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Chinatown, Houston

Chinatown ( or ) is a community in Southwest Houston, Texas, United States.

There is another Chinatown called "Old Chinatown" located within the East Downtown Houston district near the George R. Brown Convention Center.

History
The first businesses of the new Houston Chinatown opened in 1983. In the 1980s increasing numbers of Chinese were living in Southwest Houston and Fort Bend County and those residents were further away from the old Chinatown in what is now East Downtown. Diho Square, home to a Diho Supermarket chain outlet, was built, followed by Dynasty Plaza in 1986-1987, a 120000 sqft complex developed by a Singaporean friend of Diho Supermarket operator Tsang Dat Wong; the latter invited the former to build in Houston. Developers at the time bought land, inexpensive due to the recession, in hopes of prosperous development later. From the 1980s until the 2000s, the census tracts housing sections of Chinatown saw decreasing income levels and real estate values.

The new Chinatown began to expand in the 1990s when Houston-area Asian American entrepreneurs moved their businesses from older neighborhoods, especially the "Old Chinatown" on the eastern end of Downtown Houston (in the process of redevelopment), in a search for more inexpensive properties and lower crime rates. Hong Kong City Mall, owned by an ethnic Vietnamese man named Hai Du Duong, opened in 1999. In 2004 Nancy Sarnoff of the Houston Chronicle described it as a westward shift for Chinatown.

In 2005 Christy Chang, a tour operator who operated tours into Chinatown, said, "This area is not just Chinatown anymore. If anything, it's Asia Town" due to the presence of various ethnic groups that began establishing themselves in the community. The Asian American Business Council estimated that between 2004 and 2008 the land values along Bellaire Boulevard in Chinatown increased between 25 and 50 percent. In 2008 the group estimated that 2000000 sqft in construction would appear within two years, including high-end condominiums. Lisa Gray of the Houston Chronicle wrote that the development of the remaining acreage would likely cause rents to increase and that, compared to many other Chinatowns in the United States, the Houston Chinatown is still relatively inexpensive.

In 2008 the Asian American Business Council placed a contest to design a "landmark monument" to be placed on Bellaire Boulevard between Beltway 8 and Gessner Road in order to increase visibility among Asian Americans and non-Asian Americans and to beautify the area.

Xenophobia stoked during the COVID-19 pandemic caused a steep decline in customers, as malicious people spread rumors about Chinese-Americans in Houston.

Cityscape
The Southwest Management District (formerly Greater Sharpstown Management District) defines it as being roughly bounded by Redding Rd and Gessner Rd to the East, Westpark Dr to the North, Beltway 8 to the West, and Beechnut St to the South. The Greater Sharpstown Management District defines Chinatown within its borders as being a 2.37 sqmi area.

According to the Greater Houston Convention and Visitors Bureau (GHCVB), Chinatown along with Little Saigon (just west of the neighborhood) combine to form a combined Asiatown. The combined border roughly bounded by Fondren Road, Beechnut Street, State Highway 6, and Westpark Drive, and lies between Alief and the city of Bellaire. The naming is disputed as other ethnic groups are within the expanded boundaries. Chinese businesses tend to be inside the Beltway while Vietnamese businesses tend to be outside of the Beltway.

The Bellaire Chinatown is about 12 mi southwest of Downtown Houston. It is over 6 sqmi, making it among the largest automobile-centric Chinatowns in the Southern United States. The Chinatown is located on a mostly treeless plain. The community is between Westchase and the City of Sugar Land. Katharine Shilcutt of the Houston Press said that Chinatown was "straddling Beltway 8 on the southwest side like an entire city unto itself." Sarnoff said that historically the intersection of Bellaire and Corporate Drive served as the center of Chinatown, though that this was moving to the west by 2004.

Much of the land of Chinatown is owned by private entities, so there are relatively few public areas. The new Chinatown is located within a residential area of single-family houses and apartments, and its spread-out nature differs from the East Downtown Chinatown, which was in a relatively compact area. Many of the surrounding residential areas and office developments were built in the 1990s and 2000s.

The businesses within the new Chinatown include a mall, supermarkets, shopping centers, restaurants, and bakeries. The street signs have Chinese characters. Knapp and Vojnovic identified Hong Kong City Mall as the "symbolic center", and "visual center", as it houses the paifang (Chinese arch). The Bellaire Chinatown has many "retail condos", shopping centers in which spaces are owned instead of leased. Many East Asian people prefer to own shopping places instead of renting them. In the United States "retail condos" are rare outside areas populated by East Asian Americans. The community has restaurants serving many kinds of cuisines, including Chinese, Hong Kong and Taiwanese, Filipino, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Laotian, Malaysian, Thai, and Vietnamese. In addition it has restaurants operated by ethnic Vietnamese that serve Louisiana-style crawfish. The community also has many fusion cuisine restaurants. Shilcutt said that "the restaurant density in this area is roughly equivalent to the population density of Vatican City."

Lisa Gray of the Houston Chronicle stated that this Chinatown resembles newer Chinatowns that opened in automobile-oriented metropolitan areas in the United States such as suburbs in Greater Los Angeles and the Silicon Valley, as opposed to older, uniformly Chinese, pedestrian-oriented Chinatowns in New York City and San Francisco. Gray said that in older Chinatowns immigrant businesses cluster together by ethnic group, while in newer automobile oriented Chinatowns retail operations from different ethnic groups move in next door to each other.

Demographics
As of 2012, according to the Greater Sharpstown Management District the portion of Chinatown within the boundaries of the Greater Sharpstown district has 29,993 people. The clientele of this Chinatown tends to be middle class.

Government and instrastructure
Two Houston City Council districts, F and J, serve the new Chinatown. District J was created to allow Hispanics to more easily elect representatives who cater to them.

The new Chinatown is served by two Houston Police Department patrol divisions, the Midwest Patrol Division and the Westside Patrol Division, of the Houston Police Department. The Midwest division operates the Ranchester Storefront ( "Chinatown Police Office") in the Diho Square complex.

Fire stations located within Chinatown's boundaries include Station 10 Bellaire ( "Fire Brigade #10") and Station 76 Alief Community, both a part of Fire District 83. Station 10, previously located in what is now East Downtown, moved to its current location in 1985. Station 76 was built in 1985.

Economy
Nearly a dozen banks, including overseas Chinese banks and mainstream banks, are located along a less-than-1 mi stretch of Bellaire Boulevard, near Beltway 8. The clientele of these banks include area residents and Asian American entrepreneurs. Robert Lee, an executive vice president of MetroBank, said, "They call it the Wall Street of Chinatown."

In the three decades before 2007, Wells Fargo had one of the few bank branches in the area. Businesspeople began to open Asian American ethnic grocery stores and seafood markets. In the 1980s, Wells Fargo added signs in Chinese and hired tellers who spoke Cantonese, Korean, and nine other languages. During the same decade, local businesspeople opened MetroBank and Texas First National Bank during a banking crisis that hurt the state's mainstream banks. George Lee, the president of MetroCorp Bancshares, said, "All the banks were in trouble, and the ones that were not in trouble didn't understand the needs of the Asian community." American First National Bank and Southwestern National Bank opened in the 1990s. As of 2007, many Asian businesses operate in the area, and so Asian American banks have opened to cater to them. As of that year Washington Mutual (now JPMorgan Chase) was the last company to open a bank branch in that area of Chinatown. Texas First National is now known as Golden Bank.

Southwestern National Bank has its headquarters in Chinatown and Greater Sharpstown. American First National Bank maintains a 12-story, $30 million headquarters building in Chinatown. MetroCorp Bancshares and subsidiary MetroBank previously had their headquarters in Chinatown and in Greater Sharpstown.

Halliburton previously operated the Houston Office (a.k.a. Oak Park Campus) on 67 acres of land in Chinatown and in the Westchase district. The complex included the Latin America division of Easywell, a division of Halliburton. The building first opened as a Brown and Root facility in 1979. In 2009 the Westchase campus had 1,700 employees; Halliburton plans to increase employment at Oak Park to 3,000. At the Bellaire site Halliburton plans to build a 16-story tower, a two-story "life center," an additional parking garage, expanded child care facilities, auditoriums, and bridges to connect the many buildings. In 2009 Halliburton had about 1,000 employees in leased office space in Westchase. During that year Halliburton said that it planned to vacate the leased space. The plans for the Oak Park office had been delayed by one year, and Halliburton expected completion in 2013. However Halliburton closed it in 2015, and in 2020 a planned demolition was revealed.

Education
The new Chinatown is served by two school districts. Most of the New Chinatown according to the GHCVB definition is served by the Alief Independent School District, while an eastern portion is served by the Houston Independent School District. The HISD portion of the community is within Trustee District VI, represented by Greg Meyers as of 2008.

Alief Independent School District
Zoned elementary schools (K-4) located within the GHCVB definition of Chinatown include A. J. Bush, Chambers, Chancellor, Collins, Hearne, Liestman, Mahanay, Martin, and Youens. In addition Sneed Elementary School, outside Chinatown, serves a portion of Chinatown. Bilingual students zoned to Chancellor attend Youens, and bilingual students zoned to Mahanay attend Hearne.

Owens Middle School is a zoned intermediate school in Chinatown. Budewig, Miller, and Youngblood, outside Chinatown, serve portions of Chinatown. Middle schools in Chinatown include Alief Middle, Killough, and O'Donnell. A portion is served by Albright Middle, outside Chinatown.

Regardless of location within the district, all Alief ISD residents may be randomly assigned to either Alief Elsik High School, Alief Hastings High School, and Alief Taylor High School; all of them are in Chinatown. In addition the magnet school Alief Kerr High School is in Chinatown.

Houston Independent School District
Neff and White Elementary Schools are located in the Houston ISD portion of Chinatown. Other portions are served by Emerson and Piney Point elementary schools.

Most of the HISD portion is zoned to Sugar Grove Middle School and Sharpstown High School.

A portion of Chinatown is zoned to Revere Middle School and Wisdom High School (formerly Lee High School).

Prior to 2011, Sharpstown Middle School served most of the HISD portion of Chinatown. The portion of the HISD portion of New Chinatown south of Bellaire Boulevard was zoned to Sharpstown High School, while the portion north of Bellaire Boulevard was zoned to Lee High School (With Lamar High School and Westside High School as options). For a period after 2011 the Sharpstown zone was assigned to Sharpstown International School for grades 6 through 12.

Private schools
Strake Jesuit College Preparatory and Saint Agnes Academy are in Chinatown.

Transportation
Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County (METRO) provides local bus services to the area.

Recreation
Many Chinese holidays are celebrated in the Chinatown area with official events.

