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Les Huguenots

Les Huguenots is an opera by Giacomo Meyerbeer and is one of the most popular and spectacular examples of grand opera. In five acts, to a libretto by Eugène Scribe and Émile Deschamps, it premiered in Paris on 29 February 1836.

Composition history

Les Huguenots was some five years in creation. Meyerbeer prepared carefully for this opera after the sensational success of Robert le diable, recognising the need to continue to present lavish staging, a highly dramatic storyline, impressive orchestration and virtuoso parts for the soloists – the essential elements of the new genre of Grand Opera. Meyerbeer and his librettist for Robert le Diable, Eugène Scribe, had agreed to collaborate on an epic work concerning the French Wars of Religion, with a drama partly based on Prosper Mérimée's 1829 novel Chronique du règne de Charles IX. Coming from a wealthy family, Meyerbeer could afford to take his time, dictate his own terms, and to be a perfectionist. The very detailed contract which Meyerbeer arranged with Louis-Désiré Véron, director of the Opéra, for Les Huguenots (and which was drawn up for him by the lawyer Adolphe Crémieux) is a testament to this. While Meyerbeer was writing the opera, another opera with a similar setting and theme (Le pré aux clercs by Ferdinand Hérold) was also produced in Paris (1832). Like Meyerbeer's, Hérold's work was extremely popular in its time, although it is now only seldom performed.

Meyerbeer decided that he wanted more historical details of the period and a greater psychological depth to the characters than Scribe's text was supplying so he obtained Scribe's approval to invite a second librettist, Émile Deschamps, to collaborate on the text in order to furnish these elements. Meyerbeer was recommended to take his wife to a warmer climate for her health, and while in Italy for that purpose he consulted with the librettist of his earlier Italian operas, Gaetano Rossi. With his advice Meyerbeer himself re-wrote the part of Marcel, one of the most striking and original characters in the piece. Meyerbeer also accepted the advice of star tenor Adolphe Nourrit, chosen to create the part of Raoul, to expand the love duet in Act 4, which became one of the most famous numbers in the opera.

Performance history
Les Huguenots was premiered by the Paris Opera at the Salle Le Peletier on 29 February 1836 (conductor: François Habeneck), and was an immediate success. Both Adolphe Nourrit and Cornélie Falcon were particularly praised by the critics for their singing and performances. It was indeed Falcon's last important creation before her voice so tragically failed in April of the following year. Hector Berlioz called the score "a musical encyclopedia". Les Huguenots was the first opera to be performed at the Opéra more than 1,000 times (the 1,000th performance being on 16 May 1906) and continued to be produced regularly up to 1936, more than a century after its premiere. (The Paris Opera opened a new production of Les Huguenots in September 2018, the first time since 1936 for the opera to be performed there). Its many performances in all other of the world's major opera houses give it a claim to being the most successful opera of the 19th century.

Other first performances included London (Covent Garden Theatre), 20 June 1842, and New Orleans (Théâtre d'Orléans) on 29 April 1839. Due to its subject matter it was sometimes staged under different titles such as The Guelfs and the Ghibellines (in Vienna before 1848), Renato di Croenwald in Rome, or The Anglicans and the Puritans (in Munich), to avoid inflaming religious tensions among its audiences.

Les Huguenots was chosen to open the present building of the Covent Garden Theatre in 1858. During the 1890s, when it was performed at the Metropolitan Opera, it was often called 'the night of the seven stars', as the cast would include Lillian Nordica, Nellie Melba, Sofia Scalchi, Jean de Reszke, Édouard de Reszke, Victor Maurel and Pol Plançon. The opera was performed in Italian at the Met in the 19th century as Gli Ugonotti.

Soviet adaptation
In the Soviet Union, the opera was given a new libretto as Dekabristy, about the historical Decembrists.

Modern revivals
As with Meyerbeer's other operas, Les Huguenots lost favor in the early part of the twentieth century and it fell out of the operatic repertoire worldwide, except for very occasional revivals. Dame Joan Sutherland and Richard Bonynge were the major force in the opera's revival during the second half of the 20th century. Sutherland chose the opera for her final performance at the Sydney Opera House on 2 October 1990, Bonynge conducting the Opera Australia Orchestra.

Amongst reasons often adduced for the dearth of productions in the 20th century were the scale of the work and the cost of mounting it, as well as the alleged lack of virtuoso singers capable of doing justice to Meyerbeer's demanding music. However, recent successful productions of the opera at relatively small centres such as Metz (2004) show that this conventional wisdom can be challenged. Since then, there have been highly successful new productions of Les Huguenots at major opera houses in France, Belgium, Germany and Switzerland. Performances of Les Huguenots are no longer rare in Europe.

Synopsis
The story culminates in the historical St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre in 1572 in which thousands of French Huguenots (Protestants) were slaughtered by Catholics in an effort to rid France of Protestant influence. Although the massacre was a historical event, the rest of the action, which primarily concerns the love between the Catholic Valentine and the Protestant Raoul, is wholly a creation of Scribe.

A short orchestral prelude, featuring Martin Luther's chorale "Ein feste Burg", replaces the extended overture Meyerbeer originally intended for the opera.

Act 1
''The stage represents the chateau of the Count of Nevers, in Touraine. In the background, large open windows show gardens and a lawn, on which several lords play ball; on the right, a door leading into the inner apartments; at left, a window closed by a curtain and which is supposed to lead to a prayer room; at the front of the stage, other lords are playing dice, cup and ball,etc. Nevers, Tavannes, Cossé, Retz, Thoré, Méru and other Catholic lords look at them and talk to each other''

The Catholic Count of Nevers is entertaining his fellow noblemen. Their host informs them that before they can go to dinner, they must await the arrival of Raoul, a young Huguenot sent to them from the King in an effort to reconcile Protestant and Catholic. Raoul enters, very impressed with the surroundings and to be in the company of the noblemen. Lavish dishes of food and copious supplies of wine are brought in and the nobles encourage Raoul to drink ( L’orgie: "Bonheur de la table"). The Count of Nevers announces that he has just become engaged and that he must now give up his mistresses. However, he invites his guests to describe the ones they are in love with and asks the latest arrival, Raoul de Nangis. Raoul then tells how he rescued a girl from an attack on her in the street. Although he does not know her name or her origins, he immediately fell in love (Romance: "Plus blanche que la blanche hermine"). (With a daring and unusual stroke of orchestration, Meyerbeer accompanies this aria with a solo viola d'amore). Raoul's Protestant servant Marcel enters and the old man is shocked to see his master in such wicked company enjoying games, drinking and tales of love. Marcel sings a hearty Protestant prayer (to the tune of 'Ein feste Burg') while the Catholic lords toast their mistresses. One of the Catholics recognises the old man from a battle they fought and asks him to have a drink with him to bury any grudge. Marcel refuses, and then, at the Catholics' request,he sings a Huguenot battle song from the siege of La Rochelle, calling for the extermination of Catholics (Chanson huguenote: "Piff, paff, piff, paff"). The Catholics are merely amused by this.

A valet of the Count of Nevers informs his master that a mysterious woman wishes to speak to him. The count goes out to meet the stranger. Catholic lords wonder about the identity of the unknown woman and try to see her. They invite Raoul to do the same. Recognizing the young woman he saved and fell in love with, the young Huguenot, believing she is one of the mistresses of the Count of Nevers he has been boasting about, swears never to see her again. In fact she is Nevers' intended bride, Valentine (daughter of St. Bris), instructed by the Queen to break off her engagement. The page Urbain enters with a secret message for Raoul, daring him to come blindfolded to a secret rendezvous with an unnamed woman ( Cavatina: "Une dame noble et sage"). The Catholics recognize the seal on the letter as belonging to the Queen of Navarre and drink to Raoul's health as he is led away.

Act 2

''The castle and gardens at the Château de Chenonceaux. The river meanders to the middle of the stage, disappearing from time to time behind clumps of green trees. On the right, a wide staircase by which we descend from the castle into the gardens.''

Queen Marguerite looks into a mirror held by her enamoured page Urbain, and sings a virtuoso pastorale (O beau pays de la Touraine). She hopes to avoid the religious strife plaguing France by remaining in the beautiful countryside (Cabaletta: A ce mot seul s’anime et renaît la nature).Valentine enters and reports that Nevers has agreed to break the engagement, which delights Marguerite as, knowing that Valentine has fallen in love with Raoul de Nangis, she is sure that she will be able to persuade Valentine's father, the Catholic Saint-Bris, to allow his daughter to marry the young Protestant as a step towards ending sectarian strife. Marguerite's entourage of ladies enter dressed for bathing. This leads to a ballet during which the page Urbain attempts to spy on the scantily clad ladies as they frolic in the water. Urbain laughingly describes the journey of Raoul, blindfolded, to the castle (Rondeau: "Non, non, non, vous n’avez jamais, je gage") He enters and the Queen tells her ladies to leave him alone with her. With his sight restored, Raoul is amazed by the beauty of his surroundings as well as that of the young woman who stands before him, while she is tempted to try to keep the charming young man for herself rather than have him marry Valentine as she had planned (Duet: "Beauté divine enchanteresse").The lords and ladies of the court, including Nevers and Saint-Bris enter, and the Queen orders everyone to swear friendship and peace, which all aver, except for Marcel, who disapproves of his master mixing with Catholics (Oath:Par l’honneur, par le nom que portaient). The Queen presents Valentine to Raoul as the girl he loves and will marry to cement relations between the Protestant and Catholic factions. In a complex final ensemble, Raoul, who believes Valentine is the mistress of Nevers, refuses to comply with the Queen's command. The nobles then swear revenge, Valentine is devastated by this insult to her honour, the Queen does not understand Raoul's reason for rejecting the marriage and Marcel reproaches Raoul for consorting with Catholics.

Act 3
''Paris, the 'Pré aux clercs' on the left bank of the Seine, at sunset. On the left, a tavern where Catholic students sit with girls; on the right, another tavern in front of which Huguenot soldiers drink and play dice. In the background, on the left, the entrance to a chapel. In the middle, a huge tree shading the meadow. At the front of the stage, clerics from La Basoche and grisettes sit on chairs and chat between themselves. Others are walking around. Workers, merchants,traveling musicians, monks, and middle-class townspeople. It is six o'clock in the evening, in the month of August.''

