title: Die Walküre

text: As with "Das Rheingold", Wagner wished to defer any performance of the new work until it could be shown in the context of the completed cycle, but the 1870 Munich premiere was arranged at the insistence of his patron, King Ludwig II of Bavaria. More than the other "Ring" dramas, "Die Walküre" has achieved some popularity as a stand-alone work and continues to be performed independently from its role in the tetralogy.


title: Die Walküre

text: The story of "Die Walküre" is based on the Norse mythology told in the "Völsunga saga" and the "Poetic Edda". In this version, the Volsung twins Sieglinde and Siegmund, separated in childhood, meet and fall in love. This union angers the gods, who demand that Siegmund must die. Sieglinde and the couple's unborn child are saved by the defiant actions of Wotan's daughter, the title character, Valkyrie Brünnhilde, who as a result faces the gods' retribution.


title: Die Walküre

text: Wagner began work on what became his "Ring" project in October 1848, when he prepared a prose outline for "Siegfried's Death", based on the legendary hero of Germanic myth. During the following months, he developed the outline into a full "poem" or libretto.


title: Die Walküre

text: After his travels to Switzerland in May 1849, Wagner continued to expand his project, having decided that a single work would not suffice for his purposes. He would, therefore, create a series of music dramas, each telling a stage of the story, basing the narrative on a combination of myth and imagination; "Siegfried's Death" would provide the culmination. In 1851, he outlined his purposes in his essay "A Communication to My Friends": "I propose to produce my myth in three complete dramas, preceded by a lengthy Prelude (Vorspiel)". Each of these dramas would, he said, constitute an independent whole, but would not be performed separately. "At a specially appointed Festival, I propose, some future time, to produce those three Dramas with their Prelude, in the course of three days and a fore-evening".


title: Die Walküre

text: In accordance with this scheme, Wagner preceded "Siegfried's Death" (later "Götterdämmerung" ("The Twilight of the Gods") with the story of Siegfried's youth, "Young Siegfried", later renamed "Siegfried". This was, in turn, preceded by "Die Walküre" ("The Valkyrie"), dealing with Siegfried's origins, the whole tetralogy being fronted by a prologue, "Das Rheingold". Because Wagner prepared his texts in reverse chronological sequence, "Die Walküre" was the third of the dramas to be conceived and written, but appears second in the tetralogy.


title: Die Walküre

text: During the lengthy time that has passed since the gods entered Valhalla at the end of "Das Rheingold", Fafner has used the Tarnhelm to assume the form of a dragon, and guards the gold and the ring in the depths of the forest. Wotan has visited Erda seeking wisdom, and by her has fathered a daughter, Brünnhilde; he has fathered eight other daughters, possibly also by Erda. These, with Brünnhilde, are the Valkyries, whose task is to recover heroes fallen in battle and bring them to Valhalla, where they will protect the fortress from Alberich's assault should the dwarf recover the ring. Wotan has also wandered the earth, and with a woman of the Völsung race has fathered the twins Siegmund and Sieglinde, who have grown up separately and unaware of each other. From the Völsungs Wotan hopes for a hero who, unencumbered by the gods' treaties, will obtain the ring from Fafner.


title: Die Walküre

text: As a large storm rages, Siegmund finds shelter from his enemies in a large dwelling built around a massive ash-tree. Unarmed and wounded, he collapses with exhaustion. Sieglinde enters; she tells Siegmund that she is the wife of Hunding, and that he may rest here until Hunding's return. As they talk, they look at each other with growing interest and emotion. Siegmund gets ready to leave, telling Sieglinde that misfortune follows him, and he does not want to bring it on her; she replies that misfortune dwells with her already.


title: Die Walküre

text: Hunding returns and questions Siegmund's presence. Calling himself Wehwalt ("woeful"), Siegmund explains that he grew up in the forest with his parents and twin sister. One day he found their home burned down, his mother killed and his sister gone. Recently he fought with the relatives of a girl being forced into marriage. His weapons were destroyed, the bride was killed, and he was forced to flee. Hunding reveals that he is one of Siegmund's pursuers; Siegmund may stay, he says, but they must fight in the morning. Before leaving, Sieglinde gives a meaningful glance to a particular spot on the tree in which, the firelight reveals, a sword is buried to the hilt.


title: Die Walküre

text: Sieglinde returns, having drugged Hunding's drink. She reveals that she was forced into the marriage and that during their wedding feast, an old man appeared and plunged a sword into the trunk of the ash tree which neither Hunding nor any of his companions have been able to remove. She is longing for the hero who will draw the sword and save her. When Siegmund expresses his love for her, she reciprocates, and when he speaks the name of his father, Wälse, she recognises him as Siegmund, and realises that the sword was left for him. Siegmund then draws the sword from the tree. She reveals herself as Sieglinde, his twin sister. Siegmund names the sword "Nothung" and declares that it will be her protection. The two sing of their passionate love for each other, as the act ends.


title: Die Walküre

text: On a high mountain ridge, Wotan instructs Brünnhilde, his Valkyrie daughter, to protect Siegmund in his forthcoming battle with Hunding. Fricka arrives, and in her role as goddess of family values demands that Siegmund and Sieglinde be punished for their adultery and incest. She scorns Wotan's argument that he requires Siegmund as a "free hero", who can further his plans to recover the ring from Fafner, uninhibited by Wotan's contracts. She retorts that Siegmund is not free but is Wotan's pawn, whose every move the god seeks to direct. Defeated by Fricka's argument, Wotan reluctantly agrees that he will not protect Siegmund.


title: Die Walküre

text: After Fricka leaves, the troubled Wotan gives Brünnhilde the full story, and with great sorrow rescinds his earlier instruction; he orders her to give the victory to Hunding and then departs.


title: Die Walküre

text: Siegmund and Sieglinde are running away from Hunding but are forced to stop. With a vision of Hunding's dogs scratching Siegmund's face Sieglinde faints, consumed with guilt and exhaustion.


title: Die Walküre

text: Brünnhilde suddenly appears to Siegmund and tells him of his impending death; he refuses to follow Brünnhilde to Valhalla when she tells him Sieglinde cannot accompany him. Siegmund still believes that his father's sword will assure him of victory over Hunding, but Brünnhilde tells him it has lost its power. Siegmund threatens to kill both Sieglinde and himself. Much moved, Brünnhilde decides to defy her father and grant victory to Siegmund.


title: Die Walküre

text: Hunding's horn is heard; he arrives and attacks Siegmund. Under Brünnhilde's power, Siegmund begins to overpower Hunding, but Wotan appears and shatters Siegmund's sword with his spear. Hunding then stabs him to death. Brünnhilde gathers up the fragments of the sword and flees on horseback with Sieglinde. Contemptuously, Wotan kills Hunding via a simple wave of hand, and swearing that Brünnhilde will be punished for her defiance, sets out in pursuit of her.


title: Die Walküre

text: The Valkyries congregate on the mountain-top, each carrying a dead hero and chattering excitedly. Brünnhilde arrives with Sieglinde, and begs her sisters for help, but they dare not defy Wotan. Sieglinde tells Brünnhilde that without Siegmund she no longer wishes to live. Brünnhilde tells Sieglinde that she is pregnant by Siegmund, and urges her to remain alive for her child's sake, and to name the child Siegfried. Brünnhilde gives the fragments of the sword Nothung to Sieglinde, who thanks her for her loyalty and comfort, and resolves to save the child. As she departs, Wotan is heard approaching with great wrath.


title: Die Walküre

text: When Wotan arrives, the Valkyries vainly try to hide Brünnhilde. He faces her and declares her punishment: she is to be stripped of her Valkyrie status and become a mortal woman, to be held in defenceless sleep on the mountain, prey to any man who finds her. The other Valkyries protest, but when Wotan threatens them with the same, they flee.


title: Die Walküre

text: In a long discourse with Wotan, Brünnhilde explains that she decided to protect Sieglinde knowing that this was Wotan's true desire. Wotan consents to her request that he surround her resting place with a circle of fire that will protect her from all but the bravest of heroes. He bids her a loving farewell and lays her sleeping form down on a rock. He then invokes Loge, the demigod of fire, and creates a circle of perpetual fire around her. Before slowly departing, Wotan pronounces that anyone who fears his spear shall never pass through the fire.


title: Die Walküre

text: Wagner's original title for the work was "Siegfried und Sieglind: der Walküre Bestrafung" ("Siegfried and Sieglinde: The Valkyrie Punished"), but he quickly simplified this to "Die Walküre". Prose sketches for the first two acts were prepared in November 1851, and for the third act early in the following year. These sketches were expanded to a more detailed prose plan in May 1852, and the full libretto was written in June 1852. It was privately printed, with the other "Ring" libretti, in February 1853.


title: Die Walküre

text: Wagner constructed his "Die Walküre" libretto from a range of ancient Norse and Germanic sources, principally the Völsunga saga, the Poetic Edda, the Prose Edda, the Nibelungenlied and other fragments of Teutonic literature. From this plethora of material he selected particular elements and transformed them, to create his own narrative through the compression of events, the rearrangement of chronology and the fusion of characters. For example, in the Völsunga saga Siegmund is not Wotan's son, although he arranges the latter's conception by a Völsung woman. Sigurd (Siegfried) is not the child of Siegmund's incestuous marriage to his sister, but of a later wife who preserves the sword fragments. Likewise, in the sagas Sieglinde is a somewhat different character, Signy; she is Siegmund's twin sister, but the son she bears him is not Siegfried, and the manner of her death is quite different from that depicted by Wagner. Hunding is a conflation of several characters in the sagas, notably Siggeir who is wedded to Signy, and the villainous King Hunding who is Siegmund's mortal enemy in the Poetic Edda.


title: Die Walküre

text: Wotan (Odin) appears in the northern sagas as the god of all life as well as of battles, although he is by no means omnipotent. Fricka (Frigg) has most of the hallmarks of her counterpart in the Poetic and Prose Eddas, as wife of Wotan and goddess of family values. Brünnhilde is a less central figure in the sagas than she is in the "Ring" cycle. In an early lay, she is sought as a wife by Gunther, who seeks the help of Siegfried in overcoming her superhuman strength. Certain aspects of her "Ring" character appear in the Eddas and the Nibelungenlied, such as her encirclement by Wotan in a ring of fire, and her rescue by a hero without fear.