The Chinese Community Center (CCC,, "Houston Chinese Culture Service Center"), an IRS 501(c)(3) organization and a United Way affiliate, is located at 9800 Town Park Drive. The facility opened in 1979 as the Chinese Language School. The CCC has several levels of English classes offered daily. As of 2006, at CCC about 80% of the students have university degrees, and the other 20% are their family members.

There is a mural representing the pan-Asian cultures made by Thomas Tran, called the Asiatown Community Mural. The organization Houston in Action gave a grant to the Vietnamese Culture and Science Association (VCSA), which hired Tran. Over 200 people created the mural without payment, and the mural opened in 2022.

title: Chinatown, Houston


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User talk:Star27

Hello, welcome to Wikipedia. Here are some useful links in case you haven't already found them;

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If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my talk page. I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian!

snoyes 17:43, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: User talk:Star27


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Petersfield (disambiguation)

Petersfield is a market town and civil parish in the East Hampshire district of Hampshire, England.

Petersfield may also refer to:

Places

 * Petersfield, Cambridgeshire, England
 * Petersfield, Jamaica, a small town in the parish of Westmoreland
 * Petersfield, Manitoba, an unincorporated community in Canada

Other uses

 * Petersfield (UK Parliament constituency), a former constituency in Petersfield, Hampshire
 * Petersfield railway station, a railway station in Petersfield, Hampshire
 * The Petersfield School, a comprehensive school in Petersfield, Hampshire
 * Petersfield Town F.C., a football club in Petersfield, Hampshire
 * Petersfield R.F.C., a rugby union club based in Petersfield, Hampshire
 * HMS Petersfield

title: Petersfield (disambiguation)


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User:Litefantastic

i am so sorry to say, I QUIT! Barring any extenuating circumstances, I will never be back. -Litefantastic 01:54, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

title: User:Litefantastic


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User talk:Vincentle

Hello, welcome to Wikipedia. Here are some useful links in case you haven't already found them;

 * How to edit a page
 * How to write a great article
 * Naming conventions
 * Manual of Style

If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my talk page. I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian!

snoyes 17:57, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

What the heck are you doing? Replacing well-developed articles with new, less well-developed versions isn't helping at all. Please add and edit instead. Thank you. --mav 20:06, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Hello, it also seems that the information you replaced earthworm with was copied from http://www.digitalnaturopath.com/treat/T447441.html. Unless you are the author of the original information and you are able to release it under the GFDL then this information must not be added to the article. Please see Copyrights for further information. Even if this is a copyright violation, we would still welcome any original contributions from you, but please be careful about overwriting other people's work. See the instructions on how to edit a page for more info. Thanks. Angela 20:55, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

title: User talk:Vincentle


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Talk:Oriental language

This article is hopelessly uninformative and superficial. I suggest deletion. --Kaihsu Tai 17:57, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

To put it slightly differently, this page currently is just a stub, and it probably isn't very useful because "Oriental Languages" isn't a classification used much by linguists (and then probably only as an administrative rather than technical classification - some universities will have a Department of Oriental Studies, for example). There isn't very much, if anything, that languages of Eastern and South-East Asia have in common with each other but not with languages from other parts of the world. We already have a lot of information on languages in Wikipedia, and this article doesn't really fit into the overall scheme of things. It's also worth noting that Chinese and Kanji characters (and, I assume, Korean characters but I know nothing at all about Korean) are ideograms or logograms, not pictograms. Onebyone 18:17, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Antonym?
So would the opposite of "Oriental language" be Occidental language aka Interlingue? --Damian Yerrick (talk | stalk) 23:33, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

title: Talk:Oriental language


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Professional qualifications in the United Kingdom

Professional qualifications in the United Kingdom are titles or awards granted by professional bodies. Many British professional qualifications were subject to the European directives on professional qualifications and are (following Brexit) covered by amended versions of those regulations as enacted in British law. Most, but not all, professional qualifications are 'Chartered' qualifications, and follow on from having been admitted to a degree (or having an equivalent qualification). The term "professional qualification" can also be used to refer to higher-level vocational qualifications in "professional" roles.

Regulation and levels
There are four forms of regulated profession in the UK, with respect to the European directives on professional qualifications: professions regulated by law or public authority; professions regulated by professional bodies incorporated by royal charter; professions regulated under Regulation 35; and the seven sectoral professions with harmonised training requirements across the European Union. The European directives are given force of law in the UK via regulations issued by the Secretary of State under the European Communities Act 1972; the most recent regulations are The European Union (Recognition of Professional Qualifications) Regulations 2015.

The Gatsby Charitable Foundation has been supporting the development of professional qualifications for technicians, such as the Science Council's Registered Science Technician (RSciTech), the Engineering Council's Engineering Technician (EngTech) and ICT Technician (ICTTech), and the British Computer Society's Registered IT Technician (RITTech). Analysis by the Foundation identifies three levels of professional qualification on a "registration ladder" in science and engineering: technician registration, requiring Advanced Apprenticeships, A Levels, BTEC nationals, or similar awards at levels 3–4 on the Qualifications and Credit Framework (now replaced by the Regulated Qualifications Framework); intermediate qualifications such as Incorporated Engineer (IEng) and Registered Scientist (RSci) requiring Higher Apprenticeships, Higher National Diplomas, foundation degrees, bachelor's degrees, or similar awards at levels 5–6; and chartered statuses such as CEng, CSci, CPhys, CChem, etc. that require master's degrees or similar qualifications at level 7 or above.

The European directives specify five levels of professional qualification in the general system, labelled a to e and approximately defined by their required academic training as: 1. Attestation of competence

2. Education at secondary level

3. Education for at least one year at post-secondary level

4. Bachelor's degree

5. Master's degree On this scale, ICTTech, EngTech and other technician qualifications equate to level c, IEng equates to level d, and CEng, CSci, etc. elite to level e. Although chartered statuses in science and engineering are placed at level e, in some fields chartered statuses, while remaining terminal professional qualifications in that field, are at level d (e.g. CMgr).

Professional qualifications requiring an attestation of competence
These professions are government regulated and involve reserved activities rather than a reserved title. Some of these are devolved matters that are not uniformly regulated across the UK. In most cases, the competent authority for these is a government department or agency.

Professional qualifications requiring education at secondary level
These professional qualifications are mostly, as in the previous category, government regulated with reserved activities, although some are through licensing of use of a reserved title.

Professions with reserved activities:

Professions with protected titles under a licensing system:

Professional qualifications requiring education for at least one year at post-secondary level
These qualifications now begin to include those which have protected titles without reserve of activities, normally granted by professional bodies under their royal charter rather than by statutory or regulatory bodies. Titles granted by professional bodies are often accompanied by postnominal letters.

Regulated by law or public authority
Professions with reserved activities or protected functions:

Professions with protected titles under a licensing system:

Professions with protected titles without reserve of activities:

Regulated by professional bodies under royal charter
Professions with protected titles without reserve of activities:

Professional qualifications requiring bachelor's degree level education
Many of these are protected titles without reserve of activities, regulated by professional bodies acting under a royal charter. This includes a large number of chartered statuses, which are terminal professional qualifications in that field.

Regulated by law or public authority
Professions with reserved activities:

Professions with reserved activities and protected titles:

Professions with protected titles under a licensing system:

Professions with protected titles without reserve of activities:

Regulated by professional bodies under royal charter
Professions with reserved activities and protected titles:

Professions with protected titles without reserve of activities:

Regulated by law or public authority
Professions with reserved activities and protected titles:

Professions with protected titles without reserve of activities:

Regulated by professional bodies under royal charter
Professions with reserved activities:

Professions with protected titles without reserve of activities:

Regulated by law or public authority
Professions with reserved activities:

Regulated by professional bodies under royal charter
Professions with reserved activities:

Professions with protected titles without reserve of activities:

Professional qualifications in sectoral professions
The "sectoral professions" are ones which are regulated in every EU country and where training and education requirements have been harmonised. There is therefore no explicit training level associated with the qualifications in the regulations as the educational requirements do not vary between countries and do not need to be compared. All of these are regulated by law or public authority, not by professional bodies.

Professional qualifications not included in the European directives
Not all chartered titles are included in the European directives on professional qualifications, but all UK chartered titles, and some lower-level titles, are issued by a professional body under the authority of a royal charter and are thus recognised professional qualifications (these should not be confused with membership levels within an organisation). These qualifications are sometimes associated with professions that are included in the directives as regulated under law or by public authority (e.g. architecture or psychology).

Non-chartered titles:

Chartered titles:


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Nino Burjanadze

Nino Burjanadze (Georgian: ნინო ბურჯანაძე, also romanized Burdzhanadze or Burdjanadze, born 16 July 1964) is a Georgian politician and lawyer who served as Chairperson of the Parliament of Georgia from November 2001 to June 2008. As the first woman, she has served as the acting head of state of Georgia twice; the first time from 23 November 2003 to 25 January 2004 in the wake of Eduard Shevardnadze's resignation during the Rose Revolution, and again from 25 November 2007 to 20 January 2008, when Mikheil Saakashvili stepped down to rerun in the early presidential elections. She withdrew into opposition to Saakashvili as the leader of the Democratic Movement-United Georgia party in 2008. In October 2013, she ran in the presidential election, competing against 22 candidates. She ended third with 10 percent of the vote.

Early life and career
Nino Burjanadze was born in Kutaisi, then-Soviet Georgia. She graduated in 1986 from the Faculty of Law of the Tbilisi State University (TSU) and afterwards pursued education at the Moscow State University from which she graduated with a doctorate in International Law in 1990. In 1991, she became a docent (Associate Professor) of the Faculty of International Law at the Tbilisi State University. At the same time, she worked as an expert-consultant in international law for the Parliament of Georgia and the Ministry for Environment Protection and Natural Resources.

Political career
In 1995, Burjanadze was elected to the Parliament of Georgia for the Union of Citizens of Georgia (UCG) then chaired by the President of Georgia Eduard Shevardnadze and supported financially by her father Anzor Burjanadze, a wealthy businessman. She first chaired the Parliamentary Committee for Constitutional Law from 1998 to 1999, and the Parliamentary Committee for International Relations from 2000 to 2001. During the years, she became known as a supporter of pro-Western values and proponent of Georgia's integration with NATO and the European Union. She was closely allied with the reformist wing within the UCG led by Mikheil Saakashvili and Zurab Zhvania whom she succeeded on November 9 as the parliamentary chairperson after Zhvania resigned on November 1, 2001.

