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The Epoch Times

The Epoch Times is a far-right international multi-language newspaper and media company affiliated with the Falun Gong new religious movement. The newspaper, based in New York City, is part of the Epoch Media Group, which also operates New Tang Dynasty (NTD) Television. The Epoch Times has websites in 35 countries but is blocked in mainland China.

The Epoch Times opposes the Chinese Communist Party,  hosts far-right politicians in Europe,  and has supported former President Donald Trump in the U.S. A 2019 report by NBC News showed it to be the second-largest funder of pro-Trump Facebook advertising after the Trump campaign itself. The Epoch Times frequently runs stories promoting other Falun Gong-affiliated groups, such as the performing arts company Shen Yun. The Epoch Media Group's news sites and YouTube channels have promoted conspiracy theories such as QAnon, anti-vaccine misinformation and false claims of fraud in the 2020 United States presidential election. In June 2024, allegations of money laundering were leveled at the group's chief financial officer.

History and relation to Falun Gong
The Epoch Times was founded in 2000 by John Tang and other Chinese Americans affiliated with the Falun Gong new religious movement. Tang was a graduate student in Georgia at the time; he began the newspaper in his basement. The founders said they were responding to censorship inside China and a lack of international understanding about the Chinese government's repression of Falun Gong.

By 2003, The Epoch Times website and group of newspapers had grown into one of the largest Chinese-language news sites and newspaper groups outside China, with local editions in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Indonesia, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and major Western European countries. The first English edition launched online in September 2003, followed by the first print edition in 2004. The English Australian edition was launched in Sydney in 2005.

Nick Couldry and James Curran wrote in 2003 that the paper represents a "major step in the evolution of Falun Gong-related alternative media" and may be part of a de facto media alliance with democracy activists in exile. In 2003, sociologist Yuezhi Zhao wrote that the paper "displays an indisputable ideological and organizational affinity with Falun Gong" and that it strongly emphasizes negative portrayals of the Chinese government and positive portrayals of Falun Gong. Per Zhao, Epoch portrays itself as neutral, independent, and public-interest oriented.

In 2005, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that "three new U.S.-based, Chinese-language media outlets that provide provocative reporting about the Communist Party, government oppression and social unrest in China (namely The Epoch Times, Sound of Hope, and NTDTV) have ties to the Falun Gong spiritual movement." When interviewed, executives at each outlet claimed they did not represent the Falun Gong movement as a whole.

Associated Press reporter Nahal Toosi wrote in 2006 that it is "technically inaccurate" to say that Falun Gong owns The Epoch Times, though many of the paper's staff are Falun Gong practitioners. Toosi noted: "some observers" have said that Falun Gong uses the newspaper for its public relations campaigns and that the paper is connected with the group and carries sympathetic coverage of it.

The English Epoch Times chair Stephen Gregory has denied that The Epoch Times is directly connected to Falun Gong. Independent reporters in the U.S. have confirmed the connection.

In 2008, David Ownby, director of the Center for East Asian Studies at the Université de Montréal and the author of Falun Gong and the Future of China, said Falun Gong practitioners set up the newspaper with their own money. He described The Epoch Times as wishing to be taken seriously as a global newspaper rather than being judged on the basis of its strong association with Falun Gong. He wrote: "Epoch Times is a newspaper with a mission, that of reporting on issues bearing on human rights throughout the world, which allows for considerable focus on China and Falun Gong."

Canadian scholar Clement Tong wrote    The Epoch Times "operates as a mouthpiece" for Falun Gong without an official statement of affiliation with the movement.

In 2009, Li Hongzhi, the founder of Falun Gong, appeared at the newspaper's headquarters in Manhattan and called for the expansion of The Epoch Times to "become regular media". Li has called The Epoch Times "our media", along with the NTD digital production company and the Shen Yun dance troupe. Two former employees said that top editors traveled to meet with Li at Falun Gong's compound, Dragon Springs, where he weighed in on editorial and strategic decisions; The Epoch Times denied that a meeting took place.

Former Epoch Times employees have noted Falun Gong practitioners' involvement in the management and editorial process. Three anonymous former employees said Epoch Times workers were encouraged to attend weekly "Fa study" sessions outside work hours to study Li's teachings. Former employees have said that criticizing The Epoch Times amounts to disobeying Li.

The Epoch Times runs frequent promotional stories about the related Shen Yun dance troupe. The New Yorker review of Shen Yun called The Epoch Times "the world's foremost purveyor of Shen Yun content."

In a 2018 report, the conservative think tank Hoover Institution wrote, "the space for truly independent Chinese-language media in the United States has shrunk to a few media outlets supported by the adherents of Falun Gong, the banned religious sect in China, and a small publication and website called Vision Times", the report noting that the latter is also associated with Falun Gong.

In a 2019 report, Reporters Without Borders wrote, "Aside from the Epoch Times newspaper and New Tang Dynasty Television, which are run by the Falun Gong, a religious movement persecuted in China, and China Digital Times, a website founded by a leading US-based critic of the regime, the United States now has few truly independent diaspora media."

In 2019, an NBC News investigative report suggested The Epoch Times political coverage may be affected by Falun Gong believers' anticipation of a judgment day in which communists are sent to hell and Falun Gong's allies are spared. Former Epoch Times employees told NBC News that Donald Trump is viewed as a key anti-communist ally, allegedly hastening that judgment day.

In 2020, Vox identified China Uncensored and NTD as affiliates of The Epoch Times, as part of a multilingual "media empire".

The Epoch Times sold a building in Middletown, New York, to Falun Gong–aligned website company Gan Jing World in 2022, with the building then opening as Gan Jing World's headquarters in July 2022. Gan Jing World's director of media relations, Nick Janicki, has denied that there is any corporate connection between Gan Jing World and the Epoch Times, but said the founders are "good friends". The Epoch Times publishes articles promoting Gan Jing World, presenting them as news. In turn, media owned by Epoch Media Group are promoted on the Gan Jing World website, including on the front page.

Finances
According to NBC News, "little is publicly known about the precise ownership, origins or influences of The Epoch Times", and it is loosely organized into several regional tax-free nonprofits, under the umbrella of the Epoch Media Group, together with New Tang Dynasty Television.

The newspaper's revenue has increased rapidly in recent years, from $3.8million in 2016 to $8.1million in 2017 (with spending of $7.2million), $12.4million in 2018 and $15.5million in 2019. Tax documents indicate that between 2012 and 2016, the group received $900,000 from a principal at Renaissance Technologies, a hedge fund led at the time by the conservative political donor Robert Mercer. Chris Kitze, a former NBC executive and creator of the fake news website Before It's News who also manages a cryptocurrency hedge fund, joined the paper's board as vice president in 2017.

A 2020 New York Times report called The Epoch Times recent wealth "something of a mystery". Steve Bannon, the former executive chairman of Breitbart News who produced a documentary with NTD, said "I'd give them a number" on a project budget and "they'd come back and say, 'We're good for that number.'" Former employees say they were told The Epoch Times is financed by subscriptions, ads and donations from wealthy Falun Gong practitioners.

Between 2019 and 2021, The Epoch Times increased its revenue by 685%, reaching $122million in 2021. Since 2019, it has gone mostly digital, spending millions on Facebook and YouTube advertisements (Facebook later banned the website, saying it "leveraged foreign actors posing as Americans to push political content"). , The Epoch Times claims to be the US newspaper with the fourth-highest number of subscribers; this ranking cannot be verified as their circulation data is not audited by independent organizations.

Money laundering allegations
On June 3, 2024, the chief financial officer of The Epoch Times, Weidong "Bill" Guan, was indicted on federal charges in the Southern District of New York and charged with one count of conspiring to commit money laundering and two counts of bank fraud in a transnational scheme that lasted from 2020 to May 2024. The Department of Justice (DOJ) said that under Guan's leadership, The Epoch Times Make Money Online team had purchased crime proceeds using cryptocurrency and transferred them into bank accounts held by entities affiliated with The Epoch Times. According to the DOJ, tens of millions in money laundered funds were transferred to The Epoch Times bank accounts, inflating its revenue by 410%.

The Epoch Times said in a statement that Guan was "innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt", adding that it had "suspended him until this matter is resolved." Founder John Tang later resigned from his role as CEO and the company's management was handed over to a transitional team. In response to the incident, the paper published statements written by Li Hongzhi, which criticized the paper's alleged financial misconduct and partisanship, calling on Falun Gong practitioners to cease making personal attacks on American political figures.

Distribution
The Epoch Times publishes in 21 languages and 33 countries, and has print editions in eight languages: Chinese, English, Spanish, Hebrew, Vietnamese, Japanese, Korean, and Indonesian. Special print editions have also been erratically published in France.

In April 2019, videos and ads from the Epoch Media Group including The Epoch Times and New Tang Dynasty (NTD) totaled 3billion views on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, according to the analytics company Tubular. This ranked it 11th among all video creators, and ahead of any other traditional news publisher, according to NBC News.

, The Epoch Times was the 7th most followed account on Gab, a social networking service known for its far-right userbase.

According to a Facebook report released in August 2021, a subscription page for The Epoch Times received 44.2million views between April and June 2021. , the Facebook page for The Epoch Times had 9million followers. Facebook data showed that one of the most popular pages in the first quarter of 2021 was a page run by The Epoch Times.

Editorial stance
The Epoch Times is an ardent opponent of the Chinese Communist Party. Since a shift in the newspaper's approach in 2016, the newspaper received significant attention for its favorable coverage of the Trump administration, the German far-right, and the French far-right.

According to NBC News, The Epoch Times "generally stayed out of U.S. politics" before 2016 "unless they dovetailed with Chinese interests". Ben Hurley, a former Falun Gong practitioner and Epoch Times writer until 2013, said the paper was critical of abortion and LGBT people and that Falun Gong practitioners "saw communism everywhere", including in internationalist figures like Hillary Clinton and Kofi Annan, "but there was more room for disagreements in the early days."

Since 2016, according to NBC News, The Epoch Times has promoted favorable coverage of Trump's campaign and presidency, and emphasized topics like Islamic terrorism and illegal immigration to the United States. It has also emphasized "what the publication claims is a labyrinthian, global conspiracy led by [Hillary] Clinton and former President Barack Obama to tear down Trump."

