Dancing in Early Productions of The Beggar's Opera

2015 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-158
Author(s):  
Jeremy Barlow ◽  
Moira Goff
Keyword(s):  
Political Corruption ◽  
Italian Opera ◽  
Box Office ◽  
The Many

John Gay's The Beggar's Opera was accepted for production by John Rich, manager at the Theatre Royal, Lincoln's Inn Fields, and received its premiere in January 1728. With its twin satirical targets of Italian opera and political corruption, and its fresh approach to musical entertainment, the opera had an unprecedented success during its first season and continued to be performed every year in London for the remainder of the century. Alongside the many songs, the libretto indicates three contrasting ensemble dances, introduced at key moments of the drama. These dances have been overlooked in most studies of The Beggar's Opera. The article investigates the significance of the dances within the ballad opera, the dancers who may have performed them and what they may have been dancing. Each dance and its music is analysed in detail, and placed within the context of the dance repertoire and wider theatrical background at Lincoln's Inn Fields. The authors also demonstrate the importance of dance in attracting audiences at Lincoln's Inn Fields; and show how, as box office receipts for The Beggar's Opera eventually declined, Rich stimulated demand by introducing divertissements and entr'acte dances unrelated to the show.

Vice-Chamberlain Coke's Theatrical Papers 1705–1714

1978 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 192-192
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New York ◽  
Public Library ◽  
York Public Library ◽  
Italian Opera ◽  
New York Public Library ◽  
Box Office

Judith Milhous and Robert D. Hume are editing the Coke theatre papers from the original MSS at Harvard and elsewhere. Most of the papers concern the introduction of Italian opera into England at the Haymarket theatre, 1705-1714. They include letters, box-office reports, orchestra rosters, protests to the Lord Chamberlain, financial demands, contracts, lists of tradesmen's bills, etc. The collection (once owned by James Winston, and partially transcribed by him in BL Add. 38,607) was dispersed at auction in 1876. Another incomplete nineteenth-century transcription is now in the New York Public Library. From the 1876 Sale Catalogue, however, we know of about a dozen documents of which we lack any copy at all—documents by W. Armstrong, Barton Booth, Dieupart, Thomas Doggett, Motteux, Margarita de l'Epine, Lord Mohun, the Duke of Shrewsbury (Charles Talbot, 1660-1718), and an affadavit of 7 January 1714 signed by Wilks and Cibber.

scholarly journals The Market for Films in Postwar Italy: Evidence for Both National and Regional Patterns of Taste

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 199-228
Author(s):  
JOHN SEDGWICK ◽  
PETER MISKELL ◽  
MARINA NICOLI
Keyword(s):  
Film Industry ◽  
Institutional Arrangements ◽  
Market Mechanism ◽  
Statistical Distribution ◽  
Regional Patterns ◽  
The North ◽  
Box Office ◽  
Postwar Italy ◽  
The Many ◽  
The City

The postwar market for films in Italy resembles those found in other developed capitalist economies, in which supply adjusts to demand through a set of institutional arrangements designed to maximize revenue for the film distributor. The outcome is a statistical distribution of revenues that manifests extreme levels of inequality, indicating that the hits of the day were “giants” in relation to the median film and enjoyed throughout the territory. By drawing upon film industry–sourced box-office data for five cities, Milan and Turin in the north, Naples and Bari in the south, and Rome in the center, we can observe the market mechanism operating at the city level, allowing the exploration of differences in preferences between the cities. A relative popularity index (RelPOP) is introduced to measure variation in film popularity across the five cities, and clear evidence is found to support the coexistence of national and local taste. This phenomenon is examined with respect to those films that were exceptionally popular throughout, and those with particular geographically specific audiences. The example of the many films that starred Totò, appealing in particular to southern Italian audiences, is highlighted and contrasted with the Don Camillo series of films that were set in Emilia Romagna and appealed differentially to filmgoers in the north.

Prequel?

Ridley Scott ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 172-178
Author(s):  
Vincent LoBrutto
Keyword(s):  
Meaning Of Life ◽  
Horror Film ◽  
Ridley Scott ◽  
Box Office ◽  
Film Directors ◽  
The Many

After many years had gone by since he directed Alien, and sequels had been released by other film directors, Ridley Scott decided he would finally revisit the original movie in the franchise. Prometheus is the only sequel to Alien not to use that word in the title. The film is a departure from the series in that it is less a horror film and more a philosophical venture into the beginnings of humankind and the meaning of life. Prometheus was a huge box office success despite the fact that the narrative is very convoluted and not all the many questions the film poses are answered. Nonetheless, the realistic and believable production qualities of Prometheus as well as the fine ensemble cast were ingredients for success.

Political Corruption in Eastern Europe: Politics after Communism. By Tatiana Kostadinova. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2012. 303p. $62.50.

2013 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 884-886
Author(s):  
Reinoud Leenders
Keyword(s):  
Economic Development ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Political Corruption ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Christian Science ◽  
Christian Science Monitor ◽  
Eastern European Countries ◽  
The Many

More than 20 years ago, when Eastern European countries embarked on their corruption-prone transitions from communism, Robert Klitgaard (Adjusting to Reality: Beyond “State versus Market” in Economic Development, 1991), once designated the “world's leading expert on corruption” (in The Christian Science Monitor, March 2, 1994), proposed the abandonment of the search for the “many, many causes and conditions” of corruption. In despair at what he saw as academic hair splitting in the burgeoning study of corruption, he claimed to be more “pragmatic” by focusing instead on ways by which policy and management could reduce corruption. In hindsight, Klitgaard's intellectual impatience appears ironic as the debate on the causes of corruption was only about to commence, resulting in an expanding list of suggested causes—often derived from Eastern European experiences.