Although she gave Shevardnadze strong support in his dealings with foreign countries (in particular with Russia), she spoke out forcefully against the corruption and inefficiency of his government's domestic policy, declaring it to be "absolutely incompetent." She left the UCG in 2002, forming an opposition party called the Burjanadze-Democrats to fight the November 2003 parliamentary elections.

After the rigged parliamentary elections of 2 November 2003, she joined other opposition leaders in denouncing the election results and urging mass demonstrations against Shevardnadze. The terms of the Georgian constitution automatically made her the acting president when Shevardnadze resigned on 23 November. One of Burjanadze's first actions was to appeal for national unity and repeal the state of emergency declared by Shevardnadze, in an effort to restore stability to a country with a long history of political violence. She was an obvious candidate for the post, as she is widely respected by her compatriots - opinion polling in 2003 showed her to be one of 's three most popular political figures.

On 4 January 2004, Mikhail Saakashvili won the pre-term presidential elections in with an overwhelming majority. He was inaugurated on 25 January. A new was elected on 28 March, with Burjanadze resuming her old post as Speaker on 22 April.

Following a political crisis in late 2007, Saakashvili called new parliamentary and presidential elections for January 2008. In order to contest the presidential election, Saakashvili announced his resignation effective 25 November 2007, with Burjanadze becoming acting president for a second time (until the election returned Saakashvili to office on 20 January 2008).

Burjanadze was designated to lead the United National Movement party list for the parliamentary elections scheduled on 21 May 2008, but on 21 April she announced, in a surprise move, that she would not seek reelection due to a lack of consensus in the compilation of the National Movement's party list. Burjanadze's term as a parliamentary chairperson expired with the new legislature's inaugural session on 7 June 2008, when she was succeeded by David Bakradze.

In June 2008, Burjanadze announced she would set up a think tank that would serve as "a new form of being in politics." The organization — the Foundation for Democracy and Development (FDD) — was inaugurated in Tbilisi on 7 July 2008.

On 27 October 2008, in the aftermath of the 2008 South Ossetia war between Russia and Georgia, Burjanadze announced the establishment of "a clear-cut opposition party" called Democratic Movement–United Georgia.

On 28 November 2008, in an interview with Russia's Vesti news channel, Russia's NATO envoy Dmitry Rogozin accused the United States of planning to replace Mikheil Saakashvili with Burjanadze as president of Georgia.

On March 23, 2009, the Georgian interior ministry confirmed, that 10 of the activists from Burdzhanadze's party, Democratic Movement–United Georgia had been arrested. Burdzhanadze accused Mikheil Saakashvili of arranging the arrests to intimidate the opposition. Burdzhanadze said the arrests marked the start of a "punitive campaign" by the government against the opposition, ahead of the mass protest planned for April 9 to demand Saakashvili's resignation.

2011 protests
The protests led by Burzhanadze began on May 21, 2011 when over 10,000 Georgians attended a demonstration in Tbilisi demanding Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili's resignation. In the southwestern town of Batumi some demonstrations also occurred with some protesters attempting to break into the television building. Nino Burjanadze has been a lead figure in the demonstrations. The protesters in Batumi briefly clashed with police. On 26 May at about 00:15, Georgian police began to suppress the protests with tear gas and rubber bullets. The following year, the ruling party lost parliamentary elections.

Political positions

 * Burjanadze's position as it relates to Soviet symbols is that they should not be banned. According to her, it is because Georgian soldiers in the Red Army fought under Soviet symbols during World War II. "Half the world fought against the Nazis with Soviet symbols. Instead of banning them, the state should concentrate on today’s problems and stop acting like fools" Burjanadze stated in 2018.

Personal life
Burjanadze is married to Badri Bitsadze, the former head of the Department of Georgian State Border Defence, who stood down shortly after Burdjanadze's political transformation. They have two sons. Aside from the Georgian language, she is fluent in the Russian and English languages.

title: Nino Burjanadze


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List of musicals: A to L

This is a list of musicals, including Broadway, Off-Broadway, and West End musicals, as well as film and television musicals, whose titles fall into the A–L alphabetic range. This is not a complete list of musicals, and is limited to musicals that have their own articles on the English-language Wikipedia.

title: List of musicals: A to L


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Diyala Governorate

Diyala Governorate (محافظة ديالى Muḥāfaẓat Diyālā) or Diyala Province is a governorate in northeastern Iraq.

Provincial Government

 * Governor: Muthanna al-Tamimi
 * Deputy Governor: Mohammed Jassim al-Jubouri

Geography
Diyala Governorate extends to the northeast of Baghdad as far as the Iranian border. Its capital is Baqubah. It covers an area of 17,685 square kilometres (6,828 sq mi).

A large portion of the province is drained by the Diyala River, a major tributary of the Tigris. Because of its proximity to two major sources of water, Diyala's main industry is agriculture, primarily dates grown in large groves. The province also contains one of the largest olive groves in the Middle East. It is also recognized as the orange capital of the Middle East. The Hamrin Mountains pass through the governorate.

Population
The governorate is home to a diverse population of Arabs, Kurds and Turkmens. According to the latest statistics, the number of inhabitants is approximately 1,6 million.

Sports
Diyala is home to Diyala SC that plays in Iraq Stars League, the highest division of the Iraqi football league system, following promotion from Iraqi Premier Division League in 2024. The club is based in Baqubah and Ba'quba Stadium is its home stadium.

Administrative districts
Diyala Governorate comprises seven districts, listed below with their areas and populations as estimated in 2003:

Cities, towns, and villages

 * Baqubah (provincial capital)
 * Nahrawan
 * Miqdadiyah
 * Hibhib
 * Khanaqin
 * Balad Ruz
 * Al Khalis
 * Bani Sa'ad
 * Jalawla (or Jalula)
 * Al-Sadiyah
 * Mansouryat al-Jabel
 * Camp Ashraf
 * Dwelah
 * Kingirban
 * Al-Ghalibiyah
 * Abd Allah Bayk (عبدالله بيك)
 * Safra'
 * Marfu Village
 * Village of Nye
 * Udame
 * Kan’aan
 * Al Wajihiya
 * Al Muntheriya
 * Abu Saydah
 * Buhriz
 * Mandali
 * Qaryat Imam ʽAskar
 * Kifri
 * Qara Tapa

Infrastructure
The Diyala Province boasts the Diyala Media Center which has one of the Middle East's tallest radio and television antennas at 349 metres (1,047 ft). The Diyala Media Center was built under contract by a Japanese architectural firm in 1989. It is one of Iraq's few independent radio and television stations that offer local television and radio news coverage as well as rebroadcasting state-run television.

Civil unrest/Iraq War
There is evidence that Al-Qaeda in Iraq moved its base of operations from Anbar province to Diyala in 2006 and during late 2006, Baqubah and majority of the Diyala province were reported to have come under Sunni insurgent control. This insurgent control is reported to have continued through 2007 and into early 2008.

On May 11, 2007, Army Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon, commander of the Multi-National Division North said he needed more troops in order to contain the current level of violence in the Diyala province, this coming in the recent wake of a troop "surge", involuntary recalls by the U.S. military, and the public debate about the level of commitment from the U.S. government. By mid-2007 the Islamic State of Iraq, already holding Baqubah and most of the province under its control, declared its capital to be Baqubah. The Sunni insurgent group Ansar al-Islam was also active in the region around this time.

In June 2007, US forces launched Operation Arrowhead Ripper with night air assaults in Baqubah. By August 19, Baqubah was largely secured, although some insurgent presence remained in the city and surrounding areas. Fighting continued in the Diyala River valley but by the beginning of October, US and Iraqi forces held most of the province while the insurgents were in retreat to the north and west. On October 27 the Islamic State of Iraq attacked a police base in Baqubah, killing 28 Iraqi policemen and police recruits, showing that insurgent cells still remain in the province.

In January 2008 Operation Phantom Phoenix was launched in an attempt to eradicate the remaining insurgents following the Diyala campaign between 2006 and 2007.

Mid-2008 saw many changes in Diyala province with an increased effort by U.S. Forces and a substantial Iraqi Army presence, and in the Baqubah region, Islamic State of Iraq's activity was dramatically hampered, and the Sons of Iraq program served only to further weaken Islamic State in Iraq.

Declaration of autonomy
In December 2011, the governing council in Diyala province declared itself a semi-autonomous region within Iraq. This comes two months after Saladin Governorate made a similar declaration. The council in Diyala, using Article 119 of the Iraqi Constitution as justification, made the declaration because of suspicion of the Shi'a-dominated government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Unlike Salah ad Din province however, Diyala province is more ethnically and religiously mixed, and such an announcement led to the outbreak of protests in the province.

title: Diyala Governorate


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East Baltic race

The East Baltic race is one of the subcategories of the Europid race, into which it was divided by biological anthropologists and scientific racism in the early 20th century. Such racial typologies have been rejected by modern anthropology for several reasons.

The term East Baltic race was coined by anthropologist Rolf Nordenstreng, but was popularised by race theorist Hans F. K. Günther. This race was said to live in Finland, Estonia and northern Russia, and was also said to be found among the Slavic, Baltic, Uralic and even Germanic populations (mainly due to Prussian and Swedish locals who migrated to the region throughout medieval and early modern times) of the Baltic sea area. It was characterised as "short-headed, broad-faced, with heavy, massive under-jaw, chin not prominent, flat, rather broad, short nose with low bridge; stiff, light (ash-blond) hair; light (grey or pale blue) eyes, standing out; light skin with a greyish undertone.

The American Eugenics Society described East Baltic people as being Mongolized.

Nazi philologist Josef Nadler declared the East Baltic race to be the main source of German Romanticism. Also in the Third Reich, philologist Julius Petersen wrote that Ludwig Tieck's Romanticism might have been promoted by his possible Slavic heritage, referring to American biographer Edwin H. Zeydel's theory that Tieck's grandmother was Russian.

title: East Baltic race


text:
Talk:List of musicals: A to L

Untitled
Could we be specific about the meaning of "Broadway musical"? Does it mean any musical that has ever appeared on Broadway, or only those that made their debut on Broadway? Deb 18:12, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * I think we should move this to List of musicals and then consider splitting it out later. Generalised list more useful, surely? Morwen 18:24, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * I agree. I actually hadn't even noticed that it was Broadway musicals. Let's start by being all-inclusive... we can always categorize later. Offhand I'd say the list is only about 20% complete at this point, anyway...
 * By the way... do Gilbert and Sullivan count as "musicals?" (I just realized that "The Jazz Mikado" and "The Hot Mikado" do qualify, even as Broadway musicals) Dpbsmith 20:50, 24 Nov 2003 (UTC)
 * Musical is short for Musical Play and implies that, although music plays a big part in the show, the plot is mostly moved ahead by non-musical scenes as opposed to opera which uses purely musical plot scenes and operetta which uses both. G & S is in an awkward position because it is generally thought of as operetta but, as far as I recall, is also acknowledged to have had a formative influence on the early musicals. -- Derek Ross —Preceding undated comment added by Derek Ross (talk • contribs) 21:18, 24 November 2003 (UTC)

Notable songs and other notes
Someone, without any discussion here and without noting it in the edit summary, has removed all the short notes, particularly about notable songs.
 * There should have been a discussion here before this was done.
 * The fact that this was done should have definitely been noted in the edit summary, as it is a major change.