Citizens enjoy a stroll on a beautiful Sunday evening (Entracte et chœur: C’est le jour de dimanche). The Huguenot soldiers sing a blood-thirsty war song in praise of the Protestant Admiral Coligny (Couplets militaires: "Prenant son sabre de bataille"). A procession of Catholic girls crosses the scene on the way to the chapel where Valentine and Nevers are about to be married, chanting praise to the Virgin (Litanies :" Vierge Marie, soyez bénie !") Marcel enters with a letter from Raoul to Saint-Bris and interrupts the procession, seeking to know Saint-Bris's whereabouts. The Catholics are outraged by Marcel's sacrilege but the Huguenot soldiers defend him. Tension is rising when a band of gypsies enter, dancing and telling fortunes, and calm things down (Ronde bohémienne: "Venez ! – Vous qui voulez savoir d’avance" and gypsy dance). Valentine has just married Nevers, but remains in the chapel to pray. Marcel delivers a challenge from Raoul. Saint-Bris decides to kill Raoul, but is overheard by Valentine. The town crier declares curfew (the scene anticipating a similar one in Wagner's Die Meistersinger) and the crowds disperse. Valentine, in disguise, tells Marcel of the plot by her father and others to murder Raoul (Duet:Dans la nuit où seul je veille). Valentine realises that despite the public humiliation inflicted on her by Raoul she still loves him and returns to the chapel. Raoul, Saint-Bris and their witnesses arrive for the duel, each confident of success (Septet: "En mon bon droit j’ai confiance"). Marcel calls for assistance from the Huguenot soldiers in the tavern on the right and Saint-Bris to the Catholic students in the tavern on the left and a near-riot ensues. Only the arrival of the Queen, on horseback, stems the chaos. Raoul realises that Valentine has saved him and that his suspicions of her were unfounded. However, now she is married to his enemy and indeed at that moment an illuminated barge appears on the river with wedding guests serenading the newly wedded couple (Wedding chorus:"Au banquet où le ciel leur apprête"). Nevers leads her away in a splendid procession as Catholics and Protestants loudly proclaim their murderous hatred of each other (Chorus of fighters:"Non, plus de paix ni trêve").

Act 4
''A room in Nevers' Parisian town-house. Family portraits decorate the walls. In the background, a large door and a large Gothic cross. On the left, a door that leads to Valentine's bedroom. On the right, a big chimney, and near the chimney the entrance to a room closed by a tapestry. On the right, and in the foreground, a window overlooking the street.''

Valentine, alone, expresses her sorrow at being married to Nevers when she is really in love with Raoul (Air: "Parmi les pleurs mon rêve se ranime"). She is surprised by Raoul who wishes to have one last meeting with her. The sound of approaching people leads Raoul to hide behind a curtain, where he hears the Catholic nobles pledge to murder the Huguenots. They are accompanied by three monks, who bless the swords and daggers to be used in the massacre, declaring it to be God's will that the heretics be killed. Only Nevers does not join in the oath (Conjuration:"Des troubles renaissants"). This scene is generally judged the most gripping in the opera, and is accompanied by some of its most dramatic music. When the nobles have departed, Raoul re-appears and is torn between warning his fellows and staying with Valentine (Duet:"Ô ciel! où courez-vous ?"). Valentine is desperate to prevent him from meeting death by going to the assistance of his fellow Protestants and admits she loves him, which sends Raoul into raptures. However they hear the bell of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois ringing, the signal for the massacre to begin, and Valentine faints as Raoul leaps out the window to join his co-religionists.

Act 5
Scene 1: A beautifully lit ballroom in the Hôtel de Nesle

The Protestants are celebrating the marriage of the Queen to Henry of Navarre. The tolling of a bell interrupts the dancing and festivities, as does the entrance of Raoul, in torn clothing covered in blood, who informs the assembly that the second stroke was the signal for the Catholic massacre of the Huguenots. Admiral Coligny has been assassinated, Raoul tells them, and Protestant men, women and children are being slaughtered in the street by the thousands. The women flee, panic-stricken, as the Protestant men prepare to defend themselves.

''Scene 2: A cemetery: in the background, a Protestant church whose stained glass windows are visible. On the left, a small door that leads into the interior of the church. On the right, a gate that overlooks a crossroads'' Under the leadership of Marcel, Protestant women take refuge with their children in the church. It is there that Raoul finds his old servant, who, resigned, prepares to die. Valentine arrives and tells Raoul that his life will be saved if he agrees to wear a white scarf around his arm, indicating that he is Catholic. She also informs the young man that she is now free, Nevers having been killed after having defended Protestants. Raoul seems to hesitate but finally refuses Valentine's proposal to pass as Catholic. She immediately decides to share the fate of the one she loves by abjuring the Catholic faith. She asks Marcel to bless her. Marcel does so and declares the couple married in the sight of God (Trio: "Savez-vous qu’en joignant vos mains"). Meanwhile, the Protestants who barricaded themselves in the church intone Luther's hymn "Ein feste Burg". Suddenly, the singing inside the church is interrupted. The Catholics have broken down the door of the church and threaten to kill all the Protestant women and children if they do not renounce their faith. After refusing, the Protestants resume their singing, interrupted several times by musket shots. Finally, the song is no longer heard: all were massacred. At the height of exaltation, Marcel thinks he hears the march of angels leading the martyrs to God. Valentine and Raoul share this vision of heaven 'with six harps'. (Trio: "Ah ! voyez ! Le ciel s’ouvre et rayonne !"). Catholic soldiers enter the cemetery, seize Raoul, Valentine and Marcel and drag them away, wounding all three, after they refuse to abjure their faith.

Scene 3: A street in Paris, on the night of 23 to 24 August 1572

Wounded, they are finally murdered by St. Bris and his men, he realising only too late that he has killed his own daughter. (Cf. the closing scene of Fromental Halévy's opera, La Juive, libretto also by Scribe, produced a year earlier than Les Huguenots). It is at this moment that Marguerite's litter appears. She also recognizes Valentine and tries to stop the massacre, to no avail. A chorus of soldiers, hunting for more Protestants to murder and singing 'God wants blood!', brings the opera to a close.

Libretto
In Les Huguenots, Scribe and Meyerbeer depicted religious fanaticism and sectarianism causing bloody civil division for the first time. The composer Robert Schumann in a scathing review of the piece, objected to the use of the hymn "Ein feste Burg" as a musical theme recurring throughout the opera, and to the depiction of religious division, writing "I am not a moralist, but for a good Protestant it is offensive to hear his most cherished song being yelled on the stage and to see the bloodiest drama in the history of his faith degraded to the level of a fairground farce. Meyerbeer's highest ambition is to startle or titillate, and he certainly succeeds in that with the theatre-going rabble." George Sand at first refused to attend a performance of the opera, saying that she did not want to watch Catholics and Protestants slit each other's throats to music written by a Jew. When eventually she did see the piece, however, she was overwhelmed and wrote to Meyerbeer that "Though you are a musician, you are more a poet than any of us!" and called the opera "an evangel of love".

Franz Liszt observed of the libretto "If one continually reproaches the poet for striving after dramatic effects, it would be unjust not to acknowledge how thrilling these can often be" while Hector Berlioz in his review of the premiere wrote "the new libretto by M. Scribe seems to us to be admirably arranged for music and full of situations of undoubted dramatic interest".

Some writers have condemned as nothing more than "kitsch melodrama" the central and fictitious love story between Raoul and Valentine, dependent on Raoul's mistaken belief that she is Nevers' mistress, a misunderstanding that goes on for three acts when it could easily have been cleared up much sooner. Other critics have praised the psychological realism of the characters, Ernest Newman, for instance, stating that "Meyerbeer gave his audiences the delighted feeling that they were being brought into touch with real life, and that the characters they saw on the boards were men and women such as they might meet any day themselves." The character of Marcel, a creation both textually and musically of Meyerbeer, has met particular praise from critics, evolving as he does from the status of intolerant servant in the first act to that of visionary spiritual guide in the last. Liszt wrote "The role of Marcel, the purest type of popular pride and religious sacrifice, seems to us to be the most complete and living character. The unmistakable solemnity of his airs, which expresses so eloquently the moral grandeur of this man of the people, as well as his simplicity, the noble nature of his thought, remains striking from the beginning to the end of the opera."

Meyerbeer had intended a singing role for the character of Catherine de' Medici, Queen Mother at the time of the massacre, in the scene of the blessing of the daggers in Act 4, but the state censorship would not permit a royal personage to be depicted in such an unfavourable light.

Victor Hugo, in his preface to Cromwell (1827), called for the introduction of local colour into historical dramas. For music critic Robert Letellier, this request is perfectly met by Act 3 of Les Huguenots, with its strolling promenaders of all classes setting the scene and its squabbles of Catholics and Protestants interrupted by gypsy dancers and fortune-tellers, reminiscent of episodes from Hugo's Notre-Dame de Paris (1831).

Letellier has also written of the masterly way Scribe's libretto moves from light to darkness. Act 1 is set in the daytime, in the hedonistic surroundings of a chateau belonging to a pleasure-loving Catholic noble (with one of the musical numbers even marked "The Orgy".) Act 2 is set in sparkling sunshine in the beautiful countryside. Act 3, with near riots between Catholic and Protestant factions, as dusk falls. Act 4, with the plotting to massacre the Protestants, at night, and Act 5, with the actual massacre, in the darkness of the early hours of the morning.

In the assessment of music historian David Charlton, Scribe and Meyerbeer in Les Huguenots "created a masterpiece of romantic tragedy".

Music

Reviewing the premiere of the opera, Hector Berlioz wrote "The dramatic expression is always true and profound, with fresh colours, warm movement, elegant forms; in instrumentation, in effects of vocal masses, this score surpasses all that has been attempted to this day."

One of the most striking innovations is the treatment of Luther's chorale "Ein feste Burg" as a leitmotif developed and varied throughout the opera. The theme is present from the outset where it is subject to a series of variations that symbolize, according to Letellier, the feelings inspired by religion: recollection, love, consolation, exaltation, but also intolerance and fanaticism. In the song of Marcel in the first act, it corresponds to an expression of faith, full of conviction and aspiration to transcendence. In the finale of the second act, it is used as a cantus firmus to affirm the resolution and strength of Protestants in the face of danger. In the third act, it is a call to arms to escape traps and betrayals. Finally, in the last act, it becomes the stifled and distant prayer of the Protestants who seek to escape the massacre to become an ultimate cry of defiance against the Catholic executioners and is also sung in unison by Valentine, Raoul and Marcel as they have an ecstatic vision of heaven awaiting them upon their imminent deaths.

Also very innovatory were the huge multiple choruses, as for instance in the Pré-aux-Clercs scene at the start of Act 3, when Protestant soldiers sing a "rataplan" chorus, Catholic girls cross the stage chanting praise to the Virgin with a third chorus of law clerks. These are all first heard separately, then combined and to this mix is then added the wives and girlfriends of the Catholic students and Protestant soldiers hurling abuse at each other. Berlioz marveled that "The richness of texture in the Pré-aux-Clercs scene [of act III] […] was extraordinary, yet the ear could follow it with such ease that every strand in the composer's complex thought was continually apparent—a marvel of dramatic counterpoint'. and said the music in that act "dazzles the ear as bright light does the eye".

Both Liszt and Berlioz greatly admired the instrumentation of the opera. Liszt wrote that "the orchestral effects are so cleverly combined and diversified that we have never been able to attend a performance of the Huguenots without a new feeling of surprise and admiration for the art of the master who has managed to dye in a thousand shades, almost ungraspable in their delicacy, the rich fabric of his musical poem".

Meyerbeer used a variety of novel and unusual orchestral effects in the opera. Marcel's utterances are usually accompanied by two cellos and a double bass. The composer revived an archaic instrument, the viola d'amore, which had fallen into complete disuse in the 19th century, for Raoul's aria "Plus blanche que la blanche hermine" and used the bass clarinet for the first time in an opera in the scene in the last act during which Marcel "marries" Valentine and Raoul just before they are murdered, creating an other-worldly, funereal effect.

