Aarushhh/wikipedia-simple-splitted huggingface dataset:
The old Ross Casino was constructed in the late 1800s by Ross himself. It contained the first mail and telegraph service and a big store. The building had three floors, and was raised using imported materials. In January 20, 1906, the first Chilean casino was opened in that building. The Ross Casino worked until 1932, when the permission was cancelled, allowing just the newly constructed Viña del Mar Casino to work. After the closing of the Ross Casino, the building was converted into a hotel was which functioned until the 1980s.

The old casino (1905) and its gardens (1885) are an important part of the city. It was named Historic Monument by the National Monuments Council on February 25, 1988, by the supreme decree N° 100.
Ross was also the administrator of the great Juana Ross de Edwards fortune, the Nancagua Hacienda, near the city of same name. He designed an urban set of high environmental value and landscape, transforming "La Posada" to a hotel (Great Hotel Pichilemu, later Hotel Ross, or Ross Hotel). 
Ross also built several chalets, terraces, embankments, stone walls, a balcony in front of the beach and several large houses with imported building materials and furniture from France and England. Additionally, he put up a park and a forest of more than 10 hectares. Ross turned Pichilemu into a summer resort town for rich people from Santiago. He, however, could not build a dock for the city, as he had planned. 

In 1935, the Ross successors ceded to the Illustrious Municipality of Pichilemu all the Ross constructions (streets, avenues, squares, seven hectares of forests, the park in front of the hotel, the perrons and the terraces) under condition that the municipality hold them for recreation and public access.
The Cultural Centre was severely damaged after the February 2010 Chile earthquake. The library that it hosted was completely destroyed. After the 2010 Pichilemu earthquake, the Cultural Centre suffered structural damage, but Roberto Córdova, Mayor of Pichilemu, said that it was repairable.

References 

Buildings and structures in Chile
Pichilemu
The Australia national rugby union team, nicknamed the Wallabies are the national rugby union side of Australia. The first Australian teams played against the British Lions at the Sydney Cricket Ground on 24 June 1899. The Australians won the game 13-3. In 1908, the Australians went to the United Kingdom, France and North America to play. They needed a name and someone suggested the "Rabbits", but the team did not like it and chose the "Wallabies" instead. A wallaby is a small mammal from Australia, very similar to a kangaroo. Until the 1980s, only teams playing overseas were called the Wallabies; when they played in Australia they were called Internationals. Now the national team is called the Wallabies all the time.

References

National sports teams of Australia
National rugby union teams
A  north American sparrow is a member of the genus Passer. They are small passerine birds which belong to the family Passeridae. They are also known as old-world sparrows. Sparrows often make their nests near houses or buildings. This means they are one of the easiest birds to see in the wild.

The genus has about 30 species around the world. The best known of these is the house sparrow, Passer domesticus.

Some authorities place other genera in the sparrow group: Petronia, the rock sparrows; Carpospiza, the pale rockfinch; and Montifringilla, the snowfinches.

Description 
Sparrows are small birds. They are between 11–18 centimeters long. They can weigh between 13–42 grams. They are usually brown and grey. They have short tails and small, strong beaks. Most sparrows eat seeds or small insects. Sparrows are social birds and they live in flocks (groups).

The house sparrow
The house sparrow 

The house sparrow (Passer domesticus) is a species of sparrow. It lives all over the world. It originally lived only in Europe and Asia. However, people travelled to new places and the house sparrow went to those places too. It is now the bird with the widest distribution. This means it lives in the most places. The species has about 50 subspecies.

Distribution 
Sparrows can be seen on every continent on earth. A long time ago, they lived only in Europe, Asia and Africa. However, people traveled to Australia, North America and South America, and now sparrows are seen there too. The house sparrow is seen in every continent. In Australia, there are no sparrows in Western Australia, as they have not been able to travel across the deserts that separate that state from the eastern states. The government employs people to hunt and destroy any sparrows that might arrive.
North America 
The house sparrow was introduced to America in the late 19th century. It was introduced on purpose. It was imported by several people, including Eugene Schieffelin, who was a wealthy New York City admirer of Shakespeare. He wanted to introduce to America all the birds mentioned in the works of Shakespeare. Two of these species were great successes: starlings and house sparrows. He organized a society for the importation of foreign birds, incorporated in Albany.

Other so-called 'sparrows' 
Some ornithologists thought the Estrildid finches were in the same family as sparrows. However, they are now in a different family, the Estrildidae.

There is also a group called 'American sparrows', or New World sparrows. These are also in a different family, the Emberizidae (buntings).
The hedge sparrow (also known as the dunnock or accentor) Prunella modularis is also not a true sparrow. It is in a different family, the Prunellidae. It is only called a sparrow because people called all small brown birds 'sparrows'. Birdwatchers call then all LBJs (little brown jobs) because they are usually so difficult to tell apart.

Description 
The house sparrow is small bird. It is between 14–18 centimeters (5.5–7.1 in) long. It weighs between 24–39.5 grams (0.85–1.4 oz). Females are smaller than males.

Male and female house sparrows are different colors. The male is brown, gray and white. It has a black throat. The female and young house sparrows are brown and dark yellow or cream. They have streaks (stripes) on their heads and wings.

Habitat
Habitat 

The house sparrow lives close to humans, often near human houses in towns or cities. It also lives near farms and makes a nest in a bush or small tree. It can have two or three broods per year. This means it has two or three sets of eggs and chicks each year.

