Other books that might interest you

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  Edgar Degas

  Nathalia Brodskaya, Edgar Degas

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  Degas was closest to Renoir in the impressionist’s circle, for both favoured the animated Parisian life of their day as a motif in their paintings. Degas did not attend Gleyre’s studio; most likely he first met the future impressionists at the Café Guerbois. He started his apprenticeship in 1853 at the studio of Louis-Ernest Barrias and, beginning in 1854, studied under Louis Lamothe, who revered Ingres above all others, and transmitted his adoration for this master to Edgar Degas. Starting in 1854 Degas travelled frequently to Italy: first to Naples, where he made the acquaintance of his numerous cousins, and then to Rome and Florence, where he copied tirelessly from the Old Masters. His drawings and sketches already revealed very clear preferences: Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Mantegna, but also Benozzo Gozzoli, Ghirlandaio, Titian, Fra Angelico, Uccello, and Botticelli. During the 1860s and 1870s he became a painter of racecourses, horses and jockeys. His fabulous painter’s memory retained the particularities of movement of horses wherever he saw them. After his first rather complex compositions depicting racecourses, Degas learned the art of translating the nobility and elegance of horses, their nervous movements, and the formal beauty of their musculature. Around the middle of the 1860s Degas made yet another discovery. In 1866 he painted his first composition with ballet as a subject, Mademoiselle Fiocre dans le ballet de la Source (Mademoiselle Fiocre in the Ballet ‘The Spring’) (New York, Brooklyn Museum). Degas had always been a devotee of the theatre, but from now on it would become more and more the focus of his art. Degas’ first painting devoted solely to the ballet was Le Foyer de la danse à l’Opéra de la rue Le Peletier (The Dancing Anteroom at the Opera on Rue Le Peletier) (Paris, Musée d’Orsay). In a carefully constructed composition, with groups of figures balancing one another to the left and the right, each ballet dancer is involved in her own activity, each one is moving in a separate manner from the others. Extended observation and an immense number of sketches were essential to executing such a task. This is why Degas moved from the theatre on to the rehearsal halls, where the dancers practised and took their lessons. This was how Degas arrived at the second sphere of that immediate, everyday life that was to interest him. The ballet would remain his passion until the end of his days.

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  The Story of Gandhi Jyanti

  Sunita Malik

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  Gandhi Jayanti falls annually on October 2. The day marks the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, the Father of the Nation.

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  So You Want To Work In Theatre?

  Susan Elkin

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  An essential guide for young people who want to work in the theatre - but aren't sure exactly what they want to do, or how to get to do it.
  Many young people are eager to experience the excitement and allure of working in theatre, but often this only goes as far as imagining themselves as actors, on stage in front of an audience every night. In reality, there are more jobs off the stage than on it. They can be every bit as rewarding as acting - and certainly more secure because there are invariably fewer people competing for each one.
  Using her expertise as Education and Training Editor for The Stage, Susan Elkin encourages aspiring theatre-makers and workers to look beyond acting to some of the other behind-the-scenes options available: playwriting, directing, producing, designing, stage management, administration, publicity, front-of-house, stage door... *
  She describes what each job entails and how you might achieve that role, including relevant courses and training opportunities offered in the UK. There are also numerous case studies of theatre professionals describing how they got where they are, and top tips for following in their footsteps.
  Written in a clear, no-nonsense style, this book is an ideal starting point for students considering a career in theatre, but also a useful tool for parents, teachers and career-advisers looking to learn more about the options open to interested young people.
  * And, for those of you who really must, the book does cover how to get into acting too.
  'I wish this had been published when I was at school' Teaching Drama Magazine
  'provides a clear overview of work opportunities in and around theatre and really should be available to young people in schools across the country' Drama Resource

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  Our Miss Brooks: Babysitting for...

  Al Lewis

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  Miss Brooks babysits, which gives everyone the idea that she's sharing a love nest with Mr. Boynton! Although our Miss Brooks teaches English at Madison High School, her problems like those of any other teacher aren’t always confined to purely scholastics ones. There’s Mr. Philip Boynton for instance, the biology teacher for whom Miss Brooks is extremely fond. “And who in return lavishes his affection on his frogs and guinea pigs.

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  Fidelio

  Thomson Smillie

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  Fidelio is a work like no other. Beethoven’s only opera is about the joy of married love – by a man who never knew that pleasure. It is about heroism by a man who was often mean and petty in his human relations; it is about freedom by a man who was a prisoner of his own deafness; and ultimately it is about joy by a man who experienced precious little of it. Maybe there is a divine logic to that: feelings the artist could not experience but could express find their noblest manifestation in music of overwhelming power and majesty. The most popular operas from the early 19th century are Italian – Rossini, Donizetti, Verdi. We know that Fidelio is important because it was Beethoven’s only opera, but it is not, on the face of it, as much fun as The Barber of Seville, or Don Pasquale. This is why Thomson Smillie’s introduction is so useful. He places the plot and the music against the background of Beethoven’s own turbulent life and suddenly we realise the importance and the uplifting nature of the themes he deals with – starting with fidelity, the name of the opera itself. This is a riveting preparation for seeing or hearing the whole opera.

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  Lynyrd Skynyrd - Remembering the...

  Gene Odom, Frank Dorman

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  In the summer of 1964 Jacksonville, Florida teenager Ronnie Van Zant and some of his friends hatched the idea of forming a band to play covers of the Rolling Stones, Beatles, Yardbirds, and the country and blues-rock music they had grown to love. Naming their band after Leonard Skinner, the gym teacher at Robert E. Lee Senior High School who constantly badgered the long-haired aspiring musicians to get haircuts, they were soon playing gigs at parties, and bars throughout the South.During the next decade Lynyrd Skynyrd grew into the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful of the rock bands to emerge from the South since the Allman Brothers. Their hits "Free Bird" and "Sweet Home Alabama" became classics. Then, at the height of its popularity in 1977, the band was struck with tragedy — a plane crash that killed Ronnie Van Zant and two other band members.For the fans who have purchased a cumulative 35 million copies of Lynyrd Skynyrd's albums and continue to pack concerts today, Lynyrd Skynyrd is a celebration of an immortal American band.

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