A former Epoch Times reporter who covered the 2016 campaign, Steve Klett, said his editors had encouraged favorable coverage of Trump after he won the Republican nomination, and that "they seemed to have this almost messianic way of viewing Trump as the anti-Communist leader who would bring about the end of the Chinese Communist Party." After Trump was elected, The Epoch Times hired Brendan Steinhauser, a Tea Party strategist, to reach out to more conservatives and encourage the Trump administration to oppose the persecution of Falun Gong.

The Epoch Times picks up mainstream newswire stories and in some places can resemble a community newspaper. According to sociologist Yuezhi Zhao, "While mainstream newspapers typically treat Web versions as an extension of the already-existing print version, The Epoch Times website serves as the master for all its worldwide papers."

The Epoch Times is known for alleging conspiracies involving former Communist Party general secretary Jiang Zemin, under whose administration Falun Gong was suppressed in China.

The newspaper is at odds with the Taiwanese-owned and U.S.-based Chinese language newspaper World Journal, calling it a "megaphone for the evil Chinese Communist Party."

In September 2017, the German edition, The Epoch Times Deutschland, which became online-only in 2012, was described by online magazine The China File as aligned with the German far-right, and attractive to supporters of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party and the anti-immigrant group Pegida. Stefanie Albrecht, a reporter for the German broadcaster RTL who spent several days inside The Epoch Times Berlin office while investigating the far right, said that the staffers she met were all Falun Gong practitioners who had no journalistic training and did not check facts, trusting instead in the alternative sources they consulted. During her time at The Epoch Times office, Albrecht was exposed to debunked conspiracy theories such as Pizzagate, the chemtrail conspiracy theory, weather-changing machines and the Great Replacement.

In France, The Epoch Times gives "an unfettered platform to Jean-Marie Le Pen, the patriarch of the French far right, and his daughter, Marine, who leads the nationalist party her father founded", according to The New Republic.

The Epoch Times publishes climate change denial content. It promotes doubt about modern science and medicine, in line with Falun Gong's teachings. Elise Thomas of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue noted, "Falun Gong has a history of rejecting modern medicine, which obviously intersects neatly with the beliefs of many anti-vax communities." Ben Hurley said, "They've been anti-medicine for a long time. Ex-believers know many people that have died from treatable conditions. It's their belief that they don't need medicine, because they're superhuman beings."

"Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party" editorials
In November 2004, the Chinese version of The Epoch Times published a series of editorials titled "Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party". The editorials argued that China would not be free or prosperous until it was rid of the party, which it said was at odds with China's cultural and spiritual values. The Epoch Times also organized a campaign called the movement, urging people to quit the Chinese Communist Party, and said that more than 2million people had resigned. A report by the OpenNet Initiative said that 90% of websites mentioning the phrase "Nine Commentaries" were blocked in mainland China as of 2005.

Caylan Ford, a former staff writer for The Epoch Times, wrote in a 2009 guest opinion article in The Christian Science Monitor that millions of copies of the "Nine Commentaries" articles were circulated in China by email, fax, and underground printing houses. Ford wrote that the campaign differed from the 1989 and 2008 democracy movements in China by drawing on Buddhist and Daoist spirituality.

In 2012, a former People's Liberation Army Air Force officer testified to the United States Congressional-Executive Commission on China that he had been sentenced to four years of prison for distributing a "Nine Commentaries" DVD in Beijing.

The movement was called one of the top global events in 2011 by Russian economist Andrey Illarionov, who cited claims by The Epoch Times that over 100million people had quit.

Li Yi, a Hong Kong-based democratic activist, questioned The Epoch Times claims about the number of resignations in an Apple Daily opinion piece in 2006, warned that the movement could be using "lies to fight lies", and wrote that the propagandistic nature of the movement could hurt the integrity of the pro-democracy community.

According to China scholar David Ownby, the Nine Commentaries are a "condemnation of communism and a direct indictment of the legitimacy of the Chinese Communist Party's rule in China." While acknowledging the "unnecessary violence" the Chinese Communist Party has inflicted, Ownby finds that the lack of balance and nuance in tone and style makes the editorials resemble "anti-Communist propaganda written in Taiwan in the 1950s". Journalist Oscar Schwartz called the Nine Commentaries a "quasi-McCarthyist screed".

Pro-Trump conspiracy theories and disinformation

The Epoch Times has promoted an array of pro-Donald Trump conspiracy theories and is known as one of Trump's closest media allies and defenders.

The paper has financially benefited from its promotion of Trump conspiracies, increasing its revenue nearly fourfold during the first three years of Trump's administration (from $3.9million in 2016 to $15.5million in 2019) as it catered to Trump's most ardent supporters, to whom the paper marketed itself via targeted social media advertising.

The publication championed Trump's Spygate conspiracy theory in its news coverage and advertising, and the Epoch Media Group's Edge of Wonder videos on YouTube spread the far-right, pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy theory and embraced false QAnon claims.

An NBC News report found that two of Edge of Wonder hosts have been a creative director and chief photo editor at The Epoch Times. The newspaper promoted Edge of Wonder videos in dozens of Facebook posts through 2019.

In September 2019, during the Trump–Ukraine scandal, Hunter Biden's Wikipedia article included dubious claims about his business dealings in Ukraine and his father Joe Biden's motivations for going after a Ukrainian prosecutor; the claims were sourced to The Epoch Times and The New American. The Epoch Times promoted the conspiracy theory that Joe Biden had abused his power in 2016 to protect Hunter's business interests in Ukraine.

During the February 2020 Iowa Democratic caucuses, The Epoch Times shared viral disinformation from the conservative group Judicial Watch that falsely alleged inflated voter rolls. The disinformation, which went viral on Facebook, was debunked by fact checkers and the Iowa secretary of state. A Harvard media expert said that The Epoch Times employed a "classic disinformation tactic" known as "trading up the chain", in which false stories are repackaged and shared.

After Trump lost the 2020 United States presidential election, The Epoch Times consistently sought to question the election results. The organization produced a 93-minute video that falsely suggested widespread fraud in the counting; one interviewee, attorney Lin Wood, falsely alleged that China had bought an American election vendor. Versions of the video on YouTube, the Epoch Times website and NTD were viewed hundreds of thousands of times.

The Epoch Times created a network of seven new YouTube channels to disseminate election disinformation and other false claims, including falsehoods about the Nashville Christmas Day bombing. Only one of the seven YouTube channels disclosed its ties to The Epoch Times or Falun Gong. In the two and a half months after their creation, the disinformation channels garnered tens of millions of views and at least 1.1million subscribers.

One of the channels ("Eye Opener With Michael Lewis") portrays itself as an independent effort by the host "and a few friends". After the videos' false and misleading claims were reported, YouTube removed several of the videos in accordance with the site's policy against election disinformation.

The newspaper helped publicize the January 6, 2021, Trump rally in Washington, D.C., that led to the storming of the Capitol by a violent pro-Trump mob. Afterward, one of its columnists suggested that the riot was a "false flag" operation, and Michael Lewis's Epoch Times-linked YouTube channel echoed the same lie, suggesting that the Capitol attack was orchestrated by "antifa" as part of an "old Communist tactic".

COVID-19 coverage and misinformation
The Epoch Times has spread misinformation related to the COVID-19 pandemic in print and via social media including Facebook and YouTube. In 2022, Raquel Miguel of the European watchdog EU DisinfoLab said, "The Epoch Times has played a noticeable role in transmitting and amplifying many anti-vaccine narratives". According to Josef Holnburger of the Center for Monitoring, Analysis and Strategy, a German extremism monitoring agency, The Epoch Times German edition has been the most shared outlet among Germany's COVID-skeptic movement.

It has promoted anti-CCP rhetoric and conspiracy theories about the pandemic, for example through an eight-page special edition called "How the Chinese Communist Party Endangered the World", which was distributed unsolicited in April 2020 to mail customers in the United States, Canada, and Australia, and in June 2020 in the United Kingdom.

In the newspaper, the SARS-CoV-2 virus is known as the "CCP virus",  and a commentary in the paper posed the question, "is the novel coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan an accident occasioned by weaponizing the virus at that [Wuhan P4 virology] lab?" The paper's editorial board suggested that COVID-19 patients cure themselves by "condemning the CCP" and "maybe a miracle will happen".

In France, "special" French-language print editions of The Epoch Times were distributed in 2021 during anti-Health pass protests. In Germany, The Epoch Times has published articles blasting the legitimacy of PCR tests and promoting conspiracy theories about vaccination mishaps.

The misinformation tracker NewsGuard called the French page of The Epoch Times one of the "super-spreaders" of COVID-19 misinformation on Facebook, citing an Epoch Times article that suggested the virus was artificially created. NewsGuard later changed the rating of the English edition of The Epoch Times from green to red.

A February 17, 2020, Epoch Times story shared a map from the internet that falsely alleged massive sulfur dioxide releases from crematoria during the COVID-19 pandemic in China, speculating that 14,000 bodies may have been burned. A fact check by AFP reported that the map was a NASA forecast taken out of context.

A widely viewed video released by The Epoch Times on April 7, 2020, was flagged by Facebook as "partly false" for "the unsupported hypothesis that SARS-CoV-2 is a bioengineered virus released from a Wuhan research laboratory." The video featured Judy Mikovits, an anti-vaccination activist. The fact-checker Health Feedback said of the video that "several of its core scientific claims are false and its facts, even when accurate, are often presented in a misleading way." The video was a 54-minute feature on Joshua Philipp's Crossroads EpochTV series.

On April 29, 2020, a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) story reported that some Canadians were upset to receive a special edition of The Epoch Times that called COVID-19 the "CCP virus". The CBC later retracted a headline on its story that had quoted a recipient saying the special edition was "racist and inflammatory", and the CBC also retracted a claim that The Epoch Times edition had concluded that COVID-19 was a bioweapon. Opinion columns published by conservative tabloid The Toronto Sun accused the CBC of bias against The Epoch Times and said the CBC's report may have misled readers into thinking The Epoch Times was spreading anti-Asian sentiment.

In February 2021, an investigator for EU DisinfoLab found that Tierra Pura, a Spanish-language website first launched in Argentina in March 2020 that publishes COVID-19 misinformation, is closely linked to The Epoch Times and Falun Gong. At the time, the site was the most shared outlet in Spain's COVID-19-skeptic Telegram channels and groups. The Epoch Times and Tierra Pura denied being linked.

