Pittsburgh Opera

Pittsburgh Opera is an American opera company based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Pittsburgh Opera gives performances in several venues, primarily at the Benedum Center, with other performances at the Pittsburgh Creative and Performing Arts School Theater. Pittsburgh Opera headquarters is located in the former George Westinghouse Air Brake Factory, 2425 Liberty Avenue, in the Strip District. Pittsburgh Opera has been awarded LEED Silver Certification by the U.S. Green Building Council and is the first "green" opera company in the U.S. in the Operations and Maintenance Category. Pittsburgh Opera's headquarters is also the oldest green building in Pittsburgh.

History

Pittsburgh Opera was established in 1939 as the Pittsburgh Opera Company and is the eighth-oldest opera company in the United States. The company was founded by five women who established the Pittsburgh Opera Society in 1939, making possible the inaugural performance of Offenbach's Les Contes d'Hoffmann at the Carnegie Music Hall in March 1940. The first director of the company was Richard Karp, from 1942 to 1977. His daughter Barbara Karp took over her father's duties during his final illness. James DeBlasis then served as interim artistic director after the resignation of Barbara Karp. In 1983, Tito Capobianco became Pittsburgh Opera's general director, holding this position until 1997. From 1997 to 2000, Capobianco was the company's artistic director, before leaving in 2000.

Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh (/ˈpɪtsbərɡ/ PITS-burg) is the second largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania with a population of 305,842 and the county seat of Allegheny County. The Combined Statistical Area (CSA) population of 2,659,937 is the largest in both the Ohio Valley and Appalachia and the 20th-largest in the U.S. Pittsburgh is known as both "the Steel City" for its more than 300 steel-related businesses, as well as "the City of Bridges" for its 446 bridges. The city features 30 skyscrapers, 2 inclines, a pre-revolutionary fortification and the source of the Ohio River at the confluence of the Monongahela and Allegheny rivers. This vital link of the Atlantic coast and Midwest through the mineral-rich Alleghenies made the area coveted by the French and British Empires, Virginia, Whiskey Rebels, Civil War raiders and media networks.

Aside from steel, Pittsburgh has led in aluminum, glass, shipbuilding, petroleum, foods, sports, transportation, computing, autos, and electronics. For much of the 20th century, Pittsburgh was behind only New York and Chicago in corporate headquarters employment, second to New York in bank assets and with the most U.S. stockholders per capita. America's 1980s deindustrialization laid off area blue-collar workers and thousands of downtown white-collar workers when the longtime Pittsburgh-based world headquarters of Gulf Oil, Sunbeam, Rockwell and Westinghouse moved. This heritage left the area with renowned museums, medical centers,parks, research centers, libraries, a diverse cultural district and the most bars per capita in the U.S. In 2015, Pittsburgh was named on a list of the "eleven most livable cities in the world."

University of Pittsburgh

The University of Pittsburgh (commonly referred to as Pitt) is a state-related research university located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In 1787 after the American Revolutionary War, it was founded on the edge of the American frontier as the Pittsburgh Academy. It developed and was renamed as Western University of Pennsylvania by a change to its charter in 1819. After surviving two devastating fires and various relocations within the area, the school moved to its current location in the Oakland neighborhood of the city; it was renamed as the University of Pittsburgh in 1908. For most of its history, Pitt was a private institution, until 1966 when it became part of the Commonwealth System of Higher Education.

The university is composed of 17 undergraduate and graduate schools and colleges located at its urban Pittsburgh campus, home to the university's central administration and 28,766 undergraduate, graduate, and professional students. The university also includes four undergraduate schools located at campuses within Western Pennsylvania: Bradford, Greensburg, Johnstown, and Titusville. The 132-acre Pittsburgh campus has multiple contributing historic buildings of the Schenley Farms Historic District, most notably its 42-story Gothic revival centerpiece, the Cathedral of Learning. The campus is situated adjacent to the flagship medical facilities of its closely affiliated University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC), as well as the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh, Schenley Park, and Carnegie Mellon University.

List of Weeds episodes

The American dark comedy-drama series Weeds was created by Jenji Kohan and aired on premium cable channel Showtime. Mary-Louise Parker stars as Nancy Botwin, a suburban widow who begins selling marijuana to support her family. Elizabeth Perkins also starred as Nancy's neighbor, Celia Hodes, a manic PTA mother, but Perkins departed the series at the end of the fifth season. The show follows a serialized format and details Nancy's progressively deeper involvement in illegal activity as she takes care of her family.

The ten-episode first season premiered on August 5, 2005 and concluded on October 10, 2005. Season two, which comprises 12 episodes, began airing on August 14, 2006 and finished its run on October 30, 2006. The series' third season received an order of 15 episodes, premiered on August 13, 2007 and ran until November 20, 2007. The 13-episode fourth season premiered early the following summer on June 16, 2008 and concluded on September 15, 2008. Seasons one, two and three have been released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc formats in Regions 1, 2 and 4. At the 2008 Television Critics Association, it was announced that Weeds had been picked up for fifth and sixth seasons of 13 episodes each. An eighth and final season premiered in July 1, 2012 and concluded September 16, 2012.