Jack Benny’s Intermedia Juggling of Radio and Film

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathryn H. Fuller-Seeley
Keyword(s):  
Media Industries ◽  
The Past ◽  
Radio Program ◽  
Box Office ◽  
Performance Career ◽  
The Many ◽  
Radio Stars ◽  
Do So

Jack Benny was not only radio’s biggest star after the mid-1930s, but he was the most visible celebrity in Hollywood. This chapter examines the many ways that Benny’s radio program, and Benny’s performance career, intertwined radio and film, two powerful media industries that were often said to be at war with one another. While media conglomeration today means that performers and story ideas are moved freely across media, there were many impediments to do so in the past. Benny’s radio show was the first to parody popular movies, but he could not mention the radio stars who sold rival products. Benny’s radio-themed films made at Paramount between 1939 and 1941, met with significant box office success and even greater critical disparagement.

The Many Faces of Corruption

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ajit Mishra
Keyword(s):  
Political Corruption ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
The Many ◽  
High Level ◽  
Do So ◽  
Ordinary Citizens ◽  
Petty Corruption

As is well known, corruption has several faces, ranging from petty corruption, where ordinary citizens have to pay bribes to get goods and services, to high level political corruption. Anti-corruption policies have to take cognizance of the possible trade-offs existing between different forms of corruption such as collusion, extortion, embezzlement, and bribery. Efforts to control one form may encourage another. In such a context, the chapter argues that, despite its lower value and gift-like manifestation, extortive petty corruption is not to be ignored as it creates a ‘culture’ of corruption which contributes to its persistence. This form of corruption spreads easily as victims of bribery are more likely to seek bribes when they are given the chance to do so.

Ways to engage readers

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 144-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Hakemulder
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Text Comprehension ◽  
Literary Reading ◽  
Box Office ◽  
The World ◽  
The Many

There must be more to reading than just text comprehension — stories are to entertain, Brewer and Lichtenstein (1984) famously proclaimed. Hence, they said, research should focus more on how stories do that. What are the implications of this statement? Could that knowledge be of interest to people outside academia? For example, could it result in guidelines for writing bestsellers and blockbuster scripts? Some would suggest that there is more to literary stories than just entertainment. One of the many things this journal could do for the world is find out what exactly this may be. To do this we should extend our knowledge about what distinguishes the processing of literary stories from that of narratives in other genres and media. Here it will be argued that the emotional and cognitive processes typically found in literary reading may offer profound improvements of our lives and the world, and more so than better results at the box office would.

Colley Cibber Plays Richard III

1975 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 42-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albert E. Kalson
Keyword(s):  
Public Image ◽  
Richard Iii ◽  
Box Office ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Colley Cibber ◽  
The Many

In the closing months of 1699, the winter of his discontent, an established London actor and occasional dramatist hit upon a plan to change his public image from comedian to tragedian; he would fashion for himself a leading tragic role in which his uncontrollable voice and ungainly figure might prove to be assets rather than liabilities; in this way he would demonstrate to himself and to the world that he was unquestionably a complete master of his art. The alteration of Shakespeare's Richard III, the effort by which Colley Cibber, dramatist, attempted to aid the career of Colley Cibber, actor, was for the adapter a decided failure; Cibber's portrayal of England's most notorious monarch was too comic to be convincing. Yet in reshaping Shakespeare's play to suit the taste of the contemporary playgoer, he unknowingly manufactured one of the greatest box-office attractions in the history of the theatre. His alteration was to be the most lasting of all the many revisions of the plays of Shakespeare and was to hold the stage in preference to the original for nearly two hundred years. Although Cibber never explicitly admitted the reasons behind his choosing the role of Richard III for his tragic bow, his motivations become clear to the reader who patiently follows his career through the intricacies of An Apology for the Life of Mr. Colley Cibber.

Identifying suboptimalities with factorial model comparison

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wei Ji Ma
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Design ◽  
Model Comparison ◽  
Process Models ◽  
Multiple Forms ◽  
Factorial Experimental Design ◽  
Factorial Model ◽  
Multiple Components ◽  
The Many

AbstractGiven the many types of suboptimality in perception, I ask how one should test for multiple forms of suboptimality at the same time – or, more generally, how one should compare process models that can differ in any or all of the multiple components. In analogy to factorial experimental design, I advocate for factorial model comparison.

Representing utility and deploying the body

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Spurrett
Keyword(s):  
Functional Activity ◽  
Degrees Of Freedom ◽  
The Body ◽  
Target Article ◽  
Processing Demands ◽  
The Many

Abstract Comprehensive accounts of resource-rational attempts to maximise utility shouldn't ignore the demands of constructing utility representations. This can be onerous when, as in humans, there are many rewarding modalities. Another thing best not ignored is the processing demands of making functional activity out of the many degrees of freedom of a body. The target article is almost silent on both.

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