I have restored this information.

Most of these musicals do not have full articles of their own. It is unlikely that anybody is going to do full-scale articles for all or most of the musicals in the near future. Similarly, it is unlikely that many of these songs will ever receive full articles. Many of them are all but forgotten by all experts apart from having given rise to a familiar song.

To a modern reader, is there any fact about the obscure musical "Oh, Boy" that is more important than that it was the origin of "Till the Clouds Roll By?" Is there anything about "Knickerbocker Holiday" more important than that it was source of "September Song?"

If we had articles about each of these musicals and the articles listed the songs, you could make out a case for not duplicating them in the list. Most of these short notes about relevant songs and, in some cases, other identifying features of these musicals are not yet easily found elsewhere in Wikipedia.

Although specifying which songs are notable will, in reality, be based on the basis of the judgement of the person writing the entry, rather than say, researching reviews or Billboard lists, most of these judgements are noncontroversial. This is particularly true in the cases of the "obscure musical with one notable song." Obviously, if you were to for a list of the notable songs in "Oklahoma!" rank in order of notability, different people would include different songs and rank them in different orders. Even here, though, I can't imagine anyone saying that "Oh! what a Beautiful Morning" should be omitted—or that "It's a Scandal! It's an Outrage!" should be included. Dpbsmith 13:06, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

stage musicals/films
This article is now a mammoth. Anyone feel like separating out the movies into an article called List of movie musicals? AJD 10:50, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I would prefer to have an integrated list. The size can be dealt with by creating pages for letters of the alphabet as has been done with List of songs. Splitting the list would make it more difficult to determine which theatre musicals became films and vice versa. JohnRogers —Preceding unsigned comment added by JohnRogers (talk • contribs) 06:14, 18 July 2004 (UTC)

Missing Musical
Les Miserables needs to be added to the list -Ary Sudarmana (21 March, 2006) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.7.176.133 (talk) 06:38, 21 March 2006 (UTC)

Many musicals are missing. Why is a list preferred to a category in this instance? -Jodi (26 August 2006) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.232.98.102 (talk) 16:50, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

Most film musicals seem to be missing, i.e. all the Golddigger movies, Astair and Rogers, Busby Berkley. 15.251.169.69 (talk) 09:35, 31 January 2008 (UTC)Paul B.

Years?
With years on the list of musicals, should we be linking to pages like 1972 in music? Or pages like 1972? A consenus needs to be reached and then the page needs to be edited accordingly. ClarineteBajo 22:28, 19 Jul 2006

Contents broken
Someone needs to fix the contents. Everything M and under is in another entry, but the transcluded contents template links to this article. --24.115.80.11 20:15, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

definition of a musical
I wondered if there is a definition of what qualifies as a "Musical"?
 * I was first directed here since someone placed Lady and the Tramp as a musical theatre project, it does not have many songs-but it is true that on the feature on the DVD Disney Backstage that they consider it a musical.
 * Assuming this is so, there are many more missing, and some that should show up more than one time. Examples Beauty and the Beast, Lion King - became Broadway Musicals - that have additional songs and variations.
 * Animation - some are missing, assume likely true since Lady and the Tramp was just added. Oliver & Company version of the story Oliver as a animated musical an example not yet listed.
 * Direct to DVD - would be a somewhat questionable if qualifies as film - though some I have The Fox and the Hound 2 have more songs than Lady and the Tramp. And contrary to what may be thought they had well known composers and artists performing for a direct to DVD film - it was promoted with the CMT cable network.Kidsheaven 00:27, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Alphabetically/Chronologically
I for one find this alphabetical ordering of the musicals very confusing. I think it would be a lot more useful and navagation-friendly if it was ordered by year it was released, then alphabetically after. An example of what i mean is List of musical films by year.--Coin945 (talk) 10:04, 7 October 2009 (UTC)

Grinch
I am a bit unsure of what is considered a musical. Is How the Grinch stole Christmas! a musical? Rozzychan (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 04:54, 2 June 2010 (UTC).

Rearrnaged 0-9
I have put a table in the 0-9 section, and I will continue to do so if looks alright. feedback is welcome. Thank You Phaeton23 (talk) 17:53, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

If there is a Table in 0-9, there needs to be a table in everything, I am considering deleting the table. --DefyingGravityForGood (talk) 20:16, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

 * Comment I see no value in tables for these articles, the material actually appears harder to read to me. See the Wikipedia article on Tables at [Tables]. If you do decide to use tables, I agree that all formatting in all of the articles (I.e. List of musicals, - through -) should be uniform. JeanColumbia (talk) 20:48, 29 August 2010 (UTC)

 * I was not going to spend half my lifetime tabling them if the tables were to be deleted--this was done to see if helps (i think it is neater than just plain text). The reason for the tables was because people keep adding "notable songs" which can be found out when opening the page. It was just to make the correct info available and keep people from adding notable songs/other information.
 * Comment Well, we might want to add something to the introductory paragraph, like (do not need to use these exact words).

"'This list of musicals does not include notable songs or other irrelevant information.'"
 * That statement alone will, I suspect, gather some thoughtful comments and so you might be able to see what else can be done here. By the way, I doubt that changing a format to discourage inappropriate material will work. And, I suppose, put these articles on your watch list. (I will not put it on my watch list as I watch too many musical theatre articles as it is!) If you decide to use tables, I will not delete, but I can not speak for any other editor. JeanColumbia (talk) 19:30, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
 * What do you think though? I think it makes it look alot more organized, but I would like to hear what others say. Also, for musicals that begin with "A" (e.g. A Chorus Line), are they to be put in the A or their other respective first letter? Thank You Phaeton23 (talk) 14:38, 1 September 2010 (UTC)

Tables
There should be a table for every letter like on *0-9*. If it's possible, could anyone do it on the M to Z page too, because I don't know how to make a table. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ryanmalik01 (talk • contribs) 21:37, 10 June 2011 (UTC)

 * Who did the table and stopped at the first letter (numerals)? Ah, I see Phaeton did it but stopped when someone complained. Should it be in table format?
 * I can try to do the rest but I am worried that this table attempt was a spur of the moment thing that might have to be rearranged later. Is the table in the proper format for this list? Are Wikipedia lists of this size and scope often in table format?
 * If it's ok to tableize the rest, please reply on my talk page. Yclept:Berr (talk) 09:11, 26 July 2011 (UTC)
 * I'd agree looking at the list, the table form seems neater and easier to read. I'd suggest contacting Phaeton at his talk page and then discussing it here to see if there is any further dissent/support or alternative ideas on lay out.Number36 (talk) 00:10, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

D
Why hasn't the D section been set up as a table yet? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.255.63.35 (talk) 04:53, 13 February 2014 (UTC)

Anyone up for helping add, like, all the recent Broadway musicals?
Just noticed that a whole lot of recent Broadway productions (e.g. most ones nominated for the 71st Tony Awards) are entirely missing from this page! Anyone up for helping add some of them. I'm working on it too. Paintspot Infez (talk) 03:04, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

Recent consistency edits in "A" section
While updating/correcting entries I noticed that the "Venue/Type" section is being used inconsistently and for differing purposes. More often than not it's a general category, eg, "Broadway," "Off-Broadway," "Film," etc., but in random places more of a descriptor has been added (eg, "revue," "jukebox musical). Since a consistent application would require all other "Broadway," etc. entries being changed to "Broadway musical," etc (a massive job), descriptions of the type of show have been moved to "notes" where they logically belong. There were also random entries with the specific theater named, which is so erratically and rarely applied that I changed those to the categories. Likewise, all entries other than foreign ones have been consistent in terms of referring to the city where the show debuted, but some were randomly categorized as languages, which I have changed to city format.

Another thing that varies a great deal at the moment is how to classify shows with multiple songwriters/songwriting teams. In some cases we have "various artists" (capitalized multiple ways), in others just "various," and in others "et al." I have changed everything to "various artists" since it is most syntactically clear regardless of where it's placed. Going by most style guides "et al" is really only appropriate if the credits are actually listed as "et al" so I have eliminated these with the caveat that there may be some shows I haven't gotten to yet where it is actually accurate.

Finally, I have removed "book" credits from anything that isn't actually a stage musical. Movies and TV shows don't have "books," they have directors and writers, and that information has been moved to notes (figuring out who wrote the "book" to a movie is largely impossible since some films are largely "authored" by the director and others by the writers or even the producer--which becomes obvious based on how random and haphazard the current "book" entries are under films and TV productions.

