IN: Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi (Italian: [dZu'zeppe 'verdi]; 9 or 10 October 1813 - 27 January 1901) was an Italian opera composer. He was born near Busseto to a provincial family of moderate means, and developed a musical education with the help of a local patron. Verdi came to dominate the Italian opera scene after the era of Vincenzo Bellini, Gaetano Donizetti, and Gioachino Rossini, whose works significantly influenced him. By his 30s, he had become one of the pre-eminent opera composers in history.

Having achieved some fame and prosperity, Verdi began in 1859 to take an active interest in Italian politics. His early commitment to the Risorgimento movement is difficult to estimate accurately; in the words of the music historian Philip Gossett "myths intensifying and exaggerating [such] sentiment began circulating" during the nineteenth century. An example is the claim that when the "Va, pensiero" chorus in Nabucco was first sung in Milan, the audience, responding with nationalistic fervour, demanded an encore. As encores were expressly forbidden by the government at the time, such a gesture would have been extremely significant. But in fact the piece encored was not "Va, pensiero" but the hymn "Immenso Jehova". The growth of the "identification of Verdi's music with Italian nationalist politics" perhaps began in the 1840s. In 1848, the nationalist leader Giuseppe Mazzini, (whom Verdi had met in London the previous year) requested Verdi (who complied) to write a patriotic hymn. The opera historian Charles Osborne describes the 1849 La battaglia di Legnano as "an opera with a purpose" and maintains that "while parts of Verdi's earlier operas had frequently been taken up by the fighters of the Risorgimento...this time the composer had given the movement its own opera" It was not until 1859 in Naples, and only then spreading throughout Italy, that the slogan "Viva Verdi" was used as an acronym for Viva Vittorio Emanuele Re D'Italia (Viva Victor Emmanuel King of Italy), (who was then king of Piedmont). After Italy was unified in 1861, many of Verdi's early operas were increasingly re-interpreted as Risorgimento works with hidden Revolutionary messages that perhaps had not been originally intended by either the composer or his librettists. In 1859, Verdi was elected as a member of the new provincial council, and was appointed to head a group of five who would meet with King Vittorio Emanuele II in Turin. They were enthusiastically greeted along the way and in Turin Verdi himself received much of the publicity. On 17 October Verdi met with Cavour, the architect of the initial stages of Italian unification. Later that year the government of Emilia was subsumed under the United Provinces of Central Italy, and Verdi's political life temporarily came to an end. Whilst still maintaining nationalist feelings, he declined in 1860 the office of provincial council member to which he had been elected in absentia. Cavour however was anxious to convince a man of Verdi's stature that running for political office was essential to strengthening and securing Italy's future. The composer confided to Piave some years later that "I accepted on the condition that after a few months I would resign." Verdi was elected on 3 February 1861 for the town of Borgo San Donnino (Fidenza) to the Parliament of Piedmont-Sardinia in Turin (which from March 1861 became the Parliament of the Kingdom of Italy), but following the death of Cavour in 1861, which deeply distressed him, he scarcely attended. Later, in 1874, Verdi was appointed a member of the Italian Senate, but did not participate in its activities.
QUESTION: What type of action did he take in politics?
IN: Tara Ann VanDerveer (born June 26, 1953) is an American basketball coach who has been the head women's basketball coach at Stanford University since 1985. Designated the Setsuko Ishiyama Director of Women's Basketball, VanDerveer led the Stanford Cardinal to two NCAA Women's Division I Basketball Championships: in 1990 and 1992. She stepped away from the Stanford program for a year to serve as the U.S. national team head coach at the 1996 Olympic Games. VanDerveer is the 1990 Naismith National Coach of the Year and a ten-time Pac-12 Coach of the Year.

VanDerveer was born on June 26, 1953, to Dunbar and Rita VanDerveer, who named their first child "Tara" after the plantation in Gone with the Wind. She was born in Melrose, Massachusetts, a part of Greater Boston, but grew up in a small town in West Hill, near Schenectady, New York. Her parents were interested in a well-rounded education. Her father was studying for a doctorate at the school now known as the University at Albany. He took the family to Chautauqua in the summer, where she immersed in arts as well as sports. At the age of ten, her parents bought her a flute, and arranged for lessons. Two years later, one of the premier flutists in the world was staying in Chautauqua, and her father arranged for lessons with this distinguished teacher. Although she learned to play, she did not enjoy the experience, and gave up the flute in ninth grade. The love of music stayed with her though, and in later years she would take up the piano. There were no sports teams for girls when she was in high school, but she played a number of sports including basketball, in rec leagues and pickup. When she was younger, she played with both boys and girls. As she entered her high school years, the girls dropped out for other interests, so she was more apt to play with boys. To help make sure she would be chosen, she bought the best basketball she could afford, so if the boys wanted to play with her basketball, they would have to pick her. Her father wasn't completely supportive of her basketball interest, calling her in from the neighbor's basketball hoop, telling her, "Basketball won't take you anywhere. Come in and do your algebra." Tara was equally certain that algebra wasn't going to take her anywhere. Her family moved to Niagara Falls in her sophomore year in high school. The house in West Hill had a gravel driveway, making a basketball hoop impractical, but when her parents got her a hoop for Christmas when they were in Niagara Falls. By then, she thought she was too old for basketball, although she would take it up again after she transferred to Buffalo Seminary, an all-girls college preparatory school, in her junior year. She ended up earning a place in the Buffalo Seminary's Athletic Hall of Fame.
QUESTION:
What school did Tara attended?