularizers of opera for mass audiences. But most classical music critics dismissed them as unworthy of the performers’ talents.

Ailments and Accusations
Mr. Pavarotti had his uncomfortable moments in recent years. His proclivity for gaining weight became a topic of public discussion. He was caught lip-synching a recorded aria at a concert in Modena, his hometown. He was booed off the stage at La Scala during 1992 appearance. No one characterized his lapses as sinister; they were attributed, rather, to a happy-go-lucky style, a large ego and a certain carelessness.
His frequent withdrawals from prominent events at opera houses like the Met and Covent Garden in London, often from productions created with him in mind, caused administrative consternation in many places. A series of cancellations at Lyric Opera of Chicago — 26 out of 41 scheduled dates — moved Lyric’s general director in 1989, Ardis Krainik, to declare Mr. Pavarotti persona non grata at her company.

A similar banishment nearly happened at the Met in 2002. He was scheduled to sing two performances of “Tosca” — one a gala concert with prices as high as $1,875 a ticket, which led to reports that the performances may be a quiet farewell. Mr. Pavarotti arrived in New York only a few days before the first, barely in time for the dress rehearsal. The day of the first performance, though, he had developed a cold and withdrew. That was on a Wednesday.

From then until the second scheduled performance, on Saturday, everyone, from the Met’s managers to casual opera fans, debated the probability of his appearing. The New York Post ran the headline “Fat Man Won’t Sing.” The demand to see the performance was so great, however, that the Met set up 3,000 seats for a closed-circuit broadcast on the Lincoln Center Plaza. Still, at the last minute, Mr. Pavarotti stayed in bed.
Luciano Pavarotti was born in Modena, Italy, on Oct. 12, 1935. His father was a baker and an amateur tenor; his mother worked at a cigar factory. As a child he listened to opera recordings, singing along with tenor stars of a previous era, like Beniamino Gigli and Tito Schipa. He professed an early weakness for the movies of Mario Lanza, whose image he would imitate before a mirror.

As a teenager he followed studies that led to a teaching position; during these student days he met his future wife. He taught for two years before deciding to become a singer. His first teachers were Arrigo Pola and Ettore Campogalliani, and his first breakthrough came in 1961 when he won an international competition at the Teatro Reggio Emilia. He made his debut as Rodolfo in Puccini’s “Bohème” later that year.

In 1963 Mr. Pavarotti’s international career began: first as Edgardo in Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor” in Amsterdam and other Dutch cities, and then in Vienna and Zurich. His Covent Garden debut also came in 1963, when he substituted for and Giuseppe di Stefano in “La Bohème.” His reputation in Britain grew even more the next year, when he sang at the Glyndebourne Festival, taking the part of Idamante in Mozart’s “Idomeneo.”

A turning point in Mr. Pavarotti’s career was his association with the soprano Joan Sutherland. In 1965 he joined the Sutherland-Williamson company on an Australian tour during which he sang Edgardo to Ms. Sutherland’s Lucia. He later credited Ms. Sutherland’s advice, encouragement and example as a major factor in the development of his technique.

Further career milestones came in 1967, with Mr. Pavarotti’s first appearances at La Scala in Milan and his participation in a performance of the Verdi Requiem under Herbert von Karajan. He came to the Metropolitan Opera a year later, singing with Mirella Freni, a childhood friend, in a production of “La Bohème.”
A series of recordings with London Records had also begun, and these excursions through the Italian repertory remain some of Mr. Pavarotti’s lasting contributions to his generation. The recordings included “L’Elisir d’Amore,” “La Favorita,” “Lucia di Lammermoor” and “La Fille du Régiment” by Donizetti; “Madama Butterfly,” “La Bohème,” “Tosca” and “Turandot” by Puccini; “Rigoletto,” “Il Trovatore,” “La Traviata” and the Requiem by Verdi; and scattered operas by Bellini, Rossini and Mascagni. There were also solo albums of arias and songs.
In 1981 Mr. Pavarotti established a voice competition in Philadelphia and was active in its operation. Young, talented singers from around the world were auditioned in preliminary rounds before the final selections. High among the prizes for winners was an appearance in a staged opera in Philadelphia in which Mr. Pavarotti would also appear.

He also gave master classes, many of which were shown on public television in the United States. Mr. Pavarotti’s forays into teaching became stage appearances in themselves, and ultimately had more to do with the teacher than those being taught.

An Outsize Personality
In his later years Mr. Pavarotti became as much an attraction as an opera singer. Hardly a week passed in the 1990s when his name did not surface in at least two gossip columns. He could be found unveiling postage stamps depicting old opera stars or singing in Red Square in Moscow. His outsize personality remained a strong drawing card, and even his lifelong battle with his circumference guaranteed headlines: a Pavarotti diet or a Pavarotti binge provided high-octane fuel for reporters.
In 1997 Mr. Pavarotti joined Sting for the opening of the Pavarotti Music Center in war-torn Mostar, Bosnia, and Michael Jackson and Paul McCartney on a CD tribute to Diana, Princess of Wales. In 2005 he was granted Freedom of the City of London for his fund-raising concerts for the Red Cross. He also received the Kennedy Center Honors in 2001, and holds two spots in the Guinness Book of World Records — one for the greatest number of curtain calls (165), the other, held jointly with Mr. Domingo and Mr. Carreras, for the best-selling classical album of all time, the first Three Tenors album (“Carreras, Domingo, Pavarotti: The Three Tenors in Concert”). But for all that, he knew where his true appeal was centered.

“I’m not a politician, I’m a musician,” he told the BBC Music Magazine in an April 1998 article about his efforts for Bosnia. “I care about giving people a place where they can go to enjoy themselves and to begin to live again. To the man you have to give the spirit, and when you give him the spirit, you have done everything.”Mr. Pavarotti’s health became an issue in the late 1990s. His mobility onstage was sometimes severely limited because of leg problems, and at a 1997 “Turandot” performance at the Met, extras onstage surrounded him and literally helped him up and down steps. In January 1998, at a Met gala with two other singers, Mr. Pavarotti became lost in a trio from “Luisa Miller” despite having the music in front of him. He complained of dizziness and withdrew. Rumors flew alleging on one side a serious health problem and, on the other, a smoke screen for Mr. Pavarotti’s unpreparedness.

The latter was not a new accusation during the 1990s. In a 1997 review for The New York Times, Anthony Tommasini accused Mr. Pavarotti of “shamelessly coasting” through a recital, using music instead of his memory, and still losing his place. Words were always a problem, and he cheerfully admitted to using cue cards as reminders.

A Box-Office Powerhouse
It was a tribute to Mr. Pavarotti’s box-office power that when, in 1997, he announced he could not or would not learn his part for a new “Forza del Destino” at the Met, the house scrapped its scheduled production and substituted “Un Ballo in Maschera,” a piece he was ready to sing.
Around that time Mr. Pavarotti also made news by leaving his wife of more than three decades, Adua, to live with his 26-year-old assistant, Nicoletta Mantovani, and filing for divorce, which was finalized in October 2002. He married Ms. Mantovani in 2003. She survives him, as do three daughters from his marriage to the former Adua Veroni: Lorenza, Christina and Giuliana; and a daughter with Ms. Mantovani, Alice.
Mr. Pavarotti had a home in Manhattan but also maintained ties to his hometown, living when time permitted in a villa outside Modena.

He published two autobiographies, both written with William Wright: “Pavarotti: My Own Story” in 1981, and “Pavarotti: My World” in 1995.
In interviews Mr. Pavarotti could turn on a disarming charm, and if he invariably dismissed concerns about his pop projects, technical problems and even his health, he made a strong case for what his fame could do for opera itself.

