Scholar Bowl

Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi

(1834-1904) A French sculptor primarily known as the creator of Liberty Enlightening the World, better known as the Statue of Liberty. He also executed The Lion of Belfort and a statue of the Marquis de Lafayette in New York's Union Square.

Gutzon Borglum

(1867 - 1941) An American known for crafting Mount Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota. He is also known for The Mares of Diomedes and an unfinished (and later replaced) tribute to Confederate heroes on Stone Mountain in Georgia.

Charles Ives

(1874-1954) was a modernist, experimental composer whose programmatic works often utilize polytonality (more than one active key center at a time), quote extensively from folk songs and earlier classical works, and have distinctly "American" themes. Ives, who worked in the insurance industry, was not widely-recognized as a composer until late in his life. His Piano Sonata No. 2 (1915), the "Concord" sonata, depicts four leading figures of the transcendentalist movement. His Symphony No. 3, "The Camp Meeting" (1947), was awarded the 1947 Pulitzer Prize. Other notable works include the suite Three Places in New England (1914) and "The Unanswered Question" (1906).

John Cage

(1912-1992) was an experimentalist composer whose works are known for aleatoric (chance-based) composition and other forms of indeterminacy. His best-known piece, 4'33" (1952), is created from the ambient sounds of the concert space while the performer(s) sits silently on stage. His Music of Changes (1951), as well as numerous other works, were written utilizing the Chinese I Ching to determine musical content. Cage's other innovations include works for "prepared piano," a piano which has had various objects inserted into its strings. A 639-year-long organ performance of his "As Slow As Possible" (1987) is currently underway in Germany, having begun in 2001.

Gunsmoke

(1955-1975): With 635 episodes that aired over 20 seasons, Gunsmoke was the longest-running prime-time series in American television history until The Simpsons overtook it. Set in Dodge City, Kansas in the late 19th century, it centered on U.S. marshal Matt Dillon. For several seasons in the early 1960s, it featured a young Burt Reynolds as blacksmith Quint Asper.

Isaac Asimov (1920-1992, United States)

Along with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke, Asimov was one of genre science fiction's "Big Three" writers. During the 1930s and 1940s "Golden Age" of science fiction pulp magazines, Asimov worked closely with Astounding Science Fiction editor John W. Campbell Jr. to create stories such as "Nightfall," which describes a rare moment of darkness on a planet with multiple suns, and "Robbie," the first of Asimov's many works about robots with positronic brains. (The word "robot" was introduced by the Czech author Karel Capek in the 1920 play R.U.R., which depicts the worldwide uprising of "Rossum's Universal Robots"). Before Asimov, most stories about artificial life had followed the template established by Shelley's Frankenstein, in which a scientist who tries to usurp God's power to create life is ultimately destroyed by his own creation. Asimov challenged this trope by creating the "Three Laws of Robotics," which robots in his stories are obligated to follow. The laws are as follows: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws. By using these laws in dozens of stories (some of which were collected in the book I, Robot), Asimov helped to promote a conception of robots as useful machines rather than inhuman monsters. Asimov is also known for his Foundation series, which was inspired by Edward Gibbon's The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The Foundation series begins when the "psychohistorian" Hari Seldon realizes that the Galactic Empire will soon fall, and creates the title organization to limit the length of the ensuing Dark Age. Asimov eventually linked together his Robot and Foundation series into a far-reaching "history of the future," which also includes Asimov's novels The Caves of Steel, Pebble in the Sky, and The Stars, Like Dust.

Analects

One of the "Four Books" used by the ancient Chinese for civil service study, it contains the sayings (aphorisms) of Confucius. The philosopher Confucius did not write or edit the words that make up the Analects; his disciples compiled them in the 5th or 4th century BC. Confucianism is more of a philosophical system than a religion, and Confucius thought of himself more as a teacher than as a spiritual leader. The Analects also contain some of the basic ideas found in Confucianism, such as ren (benevolence) and li (proper conduct).

Lysistrata (Aristophanes, c. 411 BC)

The title character of this comedy is an Athenian woman who decides to end the Peloponnesian War, which was still ongoing when the play premiered in 411 BC At the beginning of the play, Lysistrata assembles a secret "Council of Women," whose members represent many different regions of Greece. Once the women have gathered, Lysistrata reveals her proposal: all Greek women should abstain from having sex until the men agree to stop fighting. Although Lysistrata's plan draws protests from her bawdy neighbor Calonice, and from the amorous wife Myrrhine, the Spartan Lampito reluctantly supports the idea, and helps to convince the other women. As Athenian women capture the Acropolis, the female representatives from other regions return home to enlist their compatriots in the plan. The ensuing events include conflicts between a chorus of old women and a chorus of old men, and a personal plea to Myrrhine from her husband, Cinesias. Both genders suffer from sexual deprivation, but the women of Greece remain united. With the aid of a beautiful girl called Diallage, or Reconciliation, Lysistrata convinces the frenzied men to agree to an equitable peace.

Medea (Euripides, c. 431 BC)

This Euripides play retells the myth of Medea, a sorceress from Colchis who saved Jason and the Argonauts during their quest for the Golden Fleece. Set after the Argonauts' quest, the play depicts Medea's vengeance against Jason as he prepares to marry the Corinthian princess Glauce. Medea uses poisoned robes to kill Glauce and Glauce's father Creon (a different character than the Creon who appears in Sophocles's Theban plays). Not content with this, Medea seeks to hurt Jason further by killing the sons that she bore him. When Jason tries to confront Medea, she appears above the stage in a chariot pulled by dragons, and exchanges bitter words with her former lover before departing to seek refuge with King Aegeus of Athens. The play's ending is a classic example of a deus ex machina, a literary device in which plot problems are suddenly resolved by an unexpected contrivance.

The Frogs (Aristophanes, c. 405 BC)

This comedy centers on the god Dionysus, who journeys to the underworld with his much smarter slave Xanthias. Dionysus is unhappy with the low quality of contemporary theater, and plans to bring the playwright Euripides back from the dead. As the ferryman Charon rows Dionysus to the underworld (Xanthias is forced to walk), a chorus of the title creatures appears and repeatedly chants the phrase "Brekekekex, ko-ax, ko-ax." Dionysus and Xanthias then have a series of misadventures, during which they alternately claim to be Heracles. Finally, the two find Euripides arguing with the playwright Aeschylus as to which is the better author. After the dramatists "weigh" their verses on a scale, and offer advice on how to save the city of Athens, Dionysus judges that it is Aeschylus who should be brought back to life.

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, by Pablo Picasso

This painting depicts five women in a brothel. However, the images of the women are partly broken into disjointed, angular facets. The degree of broken-ness is rather mild compared to later Cubist works, but it was revolutionary in 1907. The rather phallic fruit arrangement in the foreground reflects the influence of Cezanne's "flattening of the canvas." The two central figures face the viewer, while the other three have primitive masks as faces, reflecting another of Picasso's influences. It is currently housed at the MOMA.

Fidelio, op. 72 (1805; revised 1806 and 1814) Beethoven

This work is Beethoven's only opera. The libretto is by Joseph Sonnleithner, with revisions by Stephan von Breuning and Georg Treitschke. Leonore wishes to rescure her husband Florestan from the prison of the evil Pizarro; to do so, she disguises herself as a boy named Fidelio so that the jailer Rocco will hire her to help him, and thus grant her access to her husband. Beethoven struggled with his opera: he first presented it as a three-act work before cutting it to the present two-act form, and wrote four separate overtures. The opera utilizes some spoken (rather than sung) dialogue, and includes "O what joy," a chorus sung by prisoners.

Saint Augustine

Two different people; the earlier (354 - 430) served as the Bishop of Hippo and wrote Confessions and City of God The later (? - 604/605) founded the Christian church in southern England and was the first archbishop of Canterbury.

"Bloody Mary"

nickname of Mary I Tudor, the queen of England who preceded Elizabeth I, so named for her persecution of Protestants.

Zeami

(1363-1443) (also called Kanze Motokiyo). The second master of the Kanze theatrical school, which had been founded by his father, he is regarded as the greatest playwright of the No theater. He provided 90 of the approximately 230 plays in the modern repertoire. Among his best works are Atsumori, The Robe of Feathers, Birds of Sorrow, and Wind in the Pines. Also a drama critic, he established the aesthetic standards by which plays have been judged ever since. His Fushi kaden (The Transmission of the Flower of Acting Style) is a manual for his pupils.

Lorenzo Ghiberti

(1378 - 1455) A Florentine sculptor and goldsmith who taught both Donatello and Filippo Brunelleschi. He is best known for two pairs of bronze doors on the Florence Baptistery (associated with the Duomo, or Florentine Cathedral). He produced a single, low-relief panel to win a 1401 competition (defeating Brunelleschi) for the commission to design the 28 panels for the north doors. After that, he was given another commission to design ten panels for the east doors. This latter work, by far his most famous, was dubbed the "Gates of Paradise" by Michelangelo.

Donatello

(1386 - 1466) A Florentine sculptor who helped define Renaissance sculpture as distinct from that of the Gothic period. He is known for St. Mark and St. George in the Or San Michele [OR SAHN mee-KAY-lay] (a Florentine church), the bald Zuccone (which means "pumpkin-head," though it depicts the prophet Habbakuk), and the first equestrian statue to be cast since Roman times, the Gattamelata in Padua. He is also known for mastering the low relief form of schiacciato.