Influence
Following five years after Meyerbeer's own Robert le diable and a year after Fromental Halévy's La Juive, Les Huguenots consolidated the genre of Grand Opera, in which the Paris Opéra would specialise for the next generation, and which became a major box-office attraction for opera houses all over the world. Hector Berlioz's contemporary account is full of praise, with 'Meyerbeer in command at the first desk [of violins] [...] from beginning to end I found [the orchestral playing] superb in its beauty and refinement [...].

The immense success of the opera encouraged many musicians, including Franz Liszt and Sigismond Thalberg, to create virtuosic piano works based on its themes.

A military slow march based on the prelude to Les Huguenots is played every year during the ceremony of Trooping the Colour at Horse Guards Parade in London.

Scores

 * Réminiscences des Huguenots, p. 412 for piano by Franz Liszt at 412_(Liszt%2C_Franz) IMSLP
 * ''Grande Fantaisie sur l'opera de Meyerbeer 'Les Huguenots', Op. 43 ' for piano by Sigismond Thalberg at IMSLP
 * ''Grande Fantaisie sur l'opera de Meyerbeer 'Les Huguenots', Op. 43 ' for piano by Sigismond Thalberg at IMSLP

title: Les Huguenots


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Mahajanga

Mahajanga (French: Majunga) is a city and an administrative district on the northwest coast of Madagascar. The city of Mahajanga (Mahajanga I) is the capital of the Boeny Region. The district (identical to the city) had a population of 258,068 in 2020.

City
Mahajanga is a seaport, the second most important one in Madagascar after Toamasina. The marine terminal accommodates containerships and small (150 gross ton) general cargo freighters. Because of the limited water depth at the wharf, only small ships can call at the terminal. Deeper-draft ships anchor off the terminal and transfer cargo to and from barges, which move it to and from the terminal.

Severe storms during December 2006 damaged the bulkhead, allowing water to flow in and wash backfill out from under the terminal's paving blocks. The resulting collapse of pavement blocks has made operations at the terminal less efficient and reduced the storage space available. The largest and most valuable containerized export is frozen shrimp.

There is an international airport with regional flights to the Comoros and Mayotte.

Mahajanga is on the Betsiboka River, which then leads to Bombetoka Bay.

The city has a sizable Muslim population. In 1977, it was the scene of ethnic unrest, forcing the evacuation of the Comorian minority living there. Mahajanga is also the seat of a Roman Catholic Diocese (Cathedral of the Holy Heart of Mary).

Baobab

The African baobab tree near the coast is the largest specimen in Madagascar, having a circumference of 21 metres, and is the symbol of the city. Its age is unknown, but it is usually said to be 700–800 years old. It was once used as a site of important meetings, and, in the 19th century, as a site for executions. It is said that to honor the Malagasy ancestors, anyone who visits it must walk around it seven times.

History
According to Jane Hooper, "Since the tenth century, ports in the north of Madagascar, home to an Islamized population, had attracted merchants and migrants from East Africa, the Middle East, and even the Far East. At least a dozen ports were identified in northern Madagascar by the late fifteenth century by the Arab geographer Ibn Mājid...By the early eighteenth century, Andriamandisoarivo, with the support of his eight-hundred-man army, founded a new Sakalava dynasty in the north which he named Volamena, meaning red money or gold. His descendants were known as the Zafibolamena, children of the Volamena. He died in the northern city of Bezavo around 1710, having cemented his name in traditions as the founder of a powerful new kingdom. His kingdom contained the port of Mazalagem Nova, or Massaliege, already a prosperous center for trade, as well as the new ports of Boina and Mahajanga (Majunga)...One English captain described the northwestern town of Mahajanga as a bustling, cosmopolitan port in 1764. He wrote that the town, built “after the Indian fashion,” contained many stone buildings and mosques. Inhabited by “native” Muslims and others from “Surate, Johana, Mosembeck, and the Commoro islands,” Mahajanga was clearly a prosperous and cosmopolitan port. Within the city, the Sakalava rulers allowed Muslims to practice their religion freely. In return, the Sakalava instituted a series of trading controls. The king appointed a “purser authorized to carry trade on in the king’s name, in conjunction with another purser that comes down from the king.” Sakalava kings and queens even allowed visiting European merchants to trade with local Muslim merchants as well as with Sakalava representatives and appeared to be increasingly tapped into these networks crossing the southwestern Indian Ocean region. A Sakalava queen married an East African (or Comorian) man around the middle of the eighteenth century, according to English and Dutch reports. Sakalava kings and queens also incorporated Islamic beliefs and rituals into their practice of divine kingship and some converted to Islam by the early nineteenth century."

Indian community
In the 1780s, a community of roughly 200 Muslim traders from the Indian Subcontinent had formed at Mahajanga at the mouth of the Betsiboka River, according to French traveler Dumaine. Thus, the etymology of the word "Mahajanga" may be Indic. Confusion arose over their legal status; they often declared themselves to be Malagasy subjects to evade the laws against slave-holding or the building of stone houses, both forbidden to British subjects. Their dhows, which they used to transport goods to and from the African mainland, flew French flags. Initial arrivals were mainly Muslim Khojas, Ismailis and Da'udi Bohras, with some Hindus settling later.

The 1911 census found 4,480 Indians in the country, making them 21% of the total foreign population and the second-largest foreign population, after the French. Following the nationalisation of private businesses in the 1970s, many of them were compelled to leave; those who remained were largely uneducated, but stayed on and gradually built their businesses. By 2000, they were generally believed to control 50-60% of the country's economy, making them the target of demonstrators during periods of unrest.

In December 2006, a cyclone hit Mahajanga, causing significant damage to the port facilities and to some buildings on or near the coast.

Military history
The city has an airfield which the British used to station Shackleton aircraft to support the Beira Patrol from May 1966.

Region
Mahajanga is the capital city of the Boeny Region.

Notable people
Ali Soilih (1937 – 1978) a Comorian socialist revolutionary and political figure who served as the Dictator of the State of the Comoros from 3 January 1976 to 13 May 1978.

Sports

 * Fosa Juniors FC is the local football club.
 * ASCB Boeny (basketball) - Malagasy champions 2017

The stadium Alexis Rabemananjara, with its 8,000 places, is the 5th largest in the country.

Climate
Mahajanga has a tropical savanna climate (Köppen Aw) with two distinct seasons: a humid, rainy wet season from November to mid-April, and a sunny, less humid and practically bone-dry dry season for the remaining six-and-a-half months. Cyclones can occur during the wet season, producing very heavy rain and extensive erosion.

Education
The University of Mahajanga is located in Ambondrona campus.

French schools:
 * Collège français Françoise-Dolto

Literature

 * R. J. Barendse, Arabian Seas 1700-1763: The Western Indian Ocean in the eighteenth century
 * Du Maine, Idée de la côte orientale de Madagascar, Paris, 1792.

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

title: Mahajanga


text:
Ekphrasis

Mona Lisa, by Leonardo da Vinci, from C2RMF retouched.jpg. She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her; and trafficked for strange webs with Eastern merchants: and, as Leda, was the mother of Helen of Troy, and, as Saint Anne, the mother of Mary; and all this has been to her but as the sound of lyres and flutes, and lives only in the delicacy with which it has moulded the changing lineaments, and tinged the eyelids and the hands. The fancy of a perpetual life, sweeping together ten thousand experiences, is an old one; and modern thought has conceived the idea of humanity as wrought upon by, and summing up in itself, all modes of thought and life. Certainly, Lady Lisa might stand as the embodiment of the old fancy, the symbol of the modern idea."

The Mona Lisa described by Walter Pater]]

The word ekphrasis, or ecphrasis, comes from the Greek for the written description of a work of art produced as a rhetorical or literary exercise, often used in the adjectival form ekphrastic. It is a vivid, often dramatic, verbal description of a visual work of art, either real or imagined. Thus, "an ekphrastic poem is a vivid description of a scene or, more commonly, a work of art." In ancient times, it might refer more broadly to a description of any thing, person, or experience. The word comes from the Greek ἐκ ek and φράσις phrásis, 'out' and 'speak' respectively, and the verb ἐκφράζειν ekphrázein, 'to proclaim or call an inanimate object by name'.

The works of art described or evoked, may be real or imagined; and this may be difficult to discern. Ancient ekphrastic writing can be useful evidence for art historians, especially for paintings, as virtually no original Greco-Roman examples survive.

Ekphrasis has been considered generally to be a rhetorical device in which one medium of art tries to relate to another medium by defining and describing its essence and form, and in doing so, relate more directly to the audience, through its illuminative liveliness.

A descriptive work of prose or poetry, a film, or even a photograph may highlight through its rhetorical vividness what is happening or what is shown. For example, in the visual arts, it may enhance the original art and so take on a life of its own through its brilliant description. One example is a painting of a sculpture: the painting is "telling the story of" the sculpture, and so becoming a storyteller, as well as a story (work of art) itself. Virtually any type of artistic medium may be the actor of or subject of ekphrasis. Although, for example, it may not be possible to make an accurate sculpture of a book to retell the story in an authentic way, it is the spirit of the book that may be conveyed by virtually any medium and thereby enhance the artistic impact of the original book through synergy.

Plato's forms, the beginning of ekphrasis
In the Republic, Book X, Plato discusses forms by using real things, such as a bed, for example, and calls each way a bed has been made a "bedness". He commences with the original form of a bed, one of a variety of ways a bed may have been constructed by a craftsman and compares that form with an ideal form of a bed, of a perfect archetype or image in the form of which beds ought to be made; in short, the epitome of bedness.

In his analogy, one bedness form shares its own bedness – with all its shortcomings – with that of the ideal form, or template. A third bedness, too, may share the ideal form. He continues with the fourth form also containing elements of the ideal template or archetype which in this way remains an ever-present and invisible ideal version with which the craftsman compares his work. As bedness after bedness shares the ideal form and template of all creation of beds, and each bedness is associated with another ad infinitum, it is called an "infinite regress of forms".

From form to ekphrasis
It was this epitome, this template of the ideal form, that a craftsman or later an artist would try to reconstruct in his attempt to achieve perfection in his work, that was to manifest itself in ekphrasis at a later stage.

Artists began to use their own literary and artistic genre of art to work and reflect on another art to illuminate what the eye might not see in the original, to elevate it and possibly even surpass it.

Plato and Aristotle
For Plato (and Aristotle), it is not so much the form of each bed that defines bedness as the mimetic stages at which beds may be viewed that defines bedness.
 * 1) a bed as a physical entity is a mere form of bed
 * 2) any view from whichever perspective, be it a side elevation, a full panoramic view from above, or looking at a bed end-on is at a second remove
 * 3) a full picture, characterizing the whole bed is at a third remove
 * 4) ekphrasis of a bed in another art form is at a fourth remove

Socrates and Phaedrus
In Plato's Phaedrus, Socrates talks about ekphrasis to Phaedrus, saying:
 * "You know, Phaedrus, that is the strange thing about writing, which makes it truly correspond to painting. The painter's products stand before us as though they were alive, but if you question them, they maintain a most majestic silence. It is the same with written words; they seem to talk to you as if they were intelligent, but if you ask them anything about what they say, from a desire to be instructed, they go on telling you just the same thing forever".