“I remember when I began singing, in 1961,” he told Opera News in 1998, “one person said, ‘run quick, because opera is going to have at maximum 10 years of life.’ At the time it was really going down. But then, I was lucky enough to make the first ‘Live From the Met’ telecast. And the day after, people stopped me on the street. So I realized the importance of bringing opera to the masses. I think there were people who didn’t know what opera was before. And they say ‘Bohème,’ and of course ‘Bohème’ is so good.’ ”

About his own drawing power, his analysis was simple and on the mark.
“I think an important quality that I have is that if you turn on the radio and hear somebody sing, you know it’s me.” he said. “You don’t confuse my voice with another voice.”

By BERNARD HOLLAND
New York Times
September 6, 2007

 

Languages spoken in the world and Mathematical poetry

There are about 1,500 different languages spoken in the world today.

In the early 1940’s when it was first being organized, officials (ONU) proposed that all diplomats be required to speak a single language, a restriction that would both facilitate negotiations and symbolize global harmony.

Over the years, there have been no fewer than 300 attempts to invent and promulgate a global language, the most famous being made in 1887 by the polish oculist L.L. Zamenhof. The artificial language he created is called Esperanto, and today more than 100,000 people in twenty-two countries speak it.

United Nations ambassadors are now allowed to speak any one of five languages: Mandarin Chinese, English, Russian, Spanish,  or French.

Today who speak mathematics fluently, as measured by the millions and by the historic consequences of their unified efforts, is arguably the most successful global language even spoken.

Though it has not enabled us to build a tower of Babel, it has made possible achievements that once seemed no less impossible: electricity, airplanes, the nuclear bomb, landing a man on the moon, and understanding the nature of life and death.

Matthe Arnold said: “ Poetry is simply the most beautiful, impressive, and widely effective mode of saying things.”

In the language of mathematics, equations are like poetry: They state truths with a unique precision, convey volumes of information in rather brief terms, and often are difficult for the initiated to comprehend. And just as conventional poetry helps us to see deep within ourselves, mathematical poetry helps us to see far beyond ourselves – if not all the way up to heaven, then at leapt out to the brink of the visible universe.

In attempting to distinguish between prose and poetry, Robert Frost once suggested that a poem, by definition, is a pithy form of expression that can never be accurately translated. The same can be said about mathematics: It is impossible to understand the true meaning of an equation, or to appreciate its beauty, unless it is read in the delightfully quirky language in which it was penned.

· Summarized and adapted of “Mathematical Poetry” of Dr. Michael Guillen

 

Juan Diego Florez (PERU – USA)

Biography
Juan Diego Flórez was born in Lima, Peru on January 13, 1973 where his father, Rubén Flórez, was a noted guitarist and singer of Peruvian popular and criolla music. In an interview in the Peruvian newspaper Ojo, Flórez recounted his early days when his mother managed a pub with live music and he worked as a replacement singer whenever the main attraction called in sick. “It was a tremendous experience for me, since most of those who were regulars at the pub were of a certain age, so I had to be ready to sing anything from huaynos to Elvis Presley music and, in my mind, that served me a great deal because, in the final analysis, any music that is well structured – whether it is jazz, opera, or pop – is good music”. Initially intending to pursue a career in popular music, he entered the Conservatorio Nacional de Música in Lima at the age of 17. His classical voice emerged in the course of his studies there under Maestro Andrés Santa María. During this time, he became a member of the Coro Nacional of Peru and sang as a soloist in Mozart’s Coronation Mass and Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle.

He received a scholarship to the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia where he studied from 1993 to 1996 and began singing in student opera productions in the repertory which is still his specialty today, Rossini and the Bel Canto operas of Bellini and Donizetti. During this period, he also studied with Marilyn Horne at the Santa Barbara Academy Summer School. In 1994 the Peruvian tenor, Ernesto Palacio invited him to Italy to work on a recording of Vicente Martín y Soler’s opera Il Tutore Burlato and subsequently became Flórez’s teacher and mentor.