title: Die Walküre

text: The Valkyries have a basis in historical fact, within the primitive Teutonic war-cult. According to Cooke, originally they were "grisly old women who officiated at the sacrificial rites when prisoners were put to death." They became entwined in legend: in the Poetic Edda they emerge as supernatural warrior maidens carrying out Odin's orders as to who should die. In the Poetic Edda the Valkyries are given names: Skuld, Skogul, Gunn, Hild, Gondul and Geirskogul. Some of these names differ in other sources. The names that Wagner gave to his Valkyries were his own invention, apart from Brünnhilde and Siegrune.


title: Die Walküre

text: Wagner effected a number of changes between his original draft and the final text. For example, in the first sketch, Wotan appeared in person in Act I to drive the sword into the tree. Siegmund withdrew the sword much earlier in the act, and in Act II Hunding was not slain by Wotan, but left alive to follow Wotan's instruction: "Get hence, slave! Bow before Fricka."


title: Die Walküre

text: Apart from some rough sketches, including an early version of what became Siegmund's "Spring Song" in Act I of "Die Walküre", Wagner composed the "Ring" music in its proper sequence. Having completed the music for "Das Rheingold" in May 1854, he began composing "Die Walküre" in June, and finished the full orchestral score nearly two years later, in March 1856. This extended period is explained by several concurrent events and distractions, including Wagner's burgeoning friendship with Mathilde Wesendonck, and a lengthy concert tour in London at the invitation of the Royal Philharmonic Society, when he conducted a full season amid some controversy, although his own "Tannhäuser" overture was well received.


title: Die Walküre

text: The system of leitmotifs, integral to the "Opera and Drama" principles, is used to the full in "Die Walküre"; Holman numbers 36 such motifs that are introduced in the work. The well-known "Valkyrie" motif, used to introduce Brünnhilde in Act II, forms the basis of the famous Ride of the Valkyries that opens Act III. Wagner wrote the concert version of the Ride in 1862, for performance in concerts at Vienna and Leipzig.


title: Die Walküre

text: As with "Das Rheingold", many years elapsed between the completion of the "Die Walküre" score and its first performance. Seeing little chance of the "Ring" project coming to any immediate fruition, and in need of money, in August 1857 Wagner abandoned work on it and concentrated instead on "Tristan und Isolde" and "Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg", and on a revised version of Tannhäuser. However, King Ludwig of Bavaria, to whom Wagner had sold the copyrights to the "Ring" works, was insistent that the two completed "Ring" operas be staged, and over Wagner's bitter protests arranged for them to be performed at the Munich Hofoper, "Das Rheingold" on 22 September 1869 and "Die Walküre" on 26 June 1870. The core of Wagner's objection to a Munich performance was his relationship with the married Cosima von Bülow, with whom he was cohabiting in Switzerland; he could not return to Munich without provoking scandal, and therefore could not directly control the performances.


title: Die Walküre

text: As the date for the "Die Walküre" premiere approached, Wagner grew more distressed and sullen; a letter from the critic Franz Müller reporting that everything was going well did nothing to console him. Cosima wrote in her diary that his distress "pierces my heart like a dagger, and I ask myself whether this disgraceful act will really go unavenged?". The premiere was attended by leading figures from the musical world, including Liszt, Brahms, Camille Saint-Saëns, and the violinist Joseph Joachim. The reception from audience and critics was much more positive than had been the case a year earlier with "Rheingold", although Osborne quotes one dissenting voice, from the critic of the "Süddeutsche Presse". Having described the first act as "for the most part, drearily long-winded", this critic thought that the second act dragged and came to life only occasionally. He went on: "The third act begins so deafeningly that total stupor would be ensured even if the rest were less long-winded ... The overall effect of the music is not agreeable...". Cosima kept all communications from Munich away from Wagner, and tore up the more critical newspaper reviews.


title: Die Walküre

text: After a second performance, "Die Walküre" was performed at the Hofoper three further times, alternating with "Das Rheingold" in a "Ring" semi-cycle. King Ludwig, who was absent from the premiere, attended one of the later performances. The Munich festival had taken place amid a mounting war fever, as relations between France and the German states rapidly deteriorated; the Franco-Prussian War broke out on 19 July.


title: Die Walküre

text: In May 1872, Wagner laid the foundation stone for the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth, Northern Bavaria. He had originally envisaged holding the first Bayreuth Festival there in 1873, but delays in the building work, and in completing the "Ring" music, led to multiple postponements. Finally, the festival was scheduled for August 1876; "Die Walküre" would be performed on 14 August, the second day of the festival.


title: Die Walküre

text: Wagner was involved in every stage of the preparations; according to Ernest Newman's biography he was "a far better conductor than any of his conductors, a far better actor than any of his actors, a far better singer than any of his singers in everything but tone". Heinrich Porges, a contemporary chronicler, describes Wagner demonstrating to Amalie Materna, as Brünnhilde, how to sing the scene in which she tells Sieglinde of the impending birth of Siegfried: "He sang [the final words] with truly thrilling force". The singer Lilli Lehmann (Helmwige), in her 1913 memoirs, remembered Wagner acting the role of Sieglinde in rehearsals: "Never yet has a Sieglinde known how to approach him, even approximately".


title: Die Walküre

text: The "Die Walküre" performance on 14 August was free from the mechanical problems that had affected "Das Rheingold" the day before, and was generally well received by the distinguished audience that included the Kaiser Wilhelm I, Emperor Pedro II of Brazil, representatives from various European royal houses and many of Europe's leading composers. Wagner, however, was far from pleased. He was unnerved by an incident involving the kaiser, when the 79-year-old Wilhelm stumbled and almost fell over a doorstep, and was very critical of two of his main singers, Niemann and Betz, whom he deemed "theatre parasites" and said he would never employ again – a view he later revised. Among the scenes that he felt had not come off were those on the mountain-top: "I'll change that some day when I produce "Walküre" in heaven, at the right hand of God, and the old gent and I are watching it together".


title: Die Walküre

text: Three "Ring" cycles were performed in the first Bayreuth Festival. The stage designs used in "Die Walküre", and the other operas, were based on sketches by Josef Hoffman which were converted to stage sets by the Brückner brothers from the Coburg State Opera. These designs, and Carl Döpler's costumes, influenced productions well into the 20th century.


title: Die Walküre

text: After the 1876 festival, "Die Walküre" was not seen again at Bayreuth for 20 years, until Cosima revived the "Ring" cycle for the 1896 festival. It was quickly taken up by other opera houses: Vienna and New York in 1877, Rotterdam in 1878 and London in 1882. The New York performance, on 2 April 1877, was conducted by Adolf Neuendorff as part of a Wagner festival organised by the Academy of Music; it preceded the Metropolitan Opera premiere by nearly eight years.


title: Die Walküre

text: The London performance, at Her Majesty's Theatre on 6 May 1882, was the first "Ring" cycle to be performed anywhere, after the 1876 Bayreuth premiere. It was conducted by Anton Seidl, who had been an assistant to Wagner at Bayreuth, and had Albert Niemann in his Bayreuth role as Siegmund. "The Musical Times", in a long review, mixed approval with criticism: its reviewer noted a number of empty seats in the auditorium, thought the stage sets compared unfavourably with those at Bayreuth, and deemed the orchestra "inefficient". However, the critic praised individual performances, and judged that the music and the drama had held the attention of an audience whose enthusiasm far exceeded that showed to "Das Rheingold" the previous day. The correspondent for "The Era" newspaper was distressed by the incestuous nature of the story, which it described as "brutal and degrading", despite the quality of the music: "A composer must have lost all sense of decency and all respect for the dignity of human nature who could thus employ his genius and skill".


title: Die Walküre

text: The New York Met performance, on 30 January 1885, was part of a Wagner festival conducted by Leopold Damrosch – no other "Ring" operas were staged. Amalie Materna, Bayreuth's original Brünnhilde, reprised the part here. The stage designer, Wilhelm Hock, recreated the original Bayreuth designs. The performance was received with great enthusiasm by the audience, who demanded numerous curtain calls. Damrosch fell ill just before the festival ended, and died on 15 February 1885.


title: Die Walküre

text: During the 1880s and 1890s, "Die Walküre" was shown in many European cities, sometimes as part of a "Ring" cycle but often as an independent work: Brussels, Venice, Strasbourg and Budapest in 1883, Prague in 1885, St Petersburg in 1889, Copenhagen in 1891 and Stockholm in 1895. By then it was travelling worldwide: to Mexico in 1891, Argentina in 1899, Australia in 1907, South Africa in 1912 and Brazil in 1913. These productions often followed the Bayreuth line of staying close to the staging and costumes that Wagner had approved for the original festival, although there were some deviations, such as Adolphe Appia's productions which replaced pictorialism with stylised sets using colours and lights.


title: Die Walküre

text: At Bayreuth, no significant changes in presentation occurred until after the Second World War, when Wieland Wagner revealed his "New Bayreuth" style of largely bare stages and unadorned costumes. Although traditional productions continued outside Bayreuth, many performances followed the new trend. From the 1970s onwards there was increasing innovation; the Leipzig "Die Walküre" began the trend of placing the opening scene of Act II within Valhalla rather than on a mountain-top; Harry Kupfer at Bayreuth in 1988 set the whole cycle in a post-nuclear dystopia; Jürgen Flimm's Bayreuth 2000 production had Wotan as a corrupt businessman, sitting in an office surrounded by 21st-century paraphernalia, including a paper-shredder used to cover his tracks. A few prominent productions adhered to traditional staging, including Otto Schenk's at the New York Met in 1989, which was described by the "New York Times" as "charmingly old fashioned", and as "a relief to many beleaguered Wagnerites".


title: Die Walküre

text: According to Charles Osborne, "Die Walküre" is sufficiently self-contained to be quite frequently staged on its own. The 2018 Bayreuth Festival broke new ground when for the first time it scheduled "Die Walküre" as a stand-alone, outside the context of the "Ring" cycle.


