title: P.T. (video game)

text: "P.T."s ceaselessly looping hallway has been a source of critical discussion. Rob Crossley of GameSpot wrote that it induced "mild claustrophobia" and "a familiarity with your surroundings." He remarked that while the length of the first part of the corridor worked to create tension, the design of the second part intentionally prevented the player from being able to keep everything in view, causing the player to feel vulnerable. David Houghton of "GamesRadar+" described the looping corridor as "the conduit for everything that it builds," along with saying that "it fills that structure with an unbroken feedback loop of 'horror' ... every time you leave is a monumental relief, and every simultaneous instance of returning is a moment of primal foreboding at how things might, and almost certainly will, escalate, compounded by the knowledge of the seemingly countless iterations before." Houghton felt that the game understood how to evoke horror by working "within the realm of psychology." "Polygon" quoted a game player who said that ""P.T."s greatest asset is its looping hallway," elaborating that it not only invokes fear, but also "curiosity, or a desire to know what will happen next." Matulef said that the claustrophobic and repetitive environment displayed in the game can hypnotize the player into a sense of vulnerability.


title: P.T. (video game)

text: The majority of what is said and depicted in the game is open to interpretation, leading fans to develop and discuss theories about the nature of the events that occur in the game. Let's Players Voidburger and Bob from the video game related podcast "The Grate Debate" opined that the open-ended nature of "P.T." is one of its greatest aspects. They said that there may be something in the game that has not been discovered yet. They noted the changing colors of the flashlight's beam in the final loop as something they still had not figured out, and they felt that the game hinted that the radio may be the main culprit behind the father's murderous actions. The podcast's YouTube channel released a video in August 2019, claiming that the whole game was a metaphor for Kojima's discontent with Konami and how he was allegedly treated by them, drawing allusions to key moments leading up to his leaving of the company in October 2015.


title: P.T. (video game)

text: The game contains a Swedish line in the radio describing a radio drama from 1938 being true, which gamers suggested may be a nod to Orson Welles's radio adaptation of "The War of the Worlds". This possible reference to alien invasions was noted as a continuation of a "Silent Hill" tradition of having secret endings that included aliens. Another theory commonly discussed is deciphering the identity of the player character. The fetus talking to the player character about his remembering moments "ten months back" seems to imply that he is the father who killed Lisa and the kids, although there is speculation that the player character may be the protagonist that was to be in "Silent Hills", as shown in the trailer following the ending of "P.T."


title: P.T. (video game)

text: Journalists have expressed confusion about whether the game should be described as a teaser, video game, or demo. Despite ongoing debate, the game won awards for best trailer while also winning game of the month and best horror game of the year awards. While naming "P.T." as an honorable mention for best trailer, Marty Sliva from IGN felt that "P.T." was more of an "interactive experimental film/puzzle game". "Demo" has been one of the more common descriptions, though GameSpot was reluctant to categorize it as such. Despite it being commonly called a demo of "Silent Hills", there is no evidence that it was going to be a part of "Silent Hills" aside from the reveal of the trailer and title after the end of the game. Hideo Kojima himself explained that it was not a demo of "Silent Hills" and described it as a "teaser" in a tweet.


title: P.T. (video game)

text: Christopher Grant from "Polygon" likened "P.T." to Pixar's animated shorts shown before its full-length animated feature films.


title: P.T. (video game)

text: "P.T." has been alluded to in other video games. "", another game directed by Kojima, includes several direct references to "P.T.", such as radio dialogue and sound used in the teaser. Additionally, the unreleased first-person survival horror video game "Allison Road" was heavily inspired by "P.T."; "Allison Road" was to take place in a haunted townhouse in the United Kingdom and feature a male protagonist who attempts to unravel the mystery behind his missing family over five nights. In the demo, some wall graffiti directly alludes to "P.T." by repeating a statement made in the game. "The Park", a spin-off game from "The Secret World", has a sequence inspired by "P.T.", and the horror games "Layers of Fear" and "Visage" were heavily inspired by "P.T." as well. Kojima's "" includes an Easter egg referencing "P.T."


title: P.T. (video game)

text: "Den of Geek" named the first time the player encounters Lisa as one of the most haunting images in horror genre.


title: P.T. (video game)

text: In February 2016, the YouTube channel known collectively as "Oddest of the Odd" released a short film titled "Silent Hills P.T. in real life". The film draws heavily from its source material, as an unseen protagonist explores a two-story hallway loop in the first-person camera perspective. The short film was featured by IGN describing it as "incredible" while GameRant's Alexander Pan described the video as being "complete with the demo's much-touted disturbing content and eerie atmosphere."


title: P.T. (video game)

text: "" has been compared with "P.T." during its announcement at E3 2016 thanks in part to the Beginning Hour Demo, its first-person perspective, and its photo-realistic graphics. Jordan Amaro, the level designer of "Silent Hills", was responsible for the creation of "Resident Evil 7"s design and setting, although he has denied that his work on "Resident Evil 7" was influenced by "P.T.", claiming that he "wasn't part of the core team of "P.T."" and that ""Silent Hills" would have been quite different from "Resident Evil 7" anyway".


title: P.T. (video game)

text: Following news of the cancellation of "Silent Hills", it was announced that "P.T." would be removed from the PlayStation Network on 29 April 2015. Originally, it was reported that the demo could be re-downloaded, but in May 2015 it was no longer re-downloadable from the PlayStation Store. Cancellation of the game led to criticism of Konami. Patrick Klepek from "Kotaku" stated "It's fine that Konami doesn't want to make "Silent Hills"" but that the deletion of "P.T." was wrong since the demo had become part of gaming culture. Nick Robinson of "Polygon" described Konami's removal as the "most irresponsible, cowardly decision possible," but that the subsequent unavailability had also made the demo "one of the coolest, most fascinating games in the history of our medium." After the cancellation, PlayStation 4 consoles with "P.T." installed were listed on eBay for over $1000; eBay later pulled the auctions down. The incident has been compared to the mass selling of iPhones containing "Flappy Bird" after that game's removal from the iOS App Store. Guillermo del Toro, the intended future director of "Silent Hills", commented on "P.T."s popularity, speculating that there were people who still have a passion for the "Silent Hill" series.


title: P.T. (video game)

text: On October 24, 2014, an Xbox user named Spawn N8NE remade the game both in and using "Project Spark", titled as "R.T.", where users can download and play the game for free while using "Project Spark". However, on August 12, 2016, the game was no longer available for download after Microsoft announced that "Project Spark"s online services would be shut down, and the game itself would no longer be available digitally.


title: P.T. (video game)

text: On July 4, 2018, Qimsar, a 17-year-old developer and fan of "P.T.", remade the playable teaser for the PC and released it for free. On July 13, 2018, Konami shut down the project due to legal issues. However, Konami offered Qimsar an internship to work with its development offices.


title: P.T. (video game)

text: On January 4, 2019, another remake of "P.T." for the PC with VR and controller support was released for free by developer and fan Radius Gordello. In development for nine months, the remake uses the Unreal Engine 4 and keeps most of the original's assets, with the most notable change being an alteration to the game's ending in order to make it easier to reach. The developer pulled the game from its download page the same month. Initially, "P.T" was transferable from PlayStation 4 to PlayStation 5, though Konami has blocked people from doing so in future system updates. On May 30, 2020, modder Ambient uploaded a mod to Steam Workshop that aims to recreate the game in "".


title: Ann Cusack

text: Ann Cusack (born May 22, 1961) is an American actress. She had minor roles in "Multiplicity" (1996), "A League of Their Own" (1992), and "The Informant!" (2009). Additionally, she has made guest appearances in a number of television series, including "Grey's Anatomy", "Scandal", "One Tree Hill", "Charmed", "Ghost Whisperer", "The Unit", "Boston Legal", "Bones", "Frasier", "Ally McBeal", "Criminal Minds", "Private Practice", "Fargo", "Better Call Saul", "The Boys" and "The Good Doctor".


title: Ann Cusack

text: Cusack was born in New York City and was raised in Evanston, Illinois. She is the sister of actors Joan, John, Bill, and Susie. Her mother, Ann Paula "Nancy" (née Carolan) (1929-2022), was a mathematics teacher and political activist. Her father, Dick Cusack, was an actor, producer, and writer. With her sister Joan and brother John, she trained at the Piven Theatre Workshop in Evanston and the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts.