In literature
The fullest example of ekphrasis in antiquity can be found in Philostratus of Lemnos' Eikones which describes 64 pictures in a Neapolitan villa. Modern critics have debated as to whether the paintings described should be considered as real or imagined, or the reader left uncertain. Ekphrasis is described in Aphthonius' Progymnasmata, his textbook of style, and later classical literary and rhetorical textbooks, and with other classical literary techniques. It was keenly revived in the Renaissance.

In the Middle Ages, ekphrasis was less often practiced, especially regarding real objects. Historians of medieval art have complained that the accounts of monastic chronicles recording now vanished art concentrate on objects made from valuable materials or with the status of relics. They rarely give more than the cost and weight of objects, and perhaps a mention of the subject matter of the iconography.

The Renaissance and Baroque periods made much use of ekphrasis, typically mainly of imagined works. In Renaissance Italy, Canto 33 of Ariosto's Orlando Furioso describes a picture gallery created by Merlin. In Spain, the playwright Lope de Vega often used allusions and descriptions of Italian art in his works, and included the painter Titian as one of his characters. Calderón de la Barca also incorporated works of art in dramas such as The Painter of his Dishonor. Miguel de Cervantes, who spent his youth in Italy, used many Renaissance frescoes and paintings in Don Quixote and many of his other works. In England, Shakespeare briefly describes a group of erotic paintings in Cymbeline, but his most extended exercise is a 200-line description of the Greek army before Troy in The Rape of Lucrece. Ekphrasis seems to have been less common in France during these periods.

Instances of ekphrasis in 19th century literature can be found in the works of such influential figures as Spanish novelist Benito Pérez Galdós, French poet, painter and novelist Théophile Gautier, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen, and Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

Herman Melville's Moby Dick features an intense use of ekphrasis as a stylistic manifesto of the book in which it appears. In the chapter "The Spouter Inn", a painting hanging on the wall of a whaler's inn is described as irreconcilably unclear, overscrawled with smoke and defacements. The narrator describes how this painting can be both lacking any definition and still provoking in the viewer dozens of distinct possible understandings, until the great mass of interpretations resolves into a Whale. This grounds all the interpretations while containing them, an indication of how Melville sees his own book unfolding around this chapter.

Peter Bly has described the many uses of art in the works of Benito Pérez Galdós. For example, in La incógnita (1889), there are many allusions and descriptions of Italian art, including references to Botticelli, Mantegna, Masaccio, Raphael, Titian, and others. In Our Friend Manso (1882), the narrator describes two paintings by Théodore Géricault to point to the shipwreck of ideals. In this novel, as well as in Miau (1888), as Frederick A. de Armas has pointed out, there are numerous allusive ekphrasis to paintings of Bartholomew the Apostle.

In Ibsen's 1888 work The Lady from the Sea, the first act begins with the description of a painting of a mermaid dying on the shore and is followed by a description of a sculpture that depicts a woman having a nightmare of an ex-lover returning to her. Both works of art can be interpreted as having much importance in the overall meaning of the play as protagonist Ellida Wangel both yearns for her lost youth spent on an island out at sea and is later in the play visited by a lover she thought dead. Furthermore, as an interesting example of the back-and-forth dynamic that exists between literary ekphrasis and art, in 1896 (eight years after the play was written) Norwegian painter Edvard Munch painted an image similar to the one described by Ibsen in a painting he also entitled Lady from the Sea. Ibsen's last work, When We Dead Awaken, also contains examples of ekphrasis; the play's protagonist, Arnold Rubek, is a sculptor. Several times throughout the play he describes his masterpiece "Resurrection Day" at length and in the many different forms the sculpture took throughout the stages of its creation. Once again the evolution of the sculpture as described in the play can be read as a reflection on the transformation undergone by Rubek himself and even as a statement on the progression Ibsen's own plays took. Many scholars have read this final play (stated by Ibsen himself to be an 'epilogue') as the playwright's reflection on his own work as an artist.

The Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky employed ekphrasis most notably in his novel The Idiot. In this novel, the protagonist, Prince Myshkin, sees a painting of a dead Christ in the house of Rogozhin that has a profound effect on him. Later in the novel, another character, Hippolite, describes the painting at much length depicting the image of Christ as one of brutal realism that lacks any beauty or sense of the divine. Rogozhin, who is himself the owner of the painting, at one moment says that the painting has the power to take away a man's faith. This is a comment that Dostoyevsky himself made to his wife Anna upon seeing the actual painting that the painting in the novel is based on, The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb by Hans Holbein. The painting was seen shortly before Dostoyevsky began the novel. Though this is the major instance of ekphrasis in the novel, and the one which has the most thematic importance to the story as a whole, other instances can be spotted when Prince Myshkin sees a painting of Swiss landscape that reminds him of a view he saw while at a sanatorium in Switzerland, and also when he first sees the face of his love interest, Nastasya, in the form of a painted portrait. At one point in the novel, Nastasya, too, describes a painting of Christ, her own imaginary work that portrays Christ with a child, an image which naturally evokes comparison between the image of the dead Christ.

The Irish aesthete and novelist Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890/1891) tells how Basil Hallward paints a picture of the young man named Dorian Gray. Dorian meets Lord Henry Wotton, who espouses a new hedonism, dedicated to the pursuit of beauty and all pleasures of the senses. Under his sway, Dorian bemoans the fact that his youth will soon fade. He would sell his soul so as to have the portrait age rather than himself. As Dorian engages in a debauched life, the gradual deterioration of the portrait becomes a mirror of his soul. There are repeated instances of notional ekphrasis of the deteriorating figure in the painting throughout the novel, although these are often partial, leaving much of the portrait's imagery to the imagination. The novel forms part of the magic portrait genre. Wilde had previously experimented with employing portraits in his written work, as in "The Portrait of Mr. W. H." (1889).

Anthony Powell's novel sequence A Dance to the Music of Time begins with an evocation of the painting by Poussin which gives the sequence its name, and contains other passages of ekphrasis, perhaps influenced by the many passages in Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time.

In the 20th century, Roger Zelazny's "24 Views of Mt. Fuji, by Hokusai" uses an ekphrastic frame, descriptions of Hokusai's famous series of woodcuts, as a structural device for his story. In her novel Skyline the South African-Italian Patricia Schonstein concludes each chapter with an art curator’s description of a naïve work of art as a means of introducing additional narrative voices.

Ekphrasis and the uses of art, architecture and music are also of utmost importance in the modern Latin American novel, and particularly in the works of Alejo Carpentier as Steve Wakefield attests. In one of his early novels, The Kingdom of this World (1949), a character views a collection of statues at the Villa Borghese, culminating with the Venus Victrix. The art collection of the tyrant in Reasons of State is another example.

Ekphrastic poetry
Ekphrastic poetry may be encountered as early as the days of Homer, whose Iliad (Book 18) describes the Shield of Achilles, with how Hephaestus made it as well as its completed shape. Famous later examples are found in Virgil's Aeneid, for instance the description of what Aeneas sees engraved on the doors of Carthage's temple of Juno, and Catullus 64, which contains an extended ekphrasis of an imaginary coverlet with the story of Ariadne picked out on it.

Ekphrastic poetry flourished in the Romantic era and again among the pre-Raphaelite poets. A major poem of the English Romantics – "Ode on a Grecian Urn" by John Keats – provides an example of the artistic potential of ekphrasis. The entire poem is a description of a piece of pottery that the narrator finds evocative. Felicia Hemans made extensive use of ekphrasis, as did Letitia Elizabeth Landon, especially in her Poetical Sketches of Modern Pictures. Dante Gabriel Rossetti's "double-works" exemplify the use of the genre by an artist mutually to enhance his visual and literary art. Rossetti also ekphrasized a number of paintings by other artists, generally from the Italian Renaissance, such as Leonardo da Vinci's Virgin of the Rocks.

Other examples of the genre from the nineteenth century include Michael Field's 1892 volume Sight and Song, which contains only ekphrastic poetry; Algernon Charles Swinburne's poem "Before the Mirror", which ekphrasizes James Abbott McNeill Whistler's Symphony in White, No. 2: The Little White Girl, hinted at only by the poem's subtitle, "Verses Written under a Picture"; and Robert Browning's "My Last Duchess", which although a dramatic monologue, includes some description by the duke of the portrait before which he and the listener stand.

Ekphrastic poetry is still commonly practiced. Twentieth-century examples include Rainer Maria Rilke's "Archaic Torso of Apollo", and The Shield of Achilles (1952), a poem by W. H. Auden, which brings the tradition back to its start with an ironic retelling of the episode in Homer (see above), where Thetis finds very different scenes from those she expects. In contrast, his earlier poem "Musée des Beaux Arts" describes a particular real and famous painting, Landscape with the Fall of Icarus, thought until recently to be by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, and now believed to be "after" him, is also described in the poem by William Carlos Williams "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus". The paintings of Edward Hopper have inspired many ekphrastic poems, including a prize-winning volume in French by Claude Esteban (Soleil dans une pièce vide, Sun in an Empty Room, 1991), a collection in Catalan by Ernest Farrés (Edward Hopper, 2006, English translation 2010 by Lawrence Venuti), an English collection by James Hoggard Triangles of Light: The Edward Hopper Poems (Wings Press, 2009), and a collection by various poets (The Poetry of Solitude: A Tribute to Edward Hopper, 1995, editor Gail Levin), together with numerous individual poems; see more at.

The poet Gabriele Tinti has composed a series of poems for ancient works of art, including the Boxer at Rest, the Discobolus, the Arundel Head, the Ludovisi Gaul, the Victorious Youth, the Farnese Hercules, the Hercules by Scopas, the Elgin Marbles from the Parthenon, the Barberini Faun, the Doryphoros.

In, or as, art history
Since the types of objects described in classical ekphrases often lack survivors to modern times, art historians have often been tempted to use descriptions in literature as sources for the appearance of actual Greek or Roman art, an approach full of risk. This is because ekphrasis typically contains an element of competition with the art it describes, aiming to demonstrate the superior ability of words to "paint a picture". Many subjects of ekphrasis are clearly imaginary, for example those of the epics, but with others it remains uncertain the extent to which they were, or were expected to be by early audiences, at all accurate.

This tendency is not restricted to classical art history; the evocative but vague mentions of objects in metalwork in Beowulf are eventually always mentioned by writers on Anglo-Saxon art, and compared to the treasures of Sutton Hoo and the Staffordshire Hoard. The ekphrasic writings of the lawyer turned bishop Asterius of Amasea (fl. around 400) are often cited by art historians of the period to fill gaps in the surviving artistic record. The inadequacy of most medieval accounts of art is mentioned above; they generally lack any specific details other than cost and the owner or donor, and hyperbolic but wholly vague praise.