Since there doesn't seem to be a current style guide or discussion of style on this page (and since it's barely being touched) I did not expect any of these changes to be controversial; however, if there are arguments against these changes please let me know and I will do my best to accommodate reversions. I would prefer strongly that I not be mass-reverted since there was also substantive work that I performed. If no one objects I will continue applying these style edits as I move through the alphabet. ChrisStansfield Contribs 16:23, 17 May 2020 (UTC)
 * This all makes sense to me, including the listing of director & writer instead of bookwriter/s for films. -- BessieMaelstrom (talk) 12:35, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

1896
Can someone add 1896? I'd do it myself, but I'm not experienced with this kind of thing. Working on it :) JohnLaurensAnthonyRamos333 (correct me if I'm wrong) 21:40, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:List of musicals: A to L


text:
David Thomas

David, Dave, or Dai Thomas may refer to:

Academics and education

 * David Thomas (educationalist) (1880–1967), Welsh educationalist and politician
 * David A. Thomas (academic) (born 1956), American psychologist, president of Morehouse College, Atlanta
 * David A. Thomas (educator) (1917–2004), American educator, the dean of the Johnson School at Cornell
 * David Oswald Thomas (1924–2005), Welsh philosopher at Aberystwyth University
 * David Winton Thomas (1901–1970), British scholar of Hebrew
 * J. David Thomas (born 1931), British papyrologist and classical scholar

Literature

 * David Thomas, pen name of Dave Thompson (author) (born 1960), English writer about music
 * David Thomas (Dewi Hefin) (1828–1909), Welsh poet and schoolteacher
 * David N. Thomas (born 1945), Welsh writer
 * David St John Thomas (1929–2014), English publisher and writer
 * Diana (formerly David) Thomas (born 1959), English writer, also known under her pen name Tom Cain

Music

 * Dave Thomas (born 1936), stage name of American broadcaster and weatherman Dave Roberts (David Boreanaz) when he was at WKBW-TV Buffalo
 * David Thomas (born 1966), musician with Take 6
 * David Thomas (bass) (born 1943), British early-music and baroque-music singer
 * David Thomas (composer) (1881–1928), Welsh composer
 * David Thomas (musician) (born 1953), American musician, member of group Pere Ubu
 * David Vaughan Thomas (1873–1934), composer, organist, pianist and music administrator

Performing arts

 * Dave Thomas (actor) (born 1949), Canadian actor and comedian
 * David A. Thomas (voice actor) (born 1955), American voice actor and painter

Visual arts

 * David Thomas, former director of Newcastle Art Gallery, Newcastle, Australia

Business

 * David and Tonya Thomas, Baltimore chefs, restaurateurs, and food historians
 * David Thomas (British businessman) (born 1963), British businessman, CEO of Barratt Developments
 * David Thomas (industrialist) (1794–1882), Welsh industrialist
 * D. A. Thomas (David Alfred Thomas, 1856–1918), Welsh industrialist and politician
 * David A. Thomas (software developer), Canadian software technology figure
 * Dave Thomas (businessman) (1932–2002), founder, former chairman & spokesperson of the North American Wendy's fast-food chain
 * David Chandler Thomas (1954–2021), American economist and technology executive

Politics

 * David Thomas (British politician) (1892–1954), Welsh Labour politician
 * David Thomas (educationalist) (1880–1967), Welsh educationalist and politician
 * David Thomas (MEP) (born 1955), British Labour politician
 * David Thomas (New York politician) (1762–1831), American politician, Congressman from New York
 * David Thomas (Texas politician) (1795–1836), American politician, signer of Texas Declaration of Independence
 * David L. Thomas (born 1949), American politician, South Carolina state senator
 * Dave Thomas (politician) (born 1965), American politician from Alabama

Religion

 * David Thomas (archdeacon of Cardigan) (died 1951), Welsh priest
 * David Thomas (archdeacon of Gower), Welsh Anglican priest
 * David Thomas (archdeacon of Montgomery) (1833–1916), Welsh priest and historian
 * David Thomas (bishop) (1942–2017), Welsh bishop
 * David Thomas (missionary priest) (1829–1905), Welsh priest
 * David Thomas (Protestant minister, born 1813) (1813–1894), Welsh preacher and publisher

Science

 * David Thomas (Canadian scientist), Canadian biochemist
 * David Thomas (geographer) (born 1958), British geographer
 * Dave Thomas (programmer) (born 1956), British-American computer programmer and writer
 * Dave Thomas (skeptic) (born 1953), American physicist and mathematician known for his scientific skepticism
 * David A. Thomas (academic) (born 1956), American psychologist and academic
 * David Gilbert Thomas (1928–2015), British-American chemist and physicist
 * David Hurst Thomas (born 1945), American archaeologist

Association football

 * Dai Thomas (footballer, born 1926) (1926–2014), Swansea City A.F.C. and Welsh international footballer
 * Dai Thomas (footballer, born 1975), Welsh footballer
 * Dave Thomas (footballer, born 1917) (1917–1991), English footballer
 * Dave Thomas (footballer, born 1950), English footballer
 * Lyn Thomas (footballer) (David Stuart Lynne Thomas, 1920–1993), Welsh footballer

Rugby

 * Dai Thomas (rugby league) (1879–1958), rugby league footballer of the 1900s for Other Nationalities, and Oldham
 * Dai Thomas (rugby union) (1909–?), Welsh international rugby player
 * Dave Thomas (rugby union, born 1941) (1941–2017), Welsh rugby player
 * Dave Thomas (rugby union, born 1988), New Zealand rugby player
 * David Thomas (rugby league), rugby league footballer of the 1900s for Wales, Halifax, and Mid-Rhondda
 * David John Thomas (1879–1925), Welsh international rugby player

Cricket

 * David Thomas (cricketer, born 1911) (1911–2001), Welsh cricketer
 * David Thomas (cricketer, born 1959) (1959–2012), English cricketer
 * David Thomas (cricketer, born 1963), former English cricketer

Gridiron football

 * David Thomas (American football) (born 1983), American football tight end
 * David Thomas (Canadian football) (born 1951), American football cornerback
 * Dave Thomas (cornerback) (born 1968), American football cornerback

Other sports

 * Dave Thomas (baseball) (1905–1968), Negro league baseball player
 * Dave Thomas (basketball) (born 1976), Canadian basketball player
 * David Thomas (beach volleyball) (born 1974), Trinidad and Tobago beach volleyball player
 * David Thomas (boxer) (1937–1980), British Olympic boxer
 * David Thomas (field hockey) (born 1927), British Olympic hockey player
 * Dave Thomas (golfer) (1934–2013), Welsh golfer

Other

 * David Cuthbert Thomas (1896–1916), Welsh soldier of the First World War
 * David Courtney Thomas, American murder victim
 * David Thomas (murderer) (died 1995), executed Vincentian criminal
 * David M. Thomas Jr. (fl. 1981–present), officer in the United States Navy
 * David Thomas (jeweller) (born 1942), Crown Jeweller for the English monarchy
 * David Thomas (judge), Justice of the Supreme Court of Queensland

title: David Thomas


text:
Richat Structure

The Richat Structure, or Guelb er Richât (قلب الريشات ), is a prominent circular geological feature in the Adrar Plateau of the Sahara. It is located near Ouadane in the Adrar Region of Mauritania. In the local dialect, rīšāt means feathers and it is also known locally in Arabic as tagense, referring to the circular opening of the leather pouch that is used to draw water from local wells.

It is an eroded geological dome, 40 km in diameter, exposing sedimentary rock in layers that appear as concentric rings. Igneous rock is exposed inside and there are rhyolites and gabbros that have undergone hydrothermal alteration, and a central megabreccia. The structure is also the location of exceptional accumulations of Acheulean archaeological artifacts. It was selected as one of the 100 geological heritage sites identified by the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) to be of the highest scientific value.

Description
The Richat Structure is a deeply eroded, slightly elliptical dome with a diameter of 40 km. The sedimentary rock exposed in this dome ranges in age from Late Proterozoic within the center of the dome to Ordovician sandstone around its edges. The sedimentary rocks composing this structure dip outward at 10–20°. Differential erosion of resistant layers of quartzite has created high-relief circular cuestas. Its center consists of a siliceous breccia covering an area that is at least 30 km in diameter. Exposed within the interior of the Richat Structure is a variety of intrusive and extrusive igneous rocks. They include rhyolitic volcanic rocks, gabbros, carbonatites and kimberlites. The rhyolitic rocks consist of lava flows and hydrothermally altered tuffaceous rocks that are part of two distinct eruptive centers, which are interpreted to be the eroded remains of two maars. According to field mapping, aeromagnetic, and gravimetric data, the gabbroic rocks form two concentric ring dikes. The inner ring dike is about 30 m in width, 3 km from the center of the Richat Structure. The outer ring dike is about 70 m in width, 8 km from the center of the structure. Thirty-two carbonatite dikes and sills have been mapped within the structure. The dikes are generally about 300 m long and typically 1 to 4 m wide. They consist of massive carbonatites that are mostly devoid of vesicles. The carbonatite rocks have been dated as having cooled between 94 and 104 million years ago. A kimberlitic plug and several sills have been found within the northern part of the structure. The kimberlite plug has been dated to around 99 million years old. These intrusive igneous rocks are interpreted as indicating the presence of a large alkaline igneous intrusion that currently underlies the structure and was created by uplifting the overlying rock.

Spectacular hydrothermal features are a part of the Richat Structure. They include the extensive hydrothermal alteration of rhyolites and gabbros and a central megabreccia created by hydrothermal dissolution and collapse. The siliceous megabreccia is at least 40 m thick in its center to only a few meters thick along its edges. The breccia consists of fragments of white to dark gray cherty material, quartz-rich sandstone, diagenetic cherty nodules, and stromatolitic limestone and is intensively silicified. The hydrothermal alteration, which created this breccia, has been dated to have occurred about 98.2 ± 2.6 million years ago using the 40Ar/39Ar method.

Interpretation
The structure was first described in the 1930s to 1940s, as Richât Crater or Richât buttonhole (boutonnière du Richât). Richard-Molard (1948) considered it to be the result of a laccolithic uplift. A geological expedition to Mauritania led by Théodore Monod in 1952 recorded four "crateriform or circular irregularities" (accidents cratériformes ou circulaires) in the area, Er Richât, Aouelloul (south of Chinguetti), Temimichat-Ghallaman and Tenoumer. It was initially considered to be an impact structure (as is clearly the case with the other three), but a closer study in the 1950s to 1960s suggested that it might instead have been formed by terrestrial processes. After field and laboratory studies in the 1960s, no significant evidence was found for shock metamorphism or other deformation indicative of a hypervelocity extraterrestrial impact. Coesite, an indicator of shock metamorphism, was initially reported as being present in rock samples from the structure, but a further analysis in 1969 concluded that barite had been misidentified as coesite. Work on dating the structure was done in the 1990s. A study of the formation of the structure by Matton, et al. (2005, 2008) concluded it was not an impact structure.

Further analysis of deep structure underneath the surface, including with aeromagnetic and gravimetric mapping, concluded that the structure is the result of ring faults which led to gabbroic ring dikes over a large intrusive body of magma, and the uplifting and later erosion of a dome, through intense hydrothermal activity through the fractured substructure. This can form cuestas over time through the differential erosion of the resulting alternating hard and soft rock layers. The underlying alkaline igneous complex exposed through erosion dates to the Cretaceous period.

IUGS geological heritage site
In respect of it being "a spectacular example of a magmatic concentric alkaline complex", the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS) included the Richat Structure in its assemblage of 100 geological heritage sites around the world, in October 2022. The organisation defines an IUGS Geological Heritage Site as "a key place with geological elements and/or processes of international scientific relevance, used as a reference, and/or with a substantial contribution to the development of geological sciences through history."

