Rebecca (miniseries)

Rebecca is a 1997 British/German television serial directed by Jim O'Brien. The teleplay by Arthur Hopcraft is based on the 1938 novel of the same name by Daphne du Maurier.

The serial was filmed for Carlton Television by Portman Productions in association with WGBH and Tele München. It was broadcast in the United States as a presentation of Masterpiece Theatre on PBS.

Synopsis

While vacationing in Monte Carlo in 1927, Maxim de Winter meets the young and somewhat naive British companion of Mrs. Van Hopper, a typical Ugly American whose bout of influenza frees the girl – who, as in the original novel, is never identified by name – to spend time with the wealthy widower. When Mrs. Van Hopper announces plans to return to New York City, Max proposes to the girl and brings her to his Cornwall coast estate known as Manderley. There a large household staff is supervised by Mrs. Danvers, who was devoted to Max's first wife Rebecca, the victim of a sailing accident some ten months before, whose battered body was discovered forty miles up the coast and identified by her distraught husband.

Miniseries

A miniseries (also mini-series) is a television program that tells a story in a predetermined, limited number of episodes.

History

A miniseries is distinguished from an ongoing television series, which do not usually have a predetermined number of episodes and may continue for several years. Before the term was coined in the USA in the early 1970s, the ongoing episodic form was always called a "serial", just as a novel appearing in episodes in successive editions of magazines or newspapers is called a serial. In Britain, miniseries are often still referred to as serials.

Several commentators have offered more precise definitions of the term. In Halliwell's Television Companion, Leslie Halliwell and Philip Purser argue that miniseries tend to "appear in four to six episodes of various lengths", while Stuart Cunningham in Textual Innovation in the Australian Historical Mini-series defines a miniseries as, "a limited run program of more than two and less than the 13-part season or half season block associated with serial or series programming." Still, with the proliferation of the format in the 1980s and 90s, television films broadcast over even two or three nights were commonly referred to as miniseries.

Rebecca

Rebecca (also spelled Rebekah) (Hebrew: רִבְקָה, Modern Rivká, Tiberian Riḇqā ISO 259-3 Ribqa,(AssyrianːܪܲܦܩܵܐːRapqa) from the Hebrew ribhqeh (lit., "connection"), from Semitic root r-b-q, "to tie, couple or join", "to secure", or "to snare") appears in the Hebrew Bible as the wife of Isaac and the mother of Jacob and Esau. Rebecca and Isaac were one of the four couples believed to be buried in the Cave of the Patriarchs, the other three being Adam and Eve, Abraham and Sarah, and Jacob and Leah.

Early life

The news of her birth was told to her uncle Abraham before Akeidat Yitzchak (the Binding of Isaac), the episode in which Abraham was told by God to bring Isaac as a sacrifice on a mountain.

Many years after the Binding of Isaac, Sarah, Abraham's wife, died. After taking care of her burial, Abraham went about finding a wife for his son Isaac, who was already 37 years old. He commanded his servant (whom the Torah commentators identify as Eliezer of Damascus) to journey to his birthplace of Aram Naharaim to select a bride from his own family, rather than engage Isaac to a local Canaanite girl. Abraham sent along expensive jewelry, clothing and dainties as gifts to the bride and her family. If the girl had refused to follow him, Abraham stated that Eliezer would be absolved of his responsibility.

Rebecca (musical)

Rebecca is a German-language musical based on the novel of the same name by Daphne du Maurier. It was written by Michael Kunze (book and lyrics) and Sylvester Levay (music), the authors of the musicals Elisabeth, Mozart! and Marie Antoinette. The plot, which adheres closely to the original novel, revolves around wealthy Maxim DeWinter, his naïve new wife, and Mrs. Danvers, the manipulative housekeeper of DeWinter's Cornish estate Manderley. Mrs. Danvers resents the new wife's intrusion and persuades the new wife that she is an unworthy replacement for the first Mrs. DeWinter, the glamorous and mysterious Rebecca, who perished in a drowning accident. The new Mrs. DeWinter struggles to find her identity and take control of her life among the shadows left by Rebecca.

The musical premiered on September 28, 2006 at the Raimund Theater in Vienna, Austria, where it ran for three years. Subsequent productions have been mounted in Finland, Japan and elsewhere.

Background

As a teenager, Michael Kunze had read Daphne du Maurier's novel Rebecca. In the 1990s, he re-read it and decided that the story would make a good musical. He traveled to Cornwall, England, to find du Maurier's son in an attempt to obtain the rights to musicalize the work, which had been denied to other librettists. Attending a performance of Kunze's long-running 1992 musical Elisabeth in Vienna persuaded du Maurier's son that the novel would be in good hands with Kunze and his musical partner Sylvester Levay.

List of Dune Bene Gesserit

The following is a comprehensive list of Bene Gesserit sisters (and rare male initiates), who are prominent characters from the fictional Dune universe created by Frank Herbert.

Anirul

A Bene Gesserit of Hidden Rank, Anirul is noted in Dune (1965) to be the wife of the 81st Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV and the mother of his five daughters, the Princesses Irulan, Chalice, Wensicia, Josifa and Rugi. Anirul is also featured in the Prelude to Dune prequel trilogy (1999–2001) by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson.

Anteac