Michelangelo

(1475 - 1564) A Florentine "Renaissance man" also known for architecture (the dome of St. Peter's Basilica), painting (The Last Judgment and the Sistine Chapel ceiling), poetry, and military engineering. His sculpted masterpieces include David, a Pietà, Bacchus, and a number of pieces for the tomb of Pope Julius II (including Dying Slave and Moses). He preferred to work in Carraran marble.

Gian Lorenzo Bernini

(1598 - 1680) A Roman who, with the rarely asked-about Francesco Borromini, defined the Baroque movement in sculpture. Bernini is principally known for his freestanding works including David and The Ecstasy of St. Theresa. Bernini's David differs from that of Michelangelo in that the hero is shown "in motion," having twisted his body to sling the rock. Bernini is also known for his massive fountains in Rome including the Triton and the Fountain of the Four Rivers.

Matsuo Basho

(1644-1694) (pseudonym of Matsuo Munefusa) Generally acknowledged as the master of the haiku form, the most notable influences on his work were Zen Buddhism and his travels throughout Japan. He is noted for works like The Narrow Road to the Deep North (Oku no hosomichi), which includes descriptions of local sights in both prose and haiku. He took his pseudonym from the name of the simple hut where he retired: Basho-an, which means "Cottage of the Plaintain Tree."

Chikamatsu Monzaemon

(1653 - 1725) He was Japan's first professional dramatist. Originally named Sugimori Nobumori, Chikamatsu wrote more than 150 plays for both the bunraku (puppet theater) and the kabuki (popular theater). Chikamatsu's scripts fall into two categories: historical romances (mono) and domestic tragedies (wamono). One of Chikamatsu's most popular plays was The Battles of Coxinga, an historical melodrama about an attempt to re-establish the Ming dynasty in China. He is also largely responsible for developing the sewamono (contemporary drama on contemporary themes) in the joruri, a style of chanted narration adapted to bunraku.

Auguste Rodin

(1840 - 1917) A French sculptor known for stormy relationships with "the establishment" of the École des Beaux-Arts [ay-kohl day boh-zar] and his mistress, fellow artist Camille Claudel. His works include The Age of Bronze, Honoré de Balzac, The Burghers of Calais, and a massive pair of doors for the Museum of Decorative Arts (the Gates of Hell) inspired by Dante's Inferno. That latter work included his most famous piece, The Thinker.

Daniel Chester French

(1850 - 1931) An American who created The Minute Man for Concord, Massachusetts and Standing Lincoln for the Nebraska state capitol, but who is best known for the seated statue in the Lincoln Memorial.

José Martí

(1853-1895, Cuba). Best known as a poet and a revolutionary, Martí fought tirelessly for Cuban independence. Imprisoned at age sixteen and exiled from the island several times, he settled in New York for the last fifteen years of his life, where he wrote essays on Walt Whitman, Jesse James, and the threat of Latin American economic dependence on the United States. His Ill-Omened Friendship (1885) is considered the first Spanish modernist novel, and his poetry collections include Our America and Simple Verses; the poem "Guantanamera" was the inspiration for several songs. Martí was killed in a skirmish at Dos Ríos while participating in an invasion with other Cuban exiles.

Sergei Rachmaninoff

(1873-1943). A highly skilled pianist and conductor, Rachmaninoff twice turned down conductorship of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He failed to reap the monetary benefits of his early pieces (notably the C-Sharp Minor Prelude of 1892), because he sold them cheaply to a publisher. Treated by hypnosis in 1901, Rachmaninoff began a productive period with his Second Piano Concerto (known affectionately by Julliard students as "Rocky II") and the symphonic poem The Isle of the Dead (1909). He moved to the U.S. in 1917, after the Bolshevik Revolution. There his output decreased, though he did complete the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini in 1934.

Arnold Schoenberg

(1874-1951) was an Austrian composer who emigrated to the U.S. in 1934. Schoenberg was the leading figure and mentor of the "Second Viennese School," which also included Alban Berg and Anton Webern, who were Schoenberg's students. In 1908, Schoenberg began composing atonal music, which has no tonic pitch or key center. He also developed the twelve-tone method of composition, one of the most influential musical styles of the 20th century and first fully realized in his Suite for Piano, Op. 25 (1923). His other musical innovations include the technique of klangfarbenmeoldie ("tone-color melody"), which was used in the third movement of his Five Pieces for Orchestra (1909).

Arnold Schoenberg

(1874-1951). This Austrian pioneered dodecaphony, or the twelve-tone system, which treated all parts of the chromatic scale equally. Schoenberg's early influences were Wagner and R. Strauss, as evident in his Transfigured Night (1900) for strings. Yet by 1912, with the "Sprechstimme" (halfway between singing and speaking) piece Pierrot lunaire, he broke from Romanticism and developed expressionist pieces free from key or tone. His students, especially Alban Berg and Anton Webern, further elaborated on his theories. Fleeing Nazi persecution in 1933, he moved from Berlin to Los Angeles, where he completed A Survivor from Warsaw. The first two acts of his unfinished opera, Moses und Aron, are still frequently performed.

Charles Ives

(1874-1954). He learned experimentation from his father George, a local Connecticut businessman and bandleader. Ives studied music at Yale but found insurance sales more lucrative; his firm of Ives and Myrick was the largest in New York during the 1910s. Privately, Ives composed great modern works, including the Second Piano (Concord) Sonata (with movements named after Emerson, Hawthorne, Alcott, and Thoreau); and Three Places in New England (1914). His Third Symphony won Ives a Pulitzer Prize in 1947, while his song "General William Booth Enters Into Heaven" was based on a Vachel Lindsay poem. Poor health ended both his insurance and music careers by 1930.

Maurice Ravel

(1875-1937). His Basque mother gave him an affinity for Spanish themes, as evident in Rapsodie espagnole and his most popular piece, Bolero (1928). Ravel produced Pavane for a Dead Princess while a student of Gabriel Fauré, but was frustrated when the French Conservatory overlooked him for the Prix de Rome four times. He completed the ballet Daphnis et Chloe (1912) for Diaghilev, which was followed by Mother Goose and La Valse, and also re-orchestrated Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. His health declined after a 1932 taxi accident; unsuccessful brain surgery ended his life.

Constantin Brancusi

(1876 - 1957) A Romanian sculptor who was a major figure in Modernism. He is best known for The Kiss (not to be confused with the Rodin work or the Klimt painting), Sleeping Muse, and Bird in Space. He's also the center of anecdote in which U.S. customs taxed his works as "industrial products" since they refused to recognize them as art.

Béla Bartók

(1881-1945). A young girl singing a folk tune to her son in 1904 inspired Bartók to roam the Hungarian countryside with Zoltan Kodály, collecting peasant tunes. This influence permeated his music, including the opera Duke Bluebeard's Castle (1911) and the ballets The Wooden Prince (1916) and The Miraculous Mandarin (1919). A virtuoso pianist and an innovative composer, Bartók refused to teach composition, contributing to financial problems, especially after he fled Nazi-held Hungary for the U.S. in 1940. Bartók wrote many prominent instrumental pieces; best known are six string quartets, the educational piano piece Mikrokosmos, and Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta (1936).

Igor Stravinsky

(1882-1971). He studied under Rimsky-Korsakov and completed two grand ballets for Diaghilev, The Firebird and Petrushka. His Paris premiere of The Rite of Spring (1913), however, is what inaugurated music's Modern era. A pagan story featuring polytonal music, The Rite of Spring shocked the audience so much that riots ensued, leading a stunned Stravinsky to pursue rational, "neoclassical" music, such as his Symphony of Psalms. In 1940 he moved to Hollywood, where he composed his one full-length opera, The Rake's Progress, with libretto by W.H. Auden. Late in life, he adopted the serialist, twelve-tone style of Webern, producing the abstract ballet Agon (1957).

Gabriela Mistral

(1889-1957, Chile; Nobel 1945). The first Latin American to win the Nobel Literature Prize, Mistral was actually named Lucila Godoy Alcayaga, but took her pen name from the Italian and French poets Gabriele D'Annunzio and Frédéric Mistral respectively. At first a prominent educator, she wrote "Sonnets of Death" (1914) after the suicide of her fiancé. Those sonnets later appeared in her most famous collection, Desolation (1922). A native Chilean, she served as a diplomat both in the United States and Europe. Langston Hughes translated a portion of Mistral's poetry into English just after she died.

Sergei Prokofiev

(1891-1953). He wrote seven symphonies, of which the First (Classical, 1917) is the most notable. While in Chicago, he premiered the opera The Love for Three Oranges, based on Italian commedia dell'arte. Prokofiev moved to Paris in 1922, where he composed works for Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, including The Prodigal Son. In 1936 he returned to the USSR, where he completed the popular children's work Peter and the Wolf and the score for the film Alexander Nevsky. When Stalin denounced Prokofiev as "decadent," the composer was forced to write obsequious tributes to the premier. Prokofiev survived Stalin, but only by a few hours (both died on March 5).

Akutagawa Ryunosuke

(1892 - 1927) His mother died insane while he was a child, and his father was a failure who gave him up to relatives. Despite this inauspicious childhood, his 1915 short story Rashomon brought him into the highest literary circles and started him writing the macabre stories for which he is known. In 1927 he committed suicide by overdosing on pills, and his suicide letter A Note to a Certain Old Friend became a published work. Rashomon also was key to his international fame, when Kurosawa Akira made it into a film in 1951. One of Japan's two most prestigious literary prizes is named for Akutagawa; it is awarded for the best serious work of fiction by a new Japanese writer.