title: Die Walküre

text: Osborne writes that, like "Das Rheingold", "Die Walküre" is primarily a work for solo voices, but with better integration of the vocal parts into the overall musical structure. As with its predecessor, Wagner composed "Die Walküre" under the principles he had defined in his book-length 1851 essay "Opera and Drama", eschewing the traditional operatic norms of chorus, arias and vocal "numbers". There is, however, some division of opinion as the extent that these principles were fully observed. The critic Barry Millington opines that of all Wagner's works, "Die Walküre" is the fullest embodiment of the "Opera and Drama" precepts, achieving a complete synthesis of music and poetry. This, he says, is achieved without any notable sacrifice in musical expression". In his analytical essay "The Perfect Wagnerite", Bernard Shaw praises the synthesis of music and drama: "There is not ... a note in it that has any other point than the single direct point of giving musical expression to the drama". Gutman's view, however, is that this only applies to the first two acts; the "apogee" of this style, he says, is found in the later opera "Tristan and Isolde". Roger Scruton refers to deviations in "Die Walküre" such as the "Spring Song" ("Winterstürme"), in which Siegmund holds up the action to declare his love for Sieglinde in what is to all intents and purposes an aria, while Osborne notes the "impressive ensembles" in Act III, as the Valkyries sing together.


title: Die Walküre

text: The act opens in the key of D minor, which frames the music until Siegmund's death in Act II. The short prelude depicts a storm; a stamping rhythm in the basses rises to a climax in which "Donner's Call" from "Das Rheingold" is heard. As the scene proceeds, several new motifs are introduced; that representing Siegmund, derived from the "Spear" motif from "Das Rheingold"; that for Sieglinde, a gentle melody on strings, which Holman says "conveys at once Sieglinde's inner beauty and misfortune"; and the motif which Newman names "The Dawning of Love", which will recur in the final love duet of the act. These three motifs, and their developed variants, are prominent throughout the act. Among other motifs, the aggressive brass staccato that identifies Hunding is a particularly striking phrase, "as dark and dour as the man himself".


title: Die Walküre

text: Wagner uses other "Rheingold" motifs to deliver key information. Thus, the parentage of Siegmund and Sieglinde is revealed to the audience as Wotan, when the Valhalla music plays softly on trombones. The same theme references Wotan again, when Sieglinde recounts the visit of the old man at her wedding. A repeated falling octave in G♭, extracted from the "Sword" motif, illustrates Siegmund's desperate desire for the sword, and recurs at the end of the act, together with the full "Sword" motif in triumphant brass, as he draws the sword from the tree.


title: Die Walküre

text: The second act opens exuberantly, with a short prelude that prefigures the celebrated Valkyrie motif that in the following act will form the basis of the "Ride of the Valkyries" in Act III. This motif was first sketched in 1851, for intended use in "Siegfried's Tot", before the full plan of the "Ring" cycle was developed. The first scene of the act introduces Brünnhilde's energetic "Hojotoho!", as she answers Wotan's summons, expressing what Holman describes as her "manly enthusiasm" for her role as warrior maiden. The Wotan-Fricka dialogue that follows is illustrated by motifs that express Fricka's sour disillusion with her marriage, and Wotan's bitterness and frustration as he is unable to answer his wife's forceful arguments.


title: Die Walküre

text: In the colloquies between Wotan and Brünnhilde, several soundings of the "Woman's Worth" motif are heard. The "Annunciation of Death" motif is the crucial point, where the two narratives (Wotan/Brünnhilde and Siegmund/Sieglinde) come together. Wagner chose the tonality of F♯ minor for this scene, eventually modulating to B minor in preparation for the Valkyries' entry in Act III.


title: Die Walküre

text: The act opens with the famous sequence known as the "Ride of the Valkyries", formed by combining the Valkyries' own belligerent theme with Brünnhilde's war cry from act II. The Ride has achieved lasting popularity as an orchestral concert piece outside the framework of the "Ring" cycle; according to Newman, in the orchestral version and sometimes within the opera itself, the basis staccato phrasing is corrupted by eliding the second and third notes and emphasising the fourth rather than the first as originally written.


title: Die Walküre

text: At the midpoint of the act, prior to Wotan's vengeful entrance and the long denouement with Brünnhilde, we hear the "Reconciliation" motif ("Redemption by Love" per Newman) in which Sieglinde praises Brünnhilde for her rescue: "O highest of wonders! Noblest of maids!". The motif will next be heard at the very end of the "Ring" cycle, bringing the entire tetralogy to a close on a note of reconciliation and optimism.


title: Die Walküre

text: The final section of the act is marked by what Millington describes as "a succession of carefully controlled climaxes", of which the most affecting is that of Wotan's farewell to his errant daughter. The music is eventually dominated by the five falling notes of Brünnhilde's "Sleep" motif which, when Wotan has used his spear to summon Loge, is transformed into the "Magic Fire" music as Brünnhilde is encircled in the ring of fire, and Wotan sadly departs.


title: Die Walküre

text: The first Munich performances of "Die Walküre" were generally hailed as successes by audiences and critics; leading composers who were present greeted the work with acclaim, recognising in it evidence of Wagner's genius. One dissident voice was presented by the critic of the "Süddeutsche Presse", who was scathing about the dearth of moral standards expressed in the story and furthermore found the whole experience tedious: the first act was, for the most part, "wearyingly long-winded"; the second act only occasionally sprang to life, while in the third it was "barely possible to hear isolated shrieks from the singers through the tumult of the orchestra". The overall effect was "not agreeable ... permeated with what one can only call pagan sensuality, and ... produces finally nothing but an enervating dullness". This harsh, if isolated judgement, found some echo six years later, when "Die Walküre" was first performed at Bayreuth as part of the "Ring" cycle. Critics could now form relative views on the merits of the four operas. Although there was general admiration for the first act, "Die Walküre" emerged as the least-liked of the four, in particular on account of the second act, deemed "a great failure" and an "abyss of boredom".


title: Die Walküre

text: More generally, modern critics of "Die Walküre" have recorded much more positive opinions. To Charles Osborne it is "marvellously rich ... Wagner has found a way to integrate his voice parts into the overall structure without sacrificing their lyrical independence". It is, he says, the opera that stands up most strongly outside the tetralogy, and is popular enough to be staged frequently on its own, even within Bayreuth festivals.


title: Die Walküre

text: Writing in 2006, Millington thought that, notwithstanding the liberal use of ensembles in the third act, "Die Walküre" showed the greatest fidelity of the four operas to the theoretical principles expressed by Wagner in "Opera and Drama": "A thoroughgoing synthesis of poetry and music is achieved without any notable sacrifice in musical expression". The modern view is that, of the "Ring" operas, "Die Walküre" is both the most approachable and the one that can most successfully be performed in extracts.


title: History of communication

text: The history of communication technologies (media and appropriate inscription tools) have evolved in tandem with shifts in political and economic systems, and by extension, systems of power. Communication can range from very subtle processes of exchange, to full conversations and mass communication. The history of communication itself can be traced back since the origin of speech circa 100,000 BCE. The use of technology in communication may be considered since the first use of symbols about 30,000 years BCE. Among the symbols used, there are cave paintings, petroglyphs, pictograms and ideograms. Writing was a major innovation, as well as printing technology and, more recently, telecommunications and the Internet.


title: History of communication

text: Human communication was initiated with the origin of speech approximately 100,000 BCE. Symbols were developed about 30,000 years ago. The imperfection of speech allowed easier dissemination of ideas and eventually resulted in the creation of new forms of communications, improving both the range at which people could communicate and the longevity of the information. All of those inventions were based on the key concept of the symbol.


title: History of communication

text: The oldest known symbols created for communication were cave paintings, a form of rock art, dating to the Upper Paleolithic age. The oldest known cave painting is located within Chauvet Cave, dated to around 30,000 BC. These paintings contained increasing amounts of information: people may have created the first calendar as far back as 15,000 years ago. The connection between drawing and writing is further shown by linguistics: in Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece the concepts and words of drawing and writing were the same (Egyptian: 's-sh', Greek: 'graphein').


title: History of communication

text: The next advancement in the history of communications came with the production of petroglyphs, carvings into a rock surface. It took about 20,000 years for Homo sapiens to move from the first cave paintings to the first petroglyphs, which are dated to approximately the Neolithic and late Upper Paleolithic boundary, about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago.


title: History of communication

text: It is possible that Homo sapiens (humans) of that time used some other forms of communication, often for mnemonic purposes - specially arranged stones, symbols carved in wood or earth, quipu-like rocks, tattoos, but little other than the most durable carved stones has survived to modern times and we can only speculate about their existence based on our observation of still existing 'hunter-gatherer' cultures such as those of Africa or Oceania.


title: History of communication

text: A pictogram (pictograph) is a symbol representing a concept, object, activity, place or event by illustration. Pictography is a form of proto-writing whereby ideas are transmitted through drawing. Pictographs were the next step in the evolution of communication: the most important difference between petroglyphs and pictograms is that petroglyphs are simply showing an event, but


title: History of communication

text: pictograms are telling a story about the event, thus they can for example be ordered chronologically.


title: History of communication

text: Pictograms were used by various ancient cultures all over the world since around 9000 BC, when tokens marked with simple pictures began to be used to label basic farm produce, and become increasingly popular around 6000–5000 BC.


title: History of communication

text: They were the basis of cuneiform and hieroglyphs, and began to develop into logographic writing systems around 5000 BC.


title: History of communication

text: Pictograms, in turn, evolved into ideograms, graphical symbols that represent an idea. Their ancestors, the pictograms, could represent only something resembling their form: therefore a pictogram of a circle could represent a sun, but not concepts like 'heat', 'light', 'day' or 'Great God of the Sun'. Ideograms, on the other hand, could convey more abstract concepts.


title: History of communication

text: Because some ideas are universal, many different cultures developed similar ideograms. For example, an eye with a tear means 'sadness' in Native American ideograms in California, as it does for the Aztecs, the early Chinese and the Egyptians.


title: History of communication

text: The oldest-known forms of writing were primarily logographic in nature, based on pictographic and ideographic elements. Most writing systems can be broadly divided into three categories: "logographic", "syllabic" and "alphabetic" (or "segmental"); however, all three may be found in any given writing system in varying proportions, often making it difficult to categorise a system uniquely.


title: History of communication

text: The invention of the first writing systems is roughly contemporary with the beginning of the Bronze Age in the late Neolithic of the late 5th millennium BC. The first writing system is generally believed to have been invented in prehistoric Sumer and developed by the late 4th millennium BC into cuneiform. Egyptian hieroglyphs, and the undeciphered Proto-Elamite writing system and Indus Valley script, also date to this era, though a few scholars have questioned the Indus Valley script's status as a writing system.