Nest sites are varied, though cavities are preferred. Nests are most frequently built in the eaves and other crevices of houses. Holes in cliffs and banks, or tree hollows, are also used.p52–57 A sparrow sometimes digs out its own nests in sandy banks or rotten branches. More often it uses the nests of other birds, such swallows' nests in banks and cliffs, and old tree nest holes. It often uses deserted nests. Sometimes it takes over active nests by driving away or killing the occupants. Tree hollows are more commonly used in North America than in Europe. This puts the sparrows in competition with bluebirds and other North American cavity nesters so the native bird population declines.
Conservation 
The number of house sparrows in the United Kingdom has gone down, perhaps because their hedgerow habitat has shrunk. They are now 'endangered' in the United Kingdom. However, in other countries, the bird is still very common. Hedges are necessary to the bird because predators cannot usually get at their nests. They would have no defence against magpies (for example) if face-to-face.

Sparrows in Mao's China 
Sparrows eat some grain. So Mao decided that sparrows should be eliminated in China. The result was a disastrous famine, with grain yields a fraction of what went before. Apparently no-one knew enough about sparrows. They are major predators of locusts. With few sparrows, locusts thrived and ate much of the wheat. It is difficult in an autocracy to tell leaders they are wrong.
In Sichuan Province, even though the collected grain was decreasing from 1958 to 1961, the numbers reported to the central government kept increasing.
 In Gansu, the grain yield declined by 4,273,000 tonnes from 1957 to 1961. The gap between the expected quantity and the real quantity of grain led to widespread starvation in Mao's China.

References 

Passeri
A couch, sofa or settee is a kind of furniture that is designed to seat more than one person. It usually has a place to rest your arm on each side. Couches are normally found in the living room or in front of the TV.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, a couch was thought as a long, upward seat for resting on. One end would slope up high enough to provide a place for the head to rest.
Some late 18th-century kinds of couches had an arm running partly down one side, and this type continued to be made in England. In Greek places, there were flowing designs with all kind of elegant colors. Many of them had scrolled ends and short legs. The couch was later taken over by the overstuffed sofa during the Victorian age.
Expression 
Because the couch is usually set in front of the TV, it is the main place where people usually sit and watch it. Lazy people would eventually seem to be stuck to it all the time. This person, a person who does not do a lot of physical activity, was called a "couch potato". This was also because potatoes do not move at all, and does not do anything but just sits there. This may also be considered as slang. Couch came from the word couche, which means, "a bed, lair," or from the word coucher, which means "to lie down."

Types 
The most common types of couches in homes are the "love seats" for two, or the "sofa" for more than two.  Other couches include the divan or the "fainting couch", which usually does not have a back.  Couches are usually bought in a set together with cushions, which give them a bouncey and decorative comfortable touch.

References

 John Gloag, A Short Dictionary of Furniture rev. ed. 1962. (London: Allen & Unwin)

Other websites 
 Etymology of "sofa"

Furniture
Jena Lee (born 29 July, 1987 in Chile) is a French singer.

She was adopted by a French family at the age of nine months. In 2007, Jena Lee met Sulee B Wax, who was interested in her work. At this point in time Lee wrote the song Some Share. The song was used in an album by Sherifa Luna.  Jena Lee wrote six out of the thirteen songs that are on Sherifa Luna's album.

In 2008, Jena Lee won the Urban Music Nation contest by Skyrock. Her first single J'aimerais Tellement was released in April 2009 along with a music video. It was at the top of the French single charts for eleven weeks. It had the highest number of downloads in November 2009.

References

French singers
Chilean singers
1987 births
Living people
Sinik (real name Thomas Gerard Idir; born on 26 June 1980) is a famous French rapper. His parents are Algerian. Thomas was four years old when his parents moved to Bergères in France.

Rappers
French musical entertainers
1980 births
Living people
Porridge is a food which is made with a cereal, usually oats.  The oats are boiled in water or milk, or both. It is usually served hot in a bowl or dish.  Some people add things to their porridge such as sugar or syrup. In Scotland salt is often added.

Porridge is a traditional food in many countries in Northern Europe.  It is usually eaten for breakfast.  In some countries barley or other grains may be used.  Porridge is cooked in saucepans or in a microwave.  Traditionally, it was cooked in large metal kettles over hot coals. Porridge was often served as food for prisoners in prisons.  This is why in English there is a slang expression "doing porridge" which means "being in prison". Porridge is also given to people who are ill because it is healthy and easy to eat and digest.
Semolina and gruel are foods which are quite similar to porridge. Semolina is usually served as a pudding. Gruel is a thinner version of porridge that may be also drunk and may not need to be cooked. Oliver Twist, in the famous book by Charles Dickens, was given gruel to eat.

Historically, heavy foods were eaten because most work was manual. Before the industrial revolution, men and women doing hard work needed more calories per day than they need today. At any rate this applies to countries which are highly mechanized. Porridge is a good example of the heavy calorie-laden food which has gradually gone out of favor.

Related pages
Quaker Oats Company

References 

Breakfast foods
A Fresnel lens is an optical lens, which was originally developed for Lighthouses. It is named after its inventor, French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel. The name is pronounced  /freɪˈnɛl/ (fray-NELL), the 's' is silent. Before Fresnel,  Buffon and Condorcet proposed a similar design, as a way to make large burning lenses.  

The design allows the construction of lenses of large aperture and short focal length without the weight and volume of material that would be required in conventional lens design.  Compared to earlier lenses, the Fresnel lens is much thinner. More light can pass through. Lighthouses that use these kind of lenses can be seen from farther away.