George Gershwin

(1898-1937) music blended classical traditions and genres with jazz and popular idioms. His "Rhapsody in Blue" (1924) and "Concerto in F" (1925) both feature solo piano and orchestra, while "An American in Paris" (1928) and "Cuban Overture" (1932) were inspired by his trips abroad. The lyrics for his vocal works were often written by his brother Ira; two of his best-known songs, "Embraceable You" and "I Got Rhythm," appeared in his Broadway musical Girl Crazy (1930). His opera Porgy and Bess (1935), which included the song standards "Summertime" and "It Ain't Necessarily So," featured an entirely African-American cast.

George Gershwin

(1898-1937). Known at first for producing popular songs and musicals with his older brother Ira, Gershwin successfully melded jazz and popular music with classical forms, most famously the Rhapsody in Blue (1924), the Concerto in F for Piano and Orchestra (1925), and the folk opera Porgy and Bess (1935), based on a story by DuBose Heyward. Gershwin's first major hit was 1919's "Swanee," sung by Al Jolson, and his 1931 musical Of Thee I Sing was the first to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Gershwin died of a brain tumor at age 38.

Kawabata Yasunari

(1899 - 1972) Recipient of the 1968 Nobel Prize for Literature, he was the first Japanese author to be so honored. His works combine classic Japanese values with modern trends and often center on the role of sex in people's lives. His works are often only a few pages long, a form given the name "palm-of-the-hand." He is best known for three novels: Thousand Cranes, based on the tea ceremony and inspired by The Tale of Genji; The Sound of the Mountain, about the relationship of an old man and his daughter-in-law; and Snow Country, about an aging geisha. A friend of Mishima Yukio, he was also associated with right-wing causes and openly protested the Cultural Revolution in China. He committed suicide two years after Mishima.

Miguel Asturias

(1899-1974, Guatemala; Nobel 1967). Asturias left his native Guatemala in 1923 to study in Paris. There he discovered Mayan mythology, and translated the Popol Vuh into Spanish; the theme would pervade his work, such as 1963's Mulata de tal. He most famous novel, El señor presidente (1946), was a satire against the oppressive Guatalemalan dictatorship. Asturias also completed a trilogy that blasted exploitation by the American-led United Fruit Company, and the short-story collection Weekend in Guatemala (1956), based on the CIA-led overthrow of president Jacobo Arbenz's liberal government.

Jorge Luis Borges

(1899-1986, Argentina). One-quarter English, Borges learned that language before he learned Spanish. Educated in Europe during World War I, he met a circle of avant-garde poets in Spain, which inspired him to found the ultraismo movement and publish the collection Fervor of Buenos Aires (1923) when he returned to Argentina. While working in a library, Borges developed his greatest short stories, collected in A Universal History of Infamy (1935), Ficciones (1944), and The Aleph (1949). By his fifties, a disorder inherited from his father had taken Borges's eyesight, but in 1962 he completed the influential story collection Labyrinths.

Aaron Copland

(1900-1990) was one of a litany of American composers who studied in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, for whom Copland wrote the solo keyboard part in his Symphony for Organ and Orchestra (1924; revised as Symphony No. 1 in 1928). "El Salón México" (1936) was the first of his highly successful "Populist" works based on folk or folk-like themes, which also included his three major ballets: Billy the Kid (1938), Rodeo (1942), and Appalachian Spring (1944). His opera The Tender Land (1954) included the chorus "The Promise of Living." Copland utilized modified serial techniques in his later works; he composed very little in his last 25 years.

Pablo Neruda

(1904-1973, Chile; Nobel 1971). Born Neftalí Reyes, he adopted the surname of the 19th century Czech poet Jan Neruda. Gabriela Mistral (see below) was the head of his school in the small city of Temuco. 1923 saw the publication of Neruda's best-known work, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, which led to diplomatic appointments. As a penniless consul in Burma in the 1930s, he wrote the surrealist collection Residence on Earth. He served in the Chilean senate in the 1940s, though government opponents forced him into exile over his Communist views. Crossing the Andes on horseback inspired his epic Canto general (1950). He died of cancer days after his friend Salvador Allende was executed.

Dmitri Shostakovich

(1906-1975). His work was emblematic of both the Soviet regime and his attempts to survive under its oppression. Shostakovich's operas, such as The Nose (1928) and Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District, were well received at first--until Stalin severely criticized his work in Pravda in 1936. Fearful for his security, Shostakovich wrote several conciliatory pieces (Fifth, Seventh/Leningrad, and Twelfth Symphonies) in order to get out of trouble. He made enemies, however, with his Thirteenth Symphony (Babi Yar). Based on the Yevtushenko poem, Babi Yar condemned anti-Semitism in both Nazi Germany and the USSR.

Samuel Barber

(1910-1981) was a classicist composer best known for his "Adagio for Strings" (1936), which he adapted from his String Quartet, and which was premiered under the baton of legendary conductor Arturo Toscanini. Other major orchestral works include his Piano Concerto (1962), his ballet score Cave of the Heart (1947) based on the Greek tale of Medea, and his single-movement "First Symphony" (1936, revised 1943). His vocal works include "Dover Beach" (1931) and "Knoxville: Summer of 1915" (1947). For much of Barber's life, he maintained a romantic relationship with opera composer Gian-Carlo Menotti. His first opera, Vanessa (1958), won the Pulitzer Prize; his second major opera, Antony and Cleopatra (1966), was a flop.

John Cage

(1912-1992). An American student of Arnold Schoenberg, Cage took avant-garde to a new level, and may be considered a Dada composer because he believed in aleatory, or "chance" music. His Imaginary Landscape No. 4 (1951) used twelve radios tuned to different stations; the composition depended on what was on the radio at that time. The following year's 4'33" required a pianist to sit at the piano for that length of time and then close it; audience noise and silence created the "music." Cage also invented the "prepared piano," where he attached screws, wood, rubber bands, and other items to piano strings in order to create a percussion sound.

Benjamin Britten

(1913-1976). Reviver of the opera in the U.K., most notably with Peter Grimes (1945), the story of a fisherman who kills two of his apprentices. Britten broke through with Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge (1937), a tribute to his composition teacher, and wrote incidental music for works by his friend W.H. Auden. With his companion, the tenor Peter Pears, Britten founded the Aldeburgh Festival of Music and wrote operas such as Billy Budd, The Turn of the Screw, and Death in Venice. Britten's non-operatic works include The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (1946) and War Requiem (1961), based on the antiwar poems of Wilfred Owen, who was killed during World War I.

Octavio Paz

(1914-1998, Mexico; Nobel 1990). A prominent poet and essayist, Paz supported leftist causes in Mexico; he fought briefly for the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War. He published the poetry collection Luna silvestre at age 19, and his 584-line poem The Sun Stone deals with the planet Venus, an important symbol to the Aztecs. While studying in Los Angeles, Paz observed flamboyantly dressed Mexican-American pachucos ("zoot-suiters"), who inspired him to write about Mexico and its Native American/mestizo heritage in his pivotal essay collection, The Labyrinth of Solitude (1950). Another prose work, In the Light of India (1997), reflected Paz's part-(East) Indian heritage.

Leonard Bernstein

(1918-1990) was a prolific composer and conductor who gave numerous televised "Young People's Concerts" during his eleven-year tenure as music director of the New York Philharmonic (1958-1969). His concert works include his Symphony No. 1, "Jeremiah" (1942), and a jazz clarinet concerto premiered by Benny Goodman: "Prelude, Fugue, and Riffs" (1949). Bernstein is best known for his works for the stage, which include the musical West Side Story (1957), the ballet Fancy Free (1944), and the operetta Candide (1956; revised 1989). He also composed the score for the 1954 film On the Waterfront.

Endo Shusaku

(1923-1996) He converted to Catholicism at the age of 11, and majored in French literature. His first works, White Man and Yellow Man, explored the differences between Japanese and Western values and national experiences. Silence tells of the martyrdom of the Catholic converts of Portuguese priests. The Samurai recounts the tale of a samurai sent to establish trade relations between his shogun and Mexico, Spain, and Rome. The latter two novels are generally considered to be Shusaku's greatest achievements.

Mishima Yukio

(1925 - 1970) (pseudonym of Hiraoka Kimitake) He was a novelist whose central theme was the disparity between traditional Japanese values and the spiritual emptiness of modern life. He failed to qualify for military service during World War II, so worked in an aircraft factory instead. Mishima's first novel, Confessions of a Mask (Kamen no kokuhaku), was successful enough to allow him to write full time. His four-volume epic, The Sea of Fertility (Hojo no umi, consisting of Spring Snow, Runaway Horses, The Temple of Dawn, and The Decay of the Angel), is about self-destructive personalities and the transformation of Japan into a modern, but sterile, society. Mishima, who organized the Tate no kai, a right-wing society stressing physical fitness and the martial arts, committed ritual suicide after a public speech failed to galvanize the armed forces into overthrowing the government.

Gabriel García Marquez

(1928-present, Colombia; Nobel Prize for Literature 1982). The master of magic realism, his birthplace of Aracataca was the model for the fictional town of Macondo. The town played a prominent role in many of García Marquez's works, such as Leaf Storm and his seminal novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), which details the decline of the Buendía family over seven generations. A newspaper journalist in the 1950s, García Marquez exposed a naval scandal (chronicled in The Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor). Other prominent novels include In Evil Hour, Love in the Time of Cholera, and The General in His Labyrinth, a depiction of Simón Bolívar's final years.

Carlos Fuentes

(1928-present, Mexico). Though born into a well-to-do family, Fuentes has often dealt with the betrayed ideals from the Mexican Revolution of 1910, the subject of both his first novel, Where the Air is Clear (1958), and his most successful book, The Death of Artemio Cruz (1962). Other notable novels include Terra nostra, set during the reign of King Philip II of Spain, and The Old Gringo, which portrays Ambrose Bierce's last days in Mexico. Fuentes has also penned absurdist plays and essay collections on Mexican and American art and literature.

