Some context: Destiny's Child was an American girl group whose final and best-known line-up comprised Beyonce Knowles, Kelly Rowland, and Michelle Williams. Formed in 1997 in Houston, Texas, Destiny's Child members began their musical career as Girl's Tyme, formed in 1990, comprising Knowles, Rowland, LaTavia Roberson, and LeToya Luckett among others. After years of limited success, the quartet were signed in 1997 to Columbia Records and Music World Entertainment as Destiny's Child. Destiny's Child was launched into mainstream recognition following the release of their best-selling second album, The Writing's on the Wall (1999), which contained the number-one singles "Bills, Bills, Bills" and "Say My Name".
Destiny's Child reunited for a farewell performance at the 2006 NBA All-Star Game on February 19, 2006 in Houston, Texas; however, Knowles commented, "It's the last album, but it's not the last show." Their final televised performance was at the Fashion Rocks benefit concert in New York a few days later. On March 28, 2006, Destiny's Child was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the 2,035th recipient of the coveted recognition. At the 2006 BET Awards, Destiny's Child won Best Group, a category they also earned in 2005 and 2001. After their formal disbandment, all members resumed their solo careers and have each experienced different levels of success. Since then, Knowles, Rowland and Williams have continued to collaborate on each other's solo projects through song features, music video appearances, and live performances. Both Rowland and Williams, along with Knowles' sister Solange, appeared in Knowles' music video for her single "Get Me Bodied" (2007). On June 26, 2007, the group made a mini-reunion at the 2007 BET Awards, where Knowles performed "Get Me Bodied" with Williams and Solange as her back-up dancers. After her performance, Knowles introduced Rowland who performed her single "Like This" (2007) with Eve. On the September 2, 2007 Los Angeles stop of The Beyonce Experience tour, Knowles sang a snippet of "Survivor" with Rowland and Williams, and the latter two rendered a "Happy Birthday" song to Knowles. The performance was featured in Knowles' tour DVD, The Beyonce Experience Live. In 2008, Knowles recorded a cover of Billy Joel's "Honesty" for Destiny's Child's compilation album Mathew Knowles & Music World Present Vol.1: Love Destiny, which was released only in Japan to celebrate the group's tenth anniversary. Rowland made a cameo appearance in Knowles' music video for her single "Party" (2011), and the group's third compilation album, Playlist: The Very Best of Destiny's Child, was released in 2012 to mark the fifteenth anniversary since their formation. The fourth compilation album, Love Songs, was released on January 29, 2013, and included the newly recorded song "Nuclear", produced by Pharrell Williams. "Nuclear" marked the first original music from Destiny's Child in eight years. The following month, Rowland and Williams appeared as special guests for Knowles' Super Bowl XLVII halftime show, where they performed "Bootylicious", "Independent Women" and Knowles' own song "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)". A video album titled Destiny's Child Video Anthology was released in May 2013 and featured sixteen of the group's music videos. Knowles and Williams were then featured on Rowland's song "You Changed" from her fourth solo album Talk a Good Game (2013). Later that year, Rowland and Williams made cameo appearances in the music videos for Knowles' songs "Superpower" and "Grown Woman", which were both included on her self-titled fifth solo visual album. Williams released the single "Say Yes" in June 2014, featuring Knowles and Rowland. They performed "Say Yes" together during the 2015 Stellar Awards, and the live version of the song was mastered for iTunes in April 2015. On November 7, 2016, the group reunited in a video to try the Mannequin Challenge, which was posted on Rowland's official Instagram account.
What is the Mannequin Challenge?
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Some context: 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.
The writer Friedrich Schiller (four of whose plays were adapted as operas by Verdi) distinguished two types of artist in his 1795 essay On Naive and Sentimental Poetry. The philosopher Isaiah Berlin ranked Verdi in the 'naive' category--"They are not...self-conscious. They do not...stand aside to contemplate their creations and express their own feelings....They are able...if they have genius, to embody their vision fully." (The 'sentimentals' seek to recreate nature and natural feelings on their own terms--Berlin instances Wagner--"offering not peace, but a sword.") Verdi's operas are not written according to an aesthetic theory, or with a purpose to change the tastes of their audiences. In conversation with a German visitor in 1887 he is recorded as saying that, whilst "there was much to be admired in [Wagner's operas] Tannhauser and Lohengrin...in his recent operas [Wagner] seemed to be overstepping the bounds of what can be expressed in music. For him "philosophical" music was incomprehensible." Although Verdi's works belong, as Rosselli admits "to the most artificial of genres...[they] ring emotionally true: truth and directness make them exciting, often hugely so." That is not to say his operas did not come as great innovations. What sounds to a modern listener as derivative of the bel canto, his first major success, Nabucco, came as a something entirely new. Never before had opera been so harmonically complex and direct. No longer was there the empty vocal display of the bel canto period composers. Granted, there is a significant amount of vocal fireworks, but they exist for the purpose of drama, not to show off singers. Aside from this, his use of the chorus was entirely new. Before Nabucco, an opera's chorus was limited to be only a background voice, another instrument. In Nabucco, this is abolished; he uses the chorus as character, to show the suffering and consensus of the people. The famous "Va, pensiero" is an example of this. The first of his "big three" operas, Rigoletto, followed by La Traviata, and ending with Il Trovatore, also was revolutionary. In a letter to Rigoletto's librettist, Francesco Maria Piave, he says, "I conceived Rigoletto almost without arias, without finales but only an unending string of duets." And that it is. Rigoletto is one of, if not the earliest operas to abandon the traditional distinction between the sung aria, and the more speech-like recitative. After these three operas, his works took an increasing amount of time to finish, were significantly longer, and more masterfully orchestrated.
How did he write his operas?
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Rigoletto is one of, if not the earliest operas to abandon the traditional distinction between the sung aria, and the more speech-like recitative.