Breeches roles are usually female singers acting the role of a young man. They are normally sung by mezzo-sopranos or contraltos with light voices because they can often sound boyish. In the 17th and 18th centuries it was normal to have actors and actresses who cross-dressed. It was the time when castrato singers were popular. These castrati were men pretending to be women, but there were also women pretending to be men (especially when the actress was trying to deceive another character) and the audiences were used to this kind of thing. As they gradually stopped the horrible practice of castrating young boys in the late 18th century these male characters started to be sung by mezzo-sopranos instead.
Mozart wrote an opera called "The Marriage of Figaro". In this opera the role of Cherubino, a young page boy, is sung by a mezzo-soprano. Other famous examples include the role of Siebel in Dvořák’s opera "Rusalka" and the role of Prince Orlofsky in Johann Strauss’s opera "Die Fledermaus".
Composers from the 20th century do not usually have breeches roles in their operas. There is the role of Oktavian in Richard Strauss’s opera "Der Rosenkavalier" (1911), but this opera was deliberately trying to produce the old-fashioned atmosphere of Mozart’s time. Benjamin Britten wrote an opera called "Midsummer Night’s Dream", based on Shakespeare’s play. There is no breeches role here. Instead, the part of Oberon is written for a countertenor: a man with a high, falsetto voice.
There is also a term called a skirt role. This is the opposite of a trouser role: it is a man acting the part of a woman. Benjamin Britten uses one in the role of the Madwoman in "Curlew River". The witch in Humperdinck’s "Hansel and Gretel" is also sung by a man. In both cases it makes the characters more dramatic, but the first is very serious while the second is supposed to be humorous.
Treble (singer)
The word treble is used, especially in British English, to mean the singing voice of a boy or girl. Often it is called boy soprano, but since there are also many girls who sing in cathedral and church choirs these days, the word treble is now used to describe the voice of either sex.
A boy can sing treble until he reaches puberty. At puberty he starts to become a man and his voice range will go down (we say that his voice “breaks”). He will then become a tenor, baritone or bass, or he may even train to be a countertenor. A girl’s voice also changes when she reaches puberty, but the change into a grown-up female voice is more gradual than with a boy, and it is still within the soprano or alto range.
Boys who join a cathedral choir or the choir of a large church will have to work hard to develop their voice and learn to sing musically. They often start this training aged 7 or 8, and they may only have four or five years before their voice starts to break. They do not usually become famous as soloists, but the Welsh treble Aled Jones became very famous for about three years and made many recordings before his voice broke in 1987.
The word ‘treble’ is used for children singing in a Classical Music style, especially church music. Although children do not usually sing in opera, occasionally a treble is used for the part of a very small boy, e.g. in Debussy’s opera "Pélléas et Mélisande".
Claque
A claque (pronounce: ‘clack’) is a small group of people in an opera house who deliberately either clapped loudly (applauded) or shouted boo for a particular singer. Usually it means an "organised" group who know in advance what they are going to do.
In the 19th century there was very often a claque at performances of an opera. Someone who liked one of the singers and wanted them to have lots of applause would pay a group of people to sit near the back of the opera house and to clap and shout enthusiastically whenever that singer had finished a song. This would encourage the rest of the audience to clap loudly too. Sometimes the claque would be paid to do the opposite: they would be told to hiss and boo when the singer had sung.
Very often a singer would have to pay some money to the claque so that they would applaud him (or her). If the singer did not pay, the claque would hiss and boo. This was, of course, a nasty form of blackmail. In the early 20th century, when the world-famous tenor Enrico Caruso refused to pay the claque in Naples a bribe, they hissed during his singing of the great aria "Una furtiva lagrima".
Groups of supporters at football ('soccer') matches do much the same thing without being paid. Abuse of match officials is also quite common. Abuse between rival groups of fans is also common. Clubs are required to keep away fans in different sections from home fans.
Leech
Leeches are annelids, a kind of worm (ground creature) that lives in wet places. All leeches are carnivorous, that is, they eat mainly meat, but some are also haemophagic; this means they drink the blood of other animals. They are sometimes helpful in medicine. They are often used to reduce blood clots. They were used to suck the blood of patients a long time ago, before we knew about germs and that losing blood is bad for health.
Glycoprotein
A glycoprotein is a big molecule. It is composed of a protein and a carbohydrate (which is usually a sugar-like substance). Glycoproteins are important to recognise immune cells in mammals.
Well-known glycoproteins are:
Hormones that are glycoproteins are (amongst others)
Tissue culture
Tissue culture or cell culture is a way to grow cells in a laboratory. Cells are taken, and put into in a flask or Petri dish. They can be grown on a growth medium, sometimes an agar plate. The cells divide, and can be treated in various ways. This is done for a number of purposes, especially for the use of scientific research:
Chemotherapy
Chemotherapy, or 'chemo', is the use of chemical substances to treat diseases. The word "chemotherapy" is often used for a type of medicine used to treat cancer. The drugs are cytotoxic, which means they are toxic to the body's cells.
There are many types of chemotherapy. and doctors chose the medication that will treat each types of cancer in the best way. Often, chemotherapy drugs are combined with each other and with other drugs when a person is treated for cancer.
When a person has surgery to remove a tumor, chemotherapy may be given before or after.
Chemotherapy can also be used to treat other diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis.
Chemotherapy often has bad side effects:
Typhoid
Typhoid, or typhoid fever, is an illness caused by the bacterium "Salmonella enterica" subspecies "enterica". Symptoms may vary from mild to severe, and usually begin 6 to 30 days after exposure. The disease is spread by water which has the bacteria in it.
Typhi is spread through from what is called the "fecaloral route". The source is people who are infected but have no symptoms. An asymptomatic human carrier is an individual who is still excreting typhoid bacteria in their stool a year after the acute stage of the infection.
Typhoid usually lasts between two weeks and a month. The symptoms of typhoid often appear 10 to 14 days after infection. If no treatment is given, between one and three out of every ten patients die. The rest usually get better after a month, at the most.
Typhoid causes a steady fever of at least 103–104 degrees F (39–40 degrees C). Also, it can cause stomach pains, headache, being delirious (restless, excited, seeing things), and not being hungry. In some cases, flat, pink coloured spots show up on the patient's body. Sometimes there are no symptoms.