Journalistic art criticism was effectively invented by Denis Diderot in his long pieces on the works in the Paris Salon, and extended and highly pointed accounts of the major exhibitions of new art became a popular seasonal feature in the journalism of most Western countries. Since few if any of the works could be illustrated, description and evocation was necessary, and the criticality of descriptions of works disliked became a part of the style.

As art history began to become an academic subject in the 19th century, ekphrasis as formal analysis of objects was regarded as a vital component of the subject. Not all examples lack attractiveness as literature. Writers on art for a wider audience produced many descriptions with great literary as well as art historical merit; in English John Ruskin, both the most important journalistic critic and popularizer of historic art of his day, and Walter Pater, above all for his famous evocation of the Mona Lisa, are among the most notable. As photography in books or on television allowed audiences a direct visual comparison to the verbal description, the role of ekphrasic commentary on the images may have increased.

Ekphrasis has also been an influence on art; for example the ekphrasis of the Shield of Achilles in Homer and other classical examples are likely to have inspired the elaborately decorated large serving dishes in silver or silver-gilt, crowded with complicated scenes in relief, that were produced in 16th century Mannerist metalwork.

In music
There are a number of examples of ekphrasis in music, of which the best known is probably Pictures at an Exhibition, a suite in ten movements (plus a recurring, varied Promenade) composed for piano by the Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky in 1874, and then very popular in various arrangements for orchestra. The suite is based on real pictures, although as the exhibition was dispersed, most are now unidentified.

The first movement of Three Places in New England by Charles Ives is an ekphrasis of the Robert Gould Shaw Memorial in Boston, sculpted by Augustus Saint-Gaudens. Ives also wrote a poem inspired by the sculpture as a companion piece to the music. Rachmaninoff's symphonic poem Isle of the Dead is a musical evocation of Böcklin's painting of the same name. King Crimson's song "The Night Watch", with lyrics written by Richard Palmer-James, is an ekphrasis on Rembrandt's painting The Night Watch.

Notional ekphrasis
Notional ekphrasis may describe mental processes such as dreams, thoughts and whimsies of the imagination. It may also be one art describing or depicting another work of art which as yet is still in an inchoate state of creation, in that the work described may still be resting in the imagination of the artist before he has begun his creative work. The expression may also be applied to an art describing the origin of another art, how it came to be made and the circumstances of its being created. Finally it may describe an entirely imaginary and non-existing work of art, as though it were factual and existed in reality.

The Iliad
The shield of Achilles is described by Homer in an example of ekphrastic poetry, used to depict events that have occurred in the past and events that will occur in the future. The shield contains images representative of the Cosmos and the inevitable fate of the city of Troy. The shield of Achilles features the following nine depictions:
 * 1) The Earth, Sea, Sky, Moon and the Cosmos (484–89)
 * 2) Two cities – one where a wedding and a trial are taking place, and one that is considered to be Troy, due to the battle occurring inside the city (509–40)
 * 3) A field that is being ploughed (541–49)
 * 4) The home of a King where the harvest is being reaped (550–60)
 * 5) A vineyard that is being harvested (561–72)
 * 6) A herd of cattle that is being attacked by two lions, while the Herdsman and his dogs try to scare the lions off the prize bull (573–86)
 * 7) A sheep farm (587–89)
 * 8) A scene with young men and women dancing (590–606)
 * 9) The mighty Ocean as it encircles the shield (607–609)

The Odyssey
Although not written as elaborately as previous examples of ekphrastic poetry, from lines 609–614 the belt of Herakles is described as having "marvelous works," such as animals with piercing eyes and hogs in a grove of trees. It also contains multiple images of battles and occurrences of manslaughter. In the Odyssey, there is also a scene where Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, must prove to his wife, Penelope, that he has proof that Odysseus is still alive. She asks him about the clothes Odysseus was wearing during the time when the beggar claims he hosted Odysseus. Homer uses this opportunity to implement more ekphrastic imagery by describing the golden brooch of Odysseus, which depicts a hound strangling a fawn that it captured.

The Argonautika
The Cloak of Jason is another example of ekphrastic poetry. In The Argonautika, Jason's cloak has seven events embroidered into it:

 * 1) The forging of Zeus' thunderbolts by the Cyclops (730-734)
 * 2) The building of Thebes by the sons of Antiope (735–741)
 * 3) Aphrodite with the shield of Ares (742–745)
 * 4) The battle between Teleboans and the Sons of Electryon (746–751)
 * 5) Pelops winning Hippodameia (752–758)
 * 6) Apollo punishing Tityos (759–762)
 * 7) Phrixus and the Ram (763–765)

The description of the cloak provides many examples of ekphrasis, and not only is modeled on Homer's writing, but alludes to several occurrences in Homer's epics the Iliad and the Odyssey. Jason's cloak can be examined in many ways. The way the cloak's events are described is similar to the catalogue of Women that Odysseus encounters on his trip to the Underworld.

The cloak and its depicted events lend more to the story than a simple description; in true ekphrasis fashion it not only compares Jason to future heroes such as Achilles and Odysseus, but also provides a type of foreshadowing. Jason, by donning the cloak, can be seen as a figure who would rather resort to coercion, making him a parallel to Odysseus, who uses schemes and lies to complete his voyage back to Ithaca.

Jason also bears similarities to Achilles: by donning the cloak, Jason is represented as an Achillean heroic figure due to the comparisons made between his cloak and the shield of Achilles. He also takes up a spear given to him by Atalanta, not as an afterthought, but due to his heroic nature and the comparison between himself and Achilles.

While Jason only wears the cloak while going to meet with Hypsipyle, it foreshadows the changes that Jason will potentially undergo during his adventure. Through the telling of the scenes on the cloak, Apollonios relates the scenes on the cloak as virtues and morals that should be upheld by the Roman people, and that Jason should learn to live by. Such virtues include the piety represented by the Cyclops during the forging of Zeus' thunderbolts. This is also reminiscent of the scene in the Iliad when Thetis goes to see Hephaestus, and requisitions him to create a new set of armor for her son Achilles. Before he began creating the shield and armor, Hephaestus was forging 20 golden tripods for his own hall, and in the scene on Jason's cloak we see the Cyclops performing the last step of creating the thunderbolts for Zeus.

The Aeneid
The Aeneid is an epic that was written by Virgil during the reign of Augustus, the first Emperor of Rome. While the epic itself mimics Homer's works, it can be seen as propaganda for Augustus and the new Roman empire. The shield of Aeneas is described in book eight, from lines 629–719. This shield was given to him by his mother, Venus, after she asked her husband Vulcan to create it. This scene is almost identical to Thetis, the mother of Achilles, asking Hephaestus to create her son new weapons and armor for the battle of Troy.

The difference in the descriptions of the two shields are easily discernible; the shield of Achilles depicts many subjects, whereas the shield made for Aeneas depicts the future that Rome will have, containing propaganda in favor of the Emperor Augustus. Much like other ekphrastic poetry, it depicts a clear catalogue of events:

 * 1) The She Wolf and the suckling Romulus and Remus (629–634)
 * 2) The Rape of the Sabine Women (635–639)
 * 3) Mettius pulled apart by horses (640–645)
 * 4) Invasion of Lars Parsona (646–651)
 * 5) Manlius guarding the capitol (652–654)
 * 6) Gauls invading Rome (655–665)
 * 7) Tartarus with Cato and Catiline (666–670)
 * 8) The Sea around the width of the shield (671–674)
 * 9) The Battle of Actium (675–677)
 * 10) Augustus and Agrippa (678–684)
 * 11) Antony and Cleopatra (685–695)
 * 12) Triumph (696–719)

There is speculation as to why Virgil depicted certain events, while completely avoiding others such as Julius Caesar's conquest of Gaul. Virgil clearly outlined the shield chronologically, but scholars argue that the events on the shield are meant to reflect certain Roman values that would have been of high importance to the Roman people and to the Emperor. These values may include virtus, clementia, iustitia, and pietas, which were the values inscribed on a shield given to Augustus by the Senate. This instance of ekphrasitc poetry may be Virgil's attempt to relate more of his work to Augustus.

Earlier in the epic, when Aeneas travels to Carthage, he sees the temple of the city, and on it are great works of art that are described by the poet using the ekphrastic style. Like the other occurrences of ekphrasis, these works of art describe multiple events. Out of these, there are eight images related to the Trojan War:

 * 1) Depictions of Agamemnon and Menelaus, Priam and Achilles (459)
 * 2) Greeks running from Trojan soldiers (468)
 * 3) The sacking of the tents of Rhesus and the Thracians, and their deaths by Diomedes (468–472)
 * 4) Troilus being thrown from his Chariot as he flees from Achilles (473–478)
 * 5) The women of Troy in lamentation, praying to the gods to help them (479–482)
 * 6) Achilles selling Hektor's body (483–487)
 * 7) Priam begging for the return of his son, with the Trojan commanders nearby (483–488)
 * 8) Penthesilea the Amazon, and her fighters (489–493)

Another significant ekphrasis in the Aeneid appears on the baldric of Pallas (Aeneid X.495-505). The baldric is decorated with the murder of the sons of Aegyptus by their cousins, the Danaïds, a tale dramatized by Aeschylus. Pallas is killed by the warrior Turnus, who plunders and wears the baldric. At the climax of the poem, when Aeneas is on the point of sparing Turnus's life, the sight of the baldric changes the hero's mind. The significance of the ekphrasis is hotly debated.

The Metamorphoses
There are several examples of ekphrasis in the Metamorphoses; one in which Phaeton journeys to the temple of the sun to meet his father Phoebus. When Phaeton gazes upon the temple of the sun, he sees the following carvings:
 * 1) The seas that circle the Earth, the surrounding lands, and the sky (8–9)
 * 2) The gods of the sea and the Nymphs (10–19)
 * 3) Scenes of men, beasts, and local gods (20–21)
 * 4) Twelve figures of the Zodiac, six on each side of the door to the temple (22–23)

Educational value of using ekphrasis in teaching literature
The rationale behind using examples of ekphrasis to teach literature is that once the connection between a poem and a painting are recognized, for example, the student's emotional and intellectual engagement with the literary text is extended to new dimensions. The literary text takes on new meaning and there is more to respond to because another art form is being evaluated. In addition, as the material taught has both a visual and linguistic basis new connections of understanding are formed in the student's brain thus creating a stronger foundation for understanding, remembrance and internalization. Using ekphrasis to teach literature can be done through the use of higher order thinking skills such as distinguishing different perspectives, interpreting, inferring, sequencing, compare and contrast and evaluating.