title: Ann Cusack

text: Cusack starred in her first film role in 1992, when she was cast in "A League of Their Own", as Shirley Baker. She was in the 1996 comedy "Multiplicity", which starred Michael Keaton and Andie MacDowell. Also in 1996, she replaced Anita Barone on "The Jeff Foxworthy Show" until the series ended. In 1998, Cusack starred in "Maggie" on Lifetime Television. Cusack has made guest appearances in "Grey's Anatomy", "Scandal", "One Tree Hill", "Charmed", "Ghost Whisperer", "The Unit", "Boston Legal", "Bones", "Frasier", "Ally McBeal", "Criminal Minds", "Private Practice", and "Castle" among others. In 2002, she guest-starred in the episode of "" entitled "Carbon Creek". She had a small role in "Grosse Pointe Blank", which starred her siblings John and Joan; appeared in the movie "Accepted," in which she plays Diane Gaines, mother to the lead character played by Justin Long; and appeared in the film "What Planet Are You From?". She also co-starred in "" as Melissa Robinson Ventura, the titular character's mother (replacing Courteney Cox from the ). She also appeared in the SciFi series "Lost Room" as Helen Ruber (two episodes, 2006). In 2015, she appeared in the first episode of "Fargo"'s second season. In 2016, she played Donna Dent in the Clint Eastwood-directed Warner Bros. film "Sully", about Chesley Sullenberger and the events of Flight 1549, starring Tom Hanks. She also made her first appearance as Rebecca Bois, Chuck's ex wife, in season two of "Better Call Saul", later returning in season three.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (6 April 1971) was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor, later of French (from 1934) and American (from 1945) citizenship. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of the 20th century and a pivotal figure in modernist music.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: Stravinsky's compositional career was notable for its stylistic diversity. He first achieved international fame with three ballets commissioned by the impresario Sergei Diaghilev and first performed in Paris by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes: "The Firebird" (1910), "Petrushka" (1911), and "The Rite of Spring" (1913). The last transformed the way in which subsequent composers thought about rhythmic structure and was largely responsible for Stravinsky's enduring reputation as a revolutionary who pushed the boundaries of musical design. His "Russian phase", which continued with works such as "Renard", "L'Histoire du soldat," and "Les noces", was followed in the 1920s by a period in which he turned to neoclassicism. The works from this period tended to make use of traditional musical forms (concerto grosso, fugue, and symphony) and drew from earlier styles, especially those of the 18th century. In the 1950s, Stravinsky adopted serial procedures. His compositions of this period shared traits with examples of his earlier output: rhythmic energy, the construction of extended melodic ideas out of a few two- or three-note cells, and clarity of form and instrumentation.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: Stravinsky was born on 17 June 1882 in the town of Oranienbaum on the southern coast of the Gulf of Finland, west of Saint Petersburg. His father, Fyodor Ignatievich Stravinsky (1843–1902), was an established bass opera singer in the Kiev Opera and the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg and his mother, Anna Kirillovna Stravinskaya ("née" Kholodovskaya; 1854–1939), a native of Kiev, was one of four daughters of a high-ranking official in the Kiev Ministry of Estates. Igor was the third of their four sons; his brothers were Roman, Yury, and Gury. The Stravinsky family was of Polish and Russian heritage, descended "from a long line of Polish grandees, senators and landowners". It is traceable to the 17th and 18th centuries to the bearers of the Sulima and Strawiński coat of arms. The original family surname was Sulima-Strawiński; the name "Stravinsky" originated from the word "Strava", one of the variants of the Streva River in Lithuania.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: On 10 August 1882, Stravinsky was baptised at Nikolsky Cathedral in Saint Petersburg. Until 1914, he spent most of his summers in the town of Ustilug, now in Ukraine, where his father-in-law owned an estate. Stravinsky's first school was The Second Saint Petersburg Gymnasium, where he stayed until his mid-teens. Then he moved to Gourevitch Gymnasium, a private school, where he studied history, mathematics, and languages (Latin, Greek, and Slavonic; and French, German, and his native Russian). Stravinsky expressed his general distaste for schooling and recalled being a lonely pupil: "I never came across anyone who had any real attraction for me."


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: Stravinsky took to music at an early age and began regular piano lessons at age nine, followed by tuition in music theory and composition. At around eight years old, he attended a performance of Tchaikovsky's ballet "The Sleeping Beauty" at the Mariinsky Theatre, which began a lifelong interest in ballets and the composer himself. By age fifteen, Stravinsky had mastered Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto No. 1 and finished a piano reduction of a string quartet by Alexander Glazunov, who reportedly considered Stravinsky unmusical and thought little of his skills.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: Despite Stravinsky's enthusiasm and ability in music, his parents expected him to study law, and he at first took to the subject. In 1901, he enrolled at the University of Saint Petersburg, studying criminal law and legal philosophy, but attendance at lectures was optional and he estimated that he turned up to fewer than fifty classes in his four years of study. In 1902, Stravinsky met Vladimir, a fellow student at the University of Saint Petersburg and the youngest son of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Rimsky-Korsakov at that time was arguably the leading Russian composer, and he was a professor at Saint Petersburg Conservatory of Music. Stravinsky wished to meet Vladimir's father to discuss his musical aspirations. He spent the summer of 1902 with Rimsky-Korsakov and his family in Heidelberg, Germany. Rimsky-Korsakov suggested to Stravinsky that he should not enter the Saint Petersburg Conservatory but continue private lessons in theory.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: By the time of his father's death from cancer in 1902, Stravinsky was spending more time studying music than law. His decision to pursue music full time was helped when the university was closed for two months in 1905 in the aftermath of Bloody Sunday, which prevented him from taking his final law exams. In April 1906, Stravinsky received a half-course diploma and concentrated on music thereafter. In 1905, he began studying with Rimsky-Korsakov twice a week and came to regard him as a second father. These lessons continued until Rimsky-Korsakov's death in 1908. Stravinsky completed his first composition during this time, the Symphony in E-flat, catalogued as Opus 1. In the wake of Rimsky-Korsakov's death, Stravinsky composed "Funeral Song", Op. 5 which was performed once and then considered lost until its re-discovery in 2015.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: In August 1905, Stravinsky became engaged to his first cousin, Katherina Gavrylovna Nosenko. In spite of the Orthodox Church's opposition to marriage between first cousins, the couple married on 23 January 1906. They lived in the family's residence at 6 Kryukov Canal in Saint Petersburg before they moved into a new home in Ustilug, which Stravinsky designed and built, and which he later called his "heavenly place". He wrote many of his first compositions there. It is now a museum with documents, letters, and photographs on display, and an annual Stravinsky Festival takes place in the nearby town of Lutsk. Stravinsky and Nosenko's first two children, Fyodor (Theodore) and Ludmila, were born in 1907 and 1908, respectively.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: By 1909, Stravinsky had composed two more pieces, "Scherzo fantastique", Op. 3, and "Feu d'artifice" ("Fireworks"), Op. 4. In February of that year, both were performed in Saint Petersburg at a concert that marked a turning point in Stravinsky's career. In the audience was Sergei Diaghilev, a Russian impresario and owner of the Ballets Russes who was struck with Stravinsky's compositions. He wished to stage a mix of Russian opera and ballet for the 1910 season in Paris, among them a new ballet from fresh talent that was based on the Russian fairytale of the Firebird. After Anatoly Lyadov was given the task of composing the score, he informed Diaghilev that he needed about one year to complete it. Diaghilev then asked the 28-year-old Stravinsky, who had provided satisfactory orchestrations for him for the previous season at short notice and agreed to compose a full score. At about 50 minutes in length, "The Firebird" was revised by Stravinsky for concert performance in 1911, 1919, and 1945.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: "The Firebird" premiered at the Opera de Paris on 25 June 1910 to widespread critical acclaim and Stravinsky became an overnight sensation. As his wife was expecting their third child, the Stravinskys spent the summer in La Baule in western France. In September, they moved to Clarens, Switzerland where their second son, Sviatoslav (Soulima), was born. The family would spend their summers in Russia and winters in Switzerland until 1914. Diaghilev commissioned Stravinsky to score a second ballet for the 1911 Paris season. The result was "Petrushka", based the Russian folk tale featuring the titular character, a puppet, who falls in love with another, a ballerina. Though it failed to capture the immediate reception that "The Firebird" had following its premiere at Théâtre du Châtelet in June 1911, the production continued Stravinsky's success.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: It was Stravinsky's third ballet for Diaghilev, "The Rite of Spring", that caused a sensation among critics, fellow composers, and concertgoers. Based on an original idea offered to Stravinsky by Nicholas Roerich, the production features a series of primitive rituals celebrating the advent of spring, after which a young girl is chosen as a sacrificial victim to the sun god Yarilo, and dances herself to death. Stravinsky's score contained many novel features for its time, including experiments in tonality, metre, rhythm, stress and dissonance. The radical nature of the music and choreography caused a near-riot at its premiere at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées on 29 May 1913.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: Shortly after the premiere, Stravinsky contracted typhoid from eating bad oysters and he was confined to a Paris nursing home. He left in July 1913 and returned to Ustilug. For the rest of the summer he focused on his first opera, "The Nightingale" ("Le Rossignol"), based on the same-titled story by Hans Christian Andersen, which he had started in 1908. On 15 January 1914, Stravinsky and Nosenko had their fourth child, Marie Milène (or Maria Milena). After her delivery, Nosenko was discovered to have tuberculosis and was confined to a sanatorium in Leysin in the Alps. Stravinsky took up residence nearby, where he completed "The Nightingale". The work premiered in Paris in May 1914, after the Moscow Free Theatre had commissioned the piece for 10,000 rubles but soon became bankrupt. Diaghilev agreed for the Ballets Russes to stage it. The opera had only lukewarm success with the public and the critics, apparently because its delicacy did not meet their expectations following the tumultuous "Rite of Spring". However, composers including Ravel, Bartók, and Reynaldo Hahn found much to admire in the score's craftsmanship, even alleging to detect the influence of Arnold Schoenberg.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: In April 1914, Stravinsky and his family returned to Clarens. Following the outbreak of World War I later that year, he was ineligible for military service due to health reasons. Stravinsky managed a short visit to Ustilug to retrieve personal items just before national borders were closed. In June 1915, he and his family moved from Clarens to Morges, a town six miles from Lausanne on the shore of Lake Geneva. The family lived there (at three different addresses), until 1920. In December 1915, Stravinsky made his conducting debut at two concerts in aid of the Red Cross with "The Firebird". The war and subsequent Russian Revolution in 1917 made it impossible for Stravinsky to return to his homeland.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: Stravinsky began to struggle financially in the late 1910s as Russia (and its successor, the USSR) did not adhere to the Berne Convention, thus creating problems for Stravinsky to collect royalties for the performances of his pieces for the Ballets Russes. He blamed Diaghilev for his financial troubles, accusing the impresario of failing to adhere to their contract. While composing his theatrical piece "L'Histoire du soldat" ("The Soldier's Tale"), Stravinsky approached Swiss philanthropist Werner Reinhart for financial assistance, who agreed to sponsor him and largely underwrite its first performance which took place in Lausanne in September 1918. In gratitude, Stravinsky dedicated the work to Reinhart and gave him the original manuscript. Reinhart supported Stravinsky further when he funded a series of concerts of his chamber music in 1919. In gratitude to his benefactor, Stravinsky also dedicated his "Three Pieces for Clarinet" to Reinhart, who was also an amateur clarinetist.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: Following the premiere of "Pulcinella" by the Ballets Russes in Paris on 15 May 1920, Stravinsky returned to Switzerland.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: In June 1920, Stravinsky and his family left Switzerland for France, first settling in Carantec, Brittany for the summer while they sought a permanent home in Paris. They soon heard from couturière Coco Chanel, who invited the family to live in her Paris mansion until they had found their own residence. The Stravinskys accepted and arrived in September. Chanel helped secure a guarantee for a revival production of "The Rite of Spring" by the Ballets Russes from December 1920 with an anonymous gift to Diaghilev that was claimed to be worth 300,000 francs.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: In 1920, Stravinsky signed a contract with the French piano manufacturing company Pleyel. As part of the deal, Stravinsky transcribed most of his compositions for their player piano, the Pleyela. The company helped collect Stravinsky's mechanical royalties for his works and provided him with a monthly income. In 1921, he was given studio space at their Paris headquarters where he worked and entertained friends and acquaintances. The piano rolls were not recorded, but were instead marked up from a combination of manuscript fragments and handwritten notes by Jacques Larmanjat, musical director of Pleyel's roll department. During the 1920s, Stravinsky recorded Duo-Art piano rolls for the Aeolian Company in London and New York City, not all of which have survived.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: Stravinsky met Vera de Bosset in Paris in February 1921, while she was married to the painter and stage designer Serge Sudeikin, and they began an affair that led to de Bosset leaving her husband.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: In May 1921, Stravinsky and his family moved to Anglet, a town close to the Spanish border. Their stay was short-lived as by the autumn, they had settled to nearby Biarritz and Stravinsky completed his "Trois mouvements de Petrouchka", a piano transcription of excerpts from "Petrushka" for Artur Rubinstein. Diaghilev then requested orchestrations for a revival production of Tchaikovsky's ballet "The Sleeping Beauty". From then until his wife's death in 1939, Stravinsky led a double life, dividing his time between his family in Anglet, and Vera in Paris and on tour. Katya reportedly bore her husband's infidelity "with a mixture of magnanimity, bitterness, and compassion".