Archaeology
The Richat Structure is the location of exceptional accumulations of Acheulean artifacts. These Acheulean archaeological sites are located along wadis that occupy outermost annular depression of this structure. Pre-Acheulean stone tools also have been found in the same areas. These sites are associated with rubbly outcrops of quartzite that provided the raw material needed for the manufacture of these artifacts. The most important Acheulean sites and their associated outcrops are found along the northwest of the outer ring, from which Wadi Akerdil heads east and Wadi Bamouere to the west. Sparse and widely scattered Neolithic spear points and other artifacts have also been found. However, since these sites were first discovered by Théodore Monod in 1974, mapping of artifacts within the area of the structure have found them to be generally absent in its innermost depressions. So far, neither recognizable midden deposits nor manmade structures have been recognized and reported from the structure. This is interpreted as indicating that the area of the Richat Structure was used for only short-term hunting and stone tool manufacturing. The local apparent wealth of surface artifacts is the result of the concentration and mixing by deflation over multiple glacial-interglacial cycles.

Artifacts are found, typically redeposited, deflated, or both, in Late Pleistocene to early Holocene gravelly mud, muddy gravel, clayey sand, and silty sand. These sediments are often cemented into either concretionary masses or beds by calcrete. Ridges typically consist of deeply weathered bedrock representing truncated Cenozoic paleosols that formed under tropical environments. The Pleistocene to Middle Holocene sediments occur along wadis as the thin, meter- to less-than-meter-thick accumulations in the interior annular depressions to 3-4 m accumulations along the wadis in the outermost annular depression of the structure. The gravelly deposits consist of a mixture of slope scree, debris flow, and fluviatile or even torrential flow deposits. The finer-grained, sandy deposits consist of eolian and playa lake deposits. The latter contain well-preserved freshwater fossils. Numerous concordant radiocarbon dates indicate that the bulk of these sediments accumulated between 15,000 and 8,000 BP during the African humid period. These deposits lie directly upon deeply eroded and weathered bedrock.

Fringe theory of Atlantis site
The Richat structure has been the subject of fringe claims to be the site of Atlantis mentioned in the works of Plato. This claim is primarily based on the concentric nature of the structure, which superficially matches Plato's description of the city. Most classicists believe that Atlantis was a fictional rhetorical invention by Plato, rather than a real geographic location. Skeptic Steven Novella criticised the claim, stating that the structure is inconsistent with Plato's description of Atlantis, and that the site shows no evidence of a city ever being built at the location.

title: Richat Structure


text:
Ledbury

Ledbury is a market town and civil parish in the county of Herefordshire, England, lying east of Hereford, and west of the Malvern Hills.

It has a significant number of Tudor style timber-framed structures, in particular along Church Lane and High Street. One of the most outstanding is Ledbury Market Hall, built in 1617, located in the town centre. Other notable buildings include the parish church of St. Michael and All Angels, the Painted Room (containing sixteenth-century frescoes), the Old Grammar School, the Barrett-Browning memorial clock tower (designed by Brightwen Binyon and opened in 1896 to house the library until 2015), nearby Eastnor Castle and the St. Katherine's Hospital site. Founded c. 1231, this is a rare surviving example of a hospital complex, with hall, chapel, a Master's House (fully restored and opened in March 2015 to house the Library), almshouses and a timber-framed barn.

History
Ledbury is a borough whose origins date to around AD 690. In the Domesday Book it was recorded as Liedeberge. It may take its name from the River Leadon on which it stands. Old English burg (fortified or defended site) has been added to the river name.

As a town it was created on a bishop's manor, probably, like Leominster, Bromyard and Ross-on-Wye, in the episcopate of Bishop Richard de Capella (1121–1127). It returned members to Parliament in the reign of Edward I. The Feathers Hotel was a famous 16th century drovers' inn. It was not until the reign of Queen Elizabeth I that this 'poor town' became prosperous thanks mainly to three families of clothier merchants, Skynner, Skyppe, and Elton. No less than four battles were fought during the English civil wars, during which it was a bastion of royalism. Thereafter the arrival of the Martin and Biddulph during the age of aristocracy and into the Victorian signalled a financial sea-change for the town from these banker landowners; Biddulph was later ennobled.

In April 1645, during the English Civil War, a battle was fought at Ledbury between Royalist forces under Prince Rupert and Roundhead forces under Col Edward Massey, a veteran parliamentarian leader during the Siege of Gloucester. As Prince Rupert’s forces advanced north, towards Leicester, Massey’s forces barricaded the town, but were subsequently routed from Ledbury and pursued for many miles, losing 520 men. It was one of the last royalist victories of the First Civil War, Rupert’s army would later be comprehensively defeated at the Battle of Naseby.

Lord Biddulph lived in the Regency mansion Underdown, built in Ledbury Park by Anthony Keck in about 1780.

Ledbury was home to poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, who spent her childhood at Hope End. It is also the birthplace of poet laureate John Masefield, after whom the local secondary school is named. William Wordsworth's 1835 sonnet St. Catherine of Ledbury, concerning a local anchoress called Katherine, begins "When ... Ledbury bells broke forth in concert". In 1901 St. Katharine's priest was Charles Madison Green, whose wife, Ella, was the eldest sister of author H. Rider Haggard. During the twentieth century the population stabilised, hardly growing at all to the Census of 1971. Becoming a prosperous town of small and independent traders, it relied heavily on agricultural industries. With the addition of the by-pass in 1989, the population rapidly expanded to nearly 10,000 in Census 2011.

The Herefordshire and Gloucestershire Canal, which opened from Gloucester as far as Ledbury in 1798, passed through the lower part of the town with wharves at Bye Street and at what is now the Ross Road near the Full Pitcher public house. After closing in 1885, part of the Ledbury-to-Gloucester section of the canal was used by the Great Western Railway for the Ledbury and Gloucester Railway. The original line of the canal northwards towards Hereford can still be seen, where it went underneath the Ledbury-to-Hereford railway. When the Gloucester railway closed in 1964 as a result of the Beeching cuts it became overgrown, but the route through Ledbury became a footpath. In 1997 a 1.6 mi section from the bypass/Ross Road roundabout to the railway station was upgraded to a 2 m wide path with a surface of compacted limestone chippings that could be utilised by cyclists and wheelchair users. Several access points were created, trees thinned out but retained, and the Hereford Road Skew Bridge across the A438 was reopened. The proposed bridge to take the Town Trail (as it is now known) across the B4214 Bromyard Road into the station yard was not built. The Trail ends at the Hereford/Bromyard road junction.

Ledbury Town Halt railway station opened in 1885 and closed in 1959.

Governance
Ledbury forms part of three electoral wards of Herefordshire Council. It has a town council, a town clerk, a mayor and a town crier. The town crier, Bill Turberfield (locally known as 'Bill the Bell') opens events such as the annual Christmas Lights Switch-On. The mayor is Helen I'Anson. Ledbury is one of four market towns (the others being Leominster, Bromyard and Kington) in the North Herefordshire parliamentary constituency. Prior to 2010, it was part of the predecessor constituency, Leominster. Conservative Bill Wiggin has been the local MP since 2001.

Transport
The main roads through the town are the A449 and the A417; the M50 motorway runs to the south.

Ledbury railway station is near to the western end of the Cotswold line and offers direct services to Hereford, Worcester, Birmingham, Oxford and London Paddington. Services are operated by Great Western Railway.

Bus services are operated primarily by First Worcester and DRM Bus; routes connect the town with Hereford, Ross-on-Wye and Worcester.

Media
Local news and television programmes are provided by BBC West Midlands and ITV Central. Television signals are received from the Ridge Hill TV transmitter. Local radio stations are BBC Hereford and Worcester, Free Radio Herefordshire & Worcestershire, Greatest Hits Radio Herefordshire & Worcestershire and Sunshine Radio. The town is served by the local newspaper, Ledbury Reporter which publishes on Fridays.

Industry
For many years the Robertson's factory, a subsidiary of Rank Hovis McDougall, produced jam. Production was moved to Histon in Cambridgeshire in September 2007 following the parent company's acquisition by Premier Foods. The site is now used by Universal Beverages to process fruit for cider producers such as Bulmer's and includes two giant fermentation tanks, each capable of holding 800,000 litres.

Ledbury is home to Amcor's flexible-packaging manufacturing plant. This has been awarded both the 'Carbon Reduction Cost-Saving Award - over 250 employees' and 'Most Promising New Low-Carbon Product / Service Award - over 250 employees' in the West Midlands Low-Carbon-Economy 2010 awards.

Ledbury has an income from tourism, being steeped in history in a rural area, with pubs for visitors and locals alike.

Recreation
The town is the venue for various events including the Ledbury Poetry Festival. The annual Community Day takes place in June each year. The first such event was an Ox Roast on 2 June 2013 to commemorate the diamond jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II's coronation, exactly 60 years after an ox roast that was held in 1953 in Ledbury on Coronation Day.

The Big Chill at nearby Eastnor Castle, which brought thousands of people to the area each year closed after the August 2011 event. Eastnor Castle has provided the backdrop to a number of films, including 1970's One More Time, starring Jerry Lewis and Sammy Davis Jr. BBC television filmed some scenes for The Prince and the Pauper starring Nicholas Lyndhurst in 1976.

The Market Theatre, reputed to be the first in the world to open in the new millennium, is situated near the town centre. It has been built on the site of the former Church Room (a typical 'tin tabernacle' constructed in 1910, which became a theatre in 1956, with a change of name to the Market Theatre in the 1970s). From 1963 (following the demolition of the Kemble Theatre in Hereford, which was named after theatre manager Roger Kemble) until 1979, this little building was the only theatre in Herefordshire. Ledbury Amateur Dramatic Society (LADS) runs the Theatre, mounting several of its own productions a year. They show films and live screenings on a regular basis, and play host to small and mid-scale professional touring shows, including events in the Poetry Festival. There are a number of singing groups, including the Choral Society and the Community Choir the latter with over 60 members. In 2000, Ledbury formed a twinning association with the Swedish [28] town of Strömstad. Since then, several cultural and sporting exchanges have taken place between the two: the junior football club, Ledbury Swifts makes an annual trip there. The hunts (Ledbury, which dates from 1846, and North Ledbury, established in 1905) used to be well supported. The Hunting with Dogs Act 2004 banned the country pursuit, which angered local people, a few of whom joined the Countryside Alliance to register their protest.

The town is home to the Silurian Border Morrismen.

Folklore
At Tedstone Delamere the Sapey Brook runs its course to Upper Sapey. A story is told of a stolen mare and colt whose hoofprints stopped at the bank of the brook. The owner was Saint Catherine of Ledbury who prayed for their safe return and, upon examining the bed of the brook, saw hoofprints clearly visible in the rocky bottom. These were followed and the thief caught, the horses being safely recovered. A local pastime was once the creation of fake hoofprints for visitors; the original petrosomatoglyphs are visible in the brook to this day, attributed by experts to archaeology.