Literature examples

 * Roberto E. Aras: "«Ecfrasis» y «sinfronismos» en la ruta de Ortega hacia El Quijote" ("Ekphrasis" and "synphronism" on Ortega's route to Don Quixote), in Disputatio. Philosophical Research Bulletin 8:10 (December 2019): 0-00 (18 p.)
 * Andrew Sprague Becker: The Shield of Achilles and the Poetics of Ekphrasis. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1995. ISBN 0-8476-7998-5
 * Emilie Bergman: Art Inscribed: Essays on Ekphrasis in Spanish Golden Age Poetry. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979. ISBN 0-674-04805-9
 * Peter A. Bly, Vision and the Visual Arts in Galdós. A Study of the Novels and Newspaper Articles. Liverpool: Francis Cairns, 1986. ISBN 978-0905205304
 * Gottfried Boehm and Helmut Pfotenhauer: Beschreibungskunst, Kunstbeschreibung: Ekphrasis von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart. München: W. Fink, 1995. ISBN 3-7705-2966-9
 * Siglind Bruhn: Musical Ekphrasis: Composers Responding to Poetry and Painting. Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 2000. ISBN 1-57647-036-9
 * Siglind Bruhn: Musical Ekphrasis in Rilke's Marienleben. Amsterdam/Atlanta: Rodopi Publishers, 2000. ISBN 90-420-0800-8
 * Siglind Bruhn: "A Concert of Paintings: 'Musical Ekphrasis' in the Twentieth Century," in Poetics Today 22:3 (Herbst 2001): 551–605. ISSN 0333-5372
 * Siglind Bruhn: Das tönende Museum: Musik interpretiert Werke bildender Kunst. Waldkirch: Gorz, 2004. ISBN 3-938095-00-8
 * Siglind Bruhn: "Vers une méthodologie de l'ekphrasis musical," in Sens et signification en musique, ed. by Márta Grabócz and Danièle Piston. Paris: Hermann, 2007, 155–176. ISBN 978-2-7056-6682-8
 * Siglind Bruhn, ed.: Sonic Transformations of Literary Texts: From Program Music to Musical Ekphrasis [Interplay: Music in Interdisciplinary Dialogue, vol. 6]. Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 2008. ISBN 978-1-57647-140-1
 * Frederick A. de Armas: Ekphrasis in the Age of Cervantes. Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-8387-5624-7
 * Frederick A. de Armas: Quixotic Frescoes: Cervantes and Italian Renaissance Art. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006. ISBN 978-1-4426-1031-6
 * Frederick A. de Armas: “Huellas de Cervantes en Galdós: La écfrasis de San Bartolomé en El amigo manso y Miau,” Recreaciones quijotescas y cervantinas en la narrativa. Ed. Carlos Mata Induraín. Pamplona: Eunsa, 2013: 77-92. ISBN 978-8431331641
 * Robert D. Denham: Poets on Paintings: A Bibliography. (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010) ISBN 978-0-7864-4725-1
 * Hermann Diels: Über die von Prokop beschriebene Kunstuhr von Gaza, mit einem Anhang enthaltend Text und Übersetzung der Ekphrasis horologiou de Prokopius von Gaza. Berlin, G. Reimer, 1917.
 * Barbara K Fischer: Museum Mediations: Reframing Ekphrasis in Contemporary American Poetry. New York: Routledge, 2006. ISBN 978-0-415-97534-6
 * Claude Gandelman: Reading Pictures, Viewing Texts. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991. ISBN 0-253-32532-3
 * Jean H. Hagstrum: The Sister Arts: The Tradtition of Literary Pictorialism and English Poetry from Dryden to Gray. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1958.
 * James Heffernan: Museum of Words: The Poetics of Ekphrasis from Homer to Ashbery. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993. ISBN 0-226-32313-7
 * John Hollander: The Gazer's Spirit: Poems Speaking to Silent Works of Art. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. ISBN 0-226-34949-7
 * Gayana Jurkevich: In pursuit of the natural sign: Azorín and the poetics of Ekphrasis. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-8387-5413-9
 * Mario Klarer: Ekphrasis: Bildbeschreibung als Repräsentationstheorie bei Spenser, Sidney, Lyly und Shakespeare. Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2001. ISBN 3-484-42135-5
 * Gisbert Kranz: Das Bildgedicht: Theorie, Lexikon, Bibliographie, 3 Bände. Köln: Böhlau, 1981–87. ISBN 3-412-04581-0
 * Gisbert Kranz: Meisterwerke in Bildgedichten: Rezeption von Kunst in der Poesie. Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1986. ISBN 3-8204-9091-4
 * Gisbert Kranz: Das Architekturgedicht. Köln: Böhlau, 1988. ISBN 3-412-06387-8
 * Gisbert Kranz: Das Bildgedicht in Europa: Zur Theorie und Geschichte einer literarischen Gattung. Paderborn: Schöningh, 1973. ISBN 3-506-74813-0
 * Murray Krieger: Ekphrasis: The Illusion of the Natural Sign. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992. ISBN 0-8018-4266-2
 * Norman Land: The Viewer as Poet: The Renaissance Response to Art. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994. ISBN 0-271-01004-5
 * Cecilia Lindhé, 'Bildseendet föds i fingertopparna'. Om en ekfras för den digitala tidsålder, Ekfrase. Nordisk tidskrift för visuell kultur, 2010:1, p. 4–16. ISSN Online: 1891-5760 ISSN Print: 1891-5752
 * Hans Lund: Text as Picture: Studies in the Literary Transformation of Pictures. Lewiston, NY: E. Mellen Press, 1992 (originally published in Swedish as Texten som tavla, Lund 1982). ISBN 0-7734-9449-9
 * Alexander Medvedev: Tiziano’s «Denarius of Caesar» and F.M. Dostoevsky’s «The Grand Inquisitor»: on the Problem of Christian Art In: The Solovyov Research, 2011, No. 3, (31). P. 79–90.
 * Michaela J. Marek: Ekphrasis und Herrscherallegorie: Antike Bildbeschreibungen im Werk Tizians und Leonardos. Worms: Werner'sche Verlagsgesellschaft, 1985. ISBN 3-88462-035-5
 * J. D. McClatchy: Poets on Painters: Essays on the Art of Painting by Twentieth-Century Poets. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. ISBN 978-0-520-06971-8
 * Hugo Méndez-Ramírez: Neruda's Ekphrastic Experience: Mural Art and Canto general. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1999. ISBN 0-8387-5398-1
 * Richard Meek: Narrating the Visual in Shakespeare. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing, 2009. ISBN 978-0-7546-5775-0
 * W.J.T. Mitchell: Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994. ISBN 0-226-53231-3
 * Margaret Helen Persin: Getting the Picture: The Ekphrastic Principle in Twentieth-century Spanish Poetry. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1997. ISBN 0-8387-5335-3
 * Michael C J Putnam: Virgil's Epic Designs: Ekphrasis in the Aeneid. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998. ISBN 0-300-07353-4
 * Christine Ratkowitsch: Die poetische Ekphrasis von Kunstwerken: eine literarische Tradition der Grossdichtung in Antike, Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit. Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2006. ISBN 978-3-7001-3480-0
 * Valerie Robillard and Els Jongeneel (eds.): Pictures into Words: Theoretical and Descriptive Approaches to Ekphrasis. Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1998. ISBN 90-5383-595-4
 * Maria Rubins: Crossroad of Arts, Crossroad of Cultures: Ekphrasis in Russian and French Poetry. New York: Palgrave, 2000. ISBN 0-312-22951-8
 * Grant F. Scott: The Sculpted Word: Keats, Ekphrasis, and the Visual Arts. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1994. ISBN 0-87451-679-X
 * Grant F. Scott: "Ekphrasis and the Picture Gallery", in Advances in Visual Semiotics. Ed. Thomas A. Sebeok and Jean Umiker-Sebeok. New York and Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1995. 403–421.
 * Grant F. Scott: "Copied with a Difference: Ekphrasis in William Carlos Williams' Pictures from Brueghel". Word & Image 15 (January–March 1999): 63–75.
 * Andreas Serafim: "Making the Audience: Ekphrasis and Rhetorical Strategy in Demosthenes 18 and 19", in "Classical Quarterly" 65 (2015) 96-108.
 * Mack Smith: Literary Realism and the Ekphrastic Tradition. University Park: Pennsylvania State U Press, 1995. ISBN 0-271-01329-X
 * Leo Spitzer: "The 'Ode on a Grecian Urn', or Content vs. Metagrammar," in Comparative Literature 7. Eugene, OR: University of Oregon Press, 1955, 203–225.
 * Ryan J. Stark, Rhetoric, Science, and Magic in Seventeenth-Century England (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2009), 181–90.
 * Iman Tavassoly: Rumi in Manhattan: An Ekphrastic Collection of Poetry and Photography, 2018. ISBN 978-1984539908
 * Peter Wagner: Icons, Texts, Iconotexts: Essays on Ekphrasis and Intermediality. Berlin, New York: W. de Gruyter, 1996. ISBN 3-11-014291-0
 * Steve Wakefield, Carpentier's Baroque Fiction: Returning Medusa's Gaze. Wooddbridge: Tamesis, 2004 ISBN 978-1855661073
 * Haiko Wandhoff: Ekphrasis: Kunstbeschreibungen und virtuelle Räume in der Literatur des Mittelalters. Berlin, New York: De Gruyter, 2003. ISBN 978-3-11-017938-5
 * Ruth Webb: Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion in Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Practice. Surrey and Burlington: Ashgate, 2009.
 * Robert Wynne: Imaginary Ekphrasis. Columbus, OH: Pudding House Publications, 2005. ISBN 1-58998-335-1
 * Tamar Yacobi, "The Ekphrastic Figure of Speech," in Martin Heusser et al. (eds.), Text and Visuality. Word and Image Interactions 3, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1999, ISBN 90-420-0726-5.
 * Tamar Yacobi, "Verbal Frames and Ekphrastic Figuration," in Ulla-Britta Lagerroth, Hans Lund and Erik Hedling (eds.), Interart Poetics. Essays on the Interrelations of the Arts and Media, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1997, ISBN 90-420-0202-6.
 * Gabriele Tinti: Ruins. Eris Press: London, 1995. ISBN 978-1912475278
 * Gabriele Tinti: Ruins. Eris Press: London, 1995. ISBN 978-1912475278

title: Ekphrasis


text:
User talk:Bertie

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

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title: User talk:Bertie


text:
Phil Lesh and Friends

Phil Lesh and Friends is an American rock band formed and led by Phil Lesh, former bassist of the Grateful Dead.

Phil & Friends is not a traditional group in that several different lineups of musicians have played under the name, including groups featuring members of Phish, the Black Crowes, and the Allman Brothers Band.

Music
The Phil & Friends concept takes the music of the Grateful Dead (and an ever-increasing number of other influences, including Bob Dylan, Traffic, The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Warren Haynes' band Gov't Mule, the Allman Brothers Band, etc.) and explores and interprets it in new ways. Through the period known as the Quintet years (see below), a Phil & Friends show was often focused on harder, faster rock than that which the Grateful Dead played, thanks in large part to Haynes' and Jimmy Herring's talents at the Southern rock style. Lesh was fond of calling it "Dixieland-style rock". However, all of the incarnations of Phil & Friends have followed a trend of "updating" the Grateful Dead's body of work, and all have been adept at the long, exploratory jams that were a trademark of the Grateful Dead. Phil & Friends has been acclaimed for giving new life to the Grateful Dead's material, bringing in new styles and innovations, while at the same time remaining loyal to the original music and the original fans. It is this melding of musical influences that has given them wide appeal not only among old Deadheads, but the modern-day fans of other jam bands as well.