In January 2022, the German edition of The Epoch Times amplified accusations by German activist Steffen Löhnitz that the Austrian government had deliberately inflated infection numbers to justify a lockdown. It said Löhnitz had been digging up "correct numbers" and reported his claims of "massive fraud" as fact. The Epoch Times story was shared by figures from Querdenken, Germany's anti-lockdown movement.

Other
In 2010, the paper ran an interview with Canadian Conservative Member of Parliament Rob Anders wherein Anders alleged that the Chinese government used gifts and business deals in attempts to influence Canadian political decisions.

The Epoch Times published a web series with conservative commentator Larry Elder, a candidate in the 2021 recall election against California governor Gavin Newsom.

Ads banned by Facebook and YouTube
The Epoch Media Group spent $11million on Facebook ads in 2019, including, over a six-month period in 2019, more than $1.5million on about 11,000 pro-Trump Facebook advertisements purchased by The Epoch Times. According to publicly available Facebook ad data reported by NBC News, The Epoch Times spent more on pro-Trump ads than any group except the Trump campaign itself.

Political ad spending on Facebook in April 2019 through an account called "Coverage of the Trump Presidency by The Epoch Times" exceeded any politician's spending except Trump's and Joe Biden's. Journalist Judd Legum wrote in May 2019 that The Epoch Times ads were "boosting Donald Trump and floating conspiracy theories about Joe Biden."

In August 2019, Facebook banned The Epoch Times from advertising on its platform after finding that the paper broke its political transparency rules by publishing pro-Trump subscription ads through sockpuppet pages such as "Honest Paper" and "Pure American Journalism". A Facebook representative told NBC: "Over the past year we removed accounts associated with The Epoch Times for violating our ad policies, including trying to get around our review systems."

The Epoch Times publisher, Stephen Gregory, wrote in response that the paper did not intend to violate Facebook's rules and that its video ads were advertisements for subscriptions to the newspaper.

After Facebook banned it from advertising, the newspaper shifted its spending to YouTube, where it has spent more than $1.8million on ads, some promoting conspiracy theories, since May 2018. YouTube demonetized Edge of Wonder, a program of the Epoch Media Group, on its platform, and removed Epoch Times ads relating to COVID-19.

Removal of The BL (The Beauty of Life) from Facebook
In October 2019, the fact-checking website Snopes reported close links between The Epoch Times and a large network of Facebook pages and groups called The BL (The Beauty of Life) that shared pro-Trump views and conspiracy theories such as QAnon. At that time, The BL had spent at least $510,698 on Facebook advertising. Hundreds of the ads were removed for violations of Facebook's advertising rules. By December 2019, the BL network of pages had 28million Facebook followers, according to Snopes.

The editor-in-chief of The BL had previously worked as editor-in-chief of The Epoch Times, and several other BL employees were listed as current or former Epoch Times employees. The BL was registered in Middletown, New York, to an address that also was registered to Falun Gong's Sound of Hope radio network and was associated with the YouTube series Beyond Science, and Snopes found "the outlet as a whole is literally the English-language edition of Epoch Times Vietnam."

Snopes found that The BL was using more than 300 fake Facebook profiles based in Vietnam and other countries, using names, stock photos and celebrity photos in their profiles to emulate Americans, to administer more than 150 pro-Trump Facebook groups amplifying its content.

The Epoch Times and The BL denied being affiliated with each other, although the latter acknowledged that a "few of our staff" previously worked for The Epoch Times.

In December 2019, Facebook announced it had removed a large network of accounts, pages, and groups linked to The BL and Epoch Media Group for coordinated inauthentic behavior on behalf of a foreign actor. The network had 55million followers on Facebook and Instagram, and $9.5million had been spent on Facebook ads through its accounts.

The New York Times reported that The BL had used fake profile photos generated by artificial intelligence. The Atlantic Council Digital Forensic Research Lab director Graham Brookie said the coordinated network of fake accounts demonstrated "an eerie, tech-enabled future of disinformation." Facebook's head of security policy, Nathaniel Gleicher, said, "What's new here is that this is purportedly a U.S.-based media company leveraging foreign actors posing as Americans to push political content. We've seen it a lot with state actors in the past."

Removal of TruthMedia from Facebook
On August 6, 2020, Facebook removed hundreds of fake accounts by a digital company called TruthMedia that promoted Epoch Times and NTD content and pro-Trump conspiracy theories about COVID-19 and protests in the United States. The operation included 303 Facebook accounts, 181 pages, 44 Facebook groups and 31 Instagram accounts, which in total were followed by more than 2 million people. Snopes and NBC News reported that TruthMedia had ties to the Epoch Media Group, but Stephen Gregory, publisher of The Epoch Times, denied this.

TruthMedia, now banned from Facebook, continues to operate YouTube channels in Chinese, English, Japanese, and Vietnamese, and has accounts on Pinterest and Twitter. It appears to have begun a petition to the White House to "start calling the novel coronavirus the CCP virus."

SafeChat
In March 2021, Politico reported that SafeChat, a social media platform rife with disinformation and conspiracy theories about President Joe Biden that is popular with Trump supporters and Chinese dissidents, was closely linked to The Epoch Times and Falun Gong.

Censorship by the Chinese government
In some cases The Epoch Times operates in a hostile overseas environment, in which "overseas Chinese media companies choosing to remain independent or publish non-approved content become the targets of an aggressive campaign of elimination or control." In one instance, Chinese diplomatic officials made threats against media for reporting Falun Gong-related content; in other cases, advertisers and distributors have been threatened for supporting The Epoch Times. Communist Party authorities have been accused of resorting to "militant methods" against the paper and its staff, including attacking staff and destroying computer equipment.

In 2006, the International Federation of Journalists criticized what it called a "dirty war" against The Epoch Times, citing incidents such as The Epoch Times Hong Kong printing plant being broken into and damaged by unidentified men, and Epoch's offices in Sydney and Toronto receiving suspicious mail envelopes suspected of containing toxic materials. The IFJ also noted incidences of Epoch Times staff and advertisers being intimidated, and newspapers being confiscated, in what it characterized as "a vicious witch-hunt aimed at crushing the voice of dissent."

The newspaper was briefly banned from Malaysia after coming under reported pressure by the Chinese Communist Party.

In 2016, the newspaper was removed from the pharmacy of Australian National University after the president of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association confronted the pharmacist and threw out the papers. The incident drew national media coverage over questions of Chinese government-sponsored overseas student organizations.

In November 2019, Reporters Without Borders called on Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam to protect press freedoms after The Epoch Times said four masked arsonists with batons had damaged its printing press. Additionally, in a 2019 report, Reporters Without Borders said that The Epoch Times chief technical officer, Li Yuan, was assaulted in his Atlanta, Georgia, home on February 8, 2006, by "suspected Chinese government agents" who took his two laptops.

On April 12, 2021, the Hong Kong printing facility was vandalized during working hours, in the presence of staff members. The attack was captured by the surveillance camera, CCTV.

The 2022 film Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness was blocked from release in China after the film was submitted for review and footage that made reference to The Epoch Times was found.

White House controversies
In April 2006, a reporter with temporary Epoch Times press credentials unfurled a protest banner and heckled China's leader Hu Jintao at a summit with President George W. Bush, shouting, "Stop him from killing!" and "Evil people will die early", prompting Chinese officials to refuse to attend a ceremonial lunch in protest. The Epoch Times later disassociated itself from the reporter.

In September 2018, Epoch Times photographer Samira Bouaou broke White House protocol and handed Trump a folder. In August 2020, the White House Correspondents' Association objected to the Trump administration's bending of COVID-19 social distancing rules in press briefings to favor The Epoch Times, The Gateway Pundit and One America News Network.

Assessments
Ming Xia, a political science professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, wrote in 2007 that The Epoch Times represents part of Falun Gong's strategic effort to expand to non-practitioners, and "embed itself into the large civil society for influence and legitimacy." In 2018 he described The Epoch Times staff as largely part-time and volunteer, and said they "do not follow the protocols professional journalists abide by."

The misinformation tracker NewsGuard said that The Epoch Times "fails to gather and present information responsibly, rarely corrects or clarifies errors and remains opaque as to its ownership and funding".

The Epoch Times has been criticized by some scholars for biases, particularly regarding the Chinese Communist Party and mainland China issues, as well as for being a "mouthpiece" of the Falun Gong movement. James To, a New Zealand political scientist, described The Epoch Times as the "primary mouthpiece" of Falun Gong, writing that it "lacks credibility", despite the newspaper posing a "viable threat to the CCP" by publishing articles about the party's negative aspects.

In his book Blocked on Weibo: What Gets Suppressed on China's Version of Twitter and Why, University of Toronto research fellow Jason Q. Ng referred to the paper's coverage of mainland China issues as "heavily biased against the Communist Party" and thus its reportage "should be viewed skeptically".

A 2018 report by the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank, called The Epoch Times one of the few independent Chinese-language media outlets in the U.S. not taken over by businessmen sympathetic to the Chinese government and one that remains "independent of PRC control." The report also said that reports on China by The Epoch Times and other outlets affiliated with Falun Gong, which is banned from China, are "uneven".

In his 2019 book, Becoming Activists in Global China: Social Movements in the Chinese Diaspora, sociologist Andrew Junker argued that "simply by increasing the plurality of voices in the diaspora Chinese-language public sphere," The Epoch Times was "playing a progressive role" despite the Falun Gong community's "pariah status" limiting the publication's influence.

Seth Hettena wrote in The New Republic that The Epoch Times "has built a global propaganda machine, similar to Russia's Sputnik or RT, that pushes a mix of alternative facts and conspiracy theories that has won it far-right acolytes around the world."

Joan Donovan of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University called The Epoch Times "a known disinformation operation". Jennifer Grygiel, an associate professor of communication at Syracuse University's S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, said that The Epoch Times is "a notorious outlet that has been known to spread disinformation and misinformation."

James Bettinger, a professor of communications at Stanford University and the director of the John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships, said "Even if Epoch Times is not associated with Falun Gong, if they consistently write about Falun Gong in the same perspective, or if there are no articles examining Falun Gong, people would perceive it as being not credible." Orville Schell, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at University of California, Berkeley, said in 2005 that "It's hard to vouch for their quality because it's difficult to corroborate, but it's not something to be dismissed as pure propaganda."