title: History of communication

text: The original Sumerian writing system was derived from a system of clay tokens used to represent commodities. By the end of the 4th millennium BC, this had evolved into a method of keeping accounts, using a round-shaped stylus impressed into soft clay at different angles for recording numbers. This was gradually augmented with pictographic writing using a sharp stylus to indicate what was being counted. Round-stylus and sharp-stylus writing was gradually replaced about 2700–2000 BC by writing using a wedge-shaped stylus (hence the term cuneiform), at first only for logograms, but developed to include phonetic elements by 2800 BC. About 2600 BC cuneiform began to represent syllables of spoken Sumerian language.


title: History of communication

text: Finally, cuneiform writing became a general purpose writing system for logograms, syllables, and numbers. By the 26th century BC, this script had been adapted to another Mesopotamian language, Akkadian, and from that to others such as Hurrian, and Hittite. Scripts similar in appearance to this writing system include those for Ugaritic and Old Persian.


title: History of communication

text: The Chinese script may have originated independently of the Middle Eastern scripts, around the 16th century BC (early Shang dynasty), out of a late neolithic Chinese system of proto-writing dating back to c. 6000 BC. The pre-Columbian writing systems of the Americas, including Olmec and Mayan, are also generally believed to have had independent origins.


title: History of communication

text: The first pure alphabets (properly, "abjads", mapping single symbols to single phonemes, but not necessarily each phoneme to a symbol) emerged around 2000 BC in Ancient Egypt, but by then alphabetic principles had already been incorporated into Egyptian hieroglyphs for a millennium (see Middle Bronze Age alphabets).


title: History of communication

text: By 2700 BC, Egyptian writing had a set of some 22 hieroglyphs to represent syllables that begin with a single consonant of their language, plus a vowel (or no vowel) to be supplied by the native speaker. These glyphs were used as pronunciation guides for logograms, to write grammatical inflections, and, later, to transcribe loan words and foreign names.


title: History of communication

text: However, although seemingly alphabetic in nature, the original Egyptian uniliterals were not a system and were never used by themselves to encode Egyptian speech. In the Middle Bronze Age an apparently "alphabetic" system is thought by some to have been developed in central Egypt around 1700 BC for or by Semitic workers, but we cannot read these early writings and their exact nature remains open to interpretation.


title: History of communication

text: Over the next five centuries this Semitic "alphabet" (really a syllabary like Phoenician writing) seems to have spread north. All subsequent alphabets around the world with the sole exception of Korean Hangul have either descended from it, or been inspired by one of its descendants.


title: History of communication

text: Scholars agree that there is a relationship between the West-Semitic alphabet and the creation of the Greek alphabet. There is debate between scholars regarding the earliest uses of the Greek alphabet because of the changes that were made to create the Greek alphabet.


title: History of communication

text: Scholars believe that at one point in time, early Greek scripts were very close to the West-Semitic alphabet. Over time, the changes that were made to the Greek alphabet were introduced as a result of the need for the Greeks to find a better way to express their spoken language in a more accurate way.


title: History of communication

text: Verbal communication is one of the earliest forms of human communication, the oral tradition of storytelling has dated back to various times in history. The development of communication in its oral form can be based on certain historical periods. The complexity of oral communication has always been reflective based on the circumstance of the time period. Verbal communication was never bound to one specific area, instead, it had and continues to be a globally shared tradition of communication. People communicated through song, poems, and chants, as some examples. People would gather in groups and pass down stories, myths, and history. Oral poets from Indo-European regions were known as "weavers of words" for their mastery over the spoken word and ability to tell stories. Nomadic people also had oral traditions that they used to tell stories of the history of their people to pass them on to the next generation.


title: History of communication

text: Nomadic tribes have been the torch bearers of oral storytelling. Nomads of Arabia are one example of the many nomadic tribes that have continued through history to use oral storytelling as a tool to tell their histories and the story of their people. Due to the nature of nomadic life, these individuals were often left without architecture and possessions to call their own, and often left little to no traces of themselves. The richness of the nomadic life and culture is preserved by early Muslim scholars who collect the poems and stories that are handed down from generation to generation. Poems created by these Arabic nomads are passed down by specialists known as sha'ir. These individuals spread the stories and histories of these nomadic tribes, and often in times of war, would strengthen morale within members of given tribes through these stories.


title: History of communication

text: In its natural form, oral communication was, and has continued to be, one of the best ways for humans to spread their message, history, and traditions to the world.


title: History of communication

text: The history of telecommunication - the transmission of signals over a distance for the purpose of communication - began thousands of years ago with the use of smoke signals and drums in Africa, America and parts of Asia. In the 1790s the first fixed semaphore systems emerged in Europe however it was not until the 1830s that electrical telecommunication systems started to appear.


title: Cultural identity

text: Cultural identity is a part of a person's identity, or their self-conception and self-perception, and is related to nationality, ethnicity, religion, social class, generation, locality or any kind of social group that has its own distinct culture. In this way, cultural identity is both characteristic of the individual but also of the culturally identical group of members sharing the same cultural identity or upbringing. Cultural identity is a fluid process that is changed by different social, cultural, and historical experiences. Some people undergo more cultural identity changes as opposed to others, those who change less often have a clear cultural identity. This means that they have a dynamic yet stable integration of their culture.


title: Cultural identity

text: There are three pieces that make up a persons cultural identity, these are cultural knowledge, category label, and social connections. Cultural knowledge is when a person connects to their identity through understanding their culture's core characteristics. Category label is where a person connects with their identity through indirect membership of said culture. Social connects is where a person connects with their pp through social relationships. Cultural identity is developed through a series of steps. First, a person comes to understand a culture through being immersed in those values, beliefs, and practices. Second, the person then identifies as a member of that culture dependent on their rank within that community. Third, they develop relationships such as immediate family, close friends, coworkers, and neighbors.


title: Cultural identity

text: Culture is a term that is highly complex and often contested with academics recording about 160 variations in meaning. Underpinning the notion of culture is that it is dynamic and changes over time and in different contexts resulting in many people today identifying with one or more cultures and many different


title: Cultural identity

text: It is a defining feature of a person’s identity, contributing to how they see themselves and the groups with which they identify. A person’s understanding of their own and other’s identities develops from birth and is shaped by the values and attitudes prevalent at home and in the surrounding community.


title: Cultural identity

text: Various modern cultural studies and social theories have investigated cultural identity and understanding. In recent decades, a new form of identification has emerged that breaks down the understanding of the individual as a coherent whole subject into a collection of various cultural identifiers. These cultural identifiers may be the result of various conditions including: location, sex, race, history, nationality, language, sexuality, religious beliefs, ethnicity, aesthetics, and even food. As one author writes, recognizing both coherence and fragmentation:


title: Cultural identity

text: When talking about identity, we generally define this word as the series of physical features that differentiate a person. Thus at birth, our parents declare us and give us a name with which they will identify us based on whether we are a boy or a girl. Identity is not only a right that declares the name, sex, time, and place that one is born; the word identity goes beyond what we define it. Identity is a function of elements that portrays one in a dynamic way, in constant evolution, throughout the stages of life identity develops based on personal experiences, tastes, and choices of a sexual and religious nature, as well as the social environment, these being some of the main parameters that influence and transform the day to day and allow us to discover a new part of ourselves.


title: Cultural identity

text: The divisions between cultures can be very fine in some parts of the world, especially in rapidly changing cities where the population is ethnically diverse and social unity is based primarily on locational contiguity.


title: Cultural identity

text: As a "historical reservoir," culture is an important factor in shaping identity. Since one of the main characteristics of a culture is its "historical reservoir," many if not all groups entertain revisions, either consciously or unconsciously, in their historical record in order to either bolster the strength of their cultural identity or to forge one which gives them precedent for actual reform or change.


title: Cultural identity

text: Some critics of cultural identity argue that the preservation of cultural identity, being based upon difference, is a divisive force in society and that cosmopolitanism gives individuals a greater sense of shared citizenship. When considering practical association in international society, states may share an inherent part of their 'make up' that gives common ground and an alternative means of identifying with each other. Nations provide the framework for cultural identities called external cultural reality, which influences the unique internal cultural realities of the individuals within the nation.


title: Cultural identity

text: Rather than necessarily representing an individual's interaction within a certain group, cultural identity may be defined by the social network of people imitating and following the social norms as presented by the media. Accordingly, instead of learning behavior and knowledge from cultural/religious groups, individuals may be learning these social norms from the media to build on their cultural identity.


title: Cultural identity

text: A range of cultural complexities structures the way individuals operate with the cultural realities in their lives. Nation is a large factor of the cultural complexity, as it constructs the foundation for an individual's identity but it may contrast with one's cultural reality. Cultural identities are influenced by several different factors such as ones religion, ancestry, skin colour, language, class, education, profession, skill, family and political attitudes. These factors contribute to the development of one's identity.


title: Cultural identity

text: Cultural identity is essentially how we as individuals cater to all positions in our lives. We may be teachers, students, friends, bosses, employees, etc. How we act and how our schemas contribute to our positions are the building blocks of our overall cultural identity.


title: Cultural identity

text: It is also noted that an individual's "cultural arena," or place where one lives, impacts the culture that person abides by. The surroundings, the environment, and the people in these places play a role in how one feels about the culture they wish to adopt. Many immigrants find the need to change their culture in order to fit into the culture of most citizens in the country. This can conflict with an immigrant's current belief in their culture and might pose a problem, as the immigrant feels compelled to choose between the two presenting cultures.


title: Cultural identity

text: Some might be able to adjust to the various cultures in the world by committing to two or more cultures. It is not required to stick to one culture. Many people socialize and interact with people in one culture in addition to another group of people in another culture. Thus cultural identity is able to take many forms and can change depending on the cultural area. The nature of the impact of cultural arena has changed with the advent of the Internet, bringing together groups of people with shared cultural interests who before would have been more likely to integrate into their real world cultural arena. This plasticity is what allows people to feel like part of society wherever they go.