Stephen Sondheim

(1930-present) is one of the most celebrated lyricists and composers in musical theater. Sondheim's career has included 8 Tony Awards. He was mentored by Oscar Hammerstein II (of Rodgers and Hammerstein), and was the lyricist for West Side Story, working alongside composer Leonard Bernstein. Musicals for which he was both lyricist and composer include Company (1970), a series of scenes about an unmarried bachelor and his married friends; Sweeney Todd (1979), about a barber's murderous quest for revenge; Into the Woods (1987), a dark mash-up of several fairy tales; and Sunday in the Park with George (1984), which portrays a fictionalized version of painter Georges Seurat and won the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Oe Kenzaburo

(1935 - present) Novelist and recipient of the 1994 Nobel Prize for Literature. His first work, Shiiku (The Catch in the Shadow of the Sunrise), describes a friendship between a Japanese boy and a black American POW, and won him the Akutagawa award while he was still a student. His early works are filled with insanity, abuse, perverse sex, and violence, but his later works (including A Personal Matter (Kojinteki-na taiken) and The Silent Cry (Man'en gannen no futtoboru)) reflect the experience of being the father of a brain-damaged child. His fiction centers on the alienation following Japan's surrender and his political writings focus on the search for cultural and ideological roots.

Mario Vargas Llosa

(1936-present, Peru). While attending military school in Lima, Vargas Llosa wrote the play The Escape of the Inca (1952), but the harsh treatment he received there was the basis for his best-known novel, The Time of the Hero. Conversation in the Cathedral (1969) was Vargas Llosa's serious take on living under the dictatorship of Manuel Odría, while in 1977 he published the lighter, autobiographical Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, about soap operas. Other important works include The War of the End of the World and A Fish in the Water, which discusses his political career; Vargas Llosa ran for president of Peru in 1990 but was defeated by Alberto Fujimori.

Philip Glass

(1937-present) was a minimalist composer who is best known for his trilogy of "Portrait Operas," which include Einstein on the Beach (1976), Satyagraha (1979), and Akhnaten (1983). Einstein on the Beach is particularly notable for its use of solfege syllables and numbers in place of a standard libretto. Glass's style is heavily influenced by Indian musical traditions, and focuses on additive processes; this focus can be seen in his early minimal works "Strung Out" (1967) and "Music in Fifths" (1969). Glass is a prolific composer of film scores; his most prominent include his scores for The Truman Show, The Hours, and Notes on a Scandal.

Isabel Allende

(1942-present, Chile). Actually born in Peru, at age three she moved to her mother's native Chile. A successful news reporter in her twenties, she and her family fled to Venezuela after General Augusto Pinochet deposed and executed her uncle Salvador Allende, setting up a dictatorship. Her formal literary career began at age 40, when she published The House of the Spirits, a magic realist work that chronicles several generations of the Trueba family. Other works of fiction include the short-story collection Eva Luna (1989) and Paula (1995), which detailed Allende's care for her terminally ill daughter.

John (Coolidge) Adams

(1947-present) was a minimalist composer whose music, like that of Charles Ives, often features an "American" program. Adams may be best known for his opera Nixon in China (1987), which dramatizes the 1972 presidential visit and meeting with Mao. His other operas include Doctor Atomic (2005), which is about the Manhattan Project. He composed "On the Transmigration of Souls" (2002) to memorialize the September 11th attacks; that work received the Pulitzer Prize. Other major works for orchestra include Harmonium (1980), Harmonielehre (1985), Shaker Loops (1978), and his Violin Concerto (1993).

The Ed Sullivan Show

(1948-1971): This long-running CBS variety show occupied the same time slot—Sunday night at 8 pm—for over two decades. For most of that time, it broadcast live from what is now called the Ed Sullivan Theater on Broadway, which is currently the home of the Late Show with David Letterman. Among the characters it bequeathed to American popular culture were a Spanish ventriloquist known as "Señor Wences" and an Italian mouse puppet named Topo Gigio. In 1964, the Beatles appeared on the show for three straight weeks, appearances which are credited with launching the "British Invasion" in popular music.

I Love Lucy

(1951-1957): During its six-season run, I Love Lucy was one of America's most watched shows. It centered on Lucy Ricardo, played by comedian Lucille Ball, and her husband Ricky Ricardo, who was played by Ball's real-life husband Desi Arnaz. The show's other major characters were the Ricardos' neighbors, Fred and Ethel Mertz. In one of the show's most famous episodes, Lucy was hired to do a TV commercial for a health tonic called "Vitameatavegamin"; after drinking too much of it, Lucy becomes inebriated and is unable to pronounce the word correctly.

The Honeymooners

(1955-1956): The Honeymooners is considered the first TV spinoff, as it centered on a character—Brooklyn bus driver Ralph Kramden—who had previously been introduced on The Jackie Gleason Show. Ralph's wife Alice was frequently the recipient of his bombastic threats, such as "Bang zoom, straight to the moon!". Like I Love Lucy, the show also centrally featured a neighbor couple—in this case, Ed and Trixie Norton. Although The Honeymooners is now considered a classic sitcom, it was not very popular at the time, and only 39 episodes aired in its original one-season run.

Mr. Ed

(1958-1966): This classic sitcom centered on the title talking horse—a palomino whose voice was provided by Allan Lane—and his owner, architect Wilbur Post. Much of the show's humor derived from the fact that Mr. Ed would solely speak to Wilbur, which naturally led to hijinks. Mr. Ed should not be confused with Francis the Talking Mule, who would solely speak to his owner Peter Stirling; he appeared in a number of film comedies during the 1950s.

The Twilight Zone

(1959-1964): Rod Serling created this anthology series, whose iconic opening credits featured a theme composed by Bernard Herrmann and a narration warning that the viewer was "about to enter another dimension." One of its most famous episodes, "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," starred a young William Shatner as a salesman who becomes convinced that a gremlin nobody else can see is trying to crash the airplane on which he is flying.

The Andy Griffith Show

(1960-1968): One of the most popular TV series of its decade, The Andy Griffith Show starred its title actor as Andy Taylor, who was sheriff in the sleepy small town of Mayberry, North Carolina. The show is almost as well known for its distinctive supporting characters, including a gas station attendant named Gomer Pyle and Andy's awkward deputy sheriff, Barney Fife. Ron Howard rose to fame as a child actor on the show, playing Andy's son Opie, before going on to an adult career as a prolific actor and director.

The Mary Tyler Moore Show

(1970-1977): This sitcom centered on Mary Richards, a young woman who moves to Minneapolis, where she goes to work in the newsroom at WJM-TV. No fewer than three supporting characters eventually got their own spinoffs: Phyllis, which starred Cloris Leachman; Rhoda, which starred Valerie Harper; and Lou Grant, which—unlike both the other two spinoffs and The Mary Tyler Moore Show itself—was a drama rather than a sitcom. The show is considered groundbreaking for its portrayal of Mary as an independent single woman.

All in the Family

(1971-1979): Producer Norman Lear created this sitcom, which was based on the successful British series Till Death Us Do Part. It starred Carroll O'Connor and Jean Stapleton as the central couple, Archie and Edith Bunker; Archie was notable for his prejudicial attitudes, while Edith—whom Archie would refer to as his "dingbat"—was his long-suffering wife. The show also featured Sherman Hemsley as George Jefferson, who would later be given his own eponymous spinoff, The Jeffersons, in which he and his wife moved on up to a "deluxe apartment in the sky" on the East Side of Manhattan.

M*A*S*H

(1972-1983): Like The Mary Tyler Moore Show and All in the Family, M*A*S*H was a highly successful CBS sitcom that dealt with controversial social issues—in this case, war. Centering on the 4077th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital in South Korea, it was adapted from the 1970 feature film of the same name directed by Robert Altman. Major characters included Hawkeye Pierce, a wisecracking surgeon played by Alan Alda; Sherman Potter, who was added to the show in season 4 after the previous commanding officer, Henry Blake, was killed off; and Corporal Klinger, who would dress in women's clothing in an attempt to be discharged from the army.

Sei Shonagan

(966/7 - 1013?) Like Lady Murasaki, Sei Shonagan was a lady-in-waiting of the Empress. Since Lady Murasaki and Sei Shonagan were contemporaries and known for their wit, they were often rivals*. Sei Shonagan's only work is the Pillow Book (Makura no soshi), which is considered the best source of information about life at the Japanese court during the Heian period (784-1185).

Murasaki Shikibu

(978? - 1015?) Novelist, diarist, and courtesan. She was the author of the Tale of Genji (Genji monogatari), the first known novel; the diary, Murasaki Shikibu nikki; and a collection of tanka poems. The daughter of the court official Fujiwara Tametoki, she sat in on the classical Chinese literature lessons that her brother received, in spite of the Heian traditions against higher education for women.

John B. Watson

(American, 1878-1958) John Watson was the first prominent exponent of behaviorism; he codified its tenets in Behavior: An Introduction to Comparative Psychology, arguing that psychology could be completely grounded in objective measurements of events and physical human reactions. His most famous experiment involved conditioning an eleven-month-old boy to be apprehensive of all furry objects by striking a loud bell whenever a furry object was placed in his lap.

B. F. Skinner

(American, 1904-1990) B. F. Skinner was one of the leading proponents of behaviorism in works like Walden II and Beyond Freedom and Dignity. He argued that all human actions could be understood in terms of physical stimuli and learned responses and that there was no need to study--or even believe in--internal mental states or motivations; in fact, doing so could be harmful. Guided by his ideas, he trained animals to perform complicated tasks including teaching pigeons to play table tennis.