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: In June 1923, Stravinsky's ballet "Les noces" ("The Wedding") premiered in Paris and performed by the Ballets Russes. In the following month, he started to receive money from an anonymous patron from the US who insisted to remain anonymous and only identified themselves as "Madame". They promised to send him $6,000 in the course of three years, and sent Stravinsky an initial cheque for $1,000. Despite some payments not being sent, Robert Craft believed that the patron was famed conductor Leopold Stokowski, whom Stravinsky had recently met, and theorised that the conductor wanted to win Stravinsky over to visit the US.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: In September 1924, Stravinsky bought a new home in Nice. Here, the composer re-evaluated his religious beliefs and reconnected with his Christian faith with help from a Russian priest, Father Nicholas. He also thought of his future, and used the experience of conducting the premiere of his "Octet" at one of Serge Koussevitzky's concerts the year before to build on his career as a conductor. Koussevitzky asked for Stravinsky to compose a new piece for one of his upcoming concerts; Stravinsky agreed to a piano concerto, to which Koussevitzky convinced him that he be the soloist at its premiere. Stravinsky agreed, and the "Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments" was first performed in May 1924. The piece was a success, and Stravinsky secured himself the rights to exclusively perform the work for the next five years. Following a European tour through the latter half of 1924, Stravinsky completed his first US tour in early 1925 which spanned two months. It opened with Stravinsky conducting an all-Stravinsky program at Carnegie Hall. He visited Catalonia six times, and the first time, in 1924, after holding three concerts with the Pau Casals Orchestra at the Gran Teatre del Liceu, he stated: "Barcelona will be unforgettable for me. What I liked most was the cathedral and the sardanas".


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: In May 1927, Stravinsky's opera-oratorio "Oedipus Rex" premiered in Paris. The funding of its production was largely provided by Winnaretta Singer, Princesse Edmond de Polignac, who paid 12,000 francs for a private preview of the piece at her house. Stravinsky gave the money to Diaghilev to help finance the public performances. The premiere received a reaction, which irked Stravinsky, who had started to become annoyed at the public's fixation towards his early ballets. In the summer of 1927 Stravinsky received a commission from Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, his first from the US. A wealthy patroness of music, Coolidge requested a thirty-minute ballet score for a festival to be held at the Library of Congress, for a $1,000 fee. Stravinsky accepted and wrote "Apollo", which premiered in 1928.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: From 1931 to 1933, the Stravinskys lived in Voreppe, a commune near Grenoble in southeastern France. In June 1934, the couple acquired French citizenship. Later in that year, they left Voreppe to live on rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris, where they stayed for five years. The composer used his citizenship to publish his memoirs in French, entitled "Chroniques de ma Vie" in 1935, and underwent a US tour with Samuel Dushkin. His only composition of that year was the "Concerto for Two Solo Pianos", which was written for himself and his son Soulima using a special double piano that Pleyel had built. The pair completed a tour of Europe and South America in 1936. In April 1937 in New York City he directed his three-part ballet "Jeu de cartes", itself a commission for Lincoln Kirstein's ballet company with choreography by George Balanchine. Stravinsky later remembered this last European address as his unhappiest. Upon his return to Europe, Stravinsky left Paris for Annemasse near the Swiss border to be near his family, after his wife and daughters Ludmila and Milena had contracted tuberculosis and were in a sanatorium. Ludmila died in late 1938, followed by his wife of 33 years, in March 1939. Stravinsky himself spent five months in hospital at Sancellemoz, during which time his mother also died.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: During his later years in Paris, Stravinsky had developed professional relationships with key people in the United States: he was already working on his Symphony in C for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and he had agreed to accept the Charles Eliot Norton Chair of Poetry of 1939–1940 at Harvard University and while there, deliver six lectures on music as part of the prestigious Charles Eliot Norton Lectures.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: Stravinsky arrived in New York City on 30 September 1939 and headed for Cambridge, Massachusetts to fulfill his engagements at Harvard. During his first two months in the US, Stravinsky stayed at Gerry's Landing, the home of art historian Edward W. Forbes. Vera arrived in January 1940 and the couple married on 9 March in Bedford, Massachusetts. After a period of travel, the two moved into a home in Beverly Hills, California before they settled in Hollywood from 1941. Stravinsky felt the warmer Californian climate would benefit his health. Stravinsky had adapted to life in France, but moving to America at the age of 58 was a very different prospect. For a while, he maintained a circle of contacts and émigré friends from Russia, but he eventually found that this did not sustain his intellectual and professional life. He was drawn to the growing cultural life of Los Angeles, especially during World War II, when writers, musicians, composers, and conductors settled in the area. Music critic Bernard Holland claimed Stravinsky was especially fond of British writers, who visited him in Beverly Hills, "like W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, Dylan Thomas. They shared the composer's taste for hard spirits – especially Aldous Huxley, with whom Stravinsky spoke in French." Stravinsky and Huxley had a tradition of Saturday lunches for west coast avant-garde and luminaries.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: In 1940, Stravinsky completed his "Symphony in C" and conducted the Chicago Symphony Orchestra at its premiere later that year. It was at this time when Stravinsky began to associate himself with film music; the first major film to use his music was Walt Disney's animated feature "Fantasia" (1940) which includes parts of "The Rite of Spring" rearranged by Leopold Stokowski to a segment depicting the history of Earth and the age of dinosaurs. Orson Welles urged Stravinsky to write the score for "Jane Eyre" (1943), but negotiations broke down; a piece used in one of the film's hunting scenes was used in Stravinsky's orchestral work "Ode" (1943). An offer to score "The Song of Bernadette" (1943) also fell through; Stravinsky deemed the terms fell into the producer's favour. Music he had written for the film was later used in his "Symphony in Three Movements".


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: Stravinsky's unconventional dominant seventh chord in his arrangement of the "Star-Spangled Banner" led to an incident with the Boston police on 15 January 1944, and he was warned that the authorities could impose a $100 fine upon any "re-arrangement of the national anthem in whole or in part". The police, as it turned out, were wrong. The law in question merely forbade using the national anthem "as dance music, as an exit march, or as a part of a medley of any kind", but the incident soon established itself as a myth, in which Stravinsky was supposedly arrested, held in custody for several nights, and photographed for police records.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: On 28 December 1945, Stravinsky and his wife Vera became naturalized US citizens. Their sponsor and witness was actor Edward G. Robinson.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: On the same day Stravinsky became an American citizen, he arranged for Boosey & Hawkes to publish rearrangements of several of his compositions and used his newly acquired American citizenship to secure a copyright on the material, thus allowing him to earn money from them. The five-year contract was finalised and signed in January 1947 which included a guarantee of $10,000 per for the first two years, then $12,000 for the remaining three.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: In late 1945, Stravinsky received a commission from Europe, his first since "Perséphone", in the form of a string piece for the 20th anniversary for Paul Sacher's Basle Chamber Orchestra. The "Concerto in D" premiered in 1947. In January 1946, Stravinsky conducted the premiere of his "Symphony in Three Movements" at Carnegie Hall in New York City. It marked his first premiere in the US. In 1947, Stravinsky was inspired to write his English-language opera "The Rake's Progress" by a visit to a Chicago exhibition of the same-titled series of paintings by the eighteenth-century British artist William Hogarth, which tells the story of a fashionable wastrel descending into ruin. Auden and writer Chester Kallman worked on the libretto. The opera premiered in 1951 and marks the final work of Stravinsky's neoclassical period. While composing "The Rake's Progress", Stravinsky befriended Robert Craft, who became his personal assistant and close friend and encouraged the composer to write serial music. This began Stravinsky's third and final distinct musical period which lasted until his death.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: In 1953, Stravinsky agreed to compose a new opera with a libretto by Dylan Thomas, which detailed the recreation of the world after one man and one woman remained on Earth after a nuclear disaster. Development on the project came to a sudden end following Thomas's death in November of that year. Stravinsky completed "In Memorian Dylan Thomas", a piece for tenor, string quartet, and four trombones, in 1954.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: In 1961, Igor and Vera Stravinsky and Robert Craft traveled to London, Zürich and Cairo on their way to Australia where Stravinsky and Craft conducted all-Stravinsky concerts in Sydney and Melbourne. They returned to California via New Zealand, Tahiti, and Mexico. In January 1962, during his tour's stop in Washington, D.C., Stravinsky attended a dinner at the White House with President John F. Kennedy in honour of his eightieth birthday, where he received a special medal for "the recognition his music has achieved throughout the world". In September 1962, Stravinsky returned to Russia for the first time since 1914, accepting an invitation from the Union of Soviet Composers to conduct six performances in Moscow and Leningrad. During the three-week visit he met with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and several leading Soviet composers, including Dmitri Shostakovich and Aram Khachaturian. Stravinsky did not return to his Hollywood home until December 1962 in what was almost eight months of continual travelling. Following the assassination of Kennedy in 1963, Stravinsky completed his "Elegy for J.F.K." in the following year. The two-minute work took the composer two days to write.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: By early 1964, the long periods of travel had started to affect Stravinsky's health. His case of polycythemia had worsened and his friends had noticed that his movements and speech had slowed. In 1965, Stravinsky agreed to have David Oppenheim produce a documentary film about himself for the CBS network. It involved a film crew following the composer at home and on tour that year, and he was paid $10,000 for the production. The documentary includes Stravinsky's visit to Les Tilleuls, the house in Clarens, Switzerland, where he wrote the majority of "The Rite of Spring". The crew asked Soviet authorities for permission to film Stravinsky returning to his hometown of Ustilug, but the request was denied. In 1966, Stravinsky completed his last major work, the "Requiem Canticles".