title: Cultural identity

text: Language allows for people in the group to discuss their values, beliefs, and customs, all of which help to create cultural identity. When children lose their languages, they lose part or all of their cultural identity. When students who are non-native English speakers, go to classes where they are required to speak only English, they feel that their native language has no value. Often this leads to loss of their culture and language altogether and this can lead to either a massive change in cultural identity, or they find themselves struggling to understand who they are. Language also includes the way people speak with peers, family members, authority figures, and strangers, including the tone and familiarity that is included in the language. The learning process can also be affected by cultural identity via the understanding of specific words, and the preference for specific words when learning and using a second language. Since many aspects of a person's cultural identity can be changed, such as citizenship or influence from outside cultures can change cultural traditions, language is a main component of cultural identity.


title: Cultural identity

text: Cultural identity is often not discussed in the classroom or learning environment where an instructor presides over the class. This often happens when the instructor attempts to discuss cultural identity and the issues that come with it in the classroom and is met with disagreement and can not make forward progress in the conversation. Moreover, not talking about cultural identity can lead to issues such as prohibiting growth of education, development of a sense of self, and social competency. In these environment there are often many different cultures and problems can occur due to different world-views that prevent others from being able to think outwardly about their peers values and differing backgrounds. If students are able to think outwardly, then they can not only better connect with their peers, but also further develop their own world-view. In addition to this, instructors should take into account the needs of different students' backgrounds in order to best relay the material in a way that engages the student.


title: Cultural identity

text: When students learn that knowledge and truth are relevant to each person, that instructors do not know everything, and that their own personal experiences dictate what they believe they can better contextualize new information using their own experiences as well as taking into account the different cultural experiences of others. This in turn increases the ability to critically think and challenge new information which benefits all students learning in a classroom setting. There are two ways instructors can better elicit this response from their students through active communication of cultural identity. The first is by having students engage in class discussion with their peers. Doing so creates community and allows for students to share their knowledge as well as question their peers and instructors, thereby, learning about each other's cultural identity and creating acceptance of differing world-views in the classroom. The second way is by using active learning methods such as "forming small groups and analyzing case studies". Through engaging in active learning students learn that their cultural identity is welcomed and accepted.


title: Cultural identity

text: Identity development among immigrant groups has been studied across a multi-dimensional view of acculturation. Dina Birman and Edison Trickett (2001) conducted a qualitative study through informal interviews with first-generation Soviet Jewish refugee adolescents looking at the process of acculturation through three different dimensions: language competence, behavioral acculturation, and cultural identity. The results indicated that “acculturation appears to occur in a linear pattern over time for most dimensions of acculturation, with acculturation to the American culture increasing and acculturation to the Russian culture decreasing. However, Russian language competence for the parents did not diminish with length of residence in the country” (Birman & Trickett, 2001).


title: Cultural identity

text: In a similar study, Phinney, Horencyzk, Liebkind, and Vedder (2001) focused on a model, which concentrates on the interaction between immigrant characteristics and the responses of the majority society to understand the psychological effects of immigration. The researchers concluded that most studies find that being bicultural, the combination of a strong ethnic and a strong national identity, yields the best adaptation in the new country of residence. An article by LaFromboise, L. K. Colemna, and Gerton, reviews the literature on the impact of being bicultural. It showed that it is possible to have the ability to obtain competence within two cultures without losing one’s sense of identity or having to identity with one culture over the other. (LaFromboise Et Al. 1993) The importance of ethnic and national identity in the educational adaptation of immigrants indicates that a bicultural orientation is advantageous for school performance (Portes & Rumbaut, 1990). Educators can assume their positions of power in beneficially impactful ways for immigrant students, by providing them with access to their native cultural support groups, classes, afterschool activities, and clubs in order to help them feel more connected to both native and national cultures. It is clear that the new country of residence can impact immigrants’ identity development across multiple dimensions. Biculturalism can allow for a healthy adaptation to life and school. With many new immigrant youth, a school district in Alberta, Canada, has gone as far as to partner with various agencies and professionals in an effort to aid the cultural adjustment of new Filipino immigrant youths. In the study cited, a combination of family workshops and teacher professional development aimed to improve the language learning and emotional development of these youths and families.


title: Cultural identity

text: How great is "Achievement Loss Associated with the Transition to Middle School and High School"? John W. Alspaugh's research is in the September/October 1998 "Journal of Educational Research" (vol. 92, no. 1), 2026. Comparing three groups of 16 school districts, the loss was greater where the transition was from sixth grade than from a K-8 system. It was also greater when students from multiple elementary schools merged into a single middle school. Students from both K-8 and middle schools lost achievement in transition to high school, though this was greater for middle school students, and high school dropout rates were higher for districts with grades 6-8 middle schools than for those with K-8 elementary schools.


title: Cultural identity

text: The Jean S. Phinney Three-Stage Model of Ethnic Identity Development is a widely accepted view of the formation of cultural identity. In this model cultural Identity is often developed through a three-stage process: unexamined cultural identity, cultural identity search, and cultural identity achievement.


title: Cultural identity

text: Unexamined cultural identity: "a stage where one's cultural characteristics are taken for granted, and consequently there is little interest in exploring cultural issues." This for example is the stage one is in throughout their childhood when one doesn't distinguish between cultural characteristics of their household and others. Usually a person in this stage accepts the ideas they find on culture from their parents, the media, community, and others.


title: Cultural identity

text: An example of thought in this stage: "I don't have a culture I'm just an American." "My parents tell me about where they lived, but what do I care? I've never lived there."


title: Cultural identity

text: Cultural identity search: "is the process of exploration and questioning about one's culture in order to learn more about it and to understand the implications of membership in that culture." During this stage a person will begin to question why they hold their beliefs and compare it to the beliefs of other cultures. For some this stage may arise from a turning point in their life or from a growing awareness of other cultures. This stage is characterized by growing awareness in social and political forums and a desire to learn more about culture. This can be expressed by asking family members questions about heritage, visiting museums, reading of relevant cultural sources, enrolling in school courses, or attendance at cultural events. This stage might have an emotional component as well.


title: Cultural identity

text: An example of thought in this stage: "I want to know what we do and how our culture is different from others." "There are a lot of non-Japanese people around me, and it gets pretty confusing to try and decide who I am."


title: Cultural identity

text: Cultural identity achievement: "is characterized by a clear, confident acceptance of oneself and an internalization of one's cultural identity." In this stage people often allow the acceptance of their cultural identity play a role in their future choices such as how to raise children, how to deal with stereotypes and any discrimination and approach negative perceptions. This usually leads to an increase in self-confidence and positive psychological adjustment


title: Cultural identity

text: There is a set of phenomena that occur in conjunction between virtual culture – understood as the modes and norms of behavior associated with the internet and the online world – and youth culture. While we can speak of a duality between the virtual (online) and real sphere (face-to-face relations), for youth, this frontier is implicit and permeable. On occasions – to the annoyance of parents and teachers – these spheres are even superposed, meaning that young people may be in the real world without ceasing to be connected.


title: Cultural identity

text: In the present techno-cultural context, the relationship between the real world and the virtual world cannot be understood as a link between two independent and separate worlds, possibly coinciding at a point, but as a Moebius strip where there exists no inside and outside and where it is impossible to identify limits between both. For new generations, to an ever-greater extent, digital life merges with their home life as yet another element of nature. In this naturalizing of digital life, the learning processes from that environment are frequently mentioned not just since they are explicitly asked but because the subject of the internet comes up spontaneously among those polled. The ideas of active learning, of googling 'when you don’t know', of recourse to tutorials for 'learning' a program or a game, or the expression 'I learnt English better and in a more entertaining way by playing' are examples often cited as to why the internet is the place most frequented by the young people polled.


title: Cultural identity

text: The internet is becoming an extension of the expressive dimension of the youth condition. There, youth talk about their lives and concerns, design the content that they make available to others and assess others' reactions to it in the form of optimized and electronically mediated social approval. Many of today's youth go through processes of affirmation procedures and is often the case for how youth today grow dependent on peer approval. When connected, youth speak of their daily routines and lives. With each post, image or video they upload, they have the possibility of asking themselves who they are and to try out profiles differing from those they assume in the ‘real’ world. The connections they feel in more recent times have become much less interactive through personal means compared to past generations. The influx of new technology and access has created new fields of research on effects on teens and young adults. They thus negotiate their identity and create senses of belonging, putting the acceptance and censure of others to the test, an essential mark of the process of identity construction.


title: Cultural identity

text: Youth ask themselves about what they think of themselves, how they see themselves personally and, especially, how others see them. On the basis of these questions, youth make decisions which, through a long process of trial and error, shape their identity. This experimentation is also a form through which they can think about their insertion, membership and sociability in the ‘real’ world.


title: Cultural identity

text: From other perspectives, the question arises on what impact the internet has had on youth through accessing this sort of ‘identity laboratory’ and what role it plays in the shaping of youth identity. On the one hand, the internet enables young people to explore and perform various roles and personifications while on the other, the virtual forums – some of them highly attractive, vivid and absorbing (e.g. video games or virtual games of personification) – could present a risk to the construction of a stable and viable personal identity.


title: Melanie (singer)

text: Melanie Anne Safka-Schekeryk (born February 3, 1947), professionally known as Melanie or Melanie Safka, is an American singer-songwriter. She is best known for the 1971–72 global hit "Brand New Key", her cover of "Ruby Tuesday", her composition "What Have They Done to My Song Ma", and her 1970 international breakthrough hit "Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)" (inspired by her experience of performing at the 1969 Woodstock music festival).


title: Melanie (singer)

text: Melanie was born and raised in the Astoria neighborhood of Queens, New York City. Her father, Frederick M. Safka (1924–2009), was of Ukrainian and Russian ancestry, and her mother, jazz singer Pauline "Polly" Altomare (1926–2003), was of Italian heritage. Melanie made her first public singing appearance at age four on the radio show "Live Like A Millionaire", performing the song "Gimme a Little Kiss". She moved with her family to Long Branch, New Jersey, and attended Long Branch High School. Bothered by being pegged by her classmates as a "beatnik" in school, she ran away to California and, after her return to New Jersey, transferred to Red Bank Regional High School in Red Bank, New Jersey; she graduated in 1964, though she was blocked from attending her commencement exercise due to an overdue library book.


title: Melanie (singer)

text: In the 1960s, Melanie started performing at The Inkwell, a coffee house in the West End section of Long Branch. After high school, her parents insisted that she go to college, so she studied acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, where she began singing in the folk clubs of Greenwich Village, such as The Bitter End, and signed her first recording contract.


title: Melanie (singer)

text: Initially signed to Columbia Records in the United States, Melanie released two singles on the label. Subsequently, she signed with Buddah Records and first found chart success in Europe in 1969 with "Bobo's Party" which reached No. 1 in France. Melanie's popularity in Europe resulted in performances on European television programs, such as "Beat-Club" in West Germany. Her debut album received positive reviews from "Billboard", which heralded her voice as "wise beyond her years. Her non-conformist approach to the selections on this LP make her a new talent to be reckoned with".


title: Melanie (singer)

text: Later in 1969, Melanie had a hit in the Netherlands with "Beautiful People". She was one of only three solo women who performed at the Woodstock festival in 1969 and the inspiration for her first hit song, "Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)", apparently arose from the Woodstock audience lighting candles during her set (although most of the "candles" were actually matches or lighters). The recording became a hit in Europe, Australia, Canada, and the United States in 1970. The B-side of the single featured Melanie's spoken-word track "Candles in the Rain". "Lay Down" became Melanie's first top ten hit in America, peaking at No. 6 on the "Billboard" singles chart and achieving worldwide success. Later hits included "Peace Will Come (According To Plan)" and a cover of the Rolling Stones' "Ruby Tuesday".


title: Melanie (singer)

text: In 1970, Melanie was the only artist to ignore the court injunction banning the Powder Ridge Rock Festival scheduled to be held on July 31, August 1 and 2, 1970. She played for the crowd on a homemade stage powered by Mister Softee trucks. Shortly following this performance, she played at the Strawberry Fields Festival held from August 7 to 9, 1970, at Mosport Park, Ontario. She also performed at the Isle of Wight Festival held between August 26 and 30, 1970, at Afton Down, where she was introduced by Keith Moon and received four standing ovations (she also appeared at the 2010 Isle of Wight festival). She was also the artist who sang to herald in the summer solstice at Glastonbury Fayre (later the Glastonbury Festival) in England, in June 1971. She performed again at Glastonbury in 2011, the 40th anniversary of the original festival.


title: Melanie (singer)

text: Melanie left Buddah Records when they insisted that she produce albums on demand. In 1971, she formed her own label, Neighborhood Records, with Peter Schekeryk who was also her producer and husband. She had her biggest American hit on the Neighborhood label, the novelty-sounding 1972 number one "Brand New Key" (often referred to as "The Roller Skate Song"). "Brand New Key" sold over three million copies worldwide and was featured in the 1997 movie "Boogie Nights".


title: Melanie (singer)

text: When first released, "Brand New Key" was banned by some radio stations because some heard sexual innuendo in the lyrics. Melanie has acknowledged the possibility of reading an unintended sexual innuendo in the song, stating, "I wrote ["Brand New Key"] in about fifteen minutes one night. I thought it was cute; a kind of old thirties tune. I guess a key and a lock have always been Freudian symbols, and pretty obvious ones at that. There was no deep serious expression behind the song, but people read things into it. They made up incredible stories as to what the lyrics said and what the song meant. In some places, it was even banned from the radio ... My idea about songs is that once you write them, you have very little say in their life afterward ... People will take it any way they want to take it."


title: Melanie (singer)

text: In a 2013 interview with music journalist Ray Shasho, Melanie revealed the true origin of "Brand New Key":


title: Melanie (singer)

text: Of course I can see it symbolically with the key, but I just thought of roller skating. I was fasting with a twenty seven-day fast on water. I broke the fast and went back to my life living in New Jersey and we were going to a flea market around six in the morning. On the way back ... and I had just broken the fast, from the flea market, we passed a McDonalds and the aroma hit me, and I had been a vegetarian before the fast. So we pulled into the McDonalds and I got the whole works ... the burger, the shake and the fries ... and no sooner after I finished that last bite of my burger ... that song was in my head. The aroma brought back memories of roller skating and learning to ride a bike and the vision of my dad holding the back fender of the tire. And me saying to my dad ... "You're holding, you're holding, you’re holding, right?" Then I'd look back and he wasn't holding and I'd fall. So that whole thing came back to me and came out in this song. So it was not a deliberate or intentional sexual innuendo.


title: Melanie (singer)

text: The follow-up single to "Brand New Key" was "Ring the Living Bell". To compete with this release, Melanie's former record company released "The Nickel Song", which she had recorded while still signed to Buddah Records. Both songs were simultaneous top-40 hits while "Brand New Key" was still on the charts – setting a record for the first female performer to have three top-40 hits concurrently.


title: Melanie (singer)

text: She was awarded "Billboard"s No. 1 Top Female Vocalist award for 1972. She has been awarded two gold albums (and a gold single for "Brand New Key"), and three of her compositions were hits for The New Seekers. She is also well known for her musical adaptations of children's songs, including "Alexander Beetle" and "Christopher Robin". When she became an official UNICEF ambassador in 1972, she agreed to forego a world tour in favor of raising money for the organization.


title: Melanie (singer)

text: Melanie had another top-40 hit single in 1973 with "Bitter Bad", a song that marked a slight departure from the hippie sentiments of earlier hits (with lyrics such as "If you do me wrong I'll put your first and last name in my rock n' roll song"). Other chart hits during this period were the self-penned "Together Alone" and a cover of "Will You Love Me Tomorrow". In 1973, Melanie started to retreat from the spotlight to begin a family.


title: Melanie (singer)

text: In 1976, Melanie released one album on Atlantic Records, "Photograph", which was overseen by Ahmet Ertegun. The album was praised by "The New York Times" as one of the year's best, although it was largely ignored by the public. It was re-issued on CD in 2005 with an additional disc of unreleased material.


title: Melanie (singer)

text: Also in 1976, Melanie appeared at the tribute concert for Phil Ochs, who had committed suicide on April 9 that year. Held on May 28 at New York City's Felt Forum, Melanie performed an emotional version of Ochs' song "Chords of Fame". She had also appeared with Ochs on stage in 1974 at his Evening with Salvador Allende concert (also held at the Felt Forum), along with Dave Van Ronk, Arlo Guthrie, Bob Dylan and others.


title: Melanie (singer)

text: In 1983, Melanie wrote the music and lyrics for a theatrical musical, "Ace of Diamonds", with a book by Ed Kelleher and Seymour Vall, based on a series of letters written by Annie Oakley. Though never fully produced, several staged readings were performed at the Lincoln Center starring Melanie as the narrator and pop singer and actress Annie Golden as Oakley.


title: Melanie (singer)

text: In 1989, Melanie won an Emmy Award for writing the lyrics to "The First Time I Loved Forever", the theme song for the TV series "Beauty and the Beast". With one exception, her albums were produced by her husband, Peter Schekeryk, who died suddenly in 2010. Her three children – Leilah, Jeordie and Beau-Jarred – are also musicians. Beau-Jarred is a guitarist and accompanies his mother on tour.


title: Melanie (singer)

text: One of Melanie's later albums, "Paled By Dimmer Light" (2004), was co-produced by Peter and Beau-Jarred Schekeryk and includes the songs "To Be The One", "Extraordinary", "Make It Work" and "I Tried To Die Young". In early 2005 most of Melanie's back-catalog was re-released on the internet-only music label ItsAboutMusic.com. After a series of disagreements, the relationship between the artist and the label was severed.


title: Melanie (singer)

text: In 2007, Melanie was invited by Jarvis Cocker to perform at the Meltdown Festival at the Royal Festival Hall in London. Her sold-out performance received critical acclaim, with "The Independent" saying, "it was hard to disagree that Melanie has earned her place alongside Joan Baez, Judy Collins, Joni Mitchell and Marianne Faithfull in the pantheon of iconic female singers. Meltdown was all the better for her presence." The concert was filmed for a DVD titled "Melanie: For One Night Only", which was released in October 2007. She recorded "Psychotherapy", sung to the tune of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic", which parodies aspects of Freudian psychoanalysis. It has been played on "The Dr. Demento Show". In 2012, Melanie headlined at the 15th annual Woody Guthrie Folk Festival, along with Arlo Guthrie and Judy Collins. The festival is held annually in mid-July to celebrate the life and music of legendary singer-songwriter and folk musician Woody Guthrie.


title: Melanie (singer)

text: In October 2012, Melanie collaborated with John Haldoupis, the artistic and managing director of Blackfriars Theatre in Rochester, New York, to create an original musical about her love story with her late husband, Peter. "Melanie and the Record Man" made its world premiere on October 19, with performances scheduled until October 28. The musical, conceived and designed by Haldoupis, features the music of Melanie and tells the story of her meeting Peter, falling in love, and working together to produce her music. Melanie performed during the musical and was also the narrator. In June 2014, she toured Australia for the first time since 1977.


title: Melanie (singer)

text: In April 2015, Melanie was inducted into Red Bank Regional's "Distinguished Alumni Hall of Fame". Melanie received the Sandy Hosey Lifetime Achievement Award at the Artists Music Guild's 2015 AMG Heritage Awards on November 14, 2015, in Monroe, North Carolina.


title: Melanie (singer)

text: Melanie married record producer Peter Schekeryk in 1968. They had three children: daughter Leilah was born on October 3, 1973; daughter Jeordie on March 27, 1975; and son Beau Jarred on September 11, 1980. Leilah and Jeordie, when aged 7 and 6, released a cover of "There's No One Quite Like Grandma" that charted in Canada, reaching No. 27. Peter died in 2010. Melanie was a vegetarian in the early 1970s; she also practiced fasting.


title: Melanie (singer)

text: Melanie identifies herself politically as a Libertarian, stating: "I'm a total Libertarian, and I am not a Democrat, a Socialist, or a Republican." For a time, at the beginning of her career, Melanie was a follower of Meher Baba and this influenced some of her songs (such as "Love to Lose Again" and "Candles in the Rain"). She has stated that, in 2006, she underwent a life-altering experience with Mata Amritanandamayi or "Amma" ("Mother") as she is also known, or as the "hugging saint" from India, which inspired Melanie to write "Motherhood of Love". Melanie resides in Nashville, Tennessee.


title: Melanie (singer)

text: In 1971, Mott the Hoople released a version of the song on their "Wildlife" album. Vicky Leandros recorded it in German and English in 1972. In 1994, the Philadelphia indie rock band the Strapping Fieldhands recorded a three-track "no-fi" version of the song (as well as a reprise that closes the album) for the EP "In The Pineys". Australian singer Max Sharam's 1995 recording reached the top 40 on the Australian singles charts. Ké included a cover of the song on his 1996 debut album, "I Am". In 1999, Meredith Brooks' released a version on her album "Deconstruction" which included backing vocals by Queen Latifah. In 2010, Emiliana Torrini recorded a rendition on the compilation album "Stone Free". Beth Sorrentino recorded a cover on her 2011 album, "Hiding Out". Greta Van Fleet plays a cover of the song during their live shows. Allison Crowe also recorded a version and released it on YouTube.