Abraham Maslow

(American, 1908-1970) Abraham Maslow is principally known for two works, Motivation and Personality and Toward a Psychology of Being, that introduced his theory of the "hierarchy of needs" (food, shelter, love, esteem, etc.) and its pinnacle, the need for "self-actualization." Self-actualized people are those who understand their individual needs and abilities and who have families, friends, and colleagues that support them and allow them to accomplish things on which they place value. The lowest unmet need on the hierarchy tends to dominate conscious thought.

Stanley Milgram

(American, 1933-1984) Though he did the work that created the idea of "six degrees of separation" and the "lost-letter" technique, he is mainly remembered for his experiments on "obedience to authority" that he performed at Yale in 1961-1962. Milgram found that two-thirds of his subjects were willing to administer terrible electric shocks to innocent, protesting human beings simply because a researcher told them the experimental protocol demanded it.

Sigmund Freud

(Austrian, 1856-1939) Sigmund Freud founded the extremely influential discipline of psychoanalysis, which used the technique of "free association" to identify fears and repressed memories. He argued that many problems were caused by mental states rather than by biochemical dysfunction--a purely materialist viewpoint then in vogue. He separated the psyche into the id (illogical passion), ego (rational thought), and superego (moral and social conscience). His best known works are The Interpretation of Dreams and The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Studies On Hysteria (1895), Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905), Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious (1905), Totem and Taboo (1913), On Narcissism ( 1914), Introduction to Psychoanalysis (1917), Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920), The Future of an Illusion (1927), Civilization and Its Discontents (1930), Moses and Monotheism (1939).

Alfred Adler

(Austrian, 1870-1937) Alfred Adler was another close associate of Freud who split with him over Freud's insistence that sexual issues were at the root of neuroses and most psychological problems. Adler argued in The Neurotic Constitution that neuroses resulted from people's inability to achieve self-realization; in failing to achieve this sense of completeness, they developed "inferiority complexes" that inhibited their relations with successful people and dominated their relations with fellow unsuccessful people, a theory given the general name of "individual psychology."

Carl Jung

(Austrian, 1875-1961) Carl Jung was a close associate of Freud's who split with him over the degree to which neuroses had a sexual basis. He went on to create the movement of "analytic psychology" and introduced the controversial notion of the "collective unconscious"--a socially shared area of the mind. Quiz bowlers should be familiar with "anima," "animus," "introversion," "extroversion," and "archetypes," all terms that occur frequently in questions on Jung.

Aaron Copland

(COPE-land) (1900-1990). At first a modernist, he was the first American student of Nadia Boulanger in Paris in the 1920s; there he finished his Organ Symphony and Music for the Theater. By the 1930s, Copland turned to simple themes, especially the American West: El Salón Mexico was followed by the ballets Billy the Kid, Rodeo, and Appalachian Spring (1944), the last containing the Shaker hymn "Simple Gifts." Copland's Third Symphony contained his Fanfare for the Common Man, while Lincoln Portrait featured spoken portions of the President's writings. Copland wrote several educational books, beginning with 1939's What to Listen For in Music.

Erik Erikson

(German-born American, 1902-1994) Erik Erikson is best known for his theories on how social institutions reflect the universal features of psychosocial development; in particular, how different societies create different traditions and ideas to accommodate the same biological needs. He created a notable eight-stage development process and wrote several "psychohistories" explaining how people like Martin Luther and Mahatma Gandhi were able to think and act the way they did.

Ralph Vaughan Williams

(RAIF) (1872-1958). Best known for reviving the Tudor style and folk traditions in English music, as exemplified in his Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis (1909). Vaughan Williams completed nine symphonies, the foremost his Second (London) in 1914; other principal symphonies included the First (Sea), Third (Pastoral) and Seventh (sinfonia antarctica). His orchestral work The Lark Ascending was based on a George Meredith poem, while Sir John in Love (1924) was a Shakespearean opera that featured the "Fantasia on Greensleeves." Hugh the Drover and The Pilgrim's Progress are other major Vaughan Williams operas.

Ivan Pavlov

(Russian 1849-1936) Ivan Pavlov was more of a physiologist than a psychologist, but questions about him are more often classified as "psychology" than "biology" by question writers. He is largely remembered for his idea of the "conditioned reflex," for example, the salivation of a dog at the sound of the bell that presages dinner, even though the bell itself is inedible and has no intrinsic connection with food. He won the Nobel Prize in 1904 for Physiology or Medicine for unrelated work on digestive secretions.

Jean Piaget

(Swiss, 1896-1980) Jean Piaget is generally considered the greatest figure of 20th-century developmental psychology; he was the first to perform rigorous studies of the way in which children learn and come to understand and respond to the world around them. He is most famous for his theory of four stages of development: sensorimotor, preoperational, concrete operational, and formal operational. His most famous works are The Language and Thought of a Child and The Origins of Intelligence in Children.

Phidias

(c. 480 BC - c. 430 BC) An Athenian considered the greatest of all Classical sculptors. He created the chryselephantine (gold and ivory) Statue of Zeus at Olympia (one of the Wonders of the Ancient World, now lost) and the statue of Athena in the Parthenon (now lost). He was supported by money from the Delian League (that is, the Athenian Empire) run by his friend Pericles; he was later ruined by charges of corruption generally considered to be part of a political campaign against Pericles.

Hadith

A hadith is a report of the words or actions of a Muslim religious figure, most frequently the Prophet Muhammad. Each consists of a matn, or text of the original oral law itself, as well as an isnad, or chain of authorities through which it has been passed by word of mouth through the generations. Collectively, the hadith point Muslims toward the Sunna, or practice of the Prophet, which together with the Qur'an forms the basis for shari'a , usually translated as Islamic law.

Les Misérables (Alain Boublil, Claude-Michel Schönberg, and Herbert Kretzmer, 1985)

A partial retelling of the Victor Hugo novel of the same name, this work follows Jean Valjean, who was convicted of stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving niece. He breaks his parole and is doggedly pursued by Inspector Javert. Several years later, the lives of Valjean, his adoptive daughter Cosette, her lover Marius and his former lover Éponine, and Javert become intertwined on the barricades of an 1832 student rebellion in Paris. The longest-running show on London's West End, it features the songs "I Dreamed a Dream," "Master of the House," "Do You Hear the People Sing?", "One Day More," and "On My Own."

The Iceman Cometh (Eugene O'Neill, 1939)

A portrait of drunkenness and hopeless dreams. Regular patrons of the End of the Line Café anticipate the annual arrival of Theodore "Hickey" Hickman, but in 1912 he returns to them sober. After the patrons reveal their "pipe dreams," Hickey implores them to give up those dreams and lead productive lives. The "Iceman" is supposed to represent the "death" found in reality.

The Spanish Tragedy (or, Hieronimo is Mad Again) (Thomas Kyd, c. 1585)

A sensational hit when it was first performed, The Spanish Tragedy pioneered and popularized the gory genre known as the revenge tragedy. The play is set in the wake of a war between Portugal and Spain, during which the Spanish soldier Don Andrea was killed by the Portuguese prince Balthazar. After Andrea's death, Balthazar was captured by two Spanish soldiers: Lorenzo, the nephew of the King of Spain; and Horatio, the capable son of the marshal Hieronimo. As the play begins, Andrea's ghost has returned to Earth along with the spirit of Revenge, to watch the events that will lead to Balthazar's death. Those events are put in motion by Andrea's former lover Bel-imperia, who falls in love with Horatio, and rejects the smitten Balthazar. Lorenzo and Balthazar then conspire to kill Horatio, whose death devastates Hieronimo. Bel-imperia is imprisoned by Lorenzo to cover up the crime, but sends a letter written in her own blood to Hieronimo exposing Lorenzo's schemes. During a climactic play-within-a-play, Hieronimo and Bel-imperia take vengeance by stabbing Lorenzo and Balthazar, and subsequently kill themselves. The Spanish Tragedy is noted for its influence on the works of Shakespeare, especially the incriminating play-within-a-play in Hamlet.

Our Town (Thornton Wilder, 1938)

A sentimental story that takes place in the village of Grover's Corners, New Hampshire just after the turn of the 20th century. Our Town is divided into three acts: "Daily Life" (Professor Willard and Editor Webb gossip on the everyday lives of town residents); "Love and Marriage" (Emily Webb and George Gibbs fall in love and marry); and "Death" (Emily dies while giving birth, and her spirit converses about the meaning of life with other dead people in the cemetery). A Stage Manager talks to the audience and serves as a narrator throughout the drama, which is performed on a bare stage.

The Creation of the World (La Création du Monde) (1923) by Darius Milhaud

A trip to the U.S. inspired Milhaud to write The Creation of the World in 1922. Enchanted by the jazz bands Milhaud heard in Harlem, the ballet shows a heavy influence of jazz and blues, as well as traditional African rhythms; Milhaud omitted violas, substituting an alto saxophone. Choreographed by Jean Börlin and using a set designed by Cubist artist Ferdinand Leger, the ballet aims to depict the beginning of creation according to African tradition: the creator gods Mzame, Mbere, and Nkwa appear out of a seemingly empty void to create animals, plants, and then the first man and woman. The latter then perform a routine based on popular Dixieland dances and conclude the ballet in the tableau "The Man and the Woman Kiss." [Note: The latter is a title in the ballet, but the score itself only gives numbers to the sections.]