Optics
Giacomo Meyerbeer  (born near Berlin, 5 September 1791; died Paris,  2 May 1864) was a famous German-born opera composer.  He was the most important composer of French Grand opera during the 1830s and 1840s.  Although he was tremendously popular in his day, his music is not often played now.

Life

Early years

Meyerbeer was born into a rich Jewish family in Tasdorf (now a part of Rüdersdorf), near Berlin.  His father owned large sugar refineries in Berlin and in Italy.  His mother also came from a rich family.  Her father had been important in Germany’s struggle to be free of the French in 1812 when Napoleon was trying to conquer much of Europe. Giacomo’s mother did a lot of good work trying to help people who were wounded during the Napoleonic wars.

Many famous people came to the house where Giacomo’s family lived.  Some of the visitors were from the royal Prussian court,  including the future King Friedrich Wilhelm IV.  The naturalist and explorer Alexander von Humboldt also visited them quite often.
The first piano teacher the boy had was Franz Lauska, who also taught the royal princes.  He also had lessons in composition.  Meyerbeer first played in public in 1801 playing Mozart's Piano Concerto in D Minor in Berlin. He wrote his first opera in 1810.  In the same year he went to Darmstadt to study with the well-known music theorist Abbé Vogler.  There he met the young Carl Maria von Weber who was also a pupil of Vogler.  He left Vogler in 1811 and tried to get some work in Munich.  In 1813 he found he had been offered a job as court composer to the Grand Duke of Hessen.  Vogler had probably recommended him for the job.  At this time Meyerbeer was better known as a pianist than as a composer.  He travelled to London to hear an important pianist based there, namely J.B.Cramer.  There he met other famous pianists such as Kalkbrenner and Ferdinand Ries.

Italy
Italy

In 1816 Meyerbeer went to Italy.  He wanted to learn about Italian opera and collect Italian folksongs.  While he intended at first to stay only three months, he stayed most of the next nine years.  He made some trips back to Germany and Austria during this time.  He composed several operas which became very popular.  People started to compare him with the famous Rossini.  However, in Germany people were not interested in his music.  He took his opera Il crociato in Egitto  to  London and then to Paris, where it was a success.  The opera is remembered now for being the last opera ever to have a part for a castrato singer.

He was becoming well-known now.  Spontini asked him to compose an opera for Berlin.  He became friends, in Paris, with the librettist  Eugène Scribe who had a lot of influence in the French theatre.

The Grand Operas
The Grand Operas

From 1825 onwards Meyerbeer spent his life travelling about Europe.  He was often in Paris and in Berlin, but did not live in either of these places.  He stayed in hotels or private houses wherever he went.  One reason why he travelled was because of his health.  His wife also had bad health, so they often went to spa towns to try to get better.  He also travelled about to watch productions of his operas, and to hear young singers.

When Carl Maria von Weber died, he left an opera, Die drei Pintos, unfinished.  It was sent to Meyerbeer in the hope that he would finish it, but he did not seem interested.  In the end Mahler finished it many years later.

Meyerbeer made changes to Il crociato in Egitto and turned it into a grand opera for the Opéra in Paris.  He changed it from an Italian to a French opera, composing extra dance music and a new overture.  He was determined to be famous in Paris.
In 1826 he married his cousin.  They had two children, but they both died when they were very small.

In 1828 Daniel Auber, a famous French composer of the time, had composed a very popular opera called  La muette de Portici. It was the first French  grand opera. Meyerbeer realized he could not become really popular by turning his Italian operas into French grand opera, so he took his comic opera Robert le Diable and changed it into a grand opera.  Audiences loved it. Within three years it had been performed in 77 theatres in 10 different countries.  Many composers made their own arrangements of some of the tunes from the opera.   He was given many honours: the Chevalier of the Legion d’honneur, the title of Prussian Hof Kapellmeister (Director of Music at the Royal Court), and was made a member of the Prussian Academy of Arts and a member of the French Institute.
Meyerbeer realized that anything else he wrote would have to be really good.  In  1836 he produced another opera Les Huguenots.  This too was extremely popular.

In 1842 he went to Boulogne to improve his health.  There he met Wagner who asked him for financial help to stage his operas Rienzi and The Flying Dutchman.  Meyerbeer lent him money, but stopped giving him money when he heard that Wagner was secretly criticizing him.

Berlin years

When Spontini died Meyerbeer was made Generalmusikdirektor in Berlin.  His opera  Les Huguenots had at first been forbidden in Germany, but now it was allowed to be performed.  As court composer he wrote a grand opera called Ein Feldschlag in Schlesien (A  Battle in Silesia), but it never became internationally famous.  The main part in the opera was sung by Jenny Lind.

Return to Paris
Return to Paris

In 1849 he returned to Paris. He wrote several works together with Scribe, whom Meyerbeer described as the best living librettist, and who was one of his closest friends.  His opera Le prophète (for which Scribe again wrote the words) earned him a lot of money.  The great contralto Pauline Viardot-Garcia sang the main part.

Scribe died in 1861.  Meyerbeer worked very hard to try to finish his last opera,  L’Africaine.  Napoleon III said he wanted the opera to be ready by the winter of 1862-63, but it was not ready until 1864.  The work was being rehearsed for its first performance when Meyerbeer suddenly died, without having had the chance to revise it, the way he revised most of his other pieces.

Meyerbeer’s body was taken to Berlin where it was buried in the Jewish cemetery in a vault that belonged to his family.
Meyerbeer’s music
Meyerbeer was always more popular in France than in Germany.  His operas are about the society of wealthy people.  The sounds he made with his orchestra are often deliberately harsh.  In this he is like Beethoven in his final years, and Berlioz. Sometimes he used new instruments such as the bass clarinet and the saxophone.  He always thought carefully about what his singers were capable of when writing his music.  He enjoyed working with different singers, among them Velluti, who was the last of the great operatic castrati.  He took great trouble to give his singers rests during the opera so that they would still be in good voice for the climax of the story.  He liked scenes with large crowds.  He composed his dance music, in particular, very carefully. Often he would throw it away and start again if the dancers were not happy with it.

Besides his operas he also wrote orchestral pieces for special occasions.  He also wrote some songs for performance in the salon.
Meyerbeer was one of the richest men in Europe.  This is why some people hated him.

Meyerbeer’s reputation after his death
Meyerbeer’s operas were very popular in the middle of the 19th century, but by the end of the century they had gone out of fashion.  From 1933 to 1945 his music was banned in Germany by the Nazis because he was  Jewish.  Today there is some interest again, but nothing like the huge popularity he had in his lifetime.

Bibliography
The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, ed. Stanley Sadie; 1980; ; article “Meyerbeer” vol 12 p. 246ff

Romantic composers
19th-century German composers
1791 births
1864 deaths
Grand opera is a term which is used to describe an opera with continuous music. It is a kind of opera that was popular in the 19th-century.  Grand operas are usually divided into four or five acts. There have large casts (many singers taking part) and large orchestras. There is a lot of scenery. The story is dramatic. It is usually a story about a hero from history. The term "Grand Opera" has often been used to describe the Paris Opéra from the late 1820s to around 1850, and sometimes to describe the Paris Opéra itself.  

In a broader sense "Grand Opera" can be any large-scale opera from European countries.  During the 1830s and 1840s Giacomo Meyerbeer was thought to be the greatest composer of Grand Opera.

Opera genres
Opera terminology
Lake Lucerne is a lake in central Switzerland. It is the fourth largest lake in the country. The German name is Vierwaldstättersee which means: "Lake of the Four Forested Cantons".

It is possible to travel all the way round the side of the lake by road. There are several tunnels on the way. It is very popular with tourists. There are many hotels by the lake.

 Beethoven's "Moonlight" Sonata gets its name because, in 1832, a music critic Ludwig Rellstab said it was like the moonlight shining on Lake Lucerne.

Other websites 

 Waterlevels Lake Lucerne  at Brunnen
 Waterlevels Lake Lucerne  at Lucerne
 Lake Lucerne Region 

Lakes of Switzerland
Canton of Schwyz
Canton of Lucerne
Canton of Uri
Obwalden
Nidwalden
Die Feen (The Fairies) is an opera in three acts by Richard Wagner. The German libretto was written by the composer.  He was adapting a story by Carlo Gozzi called La donna serpente.

Die Feen was the first opera that Wagner finished.  However, it was never performed during his lifetime.  It has never become popular, although the overture is sometimes played.  The music shows the influence of Carl Maria von Weber and other composers of the time.  It also shows some musical ideas that Wagner was to develop later in his life in his famous operas.  The fairy tale atmosphere in the story is also an idea that he uses in his later operas which deal with fantasy stories.  The idea of being saved (redemption) is also an important idea that he used in later operas.

Operas by Richard Wagner
1880s operas
Rienzi is an opera by Richard Wagner.  Its full title is Rienzi, der Letzte der Tribunen (Rienzi, the Last of the Tribunes).  It is one of the earliest operas Wagner wrote.  There are five acts.  Wagner wrote the libretto himself, using the story from a novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton.  It was composed between 1838 and 1840  It was first performed at the Hofoper, Dresden on 20 October 1842.  It was the first time Wagner had a success as an opera composer.

Story
The story of the opera is set in Rome and is based on the life of Cola di Rienzi (1313–1354), a medieval Italian populist figure who manages to trick the nobles and their followers.  He helps the people to get power.  At first he is very popular, but then he has to use force against the nobles, and the Church turns against him.  In the end the ordinary people burn the Capitol where Rienzi and his friends are sheltering.

Operas by Richard Wagner
1840s operas
A chess tournament is a competition between chess players. It can take one of these forms:
A knock-out tournament. Not a popular choice in chess events.
An all-play-all event. A highly regarded format, but does not permit large entries.
A Swiss system event. Permits large entries, and is the most common format. The event has a pre-set number of rounds, and there are many more players than rounds. Progressively, players play opponents with roughly similar points to their own score. Players who win get stronger opponents, players who lose get weaker opponents. Pairing each round may be done by computer. This is an invention of the chess world and, like chess clocks, has been adopted by a number of other two-person sports.

Since the first international chess tournament in London, 1851, chess tournaments have become the standard form of chess competition among serious players. Currently, FIDE holds candidates tournaments every two years to determine challenger to the world champion.
In 1851, Adolf Anderssen became first unofficial champion. In 1858, Paul Morphy beat him and became second unofficial champion. In 1871, Johannez Zukertort defeated Adolf Anderssen to become third unofficial chess champion. There are three unofficial world chess champions: Adolf Anderssen, Paul Morphy and Johannes Zukertort, stemming from first strong international tournament in London in 1851, won by Anderssen.

References 

Chess competitions
Der fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman) is an opera by Richard Wagner.  Wagner wrote the libretto himself.  The story comes from the legend of the Flying Dutchman, which is about the captain of a ship.  It is his fate  that he has keep sailing the sea, without ever going on to land, until Judgment Day.
  
The most important idea in the story as told by Wagner is redemption through love.  It was a favourite idea of Wagner, who used it a lot in his later operas.
Wagner conducted the first performance at the Semper Oper in Dresden, in 1843.  It is an early opera of Wagner, but it shows his mature style.  It is very different from the previous opera Rienzi which is still quite similar to operas that other composers were writing.  In Der fliegende Holländer the drama is very important.  Wagner uses a number of leitmotifs: musical ideas associated with particular characters and themes in the story. The leitmotifs are all introduced in the overture.  We hear the famous leitmotif of the ocean and then those of the Dutchman and of Senta, the girl he falls in love with.

Wagner originally wrote Der fliegende Holländer to be performed without any breaks (intermission).  Sometimes it is performed like that today, but Wagner also made a version with three acts.

Operas by Richard Wagner
1840s operas
Tannhäuser und der Sängerkrieg auf Wartburg (En: Tannhäuser and the Singers' Contest at Wartburg) is a three-act opera with words and music by Richard Wagner. It was Wagner's fifth opera. He worked on it between 1842 and 1845. It was first performed at the Dresden Royal Opera on 19 October 1845 with Wagner conducting. The opera was a success. It became hugely popular in Germany.

In 1859, Tannhäuser was the first Wagner opera to be performed in the United States of America. By 1861, the opera had been performed many times in Germany when Wagner was asked to revise the work for the Paris Opéra. Despite his best efforts, Wagner failed. He was not popular. Anti-Wagner riots broke out. He withdrew the work. It was not staged again in France until 1895. Meanwhile, the opera opened the second season of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City in November 1884.

Background
Background

Wagner was in Paris completing The Flying Dutchman when he began thinking about writing another opera. A friend suggested Tannhäuser as a subject. Wagner did not like the tale. Back in Germany however, he gathered materials by Tieck, Heine, and others about Tannhäuser. Vacationing in Bohemia, he had a change of heart. He began preparing an outline for Tannhäuser. Returning home to Dresden, he immersed himself in the tale. He completed the opera in October 1845. He conducted the first performance that month at the Royal Opera House.
His Venus said, "You are a genius, but you write such eccentric stuff that it is impossible to sing." His Tannhäuser was completely baffled. The audience was puzzled. The reception was lukewarm. Wagner began revisions at once. The second performance played to a near empty house. In 1859, Wagner offered Tannhäuser to the Paris Opéra. They wanted it sung in French. They also wanted  a ballet in the second act. This so the Jockey Club had time to finish dinner and arrive at the Opéra just in time to ogle the dancers. Wagner refused to move the ballet from the first act to the second act. There were complaints. Jockey Club members interrupted the performance whenever possible. It was a disaster.
The opera disappeared from the French stage for 34 years. A few years after the Jockey Club incident, Wagner began revising the Paris version. He produced a sophisticated sound version that was superior to the first draft. Though there are several set pieces in the opera, the opera is closer to Wagner's vision of complete independence from such set pieces. Tannhäuser is on the threshold of the leitmotif, and the diminishing of the sound power of the orchestra in favor of the sung word.

Sources
Wagner's sources for the opera are spread over 600 year time span. In 1391, and again at the beginning of the 15th century, tales were in circulation about a paradise within a German mountain and a traveler who idles with a Sybil before heading to Rome for the Pope's forgiveness. The "Song of Tannhäuser" of 1515 combines moralizing with the adventures of an historical Minnesinger named Danhuser,  Tanhuser, or Tannenhauser. This Minnesinger's songs told of erotic love and its opposite, holy love.
Wagner was an insatiable reader, always on the alert for material that could be adapted to an opera. For Tannhäuser, he combined elements not only from traditional tales but material from C. J. L. Lukas's Essay (1838) on the character of Tannhäuser and Ludwig Tieck's Faithful Eckart (1799). Ludwig Bechstein's Thuringian Legends (1835) included the story of the song contest. Wagner was familiar with the song contest through E. T. A. Hoffmann's Serapion Brothers, Friedrich de la Motte-Fouque's drama The Singers Dispute in the Wartburg (1828), and Wagensil's Nuremberg Chronicle.''

Roles
Roles

 Tannhäuser, a knight and Minnesinger - tenor
 Venus - soprano
 Elisabeth, niece of the Landgrave - soprano
 Hermann, Landgrave of Thuringia - bass
 Wolfram von Eschenbach, a knight and Minnesinger - baritone
 Walther von der Vogelweide, a knight and Minnesinger - tenor
 Biterolf, a knight and Minnesinger - bass
 Heinrich der Schreiber, a knight and Minnesinger - tenor
 Reinmar von Zweter, a knight and Minnesinger - bass
 Young shepherd - soprano
 Four noble pages - trebles

Story of the opera

The story is about the struggle between sacred love and profane love, and redemption (salvation) through love.  The story is based on the historical character of Tannhäuser, about whom very little is known except the myths about him.  It is also about the myth of Venus, but it also deals with the medieval Minnesinger (minstrel). Half of the opera takes place in a historical setting, and half takes place in the mythological Venusberg.
Act 1. With the coming of Christianity, the old gods and goddesses of the ancient world were dispersed. Venus has been living in the Venusberg in Germany. Tannhäuser, a minstrel, has been passing his time with her. He has grown tired of his indulgent and jaded life. He longs to return to the world above. Venus releases him but predicts that he will someday return to her. The minstrel finds himself in the valley of the Wartburg, the home of his former love Elisabeth. He is discovered in prayer by the Landgrave and his knights. They welcome him. He returns to the castle with them.
Act 2. Elisabeth joyfully enters the castle's Hall of Song. She is thrilled Tannhäuser has returned. She renews her vows of love with him. Wolfram, Tannhäuser's friend, looks on sorrowfully. He loves Elisabeth, too. The Landgrave announces a song contest. Guests fill the Hall. The singers are to sing about the true nature of love. While the others sing of chaste and pure love, Tannhäuser sings of profane love. The guests are shocked. Elisabeth defends Tannhäuser. The Landgrave orders Tannhäuser to go to Rome and beg forgiveness of the Pope. The minstrel joins a band of pilgrims and leaves.
Act 3. Months have passed. Tannhäuser has not returned with the pilgrims. Elisabeth is heartbroken. Wolfram sings to the evening star. Wolfram finds Tannhäuser on a path to the castle. The Pope has not forgiven him because of his time with Venus. Tannhäuser despairs. Venus appears in a vision, ordering Tannhäuser to return to his old life. Wolfram whispers the name of Elisabeth. The vision disappears. A procession appears bearing the dead Elisabeth. Tannhäuser throws himself over her corpse and dies. Pilgrims appear announcing a miracle. The Pope's wooden staff has burst into bloom. Tannhäuser has been forgiven.
Criticism

The critics took Wagner to task for his historical inaccuracies. First, the real Tannhauser was only a boy at the supposed time of the song contest. Secondly, they regarded Wagner's Elisabeth with scorn: Wagner had made the character an amalgamation of several historical women.

Production
Cuts to the original were made almost immediately because the singers were not capable of understanding and thus acting their roles. The Prelude to Act 3 was cut from 155 bars to 92. In the original final scene, neither Elisabeth or Venus appeared on stage. The audience was puzzled.

The original final scene was retained until the 13th performance in 1847. Wagner then recast the final pages to make Venus visible on stage. The Venusberg did not appear however. This new ending disturbed the audience because they were used to the older version. Wagner had also cut the pilgrim's chorus, further antagonizing the audience. Another version was made restoring the chorus.

Early productions
Early productions

The first performance outside Dresden occurred at Weimar. This production showed that small theaters could also stage the opera. Other productions took place in Schwerin, Breslau, Prague, Wiesbaden, and other small houses. The opera played in New York in 1859. It played in London (in Italian) in 1876. In Vienna, Johann Strauss performed excerpts in 1853. The first Austrian staging occurred at Graz in 1854. Vienna mounted the opera in 1857. The opera was performed at the Vienna court opera in 1875. In 1860, the Paris Opera wanted the work in a revised version in French. Wagner made extensive revisions for Paris.

Popular numbers in the early years
 Tannhäuser's song in praise of Venus
 Pilgrims' Chorus
 Wolfram's plea to Tannhäuser to return to the Minnesingers
 Entrance of the Guests
 Wolfram's song to the Evening Star

References
 
 

Operas by Richard Wagner
1840s operas
New York State Route 199 (NY 199) is a road in the Hudson Valley of New York, United States. It is  long, and goes from near Kingston to Millerton. In between, NY 199 crosses over the Hudson River over a bridge and passes through the communities of Red Hook and Pine Plains. Part of the road was part of the Ulster and Delaware Turnpike. NY 199 was named in 1930.

References

Other websites

Route log 

Roads in New York (state)
New York State Route 9G (NY 9G) is a road in Dutchess County, New York, United States. It starts at US 9 in Poughkeepsie and follows the Hudson River as it goes north. It crosses Route 9 just north of Rhinebeck and ends in Hudson.

References

Other websites

Route log

Roads in New York (state)
Every year, the Kennedy Center gives its Kennedy Center Honors to artists.  These artists have contributed to American culture.  Most of these artists were performers, such as actors, dancers, and musicians.  Some of these artists were movie directors, play writers, and songwriters.  Most of the recipients have been American.  The President of the United States usually attends the awards ceremony.  The Honors are given in Washington, D.C. at the Kennedy Center Opera House.

From 1978 until 2002, the ceremony was hosted by Walter Cronkite. Since 2003, it has been hosted by Caroline Kennedy.

Recipients

1970s
1978 – Marian Anderson, Fred Astaire, George Balanchine, Richard Rodgers and Arthur Rubinstein
1979 – Aaron Copland, Ella Fitzgerald, Henry Fonda, Martha Graham and Tennessee Williams
1980s
1980 – Leonard Bernstein, James Cagney, Agnes de Mille, Lynn Fontanne, and Leontyne Price
1981 – Count Basie, Cary Grant, Helen Hayes, Jerome Robbins, and Rudolf Serkin
1982 – George Abbott, Lillian Gish, Benny Goodman, Gene Kelly, and Eugene Ormandy
1983 – Katherine Dunham, Elia Kazan, Frank Sinatra, James Stewart, and Virgil Thomson
1984 – Lena Horne, Danny Kaye, Gian Carlo Menotti, Arthur Miller, and Isaac Stern
1985 – Merce Cunningham, Irene Dunne, Bob Hope, Alan Jay Lerner & Frederick Loewe, and Beverly Sills
1986 – Lucille Ball, Hume Cronyn & Jessica Tandy, Yehudi Menuhin, Antony Tudor, and Ray Charles
1987 – Perry Como, Bette Davis, Sammy Davis, Jr., Nathan Milstein, and Alwin Nikolais
1988 – Alvin Ailey, George Burns, Myrna Loy, Alexander Schneider, and Roger L. Stevens
1989 – Harry Belafonte, Claudette Colbert, Alexandra Danilova, Mary Martin, and William Schuman
1990s
1990 – Dizzy Gillespie, Katharine Hepburn, Risë Stevens, Jule Styne, and Billy Wilder
1991 – Roy Acuff, Betty Comden & Adolph Green, Fayard & Harold Nicholas, Gregory Peck, and Robert Shaw
1992 – Lionel Hampton, Paul Newman & Joanne Woodward, Ginger Rogers, Mstislav Rostropovich, and Paul Taylor
1993 – Johnny Carson, Arthur Mitchell, Georg Solti, Stephen Sondheim, and Marion Williams
1994 – Kirk Douglas, Aretha Franklin, Morton Gould, Harold Prince, and Pete Seeger
1995 – Jacques d'Amboise, Marilyn Horne, B.B. King, Sidney Poitier, and Neil Simon
1996 – Edward Albee, Benny Carter, Johnny Cash, Jack Lemmon, and Maria Tallchief
1997 – Lauren Bacall, Bob Dylan, Charlton Heston, Jessye Norman, and Edward Villella
1998 – Bill Cosby, Fred Ebb & John Kander, Willie Nelson, André Previn, and Shirley Temple Black
1999 – Victor Borge, Sean Connery, Judith Jamison, Jason Robards, and Stevie Wonder

2000s
2000s

2000 – Mikhail Baryshnikov, Chuck Berry, Plácido Domingo, Clint Eastwood, and Angela Lansbury
2001 – Julie Andrews, Van Cliburn, Quincy Jones, Jack Nicholson, and Luciano Pavarotti
2002 – James Earl Jones, James Levine, Chita Rivera, Paul Simon, and Elizabeth Taylor
2003 – James Brown, Carol Burnett, Loretta Lynn, Mike Nichols, and Itzhak Perlman
2004 – Warren Beatty, Ossie Davis & Ruby Dee, Elton John, Joan Sutherland, and John Williams
2005 – Tony Bennett, Suzanne Farrell, Julie Harris, Robert Redford, and Tina Turner
2006 – Zubin Mehta, Dolly Parton, Smokey Robinson, Steven Spielberg, and Andrew Lloyd Webber
2007 – Leon Fleisher, Steve Martin, Diana Ross, Martin Scorsese, and Brian Wilson
2008 – Morgan Freeman, George Jones, Barbra Streisand, Twyla Tharp, and Pete Townshend & Roger Daltrey
2009 – Mel Brooks, Dave Brubeck, Grace Bumbry, Robert De Niro, and Bruce Springsteen
2010s
2010 — Merle Haggard, Jerry Herman, Bill T. Jones, Paul McCartney and Oprah Winfrey
2011 — Barbara Cook, Neil Diamond, Yo-Yo Ma, Sonny Rollins and Meryl Streep
2012 — Buddy Guy, Dustin Hoffman, Led Zeppelin (John Paul Jones, Jimmy Page and Robert Plant), David Letterman and Natalia Makarova
2013 — Martina Arroyo, Herbie Hancock, Billy Joel, Shirley MacLaine and Carlos Santana
2014 — Al Green, Tom Hanks, Patricia McBride, Sting and  Lily Tomlin 
 2015 – Carole King, George Lucas, Rita Moreno, Seiji Ozawa, and Cicely Tyson
 2016 – Martha Argerich, Eagles (Don Henley, Glenn Frey, Timothy B. Schmit, Joe Walsh), Al Pacino, Mavis Staples, and James Taylor
 2017 – Carmen de Lavallade, Gloria Estefan, LL Cool J, Norman Lear, and Lionel Richie
 2018 – Cher, Philip Glass, Reba McEntire, Wayne Shorter, and the creators of Hamilton: An American Musical (Lin-Manuel Miranda, Thomas Kail, Alex Lacamoire, and Andy Blankenbuehler)
2020s
 2020 – Cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic
 2021 – Debbie Allen, Joan Baez, Garth Brooks, Midori, and Dick Van Dyke

Related pages
Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, the Kennedy Center's award for contributions to American humor

Sources

Entertainment awards
Kennedy Center honorees
The Vicar of Wakefield is a novel by Oliver Goldsmith. It was written in 1761 and 1762. It was published in 1766. The book was very popular. The novel tells of the Primrose family.

Other websites 

 The Vicar of Wakefield 
 

Irish novels
1766
1760s books
Lady's slipper orchids are the orchids in the subfamily Cypripedioideae. They are special because of their slipper-shaped pouches on their flowers. The pouch traps insects so that they must climb up past the modified stamens, where they get or give pollen, fertilizing the flower.

Some people think this subfamily should be different from the Orchidaceae as a family Cypripediaceae.

Pollination 
A lady slipper orchid has a deep pocket that is actually a bee trap. When a bee crawls down into the flower to get the nectar, the pocket on the flower closes shut. Because of this, the bee is stuck for a while, wiggling and squirming, getting pollen all over itself.
The bee finally finds a small opening near the top of the orchid, and it gets out so that it can get trapped inside another lady slipper, where it will give that pollen to the other lady slipper's stigma.

The lady's slipper is also known in the United States of America as the moccasin flower, because it looks like a shoe or moccasin.

References
References

Further reading
Cox, A.V., A. M. Pridgeon, V. A. Albert, and M. W. Chase. 1997. Phylogenetics of the slipper orchids (Cypripedioideae: Orchidaceae): nuclear rDNA ITS sequences. Plant Systematics and Evolution 208: 197-223. PDF
Pridgeon, A.M.; Cribb, P.J.; Chase, M.W. & F. N. Rasmussen (1999): Genera Orchidacearum Vol. 1, Oxford U. Press.

Websites 
 The Slipper Orchid Alliance
 SlipperOrchids.info

Orchids
Pandita Ramabai (23 April 1858, Karnataka – 5 April 1922) was an Indian Christian who tried to change many things in India. A poet and scholar, she tried hard to improve (make better) the lives of women in India. She wrote many books, such as her popular The high
-Caste Indian Woman, which showed the troubles of child wives and women in India.

Conversion
Conversion 

She was born in Gangamoola, in the Mala village, in Karkala Taluk, in the Karnataka State of India. Her father's name was Ananta Shastri. She lost her parents (Laxmi Bai) early. She travelled to Kolkata with her brother. There, she received (got) a Pandita and a Sarasvathi Award for her expertise in Sanskrit Poetry.  Born in the home of an important scholar named Brahmin, Pandita Ramabai had more freedom than many Indian women. Her father taught her and her mother to read Sanskrit writing.  She then began to study Christianity in India, and later in England. She decided that it was the best religion; that she should be a Christian. However, she had not yet received Jesus into her heart. Ramabai later said,

Life 
Shortly after her "true conversion", Pandita Ramabai began a faith mission for the girls and widows of India.  Pandita and her helpers began a school and prayed for what they needed every day. Wheta went to refugee camps and saved widows and girls from death or abuse.
Soon she had over a thousand women and girls at the mission. Helping this many people during a time of great famine was very hard, but Pandita wrote in her autobiography,

Every day, Pandita Ramabai and her helpers taught the women to read and write, showed them cleanliness, and helped them prepare for a job. She also taught them about Jesus. She opened Ashrams at Pune, Mumbai. She established a Christian High school at Gulbarga, (now at Karnataka) and her daughter Manorama was the principal. Manorama studied in the United States and traveled to Australia.

References

  

1858 births
1922 deaths
Indian autobiographers
Indian writers
Indian activists
Indian Christians
People from Karnataka
Synthesis means to bring ideas together, or to make something out of parts which were independent. It is the opposite of analysis.

As an intellectual activity, synthesis occurs often in philosophy and science. In philosophy, synthesis is the end of a process of argument. Two examples of people whose work was mostly synthesis are:
Charles Darwin
Herbert Spencer

In chemistry, to synthesize is to make new compounds from simpler elements.
In acoustics, speech synthesis is the artificial production of human speech.

Related pages 
 Synthetic
 Synthesizer
The Ruy Lopez, also called the Spanish Opening, is an old chess opening. It is named after the Spanish priest Ruy López de Segura. He may have invented the opening. These are the opening moves:

1. e4 e5
2. Nf3 Nc6
3. Bb5

The Ruy Lopez is one of the most common and well-liked openings. There are many ways to play it. It has always been popular in master chess. White's idea is to try and undermine the center by attacking the knight with his bishop. However, White will not be always able to win a pawn immediately:

3... a6
4.Bxc6 dxc6
5.Nxe5 Qd4 recovers the pawn.

For this reason White usually plays a longer-term strategy, starting with:

3... a6
4. Ba4 Nf6
5. 0-0
Here, Black has two main options. Black can either play with an open center, with 5... Nxe4 or play a closed, positional game with 5... Be7. These openings are called the Open Ruy Lopez and the Closed Ruy Lopez.

Closed Variation 
The closed variation of the Ruy Lopez comes after these moves:

 e4 e5
 Nf3 Nc6
 Bb5 Nf6
 0-0 Be7
This line leads to a closed pawn structure. White's idea will be to break open the center with d4. Play typically continues:

 5. Re1, defending the pawn on e4
 5... b5, kicking the Bishop back even farther and preventing White from capturing the knight. If White had taken the knight, then the e5 pawn could be taken.
 6. Bb3 0-0
 7. c3

These are the main moves for White. However, White can also play 7. h3 or 7. a4. These moves are played in order to avoid the Marshall Variation. 

ECO code: C60–C99. ECO is the Encyclopaedia of chess openings.

Chess openings
A triathlon is a sport that consists of three different events one after another without resting in between.  Usually, they are swimming, cycling, and running.  Triathlon has been in the Olympic Games since 2000.  One of the hardest and most famous triathlons is the Ironman Triathlon, which involves swimming two miles, biking a hundred miles, and then running a marathon.

Events in athletics
A mathematical function is called continuous if, roughly said, a small change in the input only causes a small change in the output. If this is not the case, the function is discontinuous.  Functions defined on the real numbers, with one input and one output variable, will show as an uninterrupted line (or curve). They can be drawn without lifting the pen off of the page. The definition given above was made by Augustin-Louis Cauchy.

Karl Weierstraß gave another definition of continuity: Imagine a function f, defined on the real numbers. At the point  the function will have the value . If the function is continuous at , then for every value of  no matter how small it is, there is a value of , so that , means that . We can put this another way, given a point close to  (called x), the absolute value of the difference between the two values of the function can be made increasingly small, if the point x is close enough to .
There are also special forms of continuous, such as Lipschitz-continuous. A function is Lipschitz-continuous if there is a  with  for all x,y ∈ (a,b).

A basic way to know if a function is continuous is to use a pencil or your finger. Then, start at the left of the function. Then, move your finger along the path of the function. If you ever need to lift your finger or pencil to keep following the function, then you know it is not continuous. This is because, by lifting your finger, you have "jumped" from one section of the function to another. That means you made a very small movement but the function changed very much. This is what the first sentence of this article is talking about.

Related pages
Calculus
Chaos theory

References

Mathematical analysis
Calculus