title: Melanie (singer)

text: In 1975, Brendan Grace in Ireland covered "Brand New Key" with substantially rewritten lyrics as "The Combine Harvester". The next year, it was covered by Scrumpy and Western band the Wurzels in the UK, where it reached number one on the UK Singles Chart and stayed there for two weeks. Macy Gray, Dolly Parton, and Cher have all performed "Brand New Key" in concert (the last on "The Sonny and Cher Show"). Country singer Deana Carter covered the song on her 1999 top-10 album "Everything's Gonna Be Alright". The cellist band Rasputina had a version on the album "Thanks for the Ether". Todd Rundgren played a cover on his 2018 tour. On August 1, 2018, at Daryl's House Club in Pawling, New York, Melanie joined Rundgren onstage to sing "Brand New Key".


title: Melanie (singer)

text: A female-fronted punk trio, the Dollyrots, included a version on their album "Because I'm Awesome". The 2006 "American Idol" runner-up, Katharine McPhee, covered the song as the bonus track on her 2010 "Unbroken" album. Olivia Newton-John covered the song on the soundtrack album for the film "A Few Best Men" in 2012. Jessica Frech covered the song on her 2012 "Reality" album. The New York-based singer Jaymay covered the song in 2013. In 2013, the cover of the song by "The Voice" contestant Kaity Dunstan hit No. 40 on the Australian ARIA Charts. Ray Conniff & The Singers did a cover version on their album "I'd Like To Teach The World (In Perfect Harmony)" album in 1971. Maddie Poppe covered it in the top-24 stage of "American Idol" season 1 on ABC and later went on to win. The Wiggles covered it on their 2022 album "Rewiggled".


title: Melanie (singer)

text: Daliah Lavi recorded a successful German version of the song in 1971, and Ray Charles released a cover (as "Look What They've Done to My Song, Ma") in 1972 which reached No. 65 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 25 on the R&B charts. The song has also been covered by many other artists, including Nina Simone, the New Seekers, Dalida, and Billie Jo Spears. Claudine Longet recorded a version on her 1971 album, "We've Only Just Begun". Czechoslovakian singer Helena Vondráčková recorded it in 1971 as "Kam zmizel ten starý song" with Czech lyrics by Zdeněk Borovec. Yugoslav rock band Bajaga i Instruktori released a cover of it with lyrics in Serbian, called ""Vidi šta sam ti uradio od pesme, mama"". Ray Conniff & The Singers did a cover version on their album "We've Only Just Begun" in 1970. Lawrence Welk covered the track on his 1970 album, "Candida". Jack Wild also covered the song on his 1971 record, "Everything's Coming Up Roses".


title: Melanie (singer)

text: In 1985. It was used in the 1970s as a commercial for Lifebuoy soap ("Look what they've done to my Lifebuoy"), and in the 1980s as a commercial jingle for Ramada Inn (as "Look what they've done to Ramada") and for Oatmeal Crisp cereal (as "Look what they've done to my oatmeal"). In October 2012, Miley Cyrus released a video of her own acoustic version of the song as part of her Backyard Sessions series. In 2015, Melanie joined her to duet on the song in addition to "Peace Will Come (According to Plan)".


title: Melanie (singer)

text: The Tokens recorded a cover on their 1970 album, "Both Sides Now". The Dutch singer Mathilde Santing had a gold record and the first Top 10 hit version of "Beautiful People" in 1997. Die Goldenen Zitronen covered the song on their 2009 album "Die Entstehung der Nacht". Sandra Bernhard covered the song on her "I Love Being Me, Don't You?" live album. Eve Graham recorded a cover on her 2005 album, "The Mountains Welcome Me Home".


title: Melanie (singer)

text: Tammy Grimes recorded the song as the b-side to her 1969 single "Father O'Conner". The track has also been covered by Swedish singers Lill Lindfors and Monica Törnell. Emiliana Torrini covered "I Really Loved Harold" on her 1996 "Merman" album. She has also recorded a version of "Lay Down".


title: Melanie (singer)

text: Nana Mouskouri recorded a French version of the song, entitled "Que je sois un ange", for her 1974 album of the same name. Will Oldham and Tortoise covered it on their 2006 covers album "The Brave and the Bold". Morrissey covered it on his May 2019 covers album "California Son". Peter Evrard, winner of Idool 2003, recorded a version on his debut album, "Rhubarb".


title: Melanie (singer)

text: The New Seekers covered several Melanie songs, and also charted in the United States with "Beautiful People" (No. 67), "Look What They've Done to My Song Ma" (No. 14) and "Nickel Song" (No. 81). The latter track was also covered by Nana Mouskouri, in English, released on her "Live at the Albert Hall" double album in the early 1970s. There is also a German version of this by Lena Valaitis called "Ob es so oder so oder anders kommt" which was released in 1971.


title: Melanie (singer)

text: Cissy Houston recorded Melanie's "Any Guy" for her debut album "Presenting Cissy Houston" in 1970. Della Reese recovered a cover of "Leftover Wine" on her 1970 album, "Right Now". Dion covered "Close To It All" on his 1971 "You're Not Alone" album. Claudine Longet recorded a version of "Peace Will Come (According to Plan) on her 1971 album, "We've Only Just Begun". Roger Kellaway covered "Centre of the Circle" on the 1972 album of the same name. An 11-year-old Björk sang "Christopher Robin" in Icelandic on her debut album, "Björk".


title: Melanie (singer)

text: Kiki & Herb opened their live album "" with "Close To It All" and also covered "Tonight's the Kind of Night" in the same show. A studio version of the latter song also appeared on their album "Do You Hear What We Hear?" and they also appeared in the 2004 film "Imaginary Heroes" singing the same track. Alison Moyet performed "Momma, Momma" on her 2005 live DVD "One Blue Voice" and as the B-side to her 2007 single "One More Time". "Cyclone" was covered by Ex Norwegian on their 2015 album, "Pure Gold". "I Tried To Die Young" was covered by Jessica Frech on her 2012 album, "Reality" (featuring guest vocals by Melanie) and by Italian pop-punk band The Manges on their 2014 album, "All Is Well". "Again" was covered by Amanda Palmer on her 2016 album "You Got Me Singing". Ezra Furman covered "The Good Book" for the 2016 album "Songs by Others" and the soundtrack to the Netflix series "Sex Education" in 2020.


title: Melanie (singer)

text: The 2003 Australian hip-hop track "The Nosebleed Section" by the Hilltop Hoods sampled "People in the Front Row" which was certified 6 x Platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association. Hip-hop producer and co-owner of Don't Sleep Records, Phoniks sampled Melanie's "Do You Believe?" on his Wu-Tang Clan remix "Back in the Game" amassing almost 80 million views on YouTube proving more popular than both of the original tracks. In 2004, Kanye West sampled Melanie's "In the Hour" on a track entitled "Livin' in a Movie".


title: 24 Hours of Daytona

text: The 24 Hours of Daytona, also known as the Rolex 24 At Daytona for sponsorship reasons, is a 24-hour sports car endurance race held annually at Daytona International Speedway in Daytona Beach, Florida. It is run on the Sports Car Course layout, a combined road course that uses most of the tri-oval plus an infield road course. Held on the last weekend of January or first weekend of February as part of Speedweeks, it is the first major automobile race of the year in North America. The race is sanctioned by IMSA and is the first race of the season for the IMSA SportsCar Championship.


title: 24 Hours of Daytona

text: The race has borne the names of several sponsors over the years. Since 1992, the Rolex Watch Company has been the title sponsor of the race, replacing Sunbank, which replaced Pepsi in 1984. Winning drivers of all classes receive a Rolex Daytona watch.


title: 24 Hours of Daytona

text: Shortly after the track opened, on April 5, 1959, a six-hour/1000 kilometer USAC-FIA sports car race was held on the road course. Count Antonio Von Dory and Roberto Mieres won the race in a Porsche, shortened to 560.07 miles due to darkness. The race used a 3.81-mile layout, running counter-clockwise.


title: 24 Hours of Daytona

text: In 1962, a few years after the track was built, a 3-hour sports car race was introduced. Known as the Daytona Continental, it counted towards the FIA's new International Championship for GT Manufacturers. The first Continental was won by Dan Gurney, driving a 2.7L Coventry Climax-powered Lotus 19. Gurney was a factory Porsche driver at the time, but the 1600-cc Porsche 718 was considered too small and slow for what amounted to a sprint race on a very fast course.


title: 24 Hours of Daytona

text: In the past, a car had to cross the finish line after 24 hours to be classified, which led to dramatic scenes where damaged cars waited in the pits or on the edge of the track close to the finish line for hours, then restarted their engines and crawled across the finish line one last time in order to finish after the 24 hours and be listed with a finishing distance, rather than dismissed with DNF (Did Not Finish). This was the case in the initial 1962 Daytona Continental (then 3 hours), in which Dan Gurney's Lotus 19 had established a lengthy lead when the engine failed with just minutes remaining. Gurney stopped the car at the top of the banking, just short of the finish line. When the three hours had elapsed, Gurney simply cranked the steering wheel to the left (toward the bottom of the banking) and let gravity pull the car across the line, to not only salvage a finishing position, but actually win the race. This led to the international rule requiring a car to cross the line under its own power in order to be classified.


title: 24 Hours of Daytona

text: In 1964, the event was expanded to , doubling the classic 1000 km distance of races at Nürburgring, Spa and Monza. The distance amounted to roughly half of the distance the 24 Hours of Le Mans winners covered at the time, and was similar in length to the 12 Hours of Sebring, which was also held in Florida in March. Starting in 1966, the Daytona race was extended to the same 24-hour length as Le Mans.


title: 24 Hours of Daytona

text: The first 24 Hour event in 1966 was won by Ken Miles and Lloyd Ruby driving a Ford Mk. II. "Motor Sport" reported: "For their first 24-hour race the basic organization was good, but the various officials in many cases were out of touch, childish and lacked the professional touch which one now finds at Watkins Glen."