In his 2008 book on Falun Gong, David Ownby wrote that The Epoch Times articles are "well written and interesting, if occasionally idiosyncratic in their coverage." According to Ownby, the newspaper has been praised and also criticized for a perceived bias against the CCP, and support of Falun Gong practitioners and other dissidents such as Tibetans, Taiwanese independence advocates, democracy activists, Uyghurs and others. The paper is therefore often assessed in light of its connection to Falun Gong, rather than a thorough analysis of its editorial content.

Jiao Guobiao, a former Beijing University journalism professor who was dismissed after criticizing the Propaganda Department, proposed that even if The Epoch Times published only negative information highly critical of the CCP, its attacks could never begin to counterbalance the propaganda the party publishes about itself. In addressing media balance, Jiao noted that the Chinese public lacked negative, critical information about their country. As such, he noted for a need of media balance based on the principles of freedom, equality, and legality, and that media balance "is the result of the collective imbalances of all."

Haifeng Huang, professor of political science at the University of California, said, "I'm not exactly clear why they have become such a major pro-Trump voice" but "part of it is perhaps because they regard President Trump as tough on the Chinese government and therefore a natural ally for them."

The web-only, German edition of the paper, Epoch Times Deutschland, has aligned with the anti-immigration far-right in Germany; the paper favorably comments on Alternative for Germany and Pegida while criticizing mainstream German media as not to be trusted. Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian of Foreign Policy writes that "It's not clear why the German website of a Falun Gong newspaper would choose to promote right-wing populism in Germany" but that the decision could be a business decision to drive an increase in views of the publication, or because such views reflect the teaching of Falun Gong leader Li Hongzhi, "who believes that mixed-race children are 'pitiable' and 'physically and intellectually incomplete'."

A German media report described the outlet as a "favorite" of Pegida supporters, along with Sputnik News and Kopp Report, and found that its articles critical of immigration have been shared almost daily.

A report by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a London-based think tank, said the German edition of The Epoch Times "primarily runs anti-West, anti-American and pro-Kremlin content—a high proportion of this content is based on unverified information."

In December 2019, the English Wikipedia deprecated the English and Chinese online versions of The Epoch Times as an "unreliable source" to use as a reference in Wikipedia, with editors calling it "an advocacy group for the Falun Gong, and[...] a biased or opinionated source that frequently publishes conspiracy theories."

In March 2022, Angelo Carusone, the head of the watchdog group Media Matters for America, said that The Epoch Times "go[es] where the center for the strongest infrastructure or possibility of getting as much audience and influence and reach is", and added that this complexity makes it "radically different and hard to understand". According to Carusone, the metric of success for The Epoch Times is simply influence rather than money or a specific political agenda.

Litigation
The Epoch Times and its co-founder Dana Cheng sued Maine Beacon reporter Dan Neumann for defamation after Neumann reported on Cheng's promotion of conspiracy theories about the January 6 Capitol attack in June 2021. In October 2022, the paper lost an effort to revive the lawsuit, with the judges finding that the alleged defamatory reporting was substantially true.

Awards
In 2014, the newspaper's reporting won several journalism awards, which The New York Times later described as indicative of The Epoch Times "edging closer to Mr. Li's vision of a respectable news outlet", before it changed course in 2015 and 2016 to focus on viral content and a "Trump pivot".

title: The Epoch Times


text:
Lucens reactor

The Lucens reactor was a 6 MW experimental nuclear power reactor built next to Lucens, Vaud, Switzerland. After its connection to the electrical grid on 29 January 1968, the reactor only operated for a year before it suffered an accident on 21 January 1969. The cause was a corrosion-induced loss of heat dispersal leading to the destruction of a pressure tube which caused an adjacent pressure tube to fail, and partial meltdown of the core, resulting in radioactive contamination of the cavern.

Description
In 1962 the construction of a Swiss-designed pilot nuclear power plant began. The heavy-water moderated, carbon dioxide gas-cooled reactor was built in a cavern. It produced 28 MW of heat, which was used to generate 6 MW of electricity, and it became critical 29 December 1966. It was fueled by 0.96% enriched uranium alloyed with chromium cased in magnesium alloy (magnesium with 0.6% zirconium) inserted into a graphite matrix. Carbon dioxide gas was pumped into the top of the channels at 6.28 MPa and 223 °C and exited the channels at a pressure of 5.79 MPa and at a temperature of 378 °C.

Nuclear accident
It was intended to operate until the end of 1969, but during a startup on 21 January 1969, it suffered a loss-of-coolant accident, leading to a partial core meltdown and the radioactive contamination of the cavern, which was then sealed. Using the criteria of the International Nuclear Event Scale, introduced in 1990 by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the event has been assessed as a Level 4 "Accident with local consequences".

The accident was caused by water condensation forming on some magnesium alloy fuel element components during shutdown and corroding them. These corrosion products accumulated in some fuel channels. One of the vertical fuel channels was sufficiently blocked by it to impede the flow of carbon dioxide coolant, causing the magnesium alloy cladding to melt and further block the channel. The increase in temperature and exposure of the uranium metal fuel to the coolant eventually caused the fuel to catch fire in the carbon dioxide coolant atmosphere. The pressure tube surrounding the fuel channel split because of overheating and bowing of the burning fuel assembly, and the carbon dioxide coolant leaked out of the reactor.

No irradiation of workers or the population occurred, though the reactor's cavern was seriously contaminated. The cavern was decontaminated, and the reactor was dismantled over the next few years. The plant was decommissioned in 1988, and the last radioactive waste was removed in 2003.

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

title: Lucens reactor


text:
Talk:Private limited company by shares

I would have thought that most companies would have been the smaller proprietary companies. This is true in Australia.

Propreitary Limited (Pty Ltd) does not exist as a company form in the UK and Ireland. The main types of incorporated company are private limited companies (as discussed here) and public limited companies. There's also companies limited by guarentee, and the UK has limited liabillity partnerships, but Ireland doesn't. Private limited companies are by far the majority in either case.--83.70.58.4 17:13, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

Contrast with plcs
Not all public companies, by any means, are listed on exchanges. In legal terms the change to a plc simply enables one to list subsequently, though often becoming public and listing are done at the same time. I have tweaked the article to reflect this. Arthur Markham 20:14, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

This article has the wrong title
A company of this type is called a "private company limited by shares", not a "private limited company by shares". No? Unless anyone objects I will swap the redirect. 84.13.1.9 21:31, 12 November 2006 (UTC)

Tidied
I've tidied the article up a bit, it no longer has block capital titles, and all the sections are listed in the Table of Contents. Matwilko 22:44, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

title: Talk:Private limited company by shares


text:
Talk:Mitre

Origins
I have read in credible-sounding sources that the origin of the term "mitre" can be found in Mithraism, the ancient mystery religion that some say is a foundation of Christianity. Has this little snippet of info been discredited? And if not, would it not be of interest here?

 * This just looks like a game of sounds alike. A mitre is a bishop's hat; it is not a matter of faith. The Greek μιτρα appears variously in classical Greek as a turban or distinctive headdress. The word also appears to be used to describe a bandage or sash-belt (worn under an ancient warrior's armour). None of the references have anything to do with Mithraism. Therefore, I believe the whole proposal of an etymological link between the two might be dismissed as being someone's wishful thinking. --Gareth Hughes 16:15, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

 * See also Exodus 29:6, "And thou shalt put the mitre upon his head...", a usage reflected in the Septuagint which, whatever you believe about its origins, we can safely assume was not influenced by Mithraism. (The NIV translates this "turban", but the Greek clearly says "mitra".) Csernica 06:41, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

 * But still it is interesting, that deity Mithra was usually pictured with radiant phrygian cap like at the pictures in article Mithra. I think the relation between mitre and deity Mithra cannot be simply neglected.--Marcel Kosko 11:43, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

 * It's interesting that Mithra was shown wearing headgear that was commonly worn in the area where his worship originated? Sorry, but not all pointy hats are related to each other. This relation can be easily ignored; it doesn't exist. TCC (talk) (contribs) 23:28, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

The article used to say that the mitre originates from the middle ages, in the Byzantine Empire. Since that point of invention is clearly wrong, and I now see Csernica is making a stand against the Phrygian origin Jennings makes in his book (though written a while ago), maybe we can find more. The least is to compare theories (a says, b contradicts...), not to simply ignore them --FlammingoHey 07:41, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
 * "A stand"? I don't know who Jennings is, but the statement was totally unreferenced when it was in the article 2 years ago. If there's a reference then sure we include it, no matter how little sense it makes. (And this one makes none at all. It appears to be based on nothing more than a general resemblance. Unlike the camelaucum -- which, like all ancestral garments to ecclesiastical vestments, was an item of street wear -- no plausible connection is offered that can bridge the gap between the time the mitre first appeared and the disappearance of Mithraism from the West.) TCC (talk) (contribs) 21:53, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes, let's see a citation, please. -- SECisek 21:56, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

 * I appreciate how illogical this might seem, but the "shape" of the Greek word mitra suggests perhaps a Sanskrit origin. Given that turbans were a lot less common in ancient Greece than ancient India, and the cross-cultural contact between the two; and also, the common Indo-Iranian word mitrá meaning that which causes to bind (leading to Mitra becoming god of friendship), suggests the meaning of a headband or ribbon. Though which derives from which is another matter.
 * Nuttyskin (talk) 14:08, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Origin of mitre - fish?
Question: I have seen images drawn (http://www.bible-history.com/past/dagon.html)and in sculpted bas-relief (http://www.tofm.org/papacy/pope_mitre.htm) of a priest-like figure from the ancient Middle East wearing a headdress that consists of a fish's head and the skin of the fish trailing down the priest's back. If this is reliable, might not the mitre have originated from this? Otherwise, (from the absence of such discussion in the article) the mitre's design is a mystery, but it does seem to resemble an open fish's mouth. Cnorkus (talk) 15:08, 9 April 2012 (UTC)

 * This was a common belief in some circles due to the influence of speculation through Ellen White of the Seventh Day Adventist movement as a way to discredit the Catholic Church as infected by pagan influence. Another popular belief is that the obelisk in St. Peter's Square is an "Egyptian Phallus" (I'm not joking!). However these beliefs are entirely speculative. It only "looks like a fish" from the side, because it's a folding hat. Since it only appears to have this look in a particular region and era, it's unlikely it was inspired by ancient pre-Christian, non-Jewish sources like the supposed "cult of Dagon" or "Mithraism." Given the association of fish with Christianity, it might appeal to some, but you could just as easily say it looks like the flame of a candle, the point of a spear, a leaf, or even the tip of an artist's brush. The desire to link it to some pagan deity or ancient religious "cult" seems to be more of polemical exercise based on imagination. Pagans wore hats, lived in houses, ate food, wore clothes, danced, sang songs, etc. just like everybody else, so of course non-Pagans will do the same but doesn't require a derivative connection, much less one of implied theological import.