H.M.S. Pinafore (W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, 1878)

Aboard the title ship, Josephine promises her father, the captain, that she will marry Sir Joseph Porter, but Josephine secretly loves the common sailor Ralph Rackstraw, and the two plan to elope. A peddler named Buttercup reveals that she accidentally switched the captain and Ralph at birth: Ralph is of noble birth and should be captain, while the captain is nothing more than a common sailor. Ralph, now captain, marries Josephine, and the former captain marries Buttercup. Like The Pirates of Penzance, songs are named after their first lines; they include "We sail the ocean blue," "I'm called Little Buttercup," and "Pretty daughter of mine."

Douglas Adams (1952-2001, United Kingdom)

Adams wrote comic science fiction and fantasy novels that poked fun at genre tropes and the quirks of British culture. After working on Monty Python's Flying Circus, Adams created the BBC radio series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which premiered in 1978. The radio series became the basis of a series of novels (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy; The Restaurant at the End of the Universe; Life, the Universe, and Everything; So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish; Mostly Harmless; and the authorized sequel And Another Thing..., which was written by Artemis Fowl author Eoin Colfer after Adams died). The Hitchhiker's series focuses on Arthur Dent, an ordinary Englishman who becomes one of the last humans in the universe after Earth is destroyed by the alien Vogons. Arthur and his friend Ford Prefect travel on a starship named the Heart of Gold, along with the "paranoid android" Marvin, the two-headed galactic president Zaphod Beeblebrox, and the human scientist Trillian. Arthur eventually discovers that "answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything" is 42 (although the question itself remains unknown). Characters in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series sometimes consult the title reference work, which offers the advice "Don't Panic," encourages hitchhikers to carry towels at all times, and provides the recipe for a drink called the "Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster". Besides the Hitchhiker's series, Adams also co-authored two books offering comic definitions of British place names (The Meaning of Liff and The Deeper Meaning of Liff), and wrote a pair of novels about the supernatural adventures of the private investigator Dirk Gently (Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul).

The Jew of Malta (Christopher Marlowe, c. 1589)

After his massive fortune is seized by Malta's governor Ferneze to pay tribute to the Turks, the Jewish merchant Barabas embarks on a complex journey of revenge. Barabas uses his daughter Abigail to spark a jealous feud that leads to a duel in which the governor's son Lodowick is killed. Abigail then hides in a convent and converts to Christianity, leading Barabas and his slave Ithamore to poison all of the convent's occupants. Barabas eventually aids the Turks in conquering Malta, for which he is appointed governor, but betrays the Turks in favor of the Maltese, who kill Barabas in a boiling cauldron as they retake the island. The Jew of Malta is thought to have influenced Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice

Piano Sonata No. 23 in F minor, "Appassionata," op. 57 (1804-06)

Again, Beethoven had no hand in the popular title of this sonata: the "Appassionata" label was applied by a publisher some years after Beethoven's death. The sonata begins ominously: a theme descends in open octaves to the lowest note of the contemporary piano before rising again in an arpeggio, immediately repeated a minor second higher. The second movement has no stable conclusion, instead directly leading to the third through the use of a diminished seventh chord. The final movement's coda, which itself introduces new thematic material, is one of the most demanding and difficult passages in all of the composer's repertoire.

Rodeo (1942) by Aaron Copland

Agnes DeMille choreographed Rodeo and danced the lead role at its premiere. It tells the story of a tomboy Cowgirl in the American West (the characters are not given specific names). She falls in love with the Head Wrangler, who prefers the more feminine Rancher's Daughter. The Cowgirl winds up dancing and eventually kissing the Champion Roper, who earlier competed for the Rancher's Daughter's hand. Rodeo is split into five sections: "Buckaroo Holiday," which introduces the characters; "Corral Nocturne," in which the oboe and bassoon depict the Cowgirl's loneliness; "Ranch House Party," which was omitted from the orchestral version; "Saturday Night Waltz" and "Hoe-down," which is based on the folk song "Bonaparte's Retreat." "Hoe-down" was famously used in the "Beef: It's What's for Dinner" ad campaign in the 1990s.

Aida (Giuseppe Verdi, Antonio Ghislanzoni, 1871)

Aida is an Ethiopian princess who is held captive in Egypt. She falls in love with the Egyptian general Radames and convinces him to run away with her; unfortunately, he is caught by the high priest Ramphis and a jealous Egyptian princess Amneris. Radames is buried alive, but finds that Aida has snuck into the tomb to join him. The opera was commissioned by the khedive of Egypt and intended to commemorate the opening of the Suez Canal, but it was finished late and instead premiered at the opening of the Cairo Opera House.

Aldous Huxley (1894-1963, United Kingdom)

Aldous Huxley belonged to a prominent family of British intellectuals that included the Victorian evolutionist Thomas Henry Huxley. Although Aldous Huxley depicted his own social milieu in novels such as Crome Yellow and Point Counter Point, he is best known for writing about a dystopian "World State" in the 1932 novel Brave New World. Extrapolating from Henry Ford's model of industrial production and contemporary advances in biochemistry, Huxley imagined a world in which the fictional "Bokanovsky's Process" is used to create human clones, which are then modified to posses different intellectual abilities, and sorted into social castes named after the Greek letters Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon. Inhabitants of the World State enjoy a prosperous existence, immersive entertainment known as Feelies, and the drug soma, but lack family connections and spiritual fulfillment. The shallow pleasures of the World State are contrasted with the ideals of John the Savage, a young man who grew up on a New Mexico reservation. John is initially delighted to meet the World State residents Bernard Marx and Lenina Crowne, and excitedly quotes the "Brave New World" speech from Shakespeare's play The Tempest. However, John soon grows disgusted with "civilization." After the World Controller Mustapha Mond forbids John from living on an isolated island with the aspiring writer Helmholtz Watson, John unsuccessfully tries to retreat from society, and eventually hangs himself.

Antigone (Sophocles, c. 441 BC)

Along with Oedipus Rex and Oedipus at Colonus, Antigone is one of the three surviving "Theban plays" by Sophocles that center on the family of Oedipus. The tragedy takes place in the immediate aftermath of a battle in which Oedipus's two sons, Polyneices and Eteocles, killed each other while struggling to control Thebes. The current ruler of the city, Creon, has declared that Eteocles will be given an honorable funeral, but Polyneices will be treated as a rebel and left unburied. Oedipus's daughter Antigone disobeys Creon's order, and buries her brother Polyneices against the advice of her frightened sister, Ismene. Despite the intervention of Creon's son Haemon, who is betrothed to Antigone, Creon sentences Antigone to be entombed alive. Soon after she is imprisoned, Antigone hangs herself. Haemon then commits suicide out of grief, and Creon's wife Eurydice kills herself when she learns that Haemon is dead. The once-proud Creon blames himself for the loss of his wife and son, and prays for death.

Upanishads

Also called Vedanta, or "last part of the Vedas," the Upanishads were written in Sanskrit between 900 and 500 BC. Part poetry but mainly prose, the earlier Upanishads laid the foundation for the development of several key Hindu ideas, such as connecting the individual soul (atman) with the universal soul (Brahman). Spiritual release, or moksha, could be achieved through meditation and asceticism. The name "Upanishads" means "to sit down close," as pupils did when a teacher recited them.

Wellington's Victory; or, the Battle of Vitoria, op. 91 (1813) Beethoven

Also commonly known as the "Battle Symphony." This heavily programmatic work was originally written for the panharmonicon, an automated orchestra; Beethoven later revised the work for live performers. The work utilizes several familiar melodies—including "God Save the Queen," "Rule Britannia," and "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow"—and calls for special effects such as musket fire. The work is generally regarded as one of Beethoven's worst; even the composer himself acknowledged it as being a money-maker rather than serious art. Note that the piece specifically does not depict Wellington's victory over Napoleon at Waterloo.

Angelo, from Measure for Measure

Angelo is entrusted with the rule of Vienna by Duke Vicentio, who pretends to leave the city but actually remains present, disguised as "Friar Lodowick." Angelo enforces antiquated laws against fornication, resulting in Claudio's arrest and imminent execution. Claudio's sister, the novice nun Isabella, pleads for Claudio to be pardoned; Angelo agrees, but only if Isabella will have sex with him. After debate, Duke Vincentio proposes a "bed trick." Isabella pretends that she is willing to have sex with Angelo in absolute darkness and silence, which allows Mariana, a woman who was once betrothed to Angelo, to take Isabella's place. Although the plan works, and Angelo believes that he had sex with Isabella, he goes back on his word and orders Claudio's execution. This forces the duke to arrange a "head trick," in which the head of the pirate Ragozine is presented to Angelo, and Claudio's life is saved. Once the duke "returns" to Vienna, Isabella and Mariana petition him to right their wrongs. Angelo initially denies the charges brought against him, but confesses once he learns that the duke and Friar Lodowick are the same person. Angelo's life is spared for Mariana's sake, and the duke proposes marriage to Isabella.

The King and I (Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, 1951)

Anna Leonowens, a British schoolteacher, travels to Siam (now Thailand) to teach English to the King's many children and wives. Anna's western ways, the looming threat of British rule, and romance between Lun Tha and the concubine Tuptim all weigh heavily on the traditional, chauvinistic King. As the King dies, Anna kneels at his side, and the prince abolishes the practice of kowtowing. Adapted from Anna and the King of Siam by Margaret Landon and inspired by Anna Leonowens' memoirs, it was made into an Academy Award-winning 1956 film starring Yul Brynner. Its songs include "I Whistle a Happy Tune," "Getting to Know You," and "Shall We Dance?".

Qur'an (or Koran)

Arabic for "recitation," it is the most sacred scripture of Islam. The Qur'an is subdivided into 114 chapters, called suras, which, with the exception of the first one, are arranged in descending order of length. According to Muslim belief, the angel Jibril [Gabriel] visited the prophet Muhammad in 610 and revealed the work to him. Various suras discuss absolute submission to Allah [God], happiness in Heaven versus torture in Hell, and the mercy, compassion, and justice of Allah. The third caliph, Uthman (644-656), formalized the text after many of his oral reciters were killed in battle.

Nighthawks, by Edward Hopper

As is often the case with his works, Hopper uses a realistic approach (including such details as the fluorescent light of the diner, the coffee pots, and the Phillies cigar sign atop the diner) to convey a sense of a loneliness and isolation, even going so far as to depict the corner store without a door connecting to the larger world. Hopper's wife Jo served as the model for the woman at the bar. Nighthawks is housed at the Art Institute of Chicago.

My Fair Lady (Frederick Loewe; Alan Jay Lerner; Alan Jay Lerner; 1956)

As part of a bet with his friend Colonel Pickering, phonetics professor Henry Higgins transforms cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle into a proper lady. After Eliza falls for Freddy Eynsforth-Hill, Higgins realizes he is in love with Eliza. Eliza returns to Higgins' home in the final scene. It is adapted from George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion.

Mary Shelley (1797-1851, United Kingdom)

As the daughter of the philosophers William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft (the author of A Vindication of the Rights of Women), and the wife of the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley, Mary Shelley was a product of both the Enlightenment and Romantic eras. Her 1818 novel Frankenstein; or the Modern Prometheus helped to lay the groundwork for modern science fiction by contrasting Enlightenment ideas of progress with a Romantic conception of nature as an untameable force. The idea for Frankenstein came to Shelley while she was taking part in a friendly writing competition at Lord Byron's villa on Lake Geneva. Inspired by Luigi Galvani's experiments in "animal electricity," Shelley wrote about the Swiss scientist Victor Frankenstein, who reanimates dead tissue and creates a "monster." This attempt to control nature fails, as the monster murders Frankenstein's brother William, friend Henry Clerval, and wife Elizabeth before fleeing to the Arctic. Frankenstein pursues his creation, and tells his story to the explorer Robert Walton before dying. Shelley presented an even bleaker scenario in her 1826 novel The Last Man, which describes Lionel Verney's efforts to survive a 21st-century plague that devastates human civilization.

Symphony No. 6 in F major, "Pastoral", op. 68 (1802-08) Beethoven

As the title implies, Beethoven's Sixth Symphony is a programmatic depiction of rural scenes; it is the composer's only truly programmatic symphony. The symphony's five movements, rather than the traditional four, each include a short title or description of their content: "Awakening of cheerful feelings upon arrival in the country" (I), "Scene at the brook" (II), "Happy gathering of country folks" (III), "Thunderstorm" (IV), and "Happy and thankful feelings after the storm" (V). In the score for the second movement, Beethoven explicitly identifies several woodwind motifs as being based on bird calls.

Piano Sonata No. 14 in C sharp minor, quasi una Fantasia ("Moonlight"), op. 27 no. 2, (1801-02) Beethoven

As with the "Emperor," Beethoven did not give the "Moonlight" sonata its nickname; it was coined several years after the composer's death by Ludwig Rellstab, who commented on the first movement's resemblance to moonlight on Lake Lucerne. Beethoven's score calls for the sustain pedal to be held down through the entirety of the first movement. Often overshadowed by the ubiquitous first movement is the violent third movement, a Presto agitato sonata-allegro form with an extended coda, which on a larger scale serves as a recapitulation for the entire sonata. Beethoven dedicated the sonata to Giulietta Guicciardi, his pupil.

The Phantom of the Opera (Andrew Lloyd Webber; Charles Hart & Richard Stilgoe; Richard Stilgoe & Andrew Lloyd Webber; 1986)

At the Paris Opera in 1881, the mysterious Phantom lures the soprano Christine Daae to his lair ("The Music of the Night"). Christine falls in love with the opera's new patron, Raoul, so the Phantom drops a chandelier and kidnaps Christine. They kiss, but he disappears, leaving behind only his white mask. Adapted from the eponymous 1909 novel by Gaston Leroux, it is the longest-running show in Broadway history.

The Birds (Aristophanes, c. 414 BC)

At the start of this comedy, two Athenians named Peisthetaerus and Euelpides seek out Tereus, a human king who was transformed into a a bird called a hoopoe (some translations refer to Tereus as "Epops," the Greek word for hoopoe). Peisthetaerus convinces Tereus and his fellow birds to build a city in the sky, which would allow the birds to demand sacrifices from humans, and to blockade the Olympian gods. Peisthetaerus and Euelpides eat a root that gives them wings, and aid the birds in the construction of the city Nephelokokkygia, or "Cloudcuckooland." Peisthetaerus also drives away objectionable visitors, such as a poet, an oracle-monger, and a dealer in decrees. After the messenger goddess Iris is found in the city, the residents of Cloudcuckooland demand concessions from the Olympians. On the advice of Prometheus, Peisthetaerus demands that Zeus give up his mistress Basileia, or Sovereignty, from whom "all things come." Peisthetaerus marries Basileia, and is crowned king.

The Bacchae (Euripides, c. 405 BC)

At the start of this tragedy, the god Dionysus arrives in Thebes to seek vengeance against his aunt Agave, who has denied his immortality, and her son Pentheus, who as King of Thebes bans worship of Dionysus. The god first drives the women of the city mad, causing them to act as wild Maenads. He then convinces Pentheus to disguise himself in animal skins, and spy on the maddened women. However, the demented Agave mistakes Pentheus for a mountain lion, and dismembers her own son. The climax of the play occurs when Agave presents the head of Pentheus to her horrified father, Cadmus. As Agave realizes what she has done, Dionysus chastises her for her lack of respect, and foretells how Cadmus will spend his final days.

The Miraculous Mandarin (A csodálatos mandarin) (1926) by Belá Bartók

Based on a story by Melchior Lengyel, The Miraculous Mandarin opens by depicting a large city, with rapid ascending and descending notes on the strings followed by a theme of minor seconds and a brass imitation of car horns. In the ballet, a group of robbers force a girl to dance at the window of their apartment as a "Lockspiel," or decoy game, to lure in potential victims. After the criminals successfully rob an old lecher and a poor young man, the girl lures a rich Chinese man—the Mandarin—into the apartment; glissandos in the brass mark his entrance. After the Mandarin tries unsuccessfully to capture the girl, the tramps jump on him—symbolized by the repetition of the minor second intervals heard at the beginning of the ballet—and stab him three times, then hang him from a lamp. However, the Mandarin's body begins to glow strangely. The girl then convinces the robbers to free the man, whom she then embraces, allowing him to die peacefully. The material of the ballet made it controversial upon its 1926 premiere; the mayor of Cologne, where the ballet debuted, had it banned on moral grounds.

Symphony No. 9 in D minor, "Choral", op. 125 (1822-24) Beethoven

Beethoven's Ninth Symphony marks the first significant use of voices as part of a symphony, though they are only used in the final movement. The opening motif from the first movement reappears in altered form in a second movement scherzo, which itself is followed by a slow third movement that alternates between quadruple and triple time. The massive final movement, whose internal form closely resembles that of the entire symphony, utilizes both Friedrich Schiller's "Ode to Joy" and original texts by Beethoven himself. A typical performance takes approximately 75 minutes; the fourth movement alone takes 25.

Symphony No. 3 in E-flat major, "Eroica", op. 55 (1803-04) Beethoven

Beethoven's Third Symphony was composed during the first part of his middle stylistic period, often referred to as his "heroic decade." Beethoven may have been influenced in the work's composition by his personal confrontation with his growing deafness. The second movement is a solemn, C minor funeral march, while the finale is a playful set of variations on a melody Beethoven used in several other works. The composer originally intended to title the symphony "Bonaparte"; in a popular but possibly apocryphal story, Beethoven ripped the title page from the score upon hearing that Napoleon had declared himself emperor.

Duke Frederick, from As You Like It

Before the opening of the play, Frederick overthrew his brother, Duke Senior, and seized control of the court. There, Frederick harbors his brother's daughter Rosalind as a companion to his own daughter, Celia. When Frederick banishes Rosalind out of fear that she is plotting against him, Celia volunteers to go with her beloved cousin, and suggests that they reunite with Duke Senior in the Forest of Arden. At the same time, a young nobleman named Orlando flees to the Forest of Arden to escape his brother Oliver's mistreatment. Frederick suspects that Orlando is in the company of Celia and Rosalind, and seizes Oliver's lands until Orlando can be produced. After Oliver departs to search for his brother, Duke Frederick is not heard of again until the end of the play, when Oliver and Orlando's brother Jaques reports that Frederick suddenly repented of his crimes after meeting "an old religious man." Frederick relinquishes the crown to Duke Senior, and restores the property of Duke Senior's supporters.

King Claudius, from The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

Before the start of the play, Claudius became the ruler of Denmark by pouring poison into the ear of his sleeping brother, King Hamlet. Claudius then married Gertrude, King Hamlet's widow. In the play's first act, Prince Hamlet learns of his uncle's treachery by speaking to King Hamlet's ghost. Hamlet then arranges for a troupe of actors to perform a play titled The Murder of Gonzago, which Hamlet revises to increase the similarities to his father's death. Claudius is disturbed by the performance, and storms out during the murder scene. Later, Claudius prays for forgiveness, causing Hamlet to delay killing him out of fear that Claudius's soul would go to heaven. As Hamlet feigns madness, Claudius sends him to England with Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, who unknowingly carry a letter calling for Hamlet's execution. After Hamlet escapes and returns to Denmark, Claudius arranges for Hamlet to fight a duel with Laertes, who seeks revenge for the death of his father, Polonius, and sister, Ophelia. Laertes uses a poison-tipped sword, and Claudius prepares a poisoned drink as a back-up. When Laertes falls in combat he reveals the plot, prompting Hamlet to stab Claudius with the poisoned sword, and make Claudius drink from the poisoned cup.