title: 24 Hours of Daytona

text: 1966 also saw Suzy Dietrich enter the 24 Hours event, driving a Sunbeam Alpine with Janet Guthrie and Donna Mae Mims. The trio finished 32nd and, along with another women's team in the race, became the first women's teams to finish an international-standard 24-hour race.


title: 24 Hours of Daytona

text: After having lost in 1966 at Daytona, Sebring and Le Mans to the Fords, the Ferrari P series prototypes staged a 1–2–3 side-by-side parade finish at the banked finish line in 1967. The Ferrari 365 GTB/4 road car was given the unofficial name "Ferrari Daytona" in celebration of this victory.


title: 24 Hours of Daytona

text: Porsche repeated this show in their 1–2–3 win in the 1968 24 Hours. After the car of Gerhard Mitter had a big crash caused by tire failure in the banking, his teammate Rolf Stommelen supported the car of Vic Elford and Jochen Neerpasch. When the car of the longtime leaders Jo Siffert and Hans Herrmann dropped to second due to a technical problem, these two also joined the new leaders while continuing with their car. So Porsche managed to put 5 of 8 drivers on the center of the podium, plus Jo Schlesser and Joe Buzzetta finishing in third place, with only Mitter being left out.


title: 24 Hours of Daytona

text: Lola finished 1–2 in the 1969 24 Hours of Daytona. The winning car was the Penske Lola T70-Chevrolet of Mark Donohue and Chuck Parsons. Few spectators witnessed the achievement as "Motor Sport" reported: "The Daytona 24-Hour race draws a very small crowd, as can be seen from the empty stands in the background."


title: 24 Hours of Daytona

text: 1970 saw the race with drivers strapped into their cars, and at the start, drove away. Since 1971, races begin with rolling starts.


title: 24 Hours of Daytona

text: In 1972, because of an FIA rule, the race was shortened to six hours, while the energy crisis led to the cancellation altogether in 1974. The Sports Car Club of America sanctioning was replaced by the International Motor Sports Association in 1975.


title: 24 Hours of Daytona

text: In 2014, the race saw a dramatic crash involving Memo Gidley who was driving the pole-sitter DP and Matteo Malucelli, an amateur driver in a Ferrari 458 of the GTD category that has never won a race in North American Endurance. At the time of the impact, Malucelli was driving at less than 30 mph and keeping on the track while cars were passing him at 150 mph. Memo, who was side by side to another car couldn't have seen him and impacted front first. The race was subsequently red-flagged. Both drivers survived.


title: 24 Hours of Daytona

text: The regular teams were expanded to three drivers in the 1970s. Nowadays, four drivers compete typically because of the longer night driving. In the professional-based DPi Prototype and ACO GTE classes, all four drivers are usually professionals. In the ACO LMP2 and SRO Group GT3-based classes, many of these additional drivers are known as "amateur drivers," under current FIA specifications. Amateur drivers are sportsman drivers that have built a career in a non-motorsport related occupation. These type of drivers are typically eligible for IMSA's Jim Trueman and Bob Akin awards, awarded to the top driver who is not a professional at the end of season. These amateur drivers or overage professional drivers (FIA Silver or Bronze are typically for amateur drivers but professional drivers over 55 are automatically classified at this level) are required in the car for a specific number of hours. Most often, the fourth driver in all classes is a Daytona-only professional driver of renown that most often has won a major professional championship, such as Scott Dixon, Jeff Gordon, Fernando Alonso, Shane van Gisbergen and Kyle Busch.


title: 24 Hours of Daytona

text: Unlike the Le Mans event, the Daytona race is conducted entirely over a closed course within the speedway arena without the use of any public streets. Most parts of the steep banking are included, interrupted with a chicane on the back straight and a sweeping, fast infield section which includes two hairpins. Unlike Le Mans, the race is held in wintertime, when nights are at their longest. There are lights installed around the circuit for night racing, although the infield section is still not as well-lit as the main oval. However, the stadium lights are turned on only to a level of 20%, similar to the stadium lighting setup at Le Mans, with brighter lights around the pit straight, and decent lighting similar to street lights around the circuit.


title: 24 Hours of Daytona

text: After several ownership changes at IMSA which changed the direction the organization followed, it was decided by the 1990s that the Daytona event would align with the Grand-Am series, a competitor of the American Le Mans Series, which, as its name implies, uses the same regulations as the Le Mans Series and the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The Grand Am series, though, is instead closely linked to NASCAR and the original ideas of IMSA and focused on controlled costs and close competition.


title: 24 Hours of Daytona

text: In order to make sports car racing less expensive than elsewhere, new rules were introduced in 2002. The dedicated Daytona Prototypes (DP) use less expensive materials and technologies and the car's simple aerodynamics reduce the development and testing costs. The DPs began racing in 2003 with six cars in the race.


title: 24 Hours of Daytona

text: Specialist chassis makers like Riley, Dallara, and Lola provide the DP cars for the teams and the engines are branded under the names of major car companies like Cadillac, Lexus, Ford, BMW, and Porsche.


title: 24 Hours of Daytona

text: 2017 saw the introduction of the DPi prototypes, these cars were based on LMP2 chassis with a custom engine and bodywork from a major manufacturer


title: 24 Hours of Daytona

text: For 2023, the race will adopt the LMDh prototype specification, although Le Mans Hypercars will also be permitted. The series will also return to the Grand Touring Prototype name from the 1980's.


title: 24 Hours of Daytona

text: The Gran Turismo class cars at Daytona are closer to the road versions, similar to the GT3 class elsewhere. For example, the more standard Cup version of the Porsche 996 is used, instead of the usual RS/RSR racing versions. Recent Daytona entries also include BMW M3s and M6s, Porsche 911s, Chevy Camaros and Corvettes, Mazda RX-8s, Pontiac GTO.Rs, and Ferrari F430 Challenges. The Audi R8 and the Ferrari 458 Italia debuted in the 50th anniversary of the race in 2012.


title: 24 Hours of Daytona

text: From the era of the IMSA GTO and GTU until the 2015 rule changes, spaceframe cars clad in lookalike body panels to compete in GT (the new BMW M6, Chevrolet Camaro, and Mazda RX-8). These rules are similar to the old GTO specification, but with more restrictions. The intent of spaceframe cars is to allow teams to save money, especially after crashes, where teams can rebuild the cars for the next race at a much lower cost, or even redevelop cars, instead of having to write off an entire car after a crash or at the end of a year.


title: 24 Hours of Daytona

text: Starting in 2014 the GT Daytona class was restricted exclusively to Group GT3 cars. Alongside this came the GTLM class, using LM GTE cars, similar to the WEC. In 2022 the GTLM class was replaced by GTD Pro, using the same cars as GTD. A single GTLM car, the Corvette C8.R, was also permitted to compete in the class with its performance adjusted to the GTD cars.


title: 24 Hours of Daytona

text: The 2013 race was the first and only year for the GX class. Six cars started in the event. The class consisted of purpose built production Porsche Cayman S and Mazda 6 racecars. Mazda debuted their first diesel racecar there which is the first time a diesel fuel racecar ever started at the Daytona 24. Throughout the race the Caymans were dominant, while all three Mazdas suffered premature engine failure and retired from the race. By a 9 lap lead, the #16 Napleton Porsche Cayman, driven by David Donohue, was the GX winner.


title: 24 Hours of Daytona

text: Porsche has the most overall victories of any manufacturer with 22, scored by various models, including the road based 911, 935 and 996. Porsche also won a record 11 consecutive races from 1977 to 1987 and won 18 out of 23 races from 1968 to 1991.


title: 24 Hours of Daytona

text: In addition to their 18 wins as both car and engine manufacturers, Porsche has four wins solely as an engine manufacturer, in 1984, 1995, and two in the Daytona Prototype era in 2009 and 2010.


title: Kevin Trudeau

text: Kevin Mark Trudeau (; born February 6, 1963) is an American author, salesman, and convicted fraudster known for promotion of his books and resulting legal cases involving the US Federal Trade Commission. His ubiquitous late-night infomercials, which promoted unsubstantiated health, diet, and financial advice, earned him a fortune but resulted in civil and criminal penalties for fraud, larceny, and contempt of court.


title: Kevin Trudeau

text: In the early 1990s, Trudeau was convicted of larceny and credit card fraud. In 2007, he was accused of grossly misrepresenting the contents of his book, "The Weight-Loss Cure "They" Don't Want You to Know About". In a 2004 settlement, he agreed to pay a $500,000 fine and cease marketing all products except his books, which are protected under the First Amendment. However, in 2011, he was fined $37.6 million for violating the 2004 settlement, and ordered to post a $2 million bond before engaging in any future infomercial advertising.


title: Kevin Trudeau

text: In 2013, facing further prosecution for violations of the 2011 agreement and non-payment of the $37 million judgment, Trudeau filed for bankruptcy protection. His claims of insolvency were challenged by FTC lawyers, who maintained that he was hiding money in shell companies, and cited examples of continued lavish spending, such as $359 for a haircut.


title: Kevin Trudeau

text: In November 2013, Trudeau was convicted of criminal contempt, and was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison. The Federal Bureau of Prisons Inmate Locator indicates that Trudeau left federal custody on January 18, 2022.


title: Kevin Trudeau

text: The Chicago Tribune reported in April 2014 that infomercials starring Trudeau and promoting his books continued to air regularly on United States television stations even though he was in jail at the time.


title: Kevin Trudeau

text: Trudeau grew up in Lynn, Massachusetts, the adopted son of Robert and Mary Trudeau. He attended St. Mary's High School in Lynn, where he was voted "Most Likely to Succeed" by the class of 1981.


title: Kevin Trudeau

text: After high school Trudeau became a used car salesman, then joined the seminar circuit, selling memory improvement techniques. In 1990 he pleaded guilty to depositing $80,000 in worthless checks and impersonating a physician, but served, he said, fewer than 30 days. In 1991, he pleaded guilty to 11 counts of credit card fraud and spent two years in federal prison.


title: Kevin Trudeau

text: After his release in 1993, Trudeau joined a multi-level marketing firm, Nutrition for Life. The firm was successful until the Attorney General of Illinois charged that it was running a pyramid scheme. Trudeau and Nutrition for Life settled cases brought by the state of Illinois, and seven other U.S. states, for US$185,000.