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: In February 1967, Stravinsky and Craft directed their own concert in Miami, Florida, the composer's first in that state. By this time, Stravinsky's typical performance fee had grown to $10,000. However subsequently, upon doctor's orders, offers to perform that required him to fly were generally declined. An exception to this was a concert at Massey Hall in Toronto, Canada in May 1967, where he conducted the relatively physically undemanding "Pulcinella" suite with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. He had become increasingly frail and for the only time in his career, Stravinsky conducted while sitting down. It was his final performance as conductor in his lifetime. While backstage at the venue, Stravinsky informed Craft that he believed he had suffered a stroke. In August 1967, Stravinsky was hospitalised in Hollywood for bleeding stomach ulcers and thrombosis which required a blood transfusion. In his diary, Craft wrote that he spoon-fed the ailing composer and held his hand: "He says the warmth diminishes the pain."


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: By 1968, Stravinsky had recovered enough to resume touring across the US with him in the audience while Craft took to the conductor's post for the majority of the concerts. In May 1968, Stravinsky completed the piano arrangement of two songs by Austrian composer Hugo Wolf for a small orchestra. In October Stravinsky, Vera, and Craft travelled to Zurich, Switzerland to sort out business matters with Stravinsky's family. While there, Stravinsky's son Theodore held the manuscript of "The Rite of Spring" while Stravinsky signed it before giving it to Vera. The three considered relocating to Switzerland as they had become increasingly less fond of Hollywood, but they decided against it and returned to the US.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: In October 1969, after close to three decades in California and being denied to travel overseas by his doctors due to ill health, Stravinsky and Vera secured a two-year lease for a luxury three bedroom apartment in Essex House in New York City. Craft moved in with them, effectively putting his career on hold to care for the ailing composer. Among Stravinsky's final projects was orchestrating two preludes from "The Well-Tempered Clavier" by Bach, but it was never completed. He was hospitalised in April 1970 following a bout of pneumonia, which he successfully recovered from. Two months later, he travelled to Évian-les-Bains by Lake Geneva where he reunited with his eldest son Theodore and niece Xenia.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: On 18 March 1971, Stravinsky was taken to Lenox Hill Hospital with pulmonary edema where he stayed for ten days. On 29 March, he moved into a newly furnished apartment at 920 Fifth Avenue, his first city apartment since living in Paris in 1939. After a period of well being, the edema returned on 4 April and Vera insisted that medical equipment should be installed in the apartment. Stravinsky soon stopped eating and drinking and died at 5:20 a.m. on 6 April at the age of 88. The cause on his death certificate is heart failure. A funeral service was held three days later at Frank E. Campbell Funeral Chapel. As per his wishes, he was buried in the Russian corner of the cemetery island of San Michele in Venice, Italy, several yards from the tomb of Sergei Diaghilev, having been brought there by gondola after a service at Santi Giovanni e Paolo led by Cherubin Malissianos, Archimandrite of the Greek Orthodox Church.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and in 1987 he was posthumously awarded the Grammy Award for Lifetime Achievement. He was posthumously inducted into the National Museum of Dance and Hall of Fame in 2004.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: Stravinsky's output is typically divided into three general style periods: a Russian period, a neoclassical period, and a serial period.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: Aside from a very few surviving earlier works, Stravinsky's Russian period, sometimes called primitive period, began with compositions undertaken under the tutelage of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, with whom he studied from 1905 until Rimsky's death in 1908, including the orchestral works Symphony in E major (1907), "Faun and Shepherdess" (for mezzo-soprano and orchestra; 1907), "Scherzo fantastique" (1908), and "Feu d'artifice" (1908/9). These works clearly reveal the influence of Rimsky-Korsakov, but as Richard Taruskin has shown, they also reveal Stravinsky's knowledge of music by Glazunov, Taneyev, Tchaikovsky, Wagner, Dvořák, and Debussy, among others.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: In 1908, Stravinsky composed "Funeral Song" (Погребальная песня), Op. 5 to commemorate the death of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. The piece premiered 17 January 1909 in the Grand Hall of the Saint Petersburg Conservatory but was then lost until September 2015, when it resurfaced in a back room of the city's Conservatoire. It was played again for the first time in over a century on 2 December 2016. The rediscovery generated much enthusiasm and, as a result, over 25 performances were scheduled in 2017.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: Performances in St. Petersburg of "Scherzo fantastique" and "Feu d'artifice" attracted the attention of Serge Diaghilev, who commissioned Stravinsky to orchestrate two piano works of Chopin for the ballet "Les Sylphides" to be presented in the 1909 debut "Saison Russe" of his new ballet company.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: "The Firebird" was first performed at the Paris Opéra on 25 June 1910 by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. Like Stravinsky's earlier student works, "The Firebird" continued to look backward to Rimsky-Korsakov not only in its orchestration, but also in its overall structure, harmonic organization, and melodic content.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: According to Taruskin, Stravinsky's second ballet for the Ballet Russes, "Petrushka", is where "Stravinsky at last became Stravinsky."


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: The music itself makes significant use of a number of Russian folk tunes in addition to two waltzes by Viennese composer Joseph Lanner and a French music hall tune ("La Jambe en bois" or "The Wooden Leg").


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: In April 1915, Stravinsky received a commission from Singer (Princesse Edmond de Polignac) for a small-scale theatrical work to be performed in her Paris salon. The result was "Renard" (1916), which he called "A burlesque in song and dance".


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: "Apollon musagète" (1928), "Perséphone" (1933) and "Orpheus" (1947) exemplify not only Stravinsky's return to the music of the Classical period but also his exploration of themes from the ancient Classical world, such as Greek mythology. Important works in this period include the Octet (1923), the Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments (1924), the Serenade in A (1925), and "Symphony of Psalms" (1930).


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: In 1951, he completed his last neoclassical work, the opera "The Rake's Progress" to a libretto by Auden and Kallman based on the etchings of Hogarth. It premiered in Venice that year and was produced around Europe the following year before being staged in the New York Metropolitan Opera in 1953. It was staged by the Santa Fe Opera in a 1962 Stravinsky Festival in honor of the composer's 80th birthday and was revived by the Metropolitan Opera in 1997.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: In the 1950s, Stravinsky began using serial compositional techniques such as dodecaphony, the twelve-tone technique originally devised by Schoenberg. He first experimented with non-twelve-tone serial techniques in small-scale vocal and chamber works such as the "Cantata" (1952), the Septet (1953) and "Three Songs from Shakespeare" (1953). The first of his compositions fully based on such techniques was "In Memoriam Dylan Thomas" (1954). "Agon" (1954–57) was the first of his works to include a twelve-tone series and (1955) was the first piece to contain a movement entirely based on a tone row. Stravinsky expanded his use of dodecaphony in works such as "Threni" (1958) and "A Sermon, a Narrative and a Prayer" (1961), which are based on biblical texts, and "The Flood" (1962), which mixes brief biblical texts from the Book of Genesis with passages from the York and Chester Mystery Plays.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: Stravinsky has been called "one of music's truly epochal innovators". The most important aspect of Stravinsky's work, aside from his technical innovations (including in rhythm and harmony), is the "changing face" of his compositional style while always "retaining a distinctive, essential identity".


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: Stravinsky's use of motivic development (the use of musical figures that are repeated in different guises throughout a composition or section of a composition) included additive motivic development. This is a technique in which notes are removed from or added to a motif without regard to the consequent changes in metre. A similar technique can be found as early as the 16th century, for example in the music of Cipriano de Rore, Orlandus Lassus, Carlo Gesualdo and Giovanni de Macque, music with which Stravinsky exhibited considerable familiarity.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: The "Rite of Spring" is notable for its relentless use of ostinati, for example in the eighth-note ostinato on strings accented by eight horns in the section "Augurs of Spring (Dances of the Young Girls)". The work also contains passages where several ostinati clash against one another. Stravinsky was noted for his distinctive use of rhythm, especially in the "Rite of Spring" (1913). According to the composer Philip Glass, "the idea of pushing the rhythms across the bar lines [...] led the way [...]. The rhythmic structure of music became much more fluid and in a certain way spontaneous." Glass mentions Stravinsky's "primitive, offbeat rhythmic drive". According to Andrew J. Browne, "Stravinsky is perhaps the only composer who has raised rhythm in itself to the dignity of art." Stravinsky's rhythm and vitality greatly influenced the composer Aaron Copland.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: Over the course of his career, Stravinsky called for a wide variety of orchestral, instrumental, and vocal forces, ranging from single instruments in such works as "Three Pieces for Clarinet" (1918) or "Elegy for Solo Viola" (1944) to the enormous orchestra of "The" "Rite of Spring" (1913), which Copland characterized as "the foremost orchestral achievement of the 20th century".