Museum of Modern Art

Better known as "MoMA" and situated in Manhattan, it has been connected with the Rockefeller family since its founding in 1929. Its collection includes Vincent van Gogh's The Starry Night, Pablo Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, Salvador Dalí's The Persistence of Memory, and Piet Mondrian's Broadway Boogie Woogie.

A Streetcar Named Desire (Tennessee Williams, 1947)

Blanche DuBois and Stanley Kowalski represent Williams's two visions of the South: declining "old romantic" vs. the harsh modern era. Blanche is a Southern belle who lost the family estate, and is forced to move into her sister Stella's New Orleans apartment. Stella's husband Stanley is rough around the edges, but sees through Blanche's artifice; he ruins Blanche's chance to marry his friend Mitch by revealing to Mitch that Blanche was a prostitute. Then, after Blanche confronts Stanley, he rapes her, driving her into insanity. The drama was developed into a movie, marking the breakthrough performance of method actor Marlon Brando.

Wayne Gretzky

Born in Brantford, Ontario, "The Great One" was named Canada's athlete of the century. Gretzky holds or shares 61 NHL records, including career goals (894), assists (1,963), and points (2,857). The winner of ten scoring titles (Art Ross Trophies) and nine NHL MVP's (Hart Trophies), his #99 was retired league wide. He won four Stanley Cups with Edmonton in the 1980s before a major trade sent him to Los Angeles in 1988. After a brief stint in St. Louis, he would finish career with New York Rangers in 1999.

Gordie Howe

Born in Floral, Saskatchewan, "Mr. Hockey," was equally adept with his stick as he was with his fists. A "Gordie Howe hat trick" was later joked to consist of a goal, an assist, and a fight in a game. A six-time Art Ross Trophy winner, he played 26 seasons with the Detroit Red Wings, retiring in 1971. After a two-year retirement, he returned to the fledgling WHA, to play with his sons on the Houston Aeros. He played his last NHL season at the age of 52 in 1980 with the Hartford Whalers, finishing as the NHL's career points leader until 1989.

Eddie Shore

Born in Fort Qu'Appele, Saskatchewan, "The Edmonton Express" is the epitome of "Old-Time Hockey," as stated in the 1977 film Slap Shot. As a blue liner for the Boston Bruins he was named a first team NHL All-Star for eight of nine years during the 1930s and is the only defenseman to win 4 Hart Trophies as NHL MVP. He later went on to be the owner/GM of the AHL's Springfield Indians and the anecdotes about his stingy ways are now hockey lore.

Ken Dryden

Born in Hamilton, Ontario, he had a standout career at Cornell University before joining the Montreal Canadiens organization in 1970. In 1970-71, he starred in the playoffs, winning Conn Smythe Trophy honors (playoff MVP), before going on to win Calder Trophy (Rookie of the Year) honors the next season. Along with Tony Esposito, he served as Canada's goalie during the legendary 1972 Summit Series with the USSR. He sat out the entire 1973-74 season in a contract dispute, and worked as a legal clerk and obtaining his law degree from McGill. He currently serves as the President of the Toronto Maple Leafs.

Maurice Richard

Born in Montreal, Quebec, "The Rocket" was one of the most gifted offensive players in NHL history. He was the first NHL player to score 50 goals in a single season, doing so in 1944-45, and also the first to score 500 in a career. The winner of eight Stanley Cups, his suspension by league president Clarence Campbell in 1955 led to "The Richard Riot" on March 17, 1955, which was quelled only by an appeal by Richard for peace. Many sociologists credit the Richard Riot with starting the Quebec independence movement. The NHL began awarding the Rocket Richard Trophy in 1999 for the league's top regular season goal scorer.

Mario Lemieux

Born in Montreal, Quebec: "Super Mario" scored his first NHL goal on the first shift of his first game, against Boston in 1984. He led the Pittsburgh Penguins to consecutive Stanley Cups in 1991-92. After a bout with Hodgkin's disease, he returned to lead the NHL in scoring in 1995-96 and 1996-97. He then later helped bail the Penguins out of bankruptcy by becoming the lead owner of the team in 1999.

Vladislav Tretiak

Born in Moscow, USSR; Tretiak is first Russian player in Hockey Hall of Fame. He came to North American prominence when he starred in 1972 Summit Series against Canada. A 10-time World Champion, he also won three gold medals (1972, 1976, and 1984). The decision to pull Tretiak after the first period of the U.S./USSR game in the 1980 Olympics is considered to be part of the reason the U.S. went on to win the gold. He played for CSKA Moscow (Central Red Army) for 15 years and, since his retirement, he now serves as the goaltending coach for the Chicago Blackhawks.

Bobby Orr

Born in Parry Sound, Ontario, Bobby Orr revolutionized the position of defenseman. The first blue liner to win the Art Ross Trophy (scoring title), he also won the Norris (best defenseman), Hart (league MVP), and Conn Smythe (playoff MVP) in the same season (1969-70). That same year, he led the Bruins to their first Stanley Cup in three decades with the now famous "Goal." He recorded the highest +/- rating ever for a single season, +124 in 1970-71 and won eight straight Norris Trophies from 1968-75. Unfortunately, his bad knees forced him into early retirement in 1979.

Bobby Hull

Born in Point Anne, Ontario; "The Golden Jet" was the star of the Chicago Blackhawks of the 1960s, he won three Art Ross Trophies and led the NHL in goals seven times. In June of 1972, he defected to the fledgling WHA's Winnipeg Jets for a record 10-year, $2.75 million deal, where he would star and help make Winnipeg one of the four WHA teams to merge with the NHL in 1978-79. He is also the father of Brett Hull and the duo is the only father-son combination to score 500 each in NHL history.

Terry Sawchuk

Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, "Ukey" played more games (971), won more games (447), and recorded more shutouts (103) than any other netminder in NHL history. In 1952, he recorded eight straight wins, including four shutouts, in the playoffs for Detroit. Winning 5 Vezina Trophies in his career for lowest team GAA (the criteria during his era), Sawchuk also won the Calder Trophy as NHL rookie of the year in 1950-51. Always deeply psychologically troubled, he died in a household accident in 1970 while a member of the New York Rangers.

Ray Bradbury (1920-2012, United States)

Bradbury's science fiction and fantasy stories often contain nostalgic elements related to his Midwestern childhood. The Illinois community of Green Town is the setting of Bradbury's novels Dandelion Wine and Something Wicked This Way Comes, both of which center on boys beginning to enter adulthood. Similarly, small towns on Earth and Mars are the setting of many stories in Bradbury's 1950 collection The Martian Chronicles, which is made up of loosely connected works about the expeditions of human astronauts, the displacement of indigenous Martians as human settlers arrive, and a nuclear war that destroys most life on Earth. Bradbury also wrote about Mars in several stories that appear in his collection The Illustrated Man, whose title character has tattoos that foretell the future. Another theme that recurs in Bradbury's works is censorship and the importance of literature. This theme is expressed most strongly in Bradbury's 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451, which depicts a dystopian future in which "firemen" burn books . The protagonist of Fahrenheit 451 is Guy Montag, a fireman whose wife Mildred is deeply depressed and addicted to television programs that she watches on large "parlor walls." Montag begins to question his profession after meeting the free-spirited Clarisse McClellan, and secretly preserves books to read, leading to a rebuke from Fire Captain Beatty. Montag is eventually pursued by a robotic attack dog called the "Mechanical Hound," but escapes to join a community of rebels who memorize classic works of literature.

Annie Get Your Gun (Irving Berlin, Herbert Fields, and Dorothy Fields, 1946)

Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show comes to town, and performer Frank Butler challenges anyone to a shooting contest. Annie Oakley wins the contest and joins the show. She and Frank fall in love, but Frank quits out of jealousy that Annie is a better shooter than he is. The title role was originated by Ethel Merman, and songs in the show include "There's No Business Like Show Business," "Doin' What Comes Natur'lly," and "Anything You Can Do."

Cabaret (Fred Kander; John Ebb; Jon Masteroff; 1966)

Cabaret is set in the seedy Kit-Kat Club in Weimar Berlin, where the risqué Master of Ceremonies presides over the action ("Wilkommen"). The British lounge singer Sally Bowles falls in love with the American writer Cliff Bradshaw, but the two break up as the Nazis come to power. Adapted into an Academy Award-winning 1972 film starring Liza Minelli and Joel Grey, it is based on Christopher Isherwood's Goodbye to Berlin.

Caliban, from The Tempest

Caliban is the son of the Algerian witch Sycorax, who once ruled the island where Caliban was born. After Sycorax died the island fell under the control of the magician Prospero, an exiled duke of Milan. Prospero taught the young Caliban language, and showed kindness to him, until Caliban tried to rape Prospero's daughter Miranda. In response, Prospero enslaved Caliban, and began treating him as a subhuman creature. (Caliban's exact nature is unknown, but he seems to be physically distinct from the other characters in the play. At various points, Caliban is called a "monster," a "demi-devil," a "strange fish," a "thing of darkness," a "moon-calf," and a "freckled whelp" who lacks a "human shape.") When the play begins, Caliban longs to overthrow Prospero but