Metastasio was born in Rome in 1698. His real name was Antonio Domenico Bonaventura Trapassi. His father came from Assisi, a city in the Umbria region of Italy. His mother came from Bologna. Metastasio's father, Felice Trapasso, was a soldier in the Pope's army. Later he had a small shop in Rome. When he was a small boy, Metastasio liked to make up poems and say them in the streets near his house. His parents were poor and could not send him to school. When he was 10 years old, they sent him to work for a goldsmith (a person who makes things out of gold). One day a rich lawyer named Giovanni Vincenzo Gravina heard Metastasio saying his poems. He adopted Metastasio and paid for him to go to school. He also changed the boy's name to Pietro Metastasio. Gravina died when Metastasio was 20 years old and left all his money to him. Metastasio wrote a long poem in memory of his adopted father. It was called "" ("The Road of ").
When he was a young man, Metatstasio worked as lawyer in Naples. In those days, Naples was famous for its music and its beautiful opera houses. In Naples, Metastasio took music lessons from the Italian composer, Nicola Porpora. He liked to sing and to play the harpsichord. He sometimes composed his own music too. He also made money by writing poems for famous people's weddings and birthdays. He wrote his first opera libretto in 1724. It was called "". It told the story of Queen Dido and her love for Aeneas, a Trojan prince. It was a great success. He stopped working as a lawyer and made all his money by writing librettos and poems. Soon, he was famous all over Italy for his librettos. Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor asked Metastasio to come to Vienna to work as his poet laureate. In March 1730 Metastasio went to Vienna. He lived there for the rest of his life. He wrote many more opera librettos for the emperor's theatre. After the emperor died, Metastasio worked for the emperor's daughter Maria Theresa of Austria.
Metastasio died in 1782 at the house of his good friends, the Martinez family. He was 84 years old. Metastasio was buried in St. Michael's Church in Vienna. He left all of his money to the Martinez children. There are monuments to Metastasio in Rome and in Vienna. There are also theatres named after him in the Italian cities of Prato and Assisi. During his long life Metastasio wrote many letters to his friends. The English musician and writer, Charles Burney, translated Metastasio's letters into English. In 1796, Burney used them to write a book about the life of Metastasio. The book was called "Memoirs of the Life and Writings of the Abate Metastasio".
Metastasio wrote 26 librettos for a style of opera called "". Many composers used them. More than 800 operas have a libretto by Metastasio. Some of his "opera seria" librettos are:
Metastasio also wrote librettos for other types of stories set to music. They were used for cantatas, oratorios, ballets and a special type of short opera called an '. An "azione" mostly tells a happy or funny story. They were performed at royal courts to celebrate weddings, birthdays and special anniversaries. One "azione" by Metastasio was called '. The title means "Cupid Wins". It was performed at the Schönbrunn Palace in 1765 to celebrate the wedding of Maria Theresa of Austria's son, Joseph II. Maria Theresa's younger children all sang and danced in "".
Cape Breton Regional Municipality
Cape Breton Regional Municipality often shortened to simply CBRM, is a regional municipality in Nova Scotia's Cape Breton County.
Region of Queens Municipality
The Region of Queens Municipality is a Canadian regional municipality located in southwestern Nova Scotia.
Nokrek National Park
Nokrek National Park is an Indian national park in the West Garo Hills district of Meghalaya near the border with Bangladesh.
In 2009, UNESCO added Nokrek to its list of Biosphere Reserves.
Eric Sykes
Eric Sykes CBE (4 May 1923 – 4 July 2012) was a British actor, comedian, writer and director. He was born in Oldham, Lancashire.
Sykes worked mostly on radio and television. He and Hattie Jacques starred in "Sykes and A...", "Sykes and a Big, Big Show" and "Sykes".
Andrew Garfield
Andrew Russell Garfield (born August 20, 1980) is an American-English actor. He is best known for his role as Peter Parker in the 2012 movie "The Amazing Spider-Man". He was born in Los Angeles, California and was raised in Epsom, Surrey. Garfield began his career on the UK stage and in television productions.
In 2018, he won a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for his role as Prior Walter in "Angels in America".
Nestlé
Nestlé is the world's largest food producer, by revenue. It was formed in the 1950s, when two companies merged. At the start in the 1860s, the company produced soluble milk that could be given to infants and babies. From about the 1930s, Nestlé also produced soluble coffee. In 2010, Nestle's revenue was about 109 billion Swiss Francs, and its net profit was about 32 billion Swiss Francs.
Nestlé currently owns over 2000 brands. They own brands that manufacture coffee, bottled water, milkshakes and other beverages, breakfast cereals, infant foods, performance and healthcare nutrition, seasonings, soups and sauces, frozen and refrigerated foods, and pet food.
Bear Brand is a powdered milk. It was introduced in 1976. It was owned by Nestlé. It is a sterilized milk brand. The sterilized milk was introduced in 1906. The powdered milk was introduced in 1976. It is #6 among the top 50 "most popular fast-moving consumer goods" in the Philippines.
Bear Brand is sold in Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar, Malaysia, Brunei, India, Yemen, Nepal, Taiwan, Singapore, China, Iran, Bhutan, Hong Kong and Afghanistan.
Food that is made to be used instead of breast milk is known as infant formula. There are many laws that regulate how infant formula products should be marketed. Nestlé's soluble milk is a product that falls under this definition. In the 1970s, Nestlé marketed its soluble milk to mothers with infants. This was also done in developing countries. The marketing campaign led to a boycott known as Nestlé boycott, which is still ongoing. In 1981, the World Health Organisation published a guideline for advertising infant formula products. Nestlé is being critizised because supposedly it does not respect this code of conduct. Nestlé's policy states that breast-milk is the best food for infants, and that women who cannot or choose not to breast feed need an alternative to ensure that their babies are getting the nutrition they need. The problem is that mothers who stop breastfeeding will not be able to start again, after some time. They will become dependent on infant formula products to feed their babies.
The 2010 documentary "The Dark Side of Chocolate" found that Nestlé purchases cocoa beans from Ivory Coast plantations that use child slave labour. Most children are between twelve and fifteen years old. Some are trafficked from nearby countries. The first allegations that child slavery is used in cocoa production appeared in 1998. In late 2000, a BBC documentary reported the use of enslaved children in the production of cocoa in
West Africa. Other media also reported widespread child slavery and child trafficking in the production of cocoa. In September 2001, Bradley Alford, Chairman and CEO of Nestlé USA, signed the Harkin-Engel Protocol. The Harkin-Engel Protocol is an international agreement aimed at ending child labour in the production of cocoa. It is commonly called the Cocoa protocol.