Eliza (Arne)

Eliza is an opera in three acts by the composer Thomas Arne to an English libretto by Richard Rolt. The opera was premiered in London at the New Theatre in the Haymarket on 29 May 1754.

History and music analysis

The opera is named for Queen Elizabeth I of England, although she does not actually appear as an onstage character. Although Eliza is highly patriotic in nature, the monarchy did not take kindly to the work and the opera was suppressed after one performance "by an Order from a superior Power". The opera was later more successfully revived at the Smock Alley Theatre in Dublin in 1755 and at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in December 1756.

Eliza was published in 1758 but without the recitatives or choruses. However, the original score for Acts 2 and 3 has survived with only some of the music from Act 1 being lost. Stylistically, the opera is closer to that of Italian baroque opera than the pre-classical works being written around the same time; additionally, it has some relationship to the masque or allegory. Arne's orchestration is quite progressive for its day, using strings, bassoons, oboes, trumpets, horns and drums; it also includes obbligato parts for piccolo, flute, descant recorder and cello. The overture suggests the style of Handel.

Eliza (Cherubini)

Eliza, ou Le voyage aux glaciers du Mont St Bernard (Eliza, or The Journey to the Glaciers of Mont St Bernard) is an opéra-comique in two acts by Luigi Cherubini with a French libretto by Jacques-Antoine de Reveroni de Saint-Cyr. It was first performed at the Théâtre Feydeau, Paris on 13 December 1794.

Cherubini made great use of local colour in his music for Eliza. Its setting in the Swiss Alps was probably inspired by the contemporary popularity of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The score includes a ranz des vaches, a traditional melody played by Swiss herdsmen. Eliza marked an important stage in the development of French Romanticism and was also popular in Germany. Cherubini's musical evocation of nature (nightfall, the storm) influenced Carl Maria von Weber, who was particularly fond of the opera.

Roles

Synopsis

Florindo and Eliza are in love but Eliza's father forbids the couple to marry. Florindo and his servant Germain travel to the Great Saint Bernard Pass where they are welcomed by the prior of the local monastery. Florindo receives a letter which makes him believe that Eliza is now engaged to another man. He sets off for the nearby glacier, intending to kill himself. Eliza arrives at the monastery bringing news of her father's death which will enable her to marry Florindo. She finds his farewell note and goes to rescue him with the help of the monks and mountain guides. A violent storm blows up and starts an avalanche which engulfs Florindo, but the monks save him and he is finally reunited with Eliza.

Eliza (1806 ship)

The Eliza was a 511-ton (later 538 ton) merchant ship built in British India in 1806. She made five voyages transporting convicts from England and Ireland to Australia.

Career

Under the command of Francis Hunt and surgeon J. Brydone, she left England on 16 October 1819, with 160 male convicts. She arrived in Sydney on 21 January 1820 and had one death en route.

Eliza departed Port Jackson on 21 March 1820 bound for Hobart Town.

On her second convict voyage under the command of J. Hunt and surgeon William Rae, she left Sheerness, England on 20 July 1822, with 160 male convicts. She arrived in Sydney on 22 November 1822 and had no deaths en route.

Eliza departed Port Jackson on 12 January 1823, bound for Batavia.

After repairs and rerated at 538 tons, her next convict voyage under the command of Daniel Leary and surgeon George Rutherford, she left Cork, Ireland on 19 July 1827, with 192 male convicts. She arrived in Sydney on 8 November 1827 and had no convict deaths en route. One guard died on the voyage.

ELIZA

ELIZA is a computer program and an early example of primitive natural language processing. ELIZA operated by processing users' responses to scripts, the most famous of which was DOCTOR, a simulation of a Rogerian psychotherapist. Using almost no information about human thought or emotion, DOCTOR sometimes provided a startlingly human-like interaction. ELIZA was written at MIT by Joseph Weizenbaum between 1964 and 1966.

When the "patient" exceeded the very small knowledge base, DOCTOR might provide a generic response, for example, responding to "My head hurts" with "Why do you say your head hurts?" A possible response to "My mother hates me" would be "Who else in your family hates you?" ELIZA was implemented using simple pattern matching techniques, but was taken seriously by several of its users, even after Weizenbaum explained to them how it worked. It was one of the first chatterbots.

Overview

Weizenbaum said that ELIZA, running the DOCTOR script, provided a "parody" of "the responses of a nondirectional psychotherapist in an initial psychiatric interview." He chose the context of psychotherapy to "sidestep the problem of giving the program a data base of real-world knowledge," the therapeutic situation being one of the few real human situations in which a human being can reply to a statement with a question that indicates very little specific knowledge of the topic under discussion. For example, it is a context in which the question "Who is your favorite composer?" can be answered acceptably with responses such as "What about your own favorite composer?" or "Does that question interest you?"