Notable people

 * Richard Ashcroft, musician, best known as lead singer of the Verve.
 * Elizabeth Barrett Browning, poet.
 * Mary Duggan, cricketer
 * Robin Gardner, cricketer.
 * Henry Scott Holland, professor of divinity.
 * Elizabeth Hurley, actress.
 * Terry Jenkins, darts player
 * Katherine of Ledbury, an anchoress.
 * William Langland, poet.
 * Conroy Maddox, artist.
 * John Masefield, poet laureate.
 * Will Merrick, actor.
 * James Crosbie Smith, cricketer.
 * Paul Stoddart, businessman.
 * Rachel Whitear, student.

title: Ledbury


text:
Lostwithiel

Lostwithiel (Lostwydhyel ) is a civil parish and small town in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom at the head of the estuary of the River Fowey. According to the 2001 census it had a population of 2,739, increasing to 2,899 at the 2011 census. The Lostwithiel electoral ward had a population of 4,639 at the 2011 census. The name Lostwithiel comes from the Cornish "lostwydhyel" which means "tail of a wooded area".

Origin of the name
The origin of the name Lostwithiel is a subject much debated. In the 16th century it was thought that the name came from the Roman name Uzella, translated as Les Uchel in Cornish. In the 17th century popular opinion was that the name came from a translation of Lost (a tail) and Withiel (a lion), the lion in question being the lord who lived in the castle.

Current thinking is that the name comes from the Old Cornish Lost Gwydhyel meaning "tail-end of the woodland". The view from Restormel Castle looking towards the town shows how this may have come to be.

History
Lostwithiel was founded in the early 12th century by Norman lords who built the nearby Restormel Castle. Lostwithiel received its town charter in 1189. In the late 13th century, Edmund, 2nd Earl of Cornwall oversaw the building of the Stannary Palace, the bridge and the square church tower.

The Battle of Lostwithiel, an important battle in the First English Civil War, took place near Lostwithiel in 1644. In it Parliamentarian forces defeated by the Royalists. The Parliamentarians would go on to win the war but Cornwall remained under Royalist control until 1646.

The Lostwithiel constituency elected two members to the Unreformed House of Commons, but was disenfranchised by the Reform Act 1832. It remained a municipal borough until the 1960s, when it became a civil parish. The seal of the borough of Lostwithiel was a shield charged with a castle rising from water between two thistles, in the water two fish, with the legend "Sigillum burgi de Lostwithyel et Penknight in Cornubia". Its mayoral regalia includes a silver oar, signifying its former jurisdiction over the River Fowey.

Jaques Bagratuni, a prince and ambassador of Armenia to Britain, died in Lostwithiel on 23 December 1943 but was buried at Brompton Cemetery in London.

Geography
The town is situated in the Fowey river valley, positioned between the A390 road from Tavistock to Truro and the upper tidal reaches of the river.

Lostwithiel railway station is on the Cornish Main Line from Plymouth to Penzance. It is situated on the south side of the town, just across the medieval bridge. The line was originally built for the Cornwall Railway which built its main workshops here, but the surviving workshop buildings were transformed into apartments in 2004. A branch line takes china clay trains to Fowey.

The town contains the suburbs of Bridgend to the east and Rosehill and Victoria to the west of the River Fowey.

To the south of the town is the Shirehall Moor nature reserve which follows the course of the River Fowey and opens out to a wide salt marsh. The reserve is a haven for birdlife including swans, ducks, egrets, herons, kingfishers and Canada geese.

Buildings
Lostwithiel's most notable buildings are St Bartholomew's Church and Restormel Castle. Once a stannary town, and for a period the most important in Cornwall, it is now much reduced in importance. There is a fine early fourteenth-century bridge with six pointed arches, and nearby the remains of the Stannary Palace, with its exchequer hall. Lostwithiel Guildhall in Fore Street has an arcaded ground floor and contains the local museum.

Culture
The town has a playing field known as King George V Playing Field. Lostwithiel has several large parks including Coulson Park which was named after Nathaniel Coulson (the San Francisco property magnate) who was raised in Lostwithiel after being abandoned by his father.

The town is host to a number of annual cultural activities including an arts and crafts festival, a beer festival, a week-long carnival in the summer, food and cider festivals in October, and a Dickensian evening in December.

Sport
Cornish wrestling tournaments, for prizes, have been held in Lostwithiel for centuries. Venues have included the grounds of Lanwithan, Coulson Park and the King George V Playing Field.

Lostwithiel hosted the Interceltic Games in 1982.

Education
There are two primary schools in Lostwithiel: St Winnow C E School and Lostwithiel Primary School. Both schools are academies. Lostwithiel Primary School is part of the Peninsula Learning Trust Multi Academy Trust and St Winnow C E School is part of The Saints Way Multi Academy Trust. The majority of children aged between 11 and 16 attend Fowey River Academy or Bodmin College.

Lostwithiel Educational Trust is a local charity which makes "grants to local schools and churches, as well as to individuals, for educational purposes"

Transport
One or two trains each hour stop at Lostwithiel railway station with services in each direction between Plymouth or Penzance, many continuing beyond Plymouth to Cardiff Central or London Paddington.

National Express provides a regular coach service to London which runs via Plymouth for connections to other destinations. The coach stop is located outside the Royal Talbot Hotel.

Bus stops in Lostwithiel are outside the Royal Talbot Hotel and Cott Road phone box.

Twinning
Lostwithiel was twinned with Pleyber-Christ in Brittany, France in 1979. The people in the Twinning Associations of both towns usually meet up every year, alternating between Lostwithiel and Pleyber Christ.

title: Lostwithiel


text:
Pagliacci

Pagliacci (literal translation, 'Clowns') is an Italian opera in a prologue and two acts, with music and libretto by Ruggero Leoncavallo. The opera tells the tale of Canio, actor and leader of a commedia dell'arte theatrical company, who murders his wife Nedda and her lover Silvio on stage during a performance. Pagliacci premiered at the Teatro Dal Verme in Milan on 21 May 1892, conducted by Arturo Toscanini, with Adelina Stehle as Nedda, Fiorello Giraud as Canio, Victor Maurel as Tonio, and Mario Ancona as Silvio. Soon after its Italian premiere, the opera played in London (with Nellie Melba as Nedda) and in New York (on 15 June 1893, with Agostino Montegriffo as Canio). Pagliacci is the best-known of Leoncavallo's ten operas and remains a staple of the repertoire.

Pagliacci is often staged with Cavalleria rusticana by Pietro Mascagni, a double bill known colloquially as "Cav/Pag".

Origin and disputes
Leoncavallo was a little-known composer when Pietro Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana premiered around 1890. After seeing Mascagni's success, Leoncavallo decided to write an opera in response: one act composed in the verismo style.

Leoncavallo based the story of Pagliacci on an incident from his childhood: the 1865 murder of a Leoncavallo family servant, Gaetano Scavello, killed by Gaetano D'Alessandro, with brother Luigi acting as accomplice. The incident stemmed from a series of perceived romantic entanglements involving Scavello, Luigi D'Alessandro, and a village girl with whom both men were infatuated. Leoncavallo's father, a judge, presided as magistrate over the criminal investigation.

Leoncavallo originally titled his story Il pagliaccio (The Clown). The baritone Victor Maurel, who was cast as the first Tonio, requested that Leoncavallo change the title from the singular Il pagliaccio to the plural I Pagliacci, to broaden dramatic interest from Canio alone to include Tonio (his own role).

The French author Catulle Mendès sued Leoncavallo for plagiarism after learning of the plot of Leoncavallo's libretto from an 1894 French translation. Mendès thought it resembled his 1887 play La Femme de Tabarin, which was structured as a play-within-the-play and featured a clown murdering his wife. Leoncavallo pleaded ignorance of Mendès's play. Later, there were counter-accusations that Mendès's play resembled Don Manuel Tamayo y Baus's Un Drama Nuevo (1867). Mendès dropped his lawsuit. Scholar Matteo Sansone has suggested that Leoncavallo had ample opportunity to be exposed to new French art and musical works while living in Paris from 1882 to 1888, including potentially Mendès's play, another version of La femme de Tabarin by Paul Ferrier, and Tabarin, an opera composed by Émile Pessard that was based on Ferrier's play.

Composition
The opening Prologue was written for Victor Maurel "as an afterthought", as Leoncavallo said in a conversation with the critic and singing teacher Herman Klein during his vist to London for the UK premiere in 1893: he wrote it "as an inducement to a clever, but rather egotistical baritone to sing the part of Tonio, who felt it wasn't important enough for an artist of his distinction. Perhaps he was right. Anyhow I thought the matter over and hit upon the idea that a prologue, sung before the curtain by one of the humblest characters, would prove something of a novelty and by no means out of place. Being, as you know, my own librettist, I quickly wrote the words and sketched the music. My baritone was delighted, both with the notion and the result, and I am bound to add that it proved one the most striking features of the opera when I brought it out at the Dal Verme, Milan, just a year ago."

Towards the end of the prologue, singers often interpolate a high A♭ and a high G, although these do not appear in the original full score. In an Australian newspaper article in December 1893, the baritone Guigliemo Caruson, who had already sung the part in Genoa earlier that year said that "whilst rehearsing under Signor Leoncavallo's immediate direction, the composer gave his consent to the interpolation remarking that it was very effective, but that he would not add it to the score as he did not wish to force the note upon voices it did not suit."

Performance history
Pagliacci received mixed critical reviews after its world premiere, but was instantly successful with the public and has remained so ever since.

The UK premiere of Pagliacci took place at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, under the management of Sir Augustus Harris in London on 19 May 1893, supervised by the composer. Nellie Melba sang Nedda, with Fernando de Lucia as Canio and Mario Ancona as Tonio, M. Bonnard (Beppe) and Richard Green (Silvio). The conductor was Luigi Mancinelli.

The US premiere followed a month later at the Grand Opera House in New York on 15 June, conducted by Gustav Hinrichs, with Selma Kronold (Nedda), American tenor Agostino Montegriffo (Canio), and Giuseppe Campanari (Tonio).

The 'old' Metropolitan Opera House first staged the work on 11 December as a double-bill with Orfeo ed Euridice, with the same cast as the London premiere with Melba in the role of Nedda, De Lucia as Canio, and Ancona as Tonio. The Met again staged Pagliacci as a double-bill with the same cast and conductor, this time followed by Cavalleria rusticana on 22 December 1893 with Emma Calvé as Santuzza, conducted by Enrico Bevignani. The two operas have since been frequently performed in this double-bill, a pairing referred to in the operatic world colloquially as "Cav and Pag".

