Vanessa

Vanessa may refer to:

Art

People

Fictional characters

Other

Vanessa (opera)

Vanessa is an American opera in three (originally four) acts by Samuel Barber, opus 32, with an original English libretto by Gian-Carlo Menotti. It was composed in 1956–1957 and was first performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City on January 15, 1958 under the baton of Dimitri Mitropoulos in a production designed by Cecil Beaton and directed by Menotti. Barber revised the opera in 1964, reducing the four acts to the three-act version most commonly performed today.

Performance history

For the Met premiere, Sena Jurinac was contracted to sing the title role. However, she cancelled six weeks before the opening night and Eleanor Steber replaced her, making it her own for a long time. In the role of Erika, Vanessa's niece, was Rosalind Elias, then a young mezzo-soprano. Nicolai Gedda sang the lover Anatol, mezzo Regina Resnik sang the Baroness, Vanessa's mother, while bass, Giorgio Tozzi, sang the old doctor.

The premiere "was an unqualified success with the audience and with many of the critics as well although they were somewhat qualified in their judgment. Of the final quintet, however, New York Times critic Howard Taubman said it is '...a full-blown set-piece that packs an emotional charge and that would be a credit to any composer anywhere today.' ". Other reports substantiate this and it won Barber the Pulitzer Prize. In Europe, however, it met with a chillier reception.

Vanessa (Millais painting)

Vanessa (1868) is a painting by John Everett Millais in Sudley House, Liverpool. It is a fancy portrait depicting Jonathan Swift's correspondent Esther Vanhomrigh (1688-1723), who was known by that pseudonym.

Vanessa represents a major departure in Millais's art because he abandons fully for the first time the detailed finish that was still to be seen in Waking and Sleeping, exhibited in the previous year. Influenced by the work of Diego Velázquez and Joshua Reynolds, Millais paints with dramatic, visible brush strokes in vivid colours, creating what has been described as an "almost violently modern" handling of paint.

Esther Vanhomrigh is known as "Swift's Vanessa" because of the fictional name he gave her when he published their correspondence. The portrait is wholly imaginary. No actual image of Esther Vanhomrigh exists. She is holding a letter, presumably written to or from Swift. Her sad expression is related to the fraught nature of the relationship, which was broken up by Swift's relationship to another woman, Esther Johnson whom he called "Stella". Millais also painted a companion piece depicting Stella.

"Heroes" (David Bowie album)

"Heroes" is the twelfth studio album by David Bowie, released in 1977. The second installment of his Berlin Trilogy with Brian Eno (the other releases being Low and Lodger) "Heroes" further developed the sound of Low and featured the contributions of guitarist Robert Fripp, who flew in from the US to record his parts in one day. Of the three albums, it was the only one wholly recorded in Berlin. The title track remains one of Bowie's best known, and the album has received lasting critical acclaim as one of his best recordings. It was named NME Album of the Year.

Production and style

Recorded at Hansa Tonstudio in what was then West Berlin, "Heroes" reflected the zeitgeist of the Cold War, symbolised by the divided city. Co-producer Tony Visconti considered it "one of my last great adventures in making albums. The studio was about 500 yards from the wall. Red Guards would look into our control-room window with powerful binoculars." David Bowie again paid tribute to his Krautrock influences: the title is a nod to the track "Hero" on the album Neu! '75 by the German band Neu! – whose guitarist Michael Rother had originally been approached to play on the album – while "V-2 Schneider" is inspired by and named after Kraftwerk's Florian Schneider. Earlier in 1977, Kraftwerk had name-checked Bowie on the title track of Trans-Europe Express. The cover photo by Masayoshi Sukita was inspired by German artist Erich Heckel's Roquairol.

Héroes (Chilean miniseries)

Héroes (full name: Héroes, la gloria tiene su precio, "Heroes, glory has its price" in Spanish) is a Chilean TV miniseries produced by Canal 13 in 2007.

Héroes has 6 episodes. Each one of them relates the history of one of the principal figures of the Chilean history in the 19th century: Bernardo O'Higgins, José Miguel Carrera, Manuel Rodríguez, Diego Portales, José Manuel Balmaceda and Arturo Prat. The miniseries is one of the most ambitious project of Canal 13 for the commemoration of the bicentenary of the independence of Chile, in 2010.

The miniseries has the support of the Ministry of Education and the Chilean Army.

Episodes

"O'Higgins, vivir para merecer su nombre"

The film is set during 1817 to 1823, on the events of the Patria Nueva, but it has some flashbacks when O'Higgins was a kid (years unrevealed) and when he was learning who his father (Ambrosio O'Higgins) was. Its main plot surrounds the events of his governments, and the changes on his popularity among the people.

Heroes (Shinedown song)

"Heroes" is the third single from Shinedown's second album, Us and Them. It reached number 4 on the U.S. Mainstream Rock chart and number 28 on the U.S. Modern Rock chart. As with the preceding single, "I Dare You", no music video was made for promotion.

There is a line in the second verse that goes "You can put a man on trial, but you can't make the guilty pay". This line first came from the title song of the 2009 deluxe re-release of Leave a Whisper. Despite it being released later than "Heroes", it was written before "Heroes" was.

Chart performance

External links