Flórez’s first big breakthrough and professional debut came at the Rossini Festival in 1996. At the age of 23, he stepped in to take the leading tenor role in Matilde di Shabran when Bruce Ford became ill. He made his debut at La Scala in the same year as the Chevalier danois in Gluck’s Armide. His Covent Garden debut followed in 1997 where he sang the role of Count Potoski in a concert performance (and the first modern performance) of Donizetti’s Elisabetta. Debuts followed at the Vienna Staatsoper in 2000 as Rinuccio in Gianni Schicchi and at the New York Metropolitan Opera in 2002 as Count Almaviva in Il barbiere di Siviglia. On February 20, 2007, the opening night of Donizetti’s La Fille du régiment at La Scala, Flórez broke the theater’s 74 year old tradition of no encores when he reprised “Ah! mes amis” with its nine high Cs following an “overwhelming” ovation from the audience.

Flórez is also active on the concert stages of Europe, North America, and South America. Amongst the many venues in which he has given concerts and recitals are the Wigmore Hall in London, the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris, Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall in New York, the Palau de la Música in Barcelona and the Mozarteum in Salzburg. In a departure from his usual repertoire, he sang ‘You’ll never walk alone’ from the Broadway musical, Carousel, at the Berlin Live 8 concert in 2005.

Flórez is the possessor of a light lyric tenor voice of exceptional beauty which, while not of great size, is nevertheless audible in even the largest houses due to its unusual harmonic structure. Its compass is two octaves, up to and including the high D natural, the higher part of its range being particularly strong and brilliant, with almost no sense of effort, while the lowest notes are comparatively weak. The head and chest registers are perfectly integrated, with no audible break in the passaggio. 

His breath control is impeccable, allowing the longest phrases to be sustained with apparent ease. The ornaments of bel canto, including the trill, are well executed, and stylistic errors such as intrusive aspirates generally eschewed.

Perhaps the most distinctive technical accomplishment is the singer’s total mastery of coloratura to a degree probably not matched by any other tenor who has recorded, and to be heard to best effect in his Idreno (Semiramide) and Corradino (Matilde di Shabran).

He was signed by Decca in 2001 and since then has released four solo recital CD’s on the Decca label: Rossini Arias which won the 2003 Cannes Classical Award; Una Furtiva Lagrima, which won the 2004 Cannes Classical Award; Great Tenor Arias which won the 2005 Echo Klassik award for the best arias and duets recital; and most recently Sentimiento Latino. In addition to his official discography, almost all his professionally performed roles have been preserved in radio broadcasts, and many also by television.

Juan Diego Flórez has been awarded the Premio Abbiati 2000 (awarded by Italian critics for the best singer of the year), the Rossini d’oro, the Bellini d’oro, the Premio Aureliano Pertile, the Tamagno Prize and the L’Opera award (Migliore Tenore) for his 2001 performance in La Sonnambula at La Scala.

 

The True BEAUTY

The concept of beauty in this life is relative; therefore the concept of Beauty is more extensive than we know.

In the dictionary of the Real Spanish Academy (2001) we can see the following definitions:

1) “Property of the things that causes love them, instilling in us spiritual delight. This property exists in the nature and in the artistic and literary works.”

2) “notable Woman by its beauty.”

Analyzing the two definitions that this prestigious dictionary gives us, we can deduce that the first one is  more complete definition through the time.

A good book transcends and remains in the time; although its author have died, for example with Miguel of Cervantes and his masterpiece “Don Quijote de la Mancha” (1605)

The same thing we can say of other artists and poets that left us, in a permanent way, the beauty of their works.

Also the spiritual aspect we can observe it directly, since we awake and we walk in our environment with representatives of the three kingdoms, animal, vegetable and mineral.

We can see beautiful flowers, pretty gardens, imposing mountains,  natural beauty or refreshing landscapes or beaches and mysterious rivers.

All this one and many other things more, they show us a mosaic of natural things, according to our environment,. They permit feel us alive and surrounded by natural beauty.

The second definition, on the beauty of the woman, is relative. Therefore the human beauty or physics beauty has a time of duration, limited in years.

 Therefore who is grasped only to this beauty will be carried large disillusionments in some years more.