The Belgian premiere (in a French translation) took place on 14 February 1895 (St. Valentine's day) at the Theatre de la Monnaie, Brussels, with Cecile Simonnet as Nedda, conducted by Philippe Flon.

Pagliacci was produced alone in Washington National Opera's November 1997 production by Franco Zeffirelli. The re-organised New York City Opera presented Pagliacci in 2016 on a double bill with Rachmaninoff's Aleko.

Synopsis

 * Place: Calabria, near Montalto, on the Feast of the Assumption
 * Time: between 1865 and 1870

Prologue
During the orchestral introduction, Tonio, dressed as his commedia dell'arte character Taddeo, pokes his head through the curtain, advances, and addresses the audience. ("Si può?... Si può?... Signore! Signori! ... Un nido di memorie"). He reminds the audience that actors have feelings too, and that the show is about real people. Tonio returns behind the curtain, which then rises for the main action.

Act 1
At three o'clock in the afternoon, the commedia troupe enters the village to the cheering of the villagers. Canio describes the night's performance: the troubles of Pagliaccio. He says the play will begin at ventitré ore, an agricultural method of time-keeping that means the play will begin an hour before sunset. As Nedda steps down from the cart, Tonio offers his hand, but Canio pushes him aside and helps her down himself.

The villagers suggest drinking at the tavern. Canio and Beppe accept, but Tonio stays behind. The villagers tease Canio that Tonio is planning an affair with Nedda. Canio warns everyone that while he may act the foolish husband in the play, in real life he will not tolerate other men making advances to Nedda. Shocked, a villager asks if Canio really suspects her. He says no, and sweetly kisses her on the forehead. As the church bells ring vespers, he and Beppe leave for the tavern, leaving Nedda alone.

Nedda is frightened by Canio's vehemence ("Qual fiamma avea nel guardo"), but the birdsong comforts her ("Stridono lassù"). Tonio returns and confesses his love for her, but she laughs. Enraged, Tonio grabs Nedda, but she takes a whip, strikes him and drives him off. Silvio, who is Nedda's lover, comes from the tavern, where he has left Canio and Beppe drinking. He asks Nedda to elope with him after the performance and, though she is afraid, she agrees. Tonio, who has been eavesdropping, leaves to inform Canio so that he might catch Silvio and Nedda together. Canio and Tonio return and, as Silvio escapes, Nedda calls after him, "I will always be yours!"

Canio chases Silvio, but does not catch him and does not see his face. He demands that Nedda tell him the name of her lover, but she refuses. He threatens her with a knife, but Beppe disarms him. Beppe insists that they prepare for the performance. Tonio tells Canio that her lover will give himself away at the play. A heartbroken Canio is left alone to put on his costume and prepare to laugh ("Vesti la giubba" – "Put on the costume").

Act 2
As the crowd arrives, Nedda, costumed as Colombina, collects their money. She whispers a warning to Silvio, and the crowd cheers as the play begins.

Colombina's husband Pagliaccio has gone away until morning, and Taddeo is at the market. Alone, she anxiously awaits her lover Arlecchino, who comes to serenade her ("O Colombina") from beneath her window. Taddeo returns and confesses his love, but she mocks him. She lets Arlecchino in through the window. He boxes Taddeo's ears and kicks him out of the room, and the audience laughs.

Arlecchino and Colombina dine, and he gives her a sleeping potion to use later, "so that when Pagliaccio returns, she can drug him and elope with Arlecchino." Taddeo then bursts in, warning them that Pagliaccio is suspicious of his wife and is about to return. As Arlecchino escapes through the window, Colombina tells him, "I will always be yours!"

As Pagliaccio enters, he hears Colombina speak this line and, now as Canio, exclaims "Nome di Dio! Quelle stesse parole!" – "Name of God! Those same words!" He tries to continue the play, but loses control and demands to know her lover's name. Nedda, hoping to keep to the performance, calls Canio by his stage name "Pagliaccio" to remind him of the audience's presence. He answers with his arietta: "No! Pagliaccio non son!" – "I am not Pagliaccio!" He sings that if his face is pale, it is not from the stage makeup but from the shame she has brought him. The crowd is impressed by his emotional performance and cheers him, without realizing that it is real.

Nedda, trying to continue the play, admits that she has been visited by the innocent "Arlecchino". Canio, furious and forgetting the play, demands the name of her lover. Nedda swears she will never tell him, and it becomes apparent that they are not acting. Side-stage, Beppe asks Tonio to intervene, but Tonio refrains and prevents Beppe from halting the action. Silvio begins to fight his way toward the stage. Canio, grabbing a knife from the table, stabs Nedda. As she dies, she calls: "Help! Silvio!" Silvio attacks Canio, but Canio kills him as well. The horrified audience then hears the celebrated final line:
 * "La commedia è finita!!" – "The comedy is finished!"

Assignment of the final line
In the original manuscript, Tonio sang the opera's final line, "La Commedia è finita!", paralleling the prologue, also sung by Tonio. The appropriation of this final line by Canio dates back to 1895. John Wright has analysed the dramaturgy of the opera in the context of assignment of the final line, and concluded that the original assignment of the final line to Tonio is the most consistent and appropriate assignment. Wright says that Tonio shows more deliberate control in his manipulation of the other characters in order to obtain his revenge upon Nedda, after she has rejected him, and is more aware of the demarcation between life and art. By contrast, Canio is unaware of the behind-the-scenes manipulations and surrenders control of his perception of the difference between life and art as the opera proceeds.

In the present day, the assignment of the final line to Canio has continued to be standard. Several exceptions, where Tonio delivers the final line, include:
 * The December 1959 production at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, directed by Franco Zeffirelli
 * A 1968 RAI-TV production directed by Herbert von Karajan
 * The HMV recording conducted by Riccardo Muti (EMI CMS7 63650-2)
 * The Philips recording conducted by Muti (Philips 0289 434 1312), in conjunction with live performances in Philadelphia in February 1992
 * The 1998 English-language recording on Chandos (CHAN 3003)
 * The 2007 Teatro Real production directed by Giancarlo del Monaco, in which Tonio's prologue is inserted into the double-bill before the overture to Cavalleria rusticana, the finale of which segues directly into the first act of Pagliacci (Opus Arte OA0983D)
 * The 2008 Seattle Opera production
 * The 2010 Opera Grand Rapids production
 * The 2014 San Diego Opera production
 * The 2015 Metropolitan Opera production
 * The 2019 Maggio Musicale Fiorentino production.

Orchestration
The orchestra consists of 2 flutes, 1 piccolo, 2 oboes, 1 cor anglais, 2 clarinets, 1 bass clarinet, 3 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, 1 tuba, 2 harps, timpani, tubular bells, percussion (triangle, cymbals, bass drum, glockenspiel, and tam-tam ) and strings. Additionally, there is an onstage violin, oboe, trumpet, and bass drum.

Recordings and other media

In 1907, Pagliacci was the first opera to be recorded in its entirety, with the Puerto Rican tenor Antonio Paoli as Canio and under Leoncavallo's personal supervision. In 1931, it became the first complete opera to be filmed with sound, in a now-obscure version starring the tenor Fernando Bertini as Canio, in his only film, with the San Carlo Opera Company. Franco Zeffirelli directed his 1981 La Scala production with Plácido Domingo and Teresa Stratas for a 1982 television airing, which has since been released on DVD. The movie's soundtrack received a Grammy nomination for Best Opera Recording. Pagliacci was also recorded in English in 1997, and released commercially in 1998, for the Chandos "Opera in English" label with Dennis O'Neill as Canio, Alan Opie as Tonio, and Rosa Mannion as Nedda.

In 1991, Kent State University student Michael Mould began translating Pagliacci into English for a comics adaptation, but died on USAir Flight 405 before he could complete it. Marc Andreyko finished Mould's translation as The Clowns, a one-shot written by P. Craig Russell and illustrated by Galen Showman. Published in 1998 by Dark Horse Comics, The Clowns is dedicated in memory of Mould.

References in popular culture

 * In the Agatha Christie short story Swan Song, a tale of revenge referencing Tosca, the final line is "la commedia e finita!"
 * In Batman comic books and media adaptations, the Joker, an insane supervillain who resembles a clown with homicidal tendencies, often makes references to this opera. For instance, the character makes a reference to the lyrics in the story, "The Case of the Joker's Crime Circus" in Batman #4. In addition, the opera is featured in the Batman television series episode, "The Joker is Wild" where the Joker is disguised as the lead character of the opera, singing Vesti la giubba.
 * The song "(I'm Afraid) The Masquerade Is Over", written by Allie Wrubel and Herb Magidson and popularized in 1939 by both the Larry Clinton and Jimmy Dorsey orchestras, references Pagliacci in the lines, "I guess I'll have to play Pagliacci and get myself a clown's disguise/And learn to laugh like Pagliacci with tears in my eyes." The song was most notably covered by Marvin Gaye in 1961 for Motown Records.
 * The song "Mr. Sandman", written by Pat Ballard and popularized in 1954 by The Chordettes, references Pagliacci in the lines, "Give him a lonely heart like Pagliacci, And lots of wavy hair like Liberace."
 * The 1970 Smokey Robinson and the Miracles hit "The Tears of a Clown" references Pagliacci in the lines "Just like Pagliacci did, I try to keep my sadness hid". An earlier song cowritten by Robinson, "My Smile Is Just a Frown Turned Upside," sung by Carolyn Crawford in 1964, had included the same line.
 * In the 49th episode of the sitcom Seinfeld, "The Opera", the characters attend a production of Pagliacci.
 * In Shock Corridor, one of the patients is named after the opera. This patient has a caricature of Canio above his bed.
 * In Cabrini, the famous solo Vesti La Giubba is sung by Rolando Villazón playing Enrico DiSalvo.
 * The protagonist of Pagliacci, Canio, also appears as a legendary joker card in the Poker-themed video game Balatro.

title: Pagliacci


text:
David Thomas (composer)

David John Thomas (15 April 1881 – 13 May 1928), often known by his bardic name of "Afan", was a Welsh composer, conductor, and organist.

Thomas is remembered mainly for his hymn tunes and songs such as "Drosom ni", "Suo Gan", and "Cymru fach i mi". His other works include a cantata, "Merch y Llyn" ("Lady of the Lake"), and a choral work, "He Fell Among Thieves", a setting of the famous poem by Sir Henry Newbolt.

title: David Thomas (composer)