Phil & Friends has continued the Grateful Dead's tradition of allowing fans to record concerts, and trade these recordings freely. The Internet has been an invaluable source for these tapers to disseminate this music through various sources, including Archive.org and the BitTorrent file-sharing network. Phil has also embraced the Internet by providing free soundboard recordings of many concerts through his website, even providing high-resolution CD covers for fans to print. For his Summer 2006 tour, Phil partnered with Instant Live, a company that was able to provide soundboard CDs of a concert immediately upon its finishing, as well as make these recordings available for fans to download online, though this service was not free.

Original Phil Lesh and Friends
The first use of the Phil Lesh and Friends banner was on September 24, 1994 at the Berkeley Community Theatre. The band was an acoustic version of the Grateful Dead and featured members Phil Lesh, Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir and Vince Welnick. Grateful Dead drummers Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart were not part of the band. After this gig the band name was put to rest until Phil formed a new band in 1998.

1998–2000 permutations
In 1998, Lesh played with a rotating cast of musicians under the Phil Lesh and Friends name, mostly at San Francisco's The Fillmore. Bob Weir, Steve Kimock, Jeff Chimenti, Dave Ellis, Prairie Prince, Scott Amendola, Stan Franks, Gary Lambert, Bobby Strickland and Vince Welnick were among the musicians who participated in the gigs. From April 1999 to September 2000, Lesh toured with a regularly rotating lineup of musicians that included Warren Haynes, Derek Trucks, Jorma Kaukonen, Jimmy Herring, Robben Ford, and members of Phish, Little Feat, The String Cheese Incident and Moe.

The opening concerts on April 15, 16, and 17, 1999 featured Phil along with John Molo on drums, Steve Kimock on guitar, and two members of Phish – Trey Anastasio on guitar and Page McConnell on keys.

After these opening concerts and until October 1999, Phil kept the same "core" of himself and Kimock, and generally Molo as well, while regularly rotating in new musicians on guitar and keys (and sometimes additional instruments). Over this period, the lineups included:

 * May 29, 1999: Warren Haynes (guitar and vocals), Merl Saunders (keys), Donna Jean Godchaux (vocals)
 * June 4–5, 1999: Prairie Prince (drums), Jorma Kaukonen (guitar and vocals), Pete Sears (keys), Zoe Ellis (vocals), Caitlin Cornwell (vocals)
 * July 2–3, 1999: Bill Kreutzmann (drums), David Nelson (guitar and vocals), Barry Sless (guitar), Mookie Siegel (keys)
 * August 12–22, 1999: This series of shows generally featured Warren Haynes on guitar and vocals and Kyle Hollingsworth from The String Cheese Incident on keys. Other members of The String Cheese Incident (Michael Kang (mandolin and violin), Bill Nershi (guitar)) occasionally joined the group, as did Al Schnier of Moe.
 * October 7–9, 1999: Bobby Strickland (horns), Jeff Mattson (guitar and vocals), Rob Barraco (keys and vocals)
 * October 21–27, 1999: This series of shows featured members of Little Feat -- Bill Payne (keys and vocals), Paul Barrere (guitar and vocals)

 * Steve Kimock left the tour on October 29, 1999, and Derek Trucks joined a few days later.

 * October 29–30, 1999: Bill Payne (keys and vocals), Paul Barrere (guitar and vocals)
 * October 31, 1999: Derek Trucks (guitar), Bill Payne (keys and vocals), Paul Barrere (guitar and vocals)

From November 1999 onwards, the "core" of the group was Phil, John Molo, and Rob Barraco on keys (except where noted)

 * November 2–14, 1999: Derek Trucks (guitar), Warren Haynes (guitar and vocals);
 * November 15, 1999: Derek Trucks (guitar), Warren Haynes (guitar and vocals), Jorma Kaukonen (guitar and vocals);
 * November 17–18, 1999: Warren Haynes (guitar and vocals), Jorma Kaukonen (guitar and vocals);
 * March 10, 2000: Robben Ford (guitar and vocals), Bill Payne (keys and vocals), Paul Barrere (guitar and vocals)
 * April 6-May 27, 2000: Jeff Pevar (guitar and vocals), Jimmy Herring (guitar)

For the summer 2000 tour, the lineup primarily consistent of Robben Ford and members of Little Feat

 * June 12–July 15, 2000: Robben Ford (guitar and vocals), Paul Barrere (guitar and vocals), Bill Payne (keys and vocals)
 * July 16–18, 2000: Jimmy Herring (guitar), Paul Barrere (guitar and vocals), Bill Payne (keys and vocals)
 * July 19–30, 2000: Robben Ford (guitar and vocals), Paul Barrere (guitar and vocals), Bill Payne (keys and vocals)

The Phil Lesh Quintet
The most permanent of the Phil Lesh and Friends lineups, known as the Phil Lesh Quintet (PLQ or just "the Q" for short) played on a mostly-regular basis from September 2000 through December 2003. The members of this incarnation were Lesh, Warren Haynes (guitar & vocals; also of Gov't Mule and Allman Brothers Band), Jimmy Herring (guitar; the Allman Brothers Band, Aquarium Rescue Unit, and most recently Widespread Panic), Rob Barraco (keyboards; the Dead, the Zen Tricksters, Dark Star Orchestra) and John Molo (drums; Bruce Hornsby and the Range, the Other Ones, Modereko, Keller Williams, David Nelson Band, Jemimah Puddleduck, and John Fogerty).

This lineup released the only Phil Lesh and Friends studio album, There and Back Again, on Columbia Records in 2002. It included several new songs from Lesh and Robert Hunter, longtime Grateful Dead lyricist, as well as one recent favorite from Jerry Garcia and Hunter, and several original contributions from Haynes, Barraco/Mattson and Herring.

During the summer tour of 2001, the band performed a series of instrumental numbers composed by Lesh. The songs were inspired by the solar system. While they were never officially released on an album, they have come to be known as the Planet Jams. A bootleg compilation of these songs has been circulating since then.

Post Quintet Era
Ryan Adams started performing with the band in June 2005 after meeting Lesh at the Jammys, followed by Chris Robinson in November/December 2005.

2006
During 2006, Phil Lesh and Friends consisted of a core of musicians including Lesh, Larry Campbell (guitar, violin, slide guitar, mandolin, and vocals), Joan Osborne (vocals), Rob Barraco (keyboards and vocals), and John Molo (drums). On the first half of the summer tour, they were joined by John Scofield (guitar), and on the second half, by Barry Sless (pedal steel) and, during the third quarter of the tour and generally for the second set, by Trey Anastasio. Saxophonist Greg Osby joined the group for various concerts, particularly toward the end of the tour, and guest artists including Page McConnell and Dickey Betts sat in for individual sets.

Concerts with Scofield had a jazzy, astringent quality. Anastasio contributed a strong rock lead guitar to the sets he played in, while Sless brought a softer, more lyrical quality. The relative lack of comment about these lineups compared to the earlier "Quintet" and later 2007-8 configuration suggests that they were not as popular with Lesh's core fan base, but they gave unique and varied interpretations to some of the Grateful Dead's classics along with numerous other songs. Furthermore, the fact that the entire tour was distributed online and later via Instant Live CDs, and a live DVD was made of an early concert at the Warfield (with Scofield and Osby), meant that the various configurations of the year's lineup left a larger body of recorded work than many groups that worked together for years.

2007–2008
A new formation of Phil & Friends, including Lesh, Larry Campbell (guitar, mandolin, fiddle), Teresa Williams (vocals), Jackie Greene (vocals and guitar), Steve Molitz (keyboards), and John Molo (drums), debuted in September 2007 in Santa Barbara, California.

On February 4, 2008, Phil and Friends joined Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir and drummer Mickey Hart, along with Barry Sless and RatDog guitarist Mark Karan, for a concert called "Deadheads for Obama", in support of Barack Obama's presidential campaign. The show was the first time that Weir, Hart, and Lesh had played together since 2004. Even more recently, the band performed the final shows at the Warfield Theatre in San Francisco. Bob Weir sat in for a run of five nights that included sets of the Grateful Dead's first few albums.

In the fall of 2008, Phil Lesh and Friends toured the Eastern United States, including a run of 14 shows in 19 days, known as "Philathon", at the Nokia Theatre Times Square in New York City. The final Phil Lesh and Friends performance until 2012 was on 12/31/08. Meanwhile, Phil had been touring with The Dead and Furthur.

2012
On Phil Lesh's website, 3 dates at the 1stBank Center in Broomfield, Colorado, were scheduled for the February 16, 17, and 18. A twelve-date appearance at Lesh's new club, Terrapin Crossroads, is set to commence on March 17, 2012, which many old members of the band returning to appear alongside Lesh, as well as a few new members.

On April 26 through April 29 the original Quintet returned, performing four sold-out shows at Terrapin Crossroads.

The band also appeared at the 2012 Gathering of the Vibes and All Good Music Festival, featuring Phil Lesh, Jackie Greene, Grahame Lesh, Brian Lesh, Joe Russo, Larry Campbell, and Teresa Williams

2014
In 2014, Phil Lesh signed an exclusive deal with concert promoter Peter Shapiro to perform 44 concerts across Shapiro's venues. Thirty of those performances would take place at the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, New York, with the others at the Brooklyn Bowls in New York, London and Las Vegas, as well as the Lockn' Festival in Arrington, Virginia.

Phil Lesh and Friends featuring Warren Haynes, Jackie Greene, John Medeski and Joe Russo performed two shows on April 14 and 15 at Brooklyn Academy of Music.

Phil and Friends then played two shows at Central Park's Rumsey Playfield on May 28 and 31. The incarnation of this band included Warren Haynes, John Scofield, John Medeski and Joe Russo.

2015–2016
Starting in January 2015, Phil Lesh and Friends celebrated the Grateful Dead's 50th Anniversary by performing tribute concerts, recreating select concerts from the Grateful Dead's 30-year career, at his restaurant Terrapin Crossroads, along with select Grateful Dead Recreational Tribute shows at The Capitol Theatre, in Port Chester, New York. These celebrations of the Grateful Dead's 50th Anniversary continued into 2016.

In 2015, Phil Lesh And Friends had to cancel two shows at Terrapin Crossroads on October 24–25, due to the bladder cancer diagnosis of Phil Lesh.

At the 2015 Lockn' Festival, Carlos Santana made his debut as one of Phil's "Friends", sitting in for the whole set. The next night at Lock'n, The Chris Robinson Brotherhood also sat in with Phil Lesh & Friends.

In celebration of Phil's 76th birthday in 2015, Phil resurrected the classic "Q" lineup for a 2-night run at The Capitol Theatre, in Port Chester.

In January 2016, it was announced that Phil Lesh and Friends will perform a New Year's Eve run in Hawaii, from December 29–31.