Picture gallery
Not to be rude or anything, but what's the point of having all these pictures? A mitre looks pretty much the same no matter which Pope or bishop is underneath it. It seems to me one or two are sufficient to convey the overall appearance. TCC (talk) (contribs) 07:59, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
 * I agree. It would be different if the pictures were of different types, periods or churches, so as to illustrate a true variety.  But all the pictures in the gallery are of twentieth century Roman Catholics which is of very limited interest.  One of these would do.  Could we perhaps find examples from paintings, subject to copyright, from different periods or churches which would be more interesting?Chelseaboy 09:59, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
 * Hm. It seems that all the images have questionable licenses too. Of the Western examples, the photo of JPI claims specific permission (non-GFDL) and the others claim fair use without providing rationale. At least one of them is being formally challenged.  Of the Eastern examples, all of which claim public domain by release of the creator, the one of Pope Shenouda is from a Coptic website, the one of Patr. Alexei is from a website on Vladimir Putin, and that of Patr. Pavle is from a website run by a Serbian diocese . In no case is there a release of copyright. TCC (talk) (contribs) 10:14, 30 December 2005 (UTC)
 * An image gallery would be helpful in this article to show the variety of types and the historical evolution of the mitre, but as it exists now, there are way too many pictures of similar looking mitres, all of which are of the Eastern type. Pictures of interesting mitres from Western Christianity would be a good addition.  Dgf32 (talk) 21:11, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
 * There is something very wrong with the picture of Patr. Alexei, and it looks like the photo was modified recently.

Miarchey (talk) 21:37, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

Crowns not mitres
some pictures show crowns, not mitres.--79.111.186.106 (talk) 06:36, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

My understanding is that the Eastern mitres, though they look like crowns, are still called mitres. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Radio Sharon (talk • contribs) 14:30, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Archdeacons?
Could anyone clarify if Archdeacons wore Mitres, before the reformation, in Great Britian and Ireland? Nmclough (talk) 10:18, 22 September 2016 (UTC)

Colored miters
The claim about the traditional color of miters is highly doubtful, or at best regional. The famous "Fond du Lac circus" picture, for instance, shows what are clearly colored miters on most of the participants; at the very last, they aren't any semblance of white. Mangoe (talk) 12:17, 27 June 2017 (UTC)

Clarity
In the unattributed quote under the subheading "Byzantine Empire," it is unclear as to whether "the tiara" in question is the papal tiara or tiaras in general. Either could be believed, though, I assume the quote intends to discuss the origin of the papal tiara given the context. The article could be improved by clarification on this point.Coffeemancer (talk) 23:58, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

"former Anglican bishops"
It seems necessary to provide a citation for the statement that Catholic ecclesial law allows any former Anglican bishop who is ordained a Catholic priest to request to wear a mitre. Some former Anglican bishops who become Catholic priests are made ordinaries in the Personal Ordinariates established under Angicanorum coetibus; yes, they wear a mitre; but most are not and cannot. --142.163.195.253 (talk) 13:33, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

title: Talk:Mitre


text:
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ai-Kon

 This page is an archive of the discussion about the proposed deletion of the article below. This page is no longer live. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page rather than here so that this page is preserved as an historic record. The result of the debate was - kept - SimonP 14:15, Jun 18, 2005 (UTC)

Ai-Kon
promo. nothing here, including the ex link, that wouldnt be more appropriate in an article on Anime conventions. Nateji77 10:02, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep Searching the web shows it to be a real event with an established history of annual gatherings. There were over 4,000 references to it.  Granted, that's not a high number but what I found interesting was that there were very few overlapping domains.  That tells me that there is genuine chatter between attendees and fans about this event.  I would change my vote to Redirect if there was an Anime conventions article already.Tobycat 00:43, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete notanbility not established & promo. JamesBurns 03:46, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)

 * This page is now preserved as an archive of the debate and, like some other VfD subpages, is no longer 'live'. Subsequent comments on the issue, the deletion, or the decision-making process should be placed on the relevant 'live' pages.  Please do not edit this page .

title: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ai-Kon


text:
Zsolt Bor

Zsolt Bor (born 1949) is a Hungarian physicist, currently working at the University of Szeged. He has a BSc in Electrical Engineering from the Technical University in Kiev (1973), an MSc in physics (1974), and PhD in Physics from JATE University (1975). He is a member of the Academia Europaea, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, the Quantum Electronics and Optics Division of the European Physical Society, the Commission on Quantum Electronics, and Hungarian Physical Society Department of Optics and Quantum Electronics. He is one of the inventors of the Rhinolight phototherapeutical apparatus for hay fever therapy.

title: Zsolt Bor


text:
Sándor Csörgő

Professor Sándor Csörgő (16 July 1947 at Egerfarmos, Heves County – 14 February 2008 at Újszeged, Csongrád County ) was a Hungarian mathematician, and a professor at the University of Szeged.

His main fields were probability, mathematical statistics, and asymptotic theory. He did important research on the St. Petersburg paradox.

He was a member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

His brother Miklós Csörgő was also a mathematician.

Career
Csörgő graduated from the István Dobó High School in Eger, Heves County. He did undergraduate studies in the mathematics department at József Attila University (University of Szeged), graduating in 1970, and immediately joined the János Bolyai Mathematical Institute at the University as a graduate student. In 1972, he presented his doctoral thesis to Béla Szőkefalvi-Nagy and Károly Tandori.

From 1972 to 1975 he completed a post-doctoral theses at the Kiev State University under Anatoliy Skorokhod. On its completion in 1975, he returned to Szeged, where he was appointed assistant professor, a role he held until 1978, when he was awarded a teaching professorship, leading the Department of Stochastics.

In 1984 he moved to the United States, where he was visiting researcher at the University of California, San Diego, (1984–1985), Stanford University (1985), the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (1989–1990), and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (1990–1998).

In 2000 he returned to the Bolyai Institute to teach and do research.

Csörgő's work is often cited in highly respected domestic and foreign journals, but most often in English. He is among the ISI Highly Cited Researchers in Mathematics.

In 2001 he was elected as an Associate Member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, full Membership following in 2007.

He died in Szeged in 2008 and is buried in Újszeged cemetery.

Editorships

 * Statistical Theory and Method Abst., Eastern Europe, editor (1980–1987)
 * The Annals of Statistics, member of editorial board (1986–1988)

Awards

 * Grünwald Géza Prize (1974)
 * Pál Erdős Prize (1987)
 * Széchenyi Professorial Grant (1998–2001)
 * Akadémiai Prize (1999)
 * Tibor Szele Memorial Prize (2004)
 * Albert Szent-Györgyi Prize (2005)
 * Alapítvány Szegedért Grand Prize (2007)
 * Széchenyi Prize (2008, posthumously)

title: Sándor Csörgő


text:
L'incoronazione di Poppea

L'incoronazione di Poppea (SV 308, The Coronation of Poppaea) is an Italian opera by Claudio Monteverdi. It was Monteverdi's last opera, with a libretto by Giovanni Francesco Busenello, and was first performed at the Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo in Venice during the 1643 carnival season. One of the first operas to use historical events and people, it describes how Poppaea, mistress of the Roman emperor Nero, is able to achieve her ambition and be crowned empress. The opera was revived in Naples in 1651, but was then neglected until the rediscovery of the score in 1888, after which it became the subject of scholarly attention in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Since the 1960s, the opera has been performed and recorded many times.

The original manuscript of the score does not exist; two surviving copies from the 1650s show significant differences from each other, and each differs to some extent from the libretto. How much of the music is actually Monteverdi's, and how much the product of others, is a matter of dispute. None of the existing versions of the libretto, printed or manuscript, can be definitively tied to the first performance at the Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo, the precise date of which is unknown. Details of the original cast are few and largely speculative, and there is no record of the opera's initial public reception. Despite these uncertainties, the work is generally accepted as part of the Monteverdi operatic canon, his last and perhaps his greatest work.

In a departure from traditional literary morality, it is the adulterous liaison of Poppea and Nerone which wins the day, although this triumph is demonstrated by history to have been transitory and hollow. In Busenello's version of the story all the major characters are morally compromised. Written when the genre of opera was only a few decades old, the music for L'incoronazione di Poppea has been praised for its originality, its melody, and for its reflection of the human attributes of its characters. The work helped to redefine the boundaries of theatrical music and established Monteverdi as the leading musical dramatist of his time.

Historical context
Opera as a dramatic genre originated around the turn of the 17th century, although the word itself was not in use before 1650. Precursors of musical drama included pastoral plays with songs and choruses, and the madrigal comedies of the late 16th century. Monteverdi had already established himself as a leading composer of madrigals before writing his first full-length operas in the years 1606–08, while he was in the service of Vincenzo Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua. These works, L'Orfeo and L'Arianna, deal respectively with the Greek myths of Orpheus and Ariadne. After a disagreement in 1612 with Vincenzo's successor, Duke Francesco Gonzaga, Monteverdi moved to Venice to take up the position of director of music at St Mark's Basilica, where he remained until his death in 1643.

Amid his official duties at Venice, Monteverdi maintained an interest in theatrical music and produced several stage works, including the substantial Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda (The battle of Tancred and Clorinda) for the 1624–25 carnival. When the first public opera house in the world opened in Venice in 1637, Monteverdi, by then in his 70th year, returned to writing full-scale opera. He may have been influenced by the solicitations of Giacomo Badoaro, an aristocratic poet and intellectual who sent the elderly composer the libretto for Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria (The return of Ulysses). For the 1639–40 carnival season, Monteverdi revived L'Arianna at the Teatro San Moisè and later produced his setting of Il ritorno at the Teatro San Cassiano. For the following season he wrote Le nozze d'Enea in Lavinia (The marriage of Aeneas to Lavinia), now lost, which was performed at the third of Venice's new opera theatres, Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paulo.