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: Stravinsky’s creation of unique and idiosyncratic ensembles arising from the specific musical nature of individual works is a basic element of his style.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: Following the model of his teacher, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Stravinsky’s student works such as the Symphony in E, Op. 1 (1907), "Scherzo fantastique", Op. 3 (1908), and "Fireworks" ("Feu d'artifice"), Op. 4 (1908), call for large orchestral forces. The Symphony, for example, calls for 3 flutes (3rd doubles piccolo), 2 oboes, 3 clarinets in B, 2 bassoons, 4 horns in F, 3 trumpets in B, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, triangle, cymbals, and strings. The "Scherzo fantastique" calls for a slightly larger orchestra but completely omits trombones: this was Stravinsky’s response to Rimsky’s criticism of their overuse in the Symphony.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: Included among his students in the 1940s was the American composer and music educator Robert Strassburg. In 1959, he was awarded the Sonning Award, Denmark's highest musical honour. In the early 1960s his students included Craft and Warren Zevon.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: Stravinsky displayed a taste in literature that was wide and reflected his constant desire for new discoveries. The texts and literary sources for his work began with a period of interest in Russian folklore, which progressed to classical authors and the Latin liturgy and moved on to contemporary France (André Gide, in "Persephone") and eventually English literature, including Auden, T. S. Eliot, and medieval English verse.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: He also had an inexhaustible desire to explore and learn about art, which manifested itself in several of his Paris collaborations. Not only was he the principal composer for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, but he also collaborated with Pablo Picasso ("Pulcinella", 1920), Jean Cocteau ("Oedipus Rex", 1927), and Balanchine (, 1928). His interest in art propelled him to develop a strong relationship with Picasso, whom he met in 1917, announcing that in "a whirlpool of artistic enthusiasm and excitement I at last met Picasso." From 1917 to 1920, the two engaged in an artistic dialogue in which they exchanged small-scale works of art to each other as a sign of intimacy, which included the famous portrait of Stravinsky by Picasso, and Stravinsky's "Sketch of Music for the Clarinet". This exchange was essential to establish how the artists would approach their collaborative space in "Pulcinella".


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: The young Stravinsky was sympathetic to bourgeois liberalism and the aims of the Constitutional Democratic Party, even composing an anthem for the Russian Provisional Government, before shifting heavily towards the right following the October Revolution. In 1930, he remarked, "I don't believe that anyone venerates Mussolini more than I ... I know many exalted personages, and my artist's mind does not shrink from political and social issues. Well, after having seen so many events and so many more or less representative men, I have an overpowering urge to render homage to your Duce. He is the saviour of Italy and – let us hope – Europe." Later, after a private audience with Mussolini, he added, "Unless my ears deceive me, the voice of Rome is the voice of "Il Duce". I told him that I felt like a fascist myself... In spite of being extremely busy, Mussolini did me the great honour of conversing with me for three-quarters of an hour. We talked about music, art and politics". When the Nazis placed Stravinsky's works on the list of , he lodged a formal appeal to establish his Russian genealogy and declared, "I loathe all communism, Marxism, the execrable Soviet monster, and also all liberalism, democratism, atheism, etc."


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: Upon relocating to America in the 1940s, Stravinsky again embraced the liberalism of his youth, remarking that Europeans "can have their generalissimos and Führers. Leave me Mr. Truman and I'm satisfied." Towards the end of his life, at Craft's behest, Stravinsky made a return visit to his native country and composed a cantata in Hebrew, travelling to Israel for its performance.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: Stravinsky proved adept at playing the part of a 'man of the world', acquiring a keen instinct for business matters and appearing relaxed and comfortable in public. His successful career as a pianist and conductor took him to many of the world's major cities, including Paris, Venice, Berlin, London, Amsterdam and New York City and he was known for his polite, courteous and helpful manner. Stravinsky was reputed to have been a philanderer and was rumoured to have had affairs with high-profile partners, such as Coco Chanel. He never referred to it himself, but Chanel spoke about the alleged affair at length to her biographer Paul Morand in 1946; the conversation was published thirty years later. The accuracy of Chanel's claims has been disputed by both Stravinsky's widow, Vera, and by Craft. Chanel's fashion house avers there is no evidence that any affair between Chanel and Stravinsky ever occurred. A fictionalization of the supposed affair formed the basis of the novel "Coco and Igor" (2002) and a film, "Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky" (2009). Despite these alleged liaisons, Stravinsky was considered a family man and devoted to his children.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: Stravinsky was a devout member of the Russian Orthodox Church during most of his life, remarking at one time that,


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: The Church knew what the psalmist knew. Music praises God. Music is well or better able to praise him than the building of the church and all its decoration; it is the Church's greatest ornament.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: As a child, he was brought up by his parents in the Russian Orthodox Church. Baptized at birth, he later rebelled against the Church and abandoned it by the time he was fourteen or fifteen years old. Throughout the rise of his career he was estranged from Christianity and it was not until he reached his early forties that he experienced a spiritual crisis. After befriending a Russian Orthodox priest, Father Nicholas, after his move to Nice in 1924, he reconnected with his faith. He rejoined the Russian Orthodox Church and afterwards remained a committed Christian. Robert Craft noted that Stravinsky prayed daily, before and after composing, and also prayed when facing difficulty. Towards the end of his life, he was no longer able to attend church services, though he affirmed that this was due to laziness rather than to a loss of faith. In his late seventies, Stravinsky said:I cannot now evaluate the events that, at the end of those thirty years, made me discover the necessity of religious belief. I was not reasoned into my disposition. Though I admire the structured thought of theology (Anselm's proof in the "Fides Quaerens Intellectum", for instance) it is to religion no more than counterpoint exercises are to music. I do not believe in bridges of reason or, indeed, in any form of extrapolation in religious matters. ... I can say, however, that for some years before my actual "conversion", a mood of acceptance had been cultivated in me by a reading of the Gospels and by other religious literature.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: If Stravinsky's stated intention was "to send them all to hell", then he may have regarded the 1913 premiere of "The Rite" "of Spring" as a success: it resulted in one of history's most famous classical music riots, and Stravinsky referred to it on several occasions in his autobiography as a "". There were reports of fistfights in the audience and the need for a police presence during the second act. The real extent of the tumult is open to debate and the reports may be apocryphal.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: In 1998, "Time" magazine named Stravinsky as one of the 100 most influential people of the century. In addition to the recognition he received for his compositions, he achieved fame as a pianist and a conductor, often at the premieres of his works. In 1923, Erik Satie wrote an article about Igor Stravinsky in "Vanity Fair". Satie had met Stravinsky for the first time in 1910. In the published article, Satie argued that measuring the "greatness" of an artist by comparing him to other artists, as if speaking about some "truth", is illusory and that every piece of music should be judged on its own merits and not by comparing it to the standards of other composers. That was exactly what Cocteau did when he commented deprecatingly on Stravinsky in his 1918 book, .


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: All the signs indicate a strong reaction against the nightmare of noise and eccentricity that was one of the legacies of the war... What (for example) has become of the works that made up the program of the Stravinsky concert which created such a stir a few years ago? Practically the whole lot are already on the shelf, and they will remain there until a few jaded neurotics once more feel a desire to eat ashes and fill their belly with the east wind.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: In 1935, the American composer Marc Blitzstein compared Stravinsky to Jacopo Peri and C.P.E. Bach, conceding that, "there is no denying the greatness of Stravinsky. It is just that he is not great enough." Blitzstein's Marxist position was that Stravinsky's wish to "divorce music from other streams of life", which is "symptomatic of an escape from reality", resulted in a "loss of stamina", naming specifically "Apollo", the Capriccio, and "Le Baiser de la fée".


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: The composer Constant Lambert described pieces such as "L'Histoire du soldat" as containing "essentially cold-blooded abstraction". Lambert continued, "melodic fragments in are completely meaningless themselves. They are merely successions of notes that can conveniently be divided into groups of three, five, and seven and set against other mathematical groups" and he described the cadenza for solo drums as "musical purity ... achieved by a species of musical castration". He compared Stravinsky's choice of "the drabbest and least significant phrases" to Gertrude Stein's 'Everyday they were gay there, they were regularly gay there everyday' ("Helen Furr and Georgine Skeene", 1922), "whose effect would be equally appreciated by someone with no knowledge of English whatsoever".


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: In his 1949 book "Philosophy of Modern Music", Theodor W. Adorno described Stravinsky as an acrobat and spoke of hebephrenic and psychotic traits in several of Stravinsky's works. Contrary to a common misconception, Adorno didn't believe the hebephrenic and psychotic imitations that the music was supposed to contain were its main fault, as he pointed out in a postscript that he added later to his book. Adorno's criticism of Stravinsky is more concerned with the "transition to positivity" Adorno found in his neoclassical works. Part of the composer's error, in Adorno's view, was his neoclassicism, but of greater importance was his music's "pseudomorphism of painting", playing off (time-space) rather than (time-duration) of Henri Bergson. According to Adorno, "one trick characterizes all of Stravinsky's formal endeavors: the effort of his music to portray time as in a circus tableau and to present time complexes as though they were spatial. This trick, however, soon exhausts itself." Adorno maintained that the "rhythmic procedures closely resemble the schema of catatonic conditions. In certain schizophrenics, the process by which the motor apparatus becomes independent leads to infinite repetition of gestures or words, following the decay of the ego."


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: Stravinsky's reputation in Russia and the USSR rose and fell. Performances of his music were banned from around 1933 until 1962, the year Khrushchev invited him to the USSR for an official state visit. In 1972, an official proclamation by the Soviet Minister of Culture, Yekaterina Furtseva, ordered Soviet musicians to "study and admire" Stravinsky's music and she made hostility toward it a potential offence.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: While Stravinsky's music has been criticized for its range of styles, scholars had "gradually begun to perceive unifying elements in Stravinsky's music" by the 1980s. Earlier writers, such as Copland, Elliott Carter, and Boris de Schloezer held somewhat unfavorable views of Stravinsky's works, and Virgil Thomson, writing in "Modern Music" (a quarterly review published between 1925 and 1946), could find only a common "'seriousness' of 'tone' or of 'purpose', 'the exact correlation between the goal and the means', or a dry 'ant-like neatness'".