2023
In March 2023, Phil Lesh performed his 100th show at The Capitol Theatre.

Discography

 * Love Will See You Through (1999)
 * There and Back Again (2002)
 * Live at the Warfield (2006)

Members
The following musicians have accompanied bassist and vocalist Phil Lesh with various lineups of Phil Lesh & Friends from 1999 to present day (with one performance in 1994). Note: This list is incomplete.

 * Ryan Adams – guitar, vocals
 * Stu Allen - guitar, vocals
 * Trey Anastasio – guitar, vocals
 * Rob Barraco – keyboards, vocals
 * Rick Mitarotonda – guitar, vocals
 * Paul Barrere – guitar, vocals
 * Michael Mark Bello – tenor saxophone, kazoo, vocals, percussion, drums, horn arrangements
 * Duane Betts - guitar, vocals
 * Eric Bloom – trumpet
 * Nicki Bluhm – vocals
 * Tim Bluhm – guitar, vocals
 * Travis Book – double bass
 * Holly Bowling – keyboards
 * Larry Campbell – guitar, vocals
 * Neal Casal – guitar, vocals
 * James Casey (musician) - saxophone, clarinet, vocals
 * Jeff Chimenti – keyboards, vocals
 * Cailan Cornwell – vocals
 * Natalie Cressman - trombone, vocals
 * Jason Crosby – keyboards
 * Mikaela Davis - harp, vocals
 * Karl Denson – saxophone, flute, percussion
 * Luther Dickinson – guitar, vocals
 * JD Simo – guitar, vocals
 * Rob Eaton – guitar, vocals
 * Dave Ellis – saxophone
 * Zoe Ellis – vocals
 * Alan Evans – drums
 * Neal Evans – keyboards
 * Andy Falco – guitar
 * Jon Fishman – drums
 * Robben Ford – guitar
 * Donna Jean Godchaux – vocals
 * Jerry Garcia – guitar, vocals
 * Jeremy Garrett – fiddle
 * Jon Graboff – guitar
 * Griffin Goldsmith – drums, vocals
 * Taylor Goldsmith – guitar, vocals
 * Mike Gordon – bass, vocals
 * Jackie Greene – guitar, vocals
 * Andy Hall – dobro
 * Jennifer Hartswick trumpet, vocals
 * Warren Haynes – guitar, vocals
 * Amy Helm – vocals
 * Jimmy Herring – guitar
 * Kyle Hollingsworth – keyboards
 * Ross James – guitar, vocals
 * Gloria Jones – vocals
 * Stanley Jordan – guitar, vocals
 * John Kadlecik – guitar, vocals
 * Mark Karan – guitar, vocals
 * Michael Kang – guitar, vocals
 * Jorma Kaukonen – guitar, vocals
 * Steve Kimock – guitar
 * Marcus King – guitar, vocals
 * Alex Koford – percussion, vocals
 * Bill Kreutzmann – drums
 * Jaclyn LaBranch – vocals
 * Scott Law – guitar, vocals
 * Dan Lebowitz - guitar, pedal steel, vocals
 * Tony Leone – drums
 * Brian Lesh – guitars, vocals
 * Grahame Lesh – guitars, vocals
 * Ezra Lipp – drums, vocals
 * Scott Guberman – keyboards, vocals
 * Mark Levy – drums
 * Adam MacDougall – keyboards
 * Branford Marsalis – saxophone
 * Jeff Mattson – guitar, vocals
 * John Mayer – guitar, vocals
 * Page McConnell – keyboards, vocals
 * John Medeski – keyboards
 * Trevor Menear – guitar, vocals, harmonica
 * Scott Metzger – guitar, vocals
 * Steve Molitz – keyboards
 * John Molo – drums
 * David Nelson – guitar, vocals
 * Bill Nershi – guitar, vocals
 * Tom Osander – drums, vocals
 * Anders Osborne – guitar, vocals
 * Joan Osborne – vocals
 * Greg Osby – saxophone
 * Chris Pandolfi – banjo
 * Lee Pardini – keyboards
 * Bill Payne – keyboards, vocals
 * Jeff Pevar – guitar
 * Prairie Prince – drums
 * Chris Robinson – guitar, vocals
 * Joe Russo – drums
 * Merl Saunders – keyboards
 * Jaz Sawyer – drums
 * Al Schnier – guitar, vocals
 * John Scofield – guitar
 * Melvin Seals – keyboards
 * Pete Sears – keyboards
 * Mookie Siegel – keyboards
 * Jeff Sipe – drums
 * Barry Sless – guitar
 * Bobby Strickland – horns
 * Benmont Tench – keyboards
 * Derek Trucks – guitar
 * Bob Weir – guitar, vocals
 * Vince Welnick – keyboards, vocals
 * Teresa Williams – vocals
 * Ryan Zoidis – saxophone

title: Phil Lesh and Friends


text:
Talk:Paramount Pictures

Semi-protected edit request on 2 September 2018
Hello I would like to edit the "Highest Gross Film" section. Can I please edit it so i can make some changes? Rockinwill123 (talk) 18:07, 2 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Red question icon with gradient background.svg Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. L293D (☎ • ✎) 19:19, 2 September 2018 (UTC)

Proposed change: Portuguese, not Spanish
The logo with the subtitles “Distribuida pela Paramount” is in Portuguese, not Spanish. rfernand (talk) 13:59, 8 September 2018 (UTC)

Studio tours
The "Studio tours" section appears to be written like an advertisement. Do you agree? Lamp301 (talk) 00:56, 5 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes. The article is about a world wide company but this section about a specific site appears to be tacked on without any context. Is this particular site historic? Who established this site? Besides fans of movies and sitcoms, why any interest in this site? Section needs to be rewritten and the title changed to refer to the specific property. Studio tours can be mentioned as part of an overall explanation.  Fettlemap (talk) 18:46, 24 January 2019 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 5 May 2019 re: "Revenue" column of Paramount Pictures article
Currently, it says Paramount makes 3,041 billion in revenue (this would be 3.04 trillion, a highly unlikely figure). Upon checking the linked source I confirmed that this was not accurate (in fact, their investor relations documents say just over $741M for 2018, nowhere does it say Paramount Pictures made 3.04 trillion or billion). The real number is not in the source linked either so I'm not sure where the initial figure is from. Hosnappp (talk) 23:29, 5 May 2019 (UTC)
 * The document discusses Viacom having had a revenue of 3,000 million (so our figure was way off), and seem to have applied to Viacom as a whole and not Paramount Pictures. Have removed the number. – Þjarkur (talk) 23:52, 5 May 2019 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 8 June 2019
it was acquired in 1994

184.54.163.113 (talk) 03:25, 8 June 2019 (UTC)
 * Red question icon with gradient background.svg Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. NiciVampireHeart 22:12, 8 June 2019 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 17 February 2020
On the Highest-Grossing Films section in the Paramount Pictures' Wikipedia, Mission: Impossible - Fallout is listed twice on the Highest grossing films in North America. The Mission: Impossible - Fallout listed at #24 with $204 million should be removed and replaced with Monsters vs. Aliens which should be at #25 with $198,351,526 made (World War Z should be moved up to #24).  Polterroid (talk) 17:59, 17 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done Thank you for citing your sources. Yeah I don't think there are 2 movies of the same same.  To reply, copy and paste this:      (Talk)       22:50, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 3 December 2020
The line in the Logo section that says that a CGI version was created in 1986 seems to differ from the image box featuring the named artist not creating the image basis for that logo until 1995. And the state of CGI in 1986 was not up to the challenge. Maybe that '1986' is just a typo for '1996'? Food for thought. 108.67.193.248 (talk) 20:51, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Seems OK to me. CGI worked fine in 1986, for example Tron came out in 1982 and used lots of CGI.  RudolfRed (talk) 19:42, 9 December 2020 (UTC)

"Secret Headquarters" listed at Redirects for discussion
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect Secret Headquarters. The discussion will occur at Redirects for discussion/Log/2021 February 10 until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. signed,Rosguill talk 17:51, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 23 April 2021
Change "...an American film production company..." to "...an American film and television production and distribution company..." Garret Clarke (talk) 11:35, 23 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 13:42, 23 April 2021 (UTC)

New logo
The current logo, reminiscent to the very first logo from 1917 to 1967, was made after Paramount Global had taken its current name to avoid confusion between the studios. The logo can be seen at the very bottom of the studio's official site and on the recent posters to Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (2022). The logo will replace the 1967 logo on future Paramount Home Entertainment home releases, starting on June 7, 2022.
 * UPDATE: The new Paramount Pictures logo will take the old one place a week early on May 31, according to the new overview image to The Untouchables ' upcoming 4K release on Blu-ray.com.
 * SECOND UPDATE: The new Paramount Pictures logo will be introduced even more early on April 12, with a reprint of Escape from Alcatraz (1979).

Each source shows that the original 1967 logo won't be used anymore and the new 2022 logo will be used fully after its introduction. --XSMan2016 (talk) 15:25, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

 * You are welcome to find a high-res, official version of the new logo and upload it so we can use it here. InfiniteNexus (talk) 23:41, 16 March 2022 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 16 July 2022
Undo revision by Mr. G. Price, WP:BANREVERT 181.12.111.26 (talk) 22:45, 16 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Pictogram voting wait.svg Already done ScottishFinnishRadish (talk) 22:56, 16 July 2022 (UTC)

Pankaj Gupta Ji 8601103407
Pankaj Gupta 2405:204:A52D:BE63:0:0:B07:D8A0 (talk) 16:19, 31 October 2022 (UTC)

Split Paramount Pictures History section into its own article
The history section has become too lengthy and it makes it difficult to scroll through the article comfortably. I propose that it should be split into its own, and a summarized history is put in place. Pretty much like with all the other major American film studio (Walt Disney Pictures, Warner Bros. Pictures, Universal Pictures), and the major broadcast network (CBS, NBC and ABC) articles. Averyfunkydude23 (talk) 08:48, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

 * Maybe we could separate it from Paramount Pictures Corporation like the other studios. It would help sort things a bit more. 2601:152:5080:9D30:24DC:4F06:7749:5A6B (talk) 07:04, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

Mathematics
No 43.228.111.68 (talk) 16:11, 14 January 2023 (UTC)

harlen nights. 74.73.109.0 (talk) 02:49, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

Separate article from Paramount Pictures Corporation
Maybe we could separate "Paramount Pictures" and "Paramount Pictures Corporation" like the other studios. It could help sort things a bit especially the History section. Other majors (e.g. Walt Disney Studios/Walt Disney Pictures and Warner Bros. Entertainment/Warner Bros. Pictures) follow this too. I understand that Paramount is renowned for its extra studios, it's expanded over the years. Alongside the flagship, it has Republic Pictures, Miramax, and Paramount Players. Paramount even established "Paramount Motion Picture Group" much like "Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group." 2601:152:5080:9D30:842:E50E:AEB3:6A47 (talk) 07:03, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

File:Paramount Pictures intro 2020.ogv listed for discussion
A file that you uploaded or altered, File:Paramount Pictures intro 2020.ogv, has been listed at Files for discussion. Please see the to see why it has been listed (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry). Feel free to add your opinion on the matter below the nomination. Thank you. InfiniteNexus (talk) 01:26, 11 December 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:Paramount Pictures