Another wealthy poet-librettist in the Venice milieu was Giovanni Francesco Busenello (1598–1659), like Badoaro a member of the intellectual society Accademia degli Incogniti. This group of free-thinking intellectuals had significant influence on the cultural and political life of Venice in the mid-17th century, and was particularly active in the promotion of musical theatre. Busenello had worked with Monteverdi's younger contemporary Francesco Cavalli, providing the libretto for Didone (1641), and according to theatre historian Mark Ringer was "among the greatest librettists in the history of opera". It is unclear how and when Busenello met Monteverdi, though both had served in the Gonzaga court. Ringer speculates that they drew joint inspiration from their experiences of the Gonzaga style of rule, "a mixture of artistic cultivation and brutality", and thus developed a shared artistic vision.

Libretto
The main sources for the story told in Busenello's libretto are the Annals of Tacitus; book 6 of Suetonius's history The Twelve Caesars; books 61–62 of Dio Cassius's Roman History; and an anonymous play Octavia (once attributed to the real life Seneca), from which the opera's fictional nurse characters were derived. The main story is based on real people and events. According to the analyst Magnus Schneider, the character of Drusilla was taken from Girolamo Bargagli's 16th-century comedy The Pilgrim Woman.

Busenello condensed historical events from a seven-year period (AD 58 to AD 65) into a single day's action, and imposed his own sequence. He was open about his intention to adapt history for his own purposes, writing in the preface to his libretto that "here we represent these actions differently". Thus he gave his characters different attributes from those of their historical counterparts: Nerone's cruelty is downplayed; the wronged wife Ottavia is presented as a murderous plotter; Seneca, whose death in reality had nothing to do with Nerone's liaison with Poppea, appears as more noble and virtuous than he was; this used to be Poppea's motives are represented as based on genuine love as much as on a lust for power; the depiction of Lucano as a drunken carouser disguises the real life poet Lucan's status as a major Roman poet with marked anti-imperial and pro-republican tendencies.

The libretto has survived in numerous forms—two printed versions, seven manuscript versions or fragments, and an anonymous scenario, or summary, related to the original production. One of the printed editions relates to the opera's 1651 Naples revival; the other is Busenello's final version published in 1656 as part of a collection of his libretti. The manuscripts are all from the 17th century, though not all are specifically dated; some are "literary" versions unrelated to performances. The most significant of the manuscript copies is that discovered in Udine, Northern Italy, in 1997 by Monteverdi scholar Paolo Fabbri. This manuscript, according to music historian Ellen Rosand, "bristles with the immediacy of a performance", and is the only copy of the libretto that mentions Monteverdi by name. This, and other descriptive details missing from other copies, leads Rosand to speculate that the manuscript was copied during the course of a performance. This impression is reinforced, she says, by the inclusion of a paean of praise to the singer (Anna di Valerio according to Schneider) who played the role of Poppea. Although its dating is uncertain, the manuscript's affinity with the original scenario has led to speculation that the Udine version may have been compiled from the first performance.

Composition
Two versions of the musical score of L'incoronazione exist, both from the 1650s. The first was rediscovered in Venice in 1888, the second in Naples in 1930. The Naples score is linked to the revival of the opera in that city in 1651. Both scores contain essentially the same music, though each differs from the printed libretto and has unique additions and omissions. In each score the vocal lines are shown with basso continuo accompaniment; the instrumental sections are written in three parts in the Venice score, four parts in the Naples version, without in either case specifying the instruments. Conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt, a leading Monteverdi interpreter, refers to the contemporary practice of leaving much of a score open, to allow for differing local performance conditions. Another convention made it unnecessary to write down detail that performers would take for granted. Neither the Venice nor Naples score can be linked to the original performance; although the Venice version is generally regarded as the more authentic, modern productions tend to use material from both.

The question of authorship—essentially of how much of the music is Monteverdi's—is a contentious one, which Rosand acknowledges might never be entirely resolved. Virtually none of the contemporary documentation mentions Monteverdi, and music by other composers has been identified in the scores, including passages found in the score of Francesco Sacrati's opera La finta pazza. A particular style of metric notation used in some passages of the L'incoronazione scores suggests the work of younger composers. The most debated areas of authorship are parts of the prologue, Ottone's music, the flirtation scene between Valetto and Damigella, and the coronation scene including the final "Pur ti miro" duet.

Modern scholarship inclines to the view that L'incoronazione was the result of collaboration between Monteverdi and others, with the old composer playing a guiding role. Composers who may have assisted include Sacrati, Benedetto Ferrari and Francesco Cavalli. Ringer suggests that Monteverdi's age and health may have prevented him from completing the opera without help from younger colleagues; he speculates about an arrangement resembling "the workshop of Rubens, who might design a painting and handle the important details himself but leave the more mundane aspects ... to younger apprentice artists". The musicologist Alan Curtis believes that only a single collaborator was involved, and published his 1989 edition of L'incoronazione under the joint authorship of Monteverdi and Sacrati. The American musical analyst Eric Chafe's study of Monteverdi's tonal language supports the collaboration theory and postulates that some of the sections in question, including the prologue, the coronation scene and the final duet, reflect Monteverdi's intentions and may have been written under his direct supervision.

Morality
L'incoronazione di Poppea is frequently described as a story in which virtue is punished and greed rewarded, running counter to the normal conventions of literary morality. The musicologist Tim Carter calls the opera's characters and their actions "famously problematic", and its messages "at best ambiguous and at worst perverted", while Rosand refers to an "extraordinary glorification of lust and ambition". The critic Edward B. Savage asserts that despite the lack of a moral compass in virtually all the main characters, Busenello's plot is itself essentially moral, and that "this morality is sustained by the phenomenon of dramatic irony". From their knowledge of Roman history, audiences in Venice would have recognised that the apparent triumph of love over virtue, celebrated by Nerone and Poppea in the closing duet, was in reality hollow, and that not long after this event Nerone kicked the pregnant Poppea to death. They would have known, too, that Nerone himself committed suicide a few years later, and that others—Ottavia, Lucano, Ottone—also met untimely deaths.

Seventeenth-century Rome, under autocratic papal rule, was perceived by republican Venetians as a direct threat to their liberties. Rosand has suggested that Venetian audiences would have understood the Poppea story in the context of their own times as a moral lesson demonstrating the superiority of Venice, and that "such immorality was only possible in a decaying society, not [in] a civilized nation". Rosand concludes that the opera's broad moral compass places it first in a long tradition of operatic works that embraces Mozart's Don Giovanni and Verdi's Don Carlos. Music analyst Clifford Bartlett writes that "Monteverdi's glorious music goes beyond Busenello's cynical realism, and presents human behaviour in a better light".

Roles
The score for L'incoronazione features 28 singing characters, including 7 ensemble parts, of which the two Amori may only have appeared in the 1651 Naples production. The original Venetian production evidently made use of extensive role-doubling, allowing the opera to be staged with no more than 11 singers: two female sopranos, three male sopranos (castratos), two contraltos (castratos), two tenors and two basses. Schneider has suggested the following reconstruction of the cast and the doubling plan from the 1643 premiere on the basis of an examination of, first, contemporary casting and doubling practices, secondly, the recently discovered correspondence of the impresario Marquess Cornelio Bentivoglio, and finally the libretto for La finta savia, which preceded Poppea on the stage of the Santi Giovanni e Paolo in the 1643 Carnival and was written for the same cast.

Synopsis
The action takes place in Imperial Rome around AD 60, in and around Poppea's villa and in various locations within the imperial palace.

Prologue
The goddesses of Fortune and Virtue dispute which of them has the most power over humankind. They are interrupted by the god of Love, who claims greater power than either: "I tell the virtues what to do, I govern the fortunes of men." When they have heard his story, he says, they will admit his superior powers.

Act 1

Ottone arrives at Poppea's villa, intent on pursuing his love. Seeing the house guarded by the Emperor Nerone's soldiers he realises he has been supplanted, and his love song turns to a lament: "Ah, ah, perfidious Poppea!" He leaves, and the waiting soldiers gossip about their master's amorous affairs, his neglect of matters of state and his treatment of the Empress Ottavia. Nerone and Poppea enter and exchange words of love before Nerone departs. Poppea is warned by her nurse, Arnalta, to be careful of the empress's wrath and to distrust Nerone's apparent love for her, but Poppea is confident: "I fear no setback at all."

The scene switches to the palace, where Ottavia bemoans her lot; "Despised queen, wretched consort of the emperor!" Her nurse suggests she take a lover of her own, advice which Ottavia angrily rejects. Seneca, Nerone's former tutor, addresses the empress with flattering words, and is mocked by Ottavia's page, Valleto, who threatens to set fire to the old man's beard. Left alone, Seneca receives a warning from the goddess Pallade that his life is in danger. Nerone enters and confides that he intends to displace Ottavia and marry Poppea. Seneca demurs; such a move would be divisive and unpopular. "I care nothing for the senate and the people", replies Nerone, and when the sage persists he is furiously dismissed. Poppea joins Nerone, and tells him that Seneca claims to be the power behind the imperial throne. This so angers Nerone that he instructs his guards to order Seneca to commit suicide.

After Nerone leaves, Ottone steps forward and after failing to persuade Poppea to reinstate him in her affections, privately resolves to kill her. He is then comforted by a noblewoman, Drusilla; realising that he can never regain Poppea he offers to marry Drusilla, who joyfully accepts him. But Ottone admits to himself: "Drusilla is on my lips, Poppea is in my heart."

Act 2

In his garden, Seneca learns from the god Mercurio that he is soon to die. The order duly arrives from Nerone, and Seneca instructs his friends to prepare a suicide bath. His followers try to persuade him to remain alive, but he rejects their pleading. "The warm current of my guiltless blood shall carpet with royal purple my road to death." At the palace Ottavia's page flirts with a lady-in-waiting, while Nerone and the poet Lucano celebrate the death of Seneca in a drunken, cavorting song contest, and compose love songs in honour of Poppea. Elsewhere in the palace, Ottone, in a long soliloquy, ponders how he could have thought to kill Poppea with whom he remains hopelessly in love. He is interrupted by a summons from Ottavia, who to his dismay orders him to kill Poppea. Threatening to denounce him to Nerone unless he complies, she suggests that he disguise himself as a woman to commit the deed. Ottone agrees to do as she bids, privately calling on the gods to relieve him of his life. He then persuades Drusilla to lend him her clothes.

In the garden of Poppea's villa, Arnalta sings her mistress to sleep while the god of Love looks on. Ottone, now disguised as Drusilla, enters the garden and raises his sword to kill Poppea. Before he can do so, Love strikes the sword from his hand, and he runs away. His fleeing figure is seen by Arnalta and the now awakened Poppea, who believe that he is Drusilla. They call on their servants to give chase, while Love sings triumphantly "I protected her!"

Act 3
Drusilla muses on the life of happiness before her, when Arnalta arrives with a lictor. Arnalta accuses Drusilla of being Poppea's assailant, and she is arrested. As Nerone enters, Arnalta denounces Drusilla, who protests her innocence. Threatened with torture unless she names her accomplices, Drusilla decides to protect Ottone by confessing her own guilt. Nerone commands her to suffer a painful death, at which point Ottone rushes in and reveals the truth: that he had acted alone, at the command of the Empress Ottavia, and that Drusilla was innocent of complicity. Nerone is impressed by Drusilla's fortitude, and in an act of clemency spares Ottone's life, ordering him banished. Drusilla chooses exile with him. Nerone now feels entitled to act against Ottavia and she is exiled, too. This leaves the way open for him to marry Poppea, who is overjoyed: "No delay, no obstacle can come between us now."

Ottavia bids a quiet farewell to Rome, while in the throne room of the palace the coronation ceremony for Poppea is prepared. The Consuls and Tribunes enter, and after a brief eulogy place the crown on Poppea's head. Watching over the proceedings is the god of Love with his mother, Venere, and a divine chorus. Nerone and Poppea sing a rapturous love duet ("I gaze at you, I possess you") as the opera ends.

Early performances

L'incoronazione di Poppea was first performed at the Teatro Santi Giovanni e Paolo, Venice, as part of the 1642–43 carnival season. The theatre, opened in 1639, had earlier staged the première of Monteverdi's opera Le Nozze d'Enea in Lavinia, and a revival of the composer's Il ritorno d'Ulisse in patria. The theatre was later described by an observer: "... marvellous scene changes, majestic and grand appearances [of the performers] ... and a magnificent flying machine; you see, as if commonplace, glorious heavens, deities, seas, royal palaces, woods, forests ...". The theatre held about 900 people, and the stage was much bigger than the auditorium.

The date of the first performance of L'incoronazione and the number of times the work was performed are unknown; the only date recorded is that of the beginning of the carnival, 26 December 1642. A surviving scenario, or synopsis, prepared for the first performances, gives neither the date nor the composer's name. The identity of only one of the première cast is known for certain: Anna Renzi, who played Ottavia. Renzi, in her early twenties, is described by Ringer as "opera's first prima donna" and was, according to a contemporary source, "as skillful in acting as she [was] excellent in music". On the basis of the casting of the opera which shared the theatre with L'incoronazione during the 1642–43 season, it is possible that Poppea was played by Anna di Valerio, and Nerone by the castrato Stefano Costa. There are no surviving accounts of the opera's public reception, unless the encomium to the singer playing Poppea, part of the libretto documentation discovered at Udine in 1997, relates to the first performance.

There is only one documented early revival of L'incoronazione, in Naples in 1651. The fact that it was revived at all is noted by Carter as "remarkable, in an age where memories were short and large-scale musical works often had limited currency beyond their immediate circumstance". Thereafter there are no known records of the work's performance for more than 250 years.

Rediscovery
After two centuries in which Monteverdi had been largely forgotten as a composer of opera, interest in his theatrical works revived in the late 19th century. A shortened version of Orfeo was performed in Berlin in 1881; a few years later the Venice score of L'incoronazione was rediscovered, leading to a surge of scholarly attention. In 1905, in Paris, the French composer Vincent d'Indy directed a concert performance of L'incoronazione, limited to "the most beautiful and interesting parts of the work". D'Indy's edition was published in 1908, and his version was staged at the Théâtre des Arts, Paris, on 5 February 1913, the first recorded theatrical performance of the work since 1651. The work was not received uncritically; the dramatist Romain Rolland, who had assisted d'Indy, wrote that Monteverdi had "sacrifice[d] freedom and musical beauty to beauty of line. Here we no longer have the impalpable texture of musical poetry that we admire in Orfeo."

In April 1926 the German-born composer Werner Josten directed the opera's first American performance, at Smith College, Massachusetts where he was professor of music. His production was based on d'Indy's edition. The following year, on 27 October, L'incoronazione received its British première, with a performance at Oxford Town Hall by members of the Oxford University Opera Club using a score edited by Jack Westrup. In the 1930s several editions of the opera were prepared by leading contemporary musicians, including Gustav Mahler's son-in-law Ernst Krenek, Hans Redlich, Carl Orff (who left his version incomplete), and Gian Francesco Malipiero. Malipiero's edition was used to stage performances in Paris (1937) and Venice (1949). The Redlich edition was performed at Morley College, London on May 21, 1948, under the direction of Michael Tippett.

Richard Strauss made reference to L'incoronazione in the act 3 music lesson scene of his 1935 opera, Die schweigsame Frau, completely recomposing the act 2, scene 5 duet "Sento un certo non so che" in his own florid and late-Romantic idiom as one of many uses of preexisting musical material to set an appreciably antique atmosphere by the standards of the time. In that scene, the duet is used as an excuse for the title role to flirt with her husband, in disguise as a singing teacher.

Until the 1960s performances of L'incoronazione were relatively rare in commercial opera theatres, but they became increasingly frequent in the decade that saw the quatercentenary of Monteverdi's birth. The 1962 Glyndebourne Festival anticipated the quatercentenary with a lavish production using a new edition by Raymond Leppard. This version, controversially, was adapted for a large orchestra, and though it was enthusiastically received it has subsequently been described by Carter as a "travesty", and its continuing use in some modern productions as indefensible. A version by Erich Kraack was conducted by Herbert von Karajan at the Vienna State Opera in 1963; the following decades saw performances at Lincoln Center in New York, Turin, Venice and a revival of the Leppard version at Glyndebourne. The Venice performance at La Fenice on 5 December 1980 was based on Alan Curtis's new edition, described by Rosand as "the first to attempt a scholarly collation and rationalization of the sources". The Curtis edition was used by Santa Fe Opera in August 1986, in a production which according to The New York Times "gave music precedence over musicology", resulting in a performance that was "rich and stunningly beautiful".

Recent revivals
The 350th anniversary of Monteverdi's death, celebrated in 1993, brought a further wave of interest in his works, and since that time performances of L'incoronazione have been given in opera houses and music festivals all over the world. In April 1994 the Juilliard School in New York presented a version based on Curtis's edition, with an orchestra that mixed baroque and modern elements. Allan Kozinn wrote in The New York Times that this production had done well to resolve daunting problems arising from Monteverdi's having left instrumentation and scoring details open, and from the numerous competing versions of the score. In 2000 the work was chosen by Opéra de Montréal as the company's first venture into baroque opera, with a performance directed by Renaud Doucet. Opera Canada reported that Doucet had found "a perfect rhetoric for a modern crowd, creating an atmosphere of moral ambivalence that the courtiers of Monteverdi's day would have taken for granted". Less successful, in the critics' eyes, was the innovative English National Opera (ENO) production directed by Chen Shi-Zheng in October 2007. According to the London Evening Standard critic Fiona Maddocks the cast was strong, but they all seemed to be playing in the wrong roles. For unexplained reasons much of the action took place underwater; at one point "a snorkeller flip-flops across the stage in a harness". Seneca "wore green Wellington boots and pushed a lawnmower". At the end of 2007, in his opera review of the year in The Daily Telegraph, Rupert Christiansen compared ENO's production unfavourably with a punk musical version of the opera that had been staged during that year's Edinburgh International Festival.

In May 2008 L'incoronazione returned to Glyndebourne in a new production by Robert Carsen, with Leppard's large-scale orchestration replaced by the period instruments of the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment under Emmanuelle Haïm. The Organ's reviewer praised the vocal quality of the performers, found Haïm's handling of the orchestra "a joy throughout" and declared the whole production "a blessed relief" after the previous year's ENO staging. On 19 August the Glyndebourne singers and the orchestra, led by Haïm, presented a semi-staged version of the opera at the 2008 the BBC Proms at the Royal Albert Hall. Elsewhere the French-based ensemble Les Arts Florissants, under its director William Christie, presented the Monteverdi trilogy of operas (L'Orfeo, Il ritorno d'Ulisse and L'incoronazione) in the period 2008 to 2010, with a series of performances at the Teatro Real in Madrid.

In 2012 a new arrangement and interpretation of the original score was worked by Elena Kats-Chernin and commissioned for Barrie Kosky's Monteverdi Trilogy, conducted by André de Ridder, at the Komische Oper Berlin. This scoring was re-worked and premiered again in the same Kosky production in 2017. There are two versions of the Kats-Chernin composition, published by Boosey & Hawkes.

Music

Written early in the history of opera, L'incoronazione di Poppea broke new ground in matching music to stage action, and in its musical reproductions of the natural inflections of the human voice. Monteverdi uses all the means for vocal expression available to a composer of his time—aria, arioso, arietta, ensemble, recitative—although Ringer comments that in this work the boundaries between these forms are more than usually porous. These elements are woven into a continuous fabric which ensures that the music always serves the drama, while maintaining a tonal and formal unity throughout. The characters have strong emotions, fears and desires which are reflected in their music. Thus Poppea's and Nerone's scenes are generally lyrical, sung mainly in the forms of arioso and aria, while Ottavia sings only in dramatic recitative. Seneca's music is bold and compelling, while Ottone's is hesitant and limited in range, "entirely inappropriate for anyone aspiring to be a man of action" according to Carter. Within this arrangement Monteverdi creates enough melodies to ensure that the opera is musically as well as dramatically memorable.

Monteverdi employs specific musical devices to signify moods and situations. For example, triple metre signifies the language of love for Nerone and Ottone (unfulfilled in the latter case); forceful arpeggios are used to represent conflict; and the interlacing of texts, written as separate verses by Busenello, indicates sexual tension in the scenes with Nerone and Poppea, and escalates the discord between Nerone and Seneca. The technique of "concitato genere"—rapid semiquavers sung on one note—is used to represent rage. Secret truths may be hinted at as, for example, when Seneca's friends plead with him to reconsider his suicide in a chromatic madrigal chorus which Monteverdi scholar Denis Arnold finds reminiscent of Monteverdi's Mantuan days, carrying a tragic power rarely seen in 17th century opera. This is followed, however, by a cheerful diatonic section by the same singers which, says Rosand, suggests a lack of real sympathy with Seneca's predicament. The descending tetrachord ostinato on which the final duet of the opera is built has been anticipated in the scene in which Nerone and Lucano celebrate Seneca's death, hinting at an ambivalence in the relationship between emperor and poet. According to Rosand: "in both cases it is surely the traditional association of that pattern with sexual love that is being evoked."

Arnold asserts that the music of L'incoronazione has greater variety than any other opera by Monteverdi, and that the purely solo music is intrinsically more interesting than that of Il ritorno. The musical peaks, according to commentators, include the final duet (despite its doubtful authorship), Ottavia's act 1 lament, Seneca's farewell and the ensuing madrigal, and the drunken Nerone–Lucano singing competition, often performed with strong homoerotic overtones. Ringer describes this scene as arguably the most brilliant in the whole opera, with "florid, synchronous coloratura by both men creating thrilling, virtuosic music that seems to compel the listener to share in their joy". Rosand finds Nerone's solo aria that closes the scene something of an anticlimax, after such stimulation.

Despite continuing debates about authorship, the work is almost always treated as Monteverdi's—although Rosand observes that some scholars attribute it to "Monteverdi" (in quotation marks). Ringer calls the opera "Monteverdi's last and arguably greatest work", a unified masterpiece of "unprecedented depth and individuality". Carter observes how Monteverdi's operas redefined the boundaries of theatrical music, and calls his contribution to 17th-century Venetian opera "remarkable by any standard". Harnoncourt reflects thus: "What is difficult to understand ... is the mental freshness with which the 74-year-old composer, two years before his death, was able to surpass his pupils in the most modern style and to set standards which were to apply to the music theatre of the succeeding centuries."

List of musical items
The table uses the numberings from the 1656 printed version of Busenello's libretto, and includes the two act 2 scenes for which no music exists in the surviving scores. Typically, "scenes" comprise recitative, arioso, aria and ensemble elements, with occasional instrumental (sinfonia) passages. The boundaries between these elements are often indistinct; Denis Arnold, commenting on the musical continuity, writes that "with few exceptions it is impossible to extricate the arias and duets from the fabric of the opera".

Recording history
The first recording of L'incoronazione, with Walter Goehr conducting the Tonhalle-Orchester Zürich in a live stage performance, was issued in 1954. This LP version, which won a Grand Prix du Disque in 1954, is the only recording of the opera that predates the revival of the piece that began with the 1962 Glyndebourne Festival production. In 1963 Herbert von Karajan and the Vienna Staatsoper issued a version described by Gramophone as "far from authentic", while the following year John Pritchard and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra recorded an abridged version using Leppard's Glyndebourne orchestration. Leppard conducted a Sadler's Wells production, which was broadcast by the BBC and recorded on 27 November 1971. This is the only recording of the opera in English.

Nikolaus Harnoncourt's 1974 version, the first recording without cuts, used period instruments in an effort to achieve a more authentic sound, although Denis Arnold has criticised Harnoncourt's "over-ornamentation" of the score, particularly his use of oboe and trumpet flourishes. Arnold showed more enthusiasm for Alan Curtis's 1980 recording, live from La Fenice in Venice. Curtis uses a small band of strings, recorders and continuo, with a trumpets reserved for the final coronation scene. Subsequent recordings have tended to follow the path of authenticity, with versions from baroque specialists including Richard Hickox and the City of London Baroque Sinfonia (1988), René Jacobs and Concerto Vocale (1990), and John Eliot Gardiner with the English Baroque Soloists. Sergio Vartolo's production of the opera at Pigna, Corsica, was recorded for Brilliant Classics in 2004. A feature of this recording is the casting of a soprano Nerone in acts I and III, and a tenor Nerone in act II, to allow for the differing vocal requirements of the role in these acts. Vartolo accepts that "a staged performance would almost certainly require a different approach".

In more recent years, videotape and DVD versions have proliferated. The first was in 1979, a version directed by Harnoncourt with the Zürich Opera and chorus. Leppard's second Glyndebourne production, that of 1984, was released in DVD form in 2004. Since then, productions directed by Jacobs, Christophe Rousset and Marc Minkowski have all been released on DVD, along with Emmanuelle Haïm's 2008 Glyndebourne production in which the Festival finally rejects Leppard's big band version in favour of Haïm's period instruments, to give an experience closer to that of the original audience. The 2010 production at the Teatro Real in Madrid, conducted by William Christie, was released on DVD in 2012.

Editions
Since the beginning of the 20th century the score of L'incoronazione has been edited frequently. Some editions, prepared for particular performances (e.g. Westrup's for the 1927 Oxford Town Hall performance) have not been published. The following are the main published editions since 1904. Years of publication often postdate the first performances from these editions.

 * Hugo Goldschmidt (1904) Breitkopf & Härtel, Leipzig in Studien zur Geschichte der Italienischen Oper im 17 Jahrhundert)
 * Vincent d'Indy (Paris, 1908)
 * Gian Francesco Malipiero (Vienna, 1931 in Claudio Monteverdi: Tutte le opere)
 * Ernst Krenek (Vienna, 1935)
 * Giacomo Benvenuti (Milan, 1937)
 * Giorgio Federico Ghedini (Milan, 1953)
 * Hans Redlich (Kassel, 1958)
 * Walter Goehr (Vienna and London, 1960)
 * Raymond Leppard (London, 1966)
 * Alan Curtis (London, 1989)
 * René Jacobs (Cologne, 1990); supposed to restore 'Urfassung', uses Malipiero 1931 edition as framework, commissioned by WDR
 * Hendrik Schulze (2017), Bärenreiter

title: L'incoronazione di Poppea


text:
Fiacha

Fiacha (earlier Fíachu) is a name borne by numerous figures from Irish history and mythology, including:

 * Fiacha Cennfinnán, High King of Ireland in the 16th or 20th century BC
 * Fiacha mac Delbaíth, High King in the 14th or 18th century BC
 * Fiacha Labhrainne, High King in the 11th or 15th century BC
 * Fiacha Finscothach, High King in the 10th or 14th century BC
 * Fiacha Finnailches, High King in the 9th or 13th century BC
 * Fiacha Tolgrach, High King in the 6th or 9th century BC
 * Fiacha Sraibhtine, High King in the 3rd century BC
 * Fiacha Finnfolaidh, High King in the 1st century AD
 * Fiacha Muilleathan, a king of Munster in the 3rd century AD
 * Fiachu mac Néill, son of Niall of the Nine Hostages

Similar names

 * Fiach
 * Fiachra
 * Fiachna

title: Fiacha


text:
László Kalmár

László Kalmár (27 March 1905, in Edde – 2 August 1976, in Mátraháza) was a Hungarian mathematician and Professor at the University of Szeged. Kalmár is considered the founder of mathematical logic and theoretical computer science in Hungary.

Biography
Kalmár was of Jewish ancestry. His early life mixed promise and tragedy. His father died when he was young, and his mother died when he was 17, the year he entered the University of Budapest, making him essentially an orphan.

Kalmár's brilliance manifested itself while in Budapest schools. At the University of Budapest, his teachers included Kürschák and Fejér. His fellow students included the future logician Rózsa Politzer, from 1934 on Rózsa Péter. Kalmár graduated in 1927. He discovered mathematical logic, his chosen field, while visiting Göttingen in 1929.

Upon completing his doctorate at Budapest, he took up a position at the University of Szeged. That university was mostly made up of staff from the former University of Kolozsvár, a major Hungarian university before World War I that found itself after the War in Romania. Kolozsvár was renamed Cluj. The Hungarian university moved to Szeged in 1920, where there had previously been no university. The appointment of Haar and Riesz turned Szeged into a major research center for mathematics. Kalmár began his career as a research assistant to Haar and Riesz. Kalmár was appointed a full professor at Szeged in 1947. He was the inaugural holder of Szeged's chair for the Foundations of Mathematics and Computer Science. He also founded Szeged's Cybernetic Laboratory and the Research Group for Mathematical Logic and Automata Theory.

In mathematical logic, Kalmár proved that certain classes of formulas of the first-order predicate calculus were decidable. In 1936, he proved that the predicate calculus could be formulated using a single binary predicate, if the recursive definition of a term was sufficiently rich. (This result is commonly attributed to a 1954 paper of Quine's.) He discovered an alternative form of primitive recursive arithmetic, known as elementary recursive arithmetic, based on primitive functions that differ from the usual kind. He did his utmost to promote computers and computer science in Hungary. He wrote on theoretical computer science, including programming languages, automatic error correction, non-numerical applications of computers, and the connection between computer science and mathematical logic.

Kalmar is one of the very few logicians who has raised doubts about Church's thesis that all intuitively mechanistic, algorithmic functions are representable by recursive functions.

Kalmar was elected to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1949, and was awarded the Kossuth Prize in 1950 and the Hungarian State Prize in 1975.

In 1933 Kalmár married Erzsébet Arvay; they had four children.

Elementary functions
Kalmar defined what are known as elementary functions, number-theoretic functions (i.e. those based on the natural numbers) built up from the notions of composition and variables, the constants 0 and 1, repeated addition + of the constants, proper subtraction ∸, bounded summation and bounded product (Kleene 1952:526). Elimination of the bounded product from this list yields the subelementary or lower elementary functions. By use of the abstract computational model called a register machine Schwichtenberg provides a demonstration that "all elementary functions are computable and totally defined".

title: László Kalmár


text: User talk:81.183.151.245

title: User talk:81.183.151.245