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: In 1910, Florent Schmitt dedicated the revised version of his ballet "La tragédie de Salomé", Op. 50, to Stravinsky.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: In 1915, Claude Debussy dedicated the third movement of his "En blanc et noir" for two pianos to Stravinsky.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: In 1977, "Sacrificial Dance" from "The Rite of Spring" was included among many tracks around the world on the Voyager Golden Record.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: In 1982, Stravinsky was featured on a 2¢ postage stamp by the United States Postal Service as part of its Great Americans stamp series.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: Igor Stravinsky found recordings a practical and useful tool in preserving his thoughts on the interpretation of his music. As a conductor of his own music, he recorded primarily for Columbia Records, beginning in 1928 with a performance of the original suite from "The Firebird" and concluding in 1967 with the 1945 suite from the same ballet. In the late 1940s he made several recordings for RCA Victor at the Republic Studios in Los Angeles. Although most of his recordings were made with studio musicians, he also worked with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Cleveland Orchestra, the CBC Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the Bavarian Broadcasting Symphony Orchestra.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: During his lifetime, Stravinsky appeared on several telecasts, including the 1962 world premiere of "The Flood" on CBS Television. Although he made an appearance, the actual performance was conducted by Robert Craft. Numerous films and videos of the composer have been preserved.


title: Igor Stravinsky

text: Stravinsky published a number of books throughout his career, almost always with the aid of a (sometimes uncredited) collaborator. In his 1936 autobiography, "Chronicle of My Life", which was written with the help of Walter Nouvel, Stravinsky included his well-known statement that "music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all." With Alexis Roland-Manuel and Pierre Souvtchinsky, he wrote his 1939–40 Harvard University Charles Eliot Norton Lectures, which were delivered in French and first collected under the title in 1942 and then translated in 1947 as "Poetics of Music". In 1959, several interviews between the composer and Robert Craft were published as "Conversations with Igor Stravinsky", which was followed by a further five volumes over the following decade. A collection of Stravinsky's writings and interviews appears under the title "Confidences sur la musique" (Actes Sud, 2013).


title: John Barrymore

text: John Barrymore (born John Sidney Blyth; February 14 or 15, 1882 – May 29, 1942) was an American actor on stage, screen and radio. A member of the Drew and Barrymore theatrical families, he initially tried to avoid the stage, and briefly attempted a career as an artist, but appeared on stage together with his father Maurice in 1900, and then his sister Ethel the following year. He began his career in 1903 and first gained attention as a stage actor in light comedy, then high drama, culminating in productions of "Justice" (1916), "Richard III" (1920) and "Hamlet" (1922); his portrayal of Hamlet led to him being called the "greatest living American tragedian".


title: John Barrymore

text: After a success as "Hamlet" in London in 1925, Barrymore left the stage for 14 years and instead focused entirely on films. In the silent film era, he was well received in such pictures as "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (1920), "Sherlock Holmes" (1922) and "The Sea Beast" (1926). During this period, he gained his nickname, the Great Profile. His stage-trained voice proved an asset when sound films were introduced, and three of his works, "Grand Hotel" (1932), "Twentieth Century" (1934) and "Midnight" (1939) have been inducted into the National Film Registry.


title: John Barrymore

text: Barrymore's personal life has been the subject of much attention before and since his death. He struggled with alcohol abuse from the age of 14, was married and divorced four times, and declared bankruptcy later in life. Much of his later work involved self-parody and the portrayal of drunken has-beens. His obituary in "The Washington Post" observed that "with the passing of the years – and as his private life became more public – he became, despite his genius in the theater, a tabloid character." Although film historians have opined that Barrymore's "contribution to the art of cinematic acting began to fade" after the mid-1930s, Barrymore's biographer, Martin Norden, considers him to be "perhaps the most influential and idolized actor of his day".


title: John Barrymore

text: Barrymore was born John Sidney Blyth in Philadelphia, and was known by family, friends and colleagues as "Jack". Although the Barrymore family Bible puts his date of birth as February 15, 1882, his birth certificate shows February 14. He was the youngest of three children. His siblings were Lionel (1878–1954), and Ethel (1879–1959). His father was Maurice Barrymore, an Indian-born British actor who had been born Herbert Blyth, and had adopted Barrymore as a stage name after seeing it on a poster in the Haymarket Theatre in London. Barrymore's mother, Georgie Drew Barrymore, was born into a prominent theatrical family. Barrymore's maternal grandparents were Louisa Lane Drew, a well-known 19th-century American actress and the manager of the Arch Street Theatre, and John Drew, also an actor whose specialty was comedy. Barrymore's maternal uncles were two more thespians, John Drew Jr. and Sidney.


title: John Barrymore

text: Much of Barrymore's early life was unsettled. In October 1882, the family toured in the US for a season with Polish actress Helena Modjeska. The following year his parents toured again with Modjeska but left the children behind. Modjeska was influential in the family, and she insisted that all three children be baptized into the Catholic Church. In 1884 the family traveled to London as part of Augustin Daly's theatrical company, returning to the US two years later. As a child, Barrymore was sometimes badly behaved, and he was sent away to schools in an attempt to instill discipline. The strategy was not always successful, and he attended elementary schools in four states. He was sent first to the boys' annex of the Convent of Notre Dame in Philadelphia. One punishment that he received there was being made to read a copy of Dante's "Inferno"; he later recounted that, as he looked at the illustrations by Gustave Doré, "my interest was aroused, and a new urge was born within me. I wanted to be an artist". He was expelled from the school in 1891 and was sent to Seton Hall Preparatory School in New Jersey, where Lionel was already studying. Barrymore was unhappy at Seton and was soon withdrawn, after which he attended several public schools in New York, including the Mount Pleasant Military Academy.


title: John Barrymore

text: In 1892, his grandmother Louisa Drew's business began to suffer, and she lost control of her theater, causing disruption in the family. The following year, when Barrymore was 11 years old, his mother died from tuberculosis; her consistent touring and his absence at school meant that he barely knew her, and he was mostly raised by his grandmother. The loss of their mother's income prompted both Ethel and Lionel to seek work as professional actors. Barrymore's father was mostly absent from the family home while on tour, and when he returned he would spend time at The Lambs, a New York actors' club.


title: John Barrymore

text: In 1895, Barrymore entered Georgetown Preparatory School, then located on Georgetown University Campus, but he was expelled in November 1897, probably after being caught waiting in a brothel. One of his biographers, Michael A. Morrison, posits the alternate theory that Barrymore was expelled after the staff saw him inebriated. By the time he left Georgetown he was, according to Martin Norden in his biography of Barrymore, "already in the early stages of a chronic drinking problem". 1897 was an emotionally challenging year for Barrymore: he lost his virginity when he was seduced by his step-mother, Mamie Floyd, and in August his grandmother, the main female role model in his life, died.


title: John Barrymore

text: Barrymore traveled with his father to England in 1898, where he joined King's College School, Wimbledon. A year later he joined the Slade School of Fine Art, to study literature and art. After a year of formal study, he left and "devoted much of his subsequent stay in London to bohemianism and nocturnal adventures", according to his biographer Margot Peters. Barrymore returned to New York in the summer of 1900, and by November he found work as an illustrator on "The New York Evening Journal", at a salary of $50 a week.


title: John Barrymore

text: Barrymore had always professed a dislike of the acting profession, but in 1900 he was persuaded by his father to join him on stage for a few performances of a short play, "A Man of the World". He appeared in the same piece again the following year, but he still thought of the experience as merely a way to supplement his income, rather than as a possible future career. In October 1901, Ethel was appearing in Philadelphia in "Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines" when one of the younger actors became temporarily unavailable. She persuaded the director to allow Barrymore to accept the part of the minor character, and Barrymore traveled from New York, learning his lines on the train. In the first act, he stopped in the middle of his dialogue, unable to remember the text, and asked the audience and his fellow actors, "I've blown up. Where do we go from here?", which led the cast to improvise the remainder of the scene.


title: John Barrymore

text: An incident in 1901 had a major impact on Barrymore. In March, his father had a mental breakdown as a result of tertiary syphilis, and Barrymore took him to Bellevue hospital. He was later transferred to a private institution in Amityville, Long Island, where he suffered a "rapid descent into madness". The "Encyclopedia of World Biography" states that Barrymore was constantly "haunted by the bright and dark spell of his father", and his close friend Gene Fowler reported that "the bleak overtone of this breaking of his parent's reason never quite died away in Barrymore's mind, and he was haunted by fears he would suffer the same fate". The same year, Barrymore began an affair with a beautiful artists' model, ""Florodora" girl" and aspiring actress named Evelyn Nesbit, who was a mistress of architect Stanford White. Barrymore later described Nesbit as "the most maddening woman. ... She was the first woman I ever loved", and he proposed marriage to her. Nesbit's mother did not think that, as a struggling artist, Barrymore was a good match for her daughter. To break off their relationship her mother sent Nesbit away to school in New Jersey. In 1906, White was shot in public by Nesbit's then-husband, Pittsburgh millionaire Harry K. Thaw. Barrymore expected to testify at Thaw's murder trial on the issue of Nesbit's morality; he worried that he might be asked whether he had arranged for Nesbit to have an abortion, disguised as an appendectomy, even though Nesbit had undergone two previous "appendectomies". Barrymore was never called as a witness because Thaw pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.


title: John Barrymore

text: In May 1902, Barrymore was fired from his newspaper position after producing a poor illustration for the paper while hung over. He spent time as a poster designer but realized it was not lucrative enough for his lifestyle, which was being partly financed by Ethel, who was also paying for their father's care. While discussing his future with his brother, Barrymore said "it looks as though I'll have to succumb to the family curse, acting", and he later admitted that "there isn't any romance about how I went on stage. ... I needed the money."


title: John Barrymore

text: Barrymore began to contact his family's theatrical connections to find work and approached Charles Frohman, who had been the producer of "Captain Jinks" and had also been an employer of Barrymore's mother Georgie a decade earlier. Frohman thought that Barrymore had comedic potential but needed more experience before making a Broadway debut. Barrymore joined the company of McKee Rankin, Sidney Drew's father-in-law, on the Chicago leg of their tour, at the W. S. Cleveland Theatre in October 1903. He first played the minor role of Lt. Max von Wendlowski in "Magda", and in November when the troupe produced "Leah the Forsaken", he took the small part of Max, a village idiot with one spoken line.


title: John Barrymore

text: A year later Barrymore appeared in his first Broadway production, in a small role in the comedy "Glad of It", which only had a short run. Afterwards he played the role of Charles Hyne in the farce "The Dictator" at the Criterion Theatre, which starred William Collier. During the play's run and subsequent tour across the US, Collier became a mentor to the young actor, although his patience was continually tested by Barrymore's drinking, which led to occasional missed performances, drunken stage appearances, and general misbehavior. Collier taught Barrymore much about acting, including coaching him in comic timing, but "at times regretted his sponsorship" of his apprentice. In March 1905, while "The Dictator" was playing in Buffalo, Barrymore's father died in Amityville and was buried at Glenwood Cemetery in Philadelphia. At the close of the US tour, "The Dictator" visited Britain from April 1905, where it played at the Comedy Theatre. The critic for "The Observer" wrote that Barrymore "admirably seconded" Collier.


title: John Barrymore

text: When he returned to America, Barrymore appeared at the Criterion Theatre in a double bill of works by J. M. Barrie; he played a clown in "Pantaloon" opposite his brother, and Stephen Rollo in "Alice Sit-by-the-Fire" opposite his sister. Both plays ran for 81 performances from December 1905, and then went on tour. Barrymore continued drinking and lacked discipline, which affected his performances. Ethel was angry with her brother and had the producers fire him from the show, but re-hire him the following day, to teach him a lesson. After a tour of the US and Australia with Collier in "On the Quiet" and "The Dictator", Barrymore joined his sister in the 1907 comedy "His Excellency the Governor" at the Empire Theatre. He received mixed reviews for his performances, and "The Wichita Daily Eagle" commented that "Barrymore seems to imitate John Drew too much ever to be a good actor. Why doesn't young Barrymore imitate a real actor if he must copy someone."


title: John Barrymore

text: Barrymore gained his first leading role in early 1907, in the comedy "The Boys of Company B" at the Lyceum Theatre. Although he was well received by the critics – "The Washington Post" noted that "his work has been pronounced astonishingly clever by the critics wherever he played" – at times he continued his unprofessional stage behavior, which led to a rebuke from John Drew, who attended a performance. After a short run in "Toddles" at the Garrick Theatre, Barrymore was given the lead role of Mac in "A Stubborn Cinderella", both on tour and at the Broadway Theatre in Boston. He had previously been earning $50 a week during his sporadic employment but now enjoyed a wage increase to $175. He briefly appeared in "The Candy Shop" in mid-1909, before he played the lead role in Winchell Smith's play "The Fortune Hunter" at the Gaiety Theatre in September the same year. It was his longest-held role, running for 345 performances until May 1911, initially at the Gaiety Theatre in New York, and then on tour. The critic for "The New York Times" thought the play was, "acted with fine comedy spirit by John Barrymore ... [who] gave indisputable signs last night of grown and growing powers."


title: John Barrymore

text: In mid-1910 Barrymore met socialite Katherine Corri Harris, and the couple married in September that year. Harris' father objected to the relationship and refused to attend the wedding. Shortly after the ceremony, "The Dictator" went on tour, and Harris was given a small role in the play. According to Peters, Barrymore "began to think of his marriage as a 'bus accident. Film critic Hollis Alpert wrote that, within a week of the wedding, Katherine was complaining that she saw her new husband too infrequently. Barrymore's increasing dependence on alcohol was also a cause of marital problems, and he explained that "unhappiness increased the drink, and drink increased the unhappiness".


title: John Barrymore

text: Barrymore's next two plays – "Uncle Sam" and "Princess Zim-Zim", both from 1911 – were critically and commercially weak, but the second work introduced him to playwright Edward Sheldon, who would "reshape ... [Barrymore's] entire career". In January 1912, Barrymore appeared together with his sister in "A Slice of Life" at the Empire Theatre on Broadway, which ran for 48 performances. Charles Darnton, a critic for "The Evening World", observed that "Barrymore takes delight in 'kidding' his part not only to the limit, but perhaps beyond". A review in "The Washington Times" stated that "Barrymore inimitably imitates his uncle John Drew".


title: John Barrymore

text: Barrymore may have appeared in his first films in 1912. In four short films, a cast member is listed as "Jack Barrymore"; this is probably John Barrymore, although Norden notes that "we may never know for certain if [these] are in fact Barrymore movies." The four films were "Dream of a Motion Picture Director", "The Widow Casey's Return", "A Prize Package" (all 1912) and "One on Romance" (1913). The films were produced by the Philadelphia-based Lubin Manufacturing Company and were lost in an explosion and fire at the Lubin vaults in 1914.


title: John Barrymore

text: In July 1912, Barrymore went to Los Angeles, where he appeared in three short-running plays at the Belasco Theatre. He returned to New York in October, where he took the lead role in 72 performances of the comedy "The Affairs of Anatol" at the Little Theatre. Although the critical response was lukewarm, Barrymore's salary for the play was $600 a week. He began the following year by appearing in a short run of "A Thief for a Night" in McVicker's Theatre, Chicago, before returning to New York, and the Thirty-Ninth St. Theatre, for a two-month run in "Believe Me Xantippe".


title: John Barrymore

text: In late 1913, Barrymore made his first confirmed feature film, the romantic comedy "An American Citizen", with Adolph Zukor's Famous Players Film Company. When the film was released in January 1914, Barrymore "delighted movie audiences with an inimitable light touch that made a conventional romance 'joyous'," writes Peters. A reviewer for "The Oregon Daily Journal" thought that Barrymore gave a "portrayal of unusual quality". The success of the picture led to further film work, including "The Man from Mexico" (1914), "Are You a Mason?", "The Dictator" and "The Incorrigible Dukane" (all 1915). Except for "The Incorrigible Dukane", all of these early films are presumed lost.


title: John Barrymore

text: Despite the film work and the higher fees he earned from it, Barrymore continued to seek stage work, and in January 1914 he played the lead in "The Yellow Ticket" at New York's Eltinge Theatre. The role marked a departure from the light comedy of his previous performances, a result of Sheldon urging him to turn towards more dramatic parts. "The Yellow Ticket" was not the breakthrough that Barrymore wanted. A few months before the outbreak of World War I, he took a vacation to Italy with Sheldon to enjoy a temporary break from his worsening marriage. He returned from Italy and accepted another serious stage role, that of an ex-convict in "Kick In", at New York's Longacre Theatre. The play was a success, and Barrymore received praise from the critics; "The New York Times" reviewer thought that in a play that had "uncommonly able and sincere playing", Barrymore acted his role with "intelligence and vigor and impart[ed] to it a deal of charm".


title: John Barrymore

text: Barrymore spent the second half of 1915 making three films, including "The Red Widow", which he called "the worst film I ever made" in his 1926 autobiography. In April 1916, he starred in John Galsworthy's prison drama "Justice", again at the instigation of Sheldon. The play was a critical success, and "The New York Times" thought the audience saw "Barrymore play as he had never played before, and so, by his work as the wretched prisoner in "Justice", step forward into a new position on the American stage." The critic went on to say that Barrymore gave "an extraordinary performance in every detail of appearance and manner, in every note of deep feeling ... a superb performance."


title: John Barrymore

text: From early 1916, Barrymore had been living apart from Katherine, and she sued for divorce in November 1916. By the time the divorce was finalized in December 1917, he had taken the lead role in the film "Raffles, the Amateur Cracksman". He had also tried to enlist in the U.S. Army following the country's entry into World War I, but Army doctors discovered that he had varicose veins, and he was not accepted for military service. For over a year beginning in April 1917, he appeared together with Lionel in a stage version of George du Maurier's 1891 novel "Peter Ibbetson". The play and the two Barrymores were warmly regarded by the critics. Around this time, Barrymore began a relationship with a married mother of two, Blanche Oelrichs, a suffragist from an elite Rhode Island family with what Peters calls "anarchistic self-confidence". Oelrichs also published poetry under the name Michael Strange. While their relationship began in secret, it became more open after Oelrichs' husband was commissioned into the army and then posted to France.


title: John Barrymore

text: Both Oelrichs and Sheldon urged Barrymore to take on his next role, Fedya Vasilyevich Protasov, in Leo Tolstoy's play "Redemption" at the Plymouth Theatre. The critic for "The New York Times" felt that, although Barrymore's performance was "marred by vocal monotony", overall the performance was "a distinct step forward in Mr. Barrymore's artistic development ... There is probably not another actor on our stage who has a temperament so fine and spiritual, an art so flexible and sure." In 1918, Barrymore starred in the romantic comedy film "On the Quiet"; the "Iowa City Press-Citizen" considered the film superior to the original Broadway performance.


title: John Barrymore

text: In 1919, Barrymore portrayed a struggling lawyer in the film adaptation of the Broadway show "Here Comes the Bride", which he followed with "The Test of Honor". The latter film marked his first straight dramatic role on screen after years of performing in comedy dramas. Later that year, when Barrymore again appeared on stage with Lionel in Sem Benelli's historical drama "The Jest", audience members "agree[d] that the American stage had never witnessed finer acting", according to Peters. Alexander Woollcott, writing in "The New York Times", thought that "John and Lionel Barrymore hold spellbound each breathless audience", and he commented that Barrymore "contributes to that appeal by every step, every hand, every posture of a body grown unexpectedly eloquent in recent years". In November, Barrymore began filming "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde", playing the dual leading role, and the film was released in theaters the following year. "Wid's Daily" thought that "it is the star's picture from the very outset, and it is the star that makes it", going on to say that Barrymore's portrayal was "a thing of fine shadows and violent emotions". "The Washington Post" was in agreement, and considered the performance to be "a masterpiece", and "a remarkable piece of work". The film was so successful that the US Navy used stills of Barrymore in its recruiting posters.


title: John Barrymore

text: After planning for over a year – largely in secret – Barrymore played his first Shakespeare part, the title role in "Richard III". Conscious of the criticism of his vocal range, he underwent training with Margaret Carrington, the voice and diction trainer, to ensure he sounded right for the part, and the pair worked together daily for up to six hours a day for six weeks. After the debut in March 1920, the critics were effusive in their praise. The "Washington Herald" observed that the audience were "held by the sheer power of Barrymore's performance", which was "remarkable for ... [the actor's] unexpected vocal richness", while Woollcott, in "The New York Times", thought the performance "marked a measurable advance in the gradual process of bringing [Barrymore's] technical fluency abreast with his winged imagination and his real genius for the theatre".


title: John Barrymore

text: Although a commercial and critical success, the play closed after 31 performances when Barrymore collapsed, suffering a nervous breakdown. Since appearing in "Redemption" he had worked ceaselessly, appearing on stage in the evenings, while planning or rehearsing the next production during the day, and by the time he appeared as Richard, he was spending his daytimes filming "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde". He spent six weeks recuperating under the ministrations of his father's friend, wrestler William Muldoon, who ran a sanitarium. During the summer of 1920, Oelrichs became pregnant with Barrymore's child, and a quick divorce was arranged with her husband, which left her and Barrymore free to marry in August that year; a daughter, Diana Barrymore, followed in March 1921. Soon after the birth, he began rehearsals for "Clair de Lune", which his wife had adapted from Victor Hugo's 1869 novel "The Man Who Laughs". Barrymore persuaded Ethel to play the role of the Queen – it was the first time the two had appeared on stage together in over a decade. The play was a critical flop, although the presence of the siblings ensured that it ran for over 60 performances.


title: John Barrymore

text: In 1921, Barrymore portrayed a wealthy Frenchman in New York in the film "The Lotus Eater", with Colleen Moore. In September, Barrymore and Oelrichs went to Europe on holiday; cracks were appearing in their relationship, and she fell in love with a poet during their extended stay in Venice. In October, Oelrichs returned to New York and Barrymore traveled to London to film the exterior scenes for his latest movie, "Sherlock Holmes", in which he played the title role. He then returned to New York to work on the film's interior scenes in January 1922. Barrymore became involved in the pre-production work for the film and provided designs for Moriarty's lair. The film was released later that year and was generally thought "a little dull and ponderous, with too many intertitles", although James W. Dean of "The Evening News" of Harrisburg opined that "the personality of Barrymore is the film's transcendent quality".


title: John Barrymore

text: Barrymore decided next to star in "Hamlet" on stage, with Arthur Hopkins directing. They spent six months preparing, cutting over 1,250 lines from the text as they did so, and Barrymore opted to play Hamlet as "a man's man", according to Norden. Barrymore later described his Hamlet as a "normal, healthy, lusty young fellow who simply got into a mess that was too thick for him ... he was a great fencer, an athlete, a man who led an active, healthy life. How can you make a sickly half-wit out of a man like that?" Barrymore again used Carrington as a vocal coach; rehearsals started in October, and the play opened on November 16. The production was a box-office success, and the critics were lavish in their praise. Woollcott, writing for the "New York Herald", opined that it was "an evening that will be memorable in the history of the American theater". while John Corbin, the drama critic for "The New York Times", agreed, writing that "in all likelihood we have a new and a lasting Hamlet". The reviewer for "Brooklyn Life" stated that Barrymore had "doubtless won the right to be called the greatest living American tragedian". In 1963, Orson Welles said that Barrymore was the best Hamlet he had seen, describing the character as "not so much princely – he was a man of genius who happened to be a prince, and he was tender, and virile, and witty, and dangerous".


title: John Barrymore

text: Barrymore and Hopkins decided to end the run at 101 performances, just breaking the record of one hundred by Edwin Booth, before the play closed in February 1923. In November and December that year, a three-week run of the play was staged at the Manhattan Opera House, followed by a brief tour that closed at the end of January 1924.


title: John Barrymore

text: News of Barrymore's success in "Hamlet" piqued the interest of Warner Bros., which signed him as the lead in the 1924 film "Beau Brummel". Unhappy in his marriage, Barrymore – aged 40 at the time – sought solace elsewhere and had an affair with his 17-year-old co-star Mary Astor during filming. Although the film was not an unqualified success, the cast, including Barrymore, was generally praised. Around this time, Barrymore acquired the nickname "the Great Profile", as posters and photographs of him tended to favor the left-hand side. He later said: "The right side of my face looks like a fried egg. The left side has features that are to be found in almost any normal anthropological specimen, and those are the apples I try to keep on top of the barrel."


title: John Barrymore

text: In February 1925, Barrymore staged "Hamlet" in London at the Haymarket Theatre, which the "Manchester Guardian" later said had "the most memorable first night for years". The reviews were positive, and "although none of the London critics found Barrymore superior to [Henry] Irving and [Johnston] Forbes-Robertson, many were favorable in their comparisons". Among the audience members was the 20-year-old actor John Gielgud, who wrote in his program "Barrymore is romantic in appearance and naturally gifted with grace, looks and a capacity to wear period clothes, which makes his brilliantly intellectual performance classical without being unduly severe, and he has tenderness, remoteness, and neurosis all placed with great delicacy and used with immense effectiveness and admirable judgment". Looking back in the 1970s, he said: "The handsome middle-aged stars of the Edwardian theatre romanticised the part. Even John Barrymore, whose Hamlet I admired very much, cut the play outrageously so that he could, for instance, play the closet scene all out for sentiment with the emphasis on the 'Oedipus complex' – sobbing on Gertrude's bosom. Yet Barrymore ... had a wonderful edge and a demonic sense of humour."


title: John Barrymore

text: At the end of this run of "Hamlet", Barrymore traveled to Paris, where Oelrichs had stayed during his residence in London, but the reunion was not a happy one and the couple argued frequently. When he returned to America, she remained in Paris, and the couple drew up a separation agreement that provided Oelrichs with $18,000 a year and stated that neither could sue for divorce on the grounds of adultery. While he had been in London, Warner Bros and Barrymore entered into a contact for three further films at a salary of $76,250 per picture. He later claimed that his motivation for moving from stage to films was the "lack of repetition—the continual playing of a part, which is so ruinous to an actor, is entirely eliminated".


title: John Barrymore

text: Barrymore's first film under the contract was "The Sea Beast" (1926), loosely based on the 1851 novel "Moby-Dick", in which he played Captain Ahab Ceeley. This was one of the biggest money-makers of the year for Warner Bros. Although Barrymore wanted Astor to play the female lead, she was unavailable, and Dolores Costello was cast in her place. He later said that "I fell in love with her instantly. This time I knew I was right", and the couple began an affair. Costello's father was angered by the relationship, but his complaints were ignored by both Costello and her mother: Costello's parents separated and were divorced as a result. The film was well received by critics, and Mordaunt Hall, the film critic of "The New York Times", praised the "energy, earnestness and virility" Barrymore displayed in the role of Ceeley.


title: John Barrymore

text: As filming finished on "The Sea Beast", work began on "Don Juan", the first feature-length film with synchronized Vitaphone sound effects and a musical soundtrack. Although Barrymore wanted to play opposite Costello again, Jack L. Warner, the film's producer, signed Astor. After completing his Warner Bros. contract with "When a Man Loves", with Costello, Barrymore joined United Artists (UA) under a three-film deal. For the next three years, according to Morrison, he "enjoyed unprecedented prosperity and spent lavishly". Nevertheless, he received some harsh reviews. Critic and essayist Stark Young wrote in "The New Republic" that Barrymore's films were "rotten, vulgar, empty, in bad taste, dishonest, noisome with a silly and unwholesome exhibitionism, and odious with a kind of stale and degenerate studio adolescence. Their appeal is cheap, cynical and specious".


title: John Barrymore

text: In 1927, Barrymore planned to revive "Hamlet" at the Hollywood Bowl, but in August he canceled the production, without explanation, and began filming the third of the UA pictures, "Eternal Love", for which he was paid $150,000. In February 1928, Barrymore obtained a quiet divorce from Oelrichs; she eagerly agreed to the separation, as she was in a relationship with a lawyer, Harrison Tweed, whom she later married. Barrymore and Costello married in November that year; their daughter, Dolores, was born in April 1930 and a son, John Drew Barrymore, followed in June 1932. Barrymore purchased and converted an estate in the Hollywood Hills into 16 different buildings with 55 rooms, gardens, skeet ranges, swimming pools, fountains and a totem pole.


title: John Barrymore

text: By the late 1920s, sound films had become common, following the 1927 sensation, "The Jazz Singer". Actors with trained voices were in demand by the studios, and Barrymore was offered a five-film deal with Warner Bros. at $150,000 per picture, and a share of the profits. Before he began this contract, he played his first speaking role on film: a one-off section in "The Show of Shows" (1929), playing Richard, Duke of Gloucester in "Henry VI, Part 3". His first two films under contract were "General Crack" and "The Man from Blankley's", each of which were modestly successful. As he had been frustrated at the inability of making "The Sea Beast" as a sound film, Barrymore returned to "Moby Dick" as the source for a 1930 film of the same name. Peters thinks little of the film, describing it as "a seesaw between the cosmic and the comic, a travesty of Melville as well as a silly film all on its own".


title: John Barrymore

text: The following year, Barrymore played the title role of a manipulative voice coach in "Svengali", opposite Marian Marsh. Martin Dickstein, the critic for the "Brooklyn Daily Eagle", wrote that Barrymore "registers a personal triumph in the role", calling his performance "brilliant ... one of the best of his movie career". Later in 1931, he played a crippled puppeteer, who tries to fulfill his frustrated ambitions by manipulating the life of a young male ballet dancer and the dancer's lover (also Marsh) in "The Mad Genius"; the film was a commercial failure. With disappointing box office returns from their five-film deal, Warner Bros. decided not to offer Barrymore a contract renewal. Instead, Barrymore signed a non-exclusive contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) and took a $25,000 salary cut per film.


title: John Barrymore

text: Barrymore's first film for MGM was the 1932 mystery "Arsène Lupin", in which he co-starred with his brother Lionel. In "The New York Times", Hall called Barrymore's performance "admirable" and wrote that "it is a pleasure to see [him] again in something in a lighter vein." The same year, Barrymore starred as jewel thief Baron Felix von Geigern together with Greta Garbo in the 1932 film "Grand Hotel", in which Lionel also appeared. Critical opinion of Barrymore's acting was divided; John Gilbert's biographer Eve Golden refers to Barrymore as seeming "more like ... [Garbo's] affectionate father than her lover", while George Blaisdell of "International Photographer" praised the dialogue and wrote that a viewer would be "deeply impressed with the rarity in screen drama on which he is looking." "Grand Hotel" won the Academy Award for Best Picture and was one of the highest-grossing films of the year. It was later added to the National Film Registry.


title: John Barrymore

text: In 1932, Barrymore went to RKO Pictures where he played a borderline-alcoholic lawyer in "State's Attorney", and an escaped lunatic in "A Bill of Divorcement", opposite Katharine Hepburn in her screen debut. Film scholar Daniel Bernardi later noted the humanism demonstrated between Barrymore's character and his family, particularly the "close bond" between father and daughter. In his final film of the year, he returned to MGM for "Rasputin and the Empress", Barrymore, Ethel and Lionel co-starred. Physically, Barrymore had deteriorated since filming "Svengali", and he had gained weight because of his drinking. Peters notes the "dissipation of the once ascetic face, a dissipation only underlined by the studio's attempt to reconstruct with lights, filters and make-up a spiritual beauty that had been corrupted." The film was a critical and commercial failure, and MGM lost significant amounts of money. "The New Yorker" thought the three Barrymores had produced their worst work.