On the other hand who cultivates more the love by the beauty of the nature, the good literary or artistic works. Even by the interior beauty that many human beings have it. Then, we will have the beauty in a permanent way with us.

See you later,
CARLOS (Tiger without Time)

 

The BLOG traveler, Does Road when is walking

It is very interesting the evolution of the Blogs, like group, as a new massive media, using modern technologies and the evolution of the Internet.

If we concentrate on those people that make a serious Blogs, to communicate us, direct or indirectly, some news, ideas, comments, experiences or simply to entertain us with some video or photos.

Besides the fact to be able to share new know-how or experiences of people of everywhere around the world. And, in a diversity of themes that would be very long to mention.

All this new form of modern communication, of people with access to Internet, that each day they are more. So, how everything in this life, it has a good side and it has a bad side.

The good side is that without doing long and costly travel, we can know people of almost everywhere around the world and to learn their form of seeing the world and to learn his culture and form of living.

Also the Blogs can be like our curriculum of personal presentation to other people. According to our design of Blog we will get up people that have something interests in what we publish, and so will be born a fruitful friendship.

The bad side is that we can convert ourselves, in people that they are in a room with a PC, and they forget of the physical relations. Very important is the physical contact for to get good human relations.

Besides being able to make the mistake of idealizing to the people that know for Internet. Therefore, always the personal contact is decisive.

Thus, paraphrasing a great poet, the Blogs have begun to walk, they are Blogs travelers and they do road when It’s walking, and, now, when we return our view behind, we see distant and obsolete the starting point; therefore, not only, we leave wakes in the sea, but we leave wakes in the cyberspace.

See you soon,

CARLOS (Tiger without Time)

 

Sarah Brigthman and Andrea Bocelli (Musical Video)

[YOUTUBE=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sp0ccQVy1og]

Time to say goodbye
———————-

When Im alone
I dream on the horizon
And words fail;
Yes, I know there is no light
In a room
Where the sun is not there
If you are not with me.
At the windows
Show everyone my heart
Which you set alight;
Enclose within me
The light you
Encountered on the street.

Time to say goodbye,
To countries I never
Saw and shared with you,
Now, yes, I shall experience them,
Ill go with you
On ships across seas
Which, I know,
No, no, exist no longer;
With you I shall experience them.

When you are far away
I dream on the horizon
And words fail,
And yes, I know
That you are with me;
You, my moon, are here with me,
My sun, you are here with me.
With me, with me, with me,

Time to say goodbye,
To countries I never
Saw and shared with you,
Now, yes, I shall experience them,
Ill go with you
On ships across seas
Which, I know,
No, no, exist no longer;
With you I shall re-experience them.
Ill go with you
On ships across seas
Which, I know,
No, no, exist no longer;
With you I shall re-experience them.
Ill go with you,
I with you.

 

Happy Year 2007

Happy year 2007 and  that obtain your goals of happiness, peace and welfare in your life

CARLOS (Tiger  without Time) 

That the love transcend the religions or ideologies that everybody have it and only a desire of love, peace, justice, solidarity and Tolerance, lead our lives today, tomorrow and always. 

 

Merry Christmas 2006 = FELIZ NAVIDAD 2006

In this Christmas I Ask to God or the infinite forces of the Universe:  

I ask, in prayer that supports my friends and family that read this message, right now, and get the truth of this life and to apply it in their own present life.

So they will be happy and they getting remove the internal force that have themselves. 

That your thoughts, words and actions permit them obtain the lighting, love and truth that they need for transcend in mind, body and spirit. 

That the love transcend the religions or ideologies that everybody have it and only a desire of love, peace, justice, solidarity and Tolerance, lead our lives today, tomorrow and always. 

That Christmas be the start for this great crusade. 

Remember, friends and family that all our spiritual power is inside of us.  We don’t depend on other people to be happy or for remove all our potential. 

Only you can do that …   

LOVE, PEACE and HAPPINESS by ALWAYS.   

CARLOS (Tiger without Time)  a verdad de esta vida para aplicarla en su propia vida actual y