La statue
La statue (The Statue) is an opera in three acts and five tableaux by Ernest Reyer to the libretto by Michel Carré and Jules Barbier based on tales from One Thousand and One Nights and La statue merveilleuse, an 1810 carnival play (pièce foraine) by Alain-René Lesage and Jacques-Philippe d'Orneval.
Although in its story opera possesses a certain Oriental climate, musically it has very little resemblance to its locale, remaining in core of the French music tradition of 18th and early 19th century. It was originally conceived and performed as an opéra comique (with some spoken dialogue instead of all recitatives).
Performance history
The opera received its premiere at the Théâtre Lyrique on 11 April 1861 and was very successful (Jules Massenet, who at that time himself participated in that performance (playing timpani in the orchestra), described it as "a superb score and tremendous success"). Until the year 1863 it received total of 59 performances, impressive figure for those times. It was then performed in Brussels at La Monnaie in 1865, at the Opéra-Comique in Paris in 1878, Monte Carlo in 1890 and finally in completely revised version the Paris Opéra in 1903 (at that time receiving only just 10 performances). Since that time it has slipped into total oblivion and has not been performed ever since.
Statue (disambiguation)
A statue is a sculpture representing one or more people or animals.
Statue or The Statue may also refer to:
Film and TV
Games
Music
Albums
Songs
See also
The Statue (1971 film)
The Statue is a 1971 British film comedy starring David Niven, Robert Vaughn and Italian beauty Virna Lisi in the key roles. Monty Python's John Cleese and Graham Chapman appear in early roles as the Niven character's psychiatrist and a newsreader respectively. Niven plays a nobel-prize winning professor who suspects his wife, played by Lisi, of infidelity when she makes and unveils an 18-foot statue of him with private parts recognisably not his own. Critical and audience reception of the film was poor, though Niven was praised for his efforts to sustain the film as the main character.
Plot
Professor Alex Bolt has developed a new universal language, Unispeak, which has made him internationally famous. His wife Rhonda has made a sculpture of her husband at the behest of the US State Department, commissioned by his friend, US Ambassador to England, Ray, for $50,000, in order to promote Unispeak. It is intended that the sculpture be unveiled in London's Grosvener Square.
The Statue (Seinfeld)
"The Statue" is the sixth episode of the second season of the NBC sitcom Seinfeld, and the show's 11th episode overall. In the episode, protagonist Jerry Seinfeld (Jerry Seinfeld) inherits some old possessions of his grandfather. One of these is a statue, resembling one that his friend George Costanza (Jason Alexander) broke when he was ten years old. When Jerry sees the statue in the house of Ray (Michael D. Conway), the man who cleaned his apartment, he believes Ray stole the statue. Jerry struggles to get back at Ray, as his friend Elaine Benes (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is editing a book written by Ray's girlfriend.
The episode was written by Larry Charles and directed by Tom Cherones. The character of Jerry's neighbor Kramer (Michael Richards) is developed in this episode, as he goes undercover as a cop to retrieve the statue. Charles was interested in the development of Kramer, as he felt George and Jerry had their counterparts in co-creators Larry David and Seinfeld. Richards enjoyed how his character acted in the episode and encouraged Charles to continue exploiting the Kramer character. "The Statue" first aired on NBC on April 11, 1991 in the United States and was watched by over 23 million American homes. It received mixed responses from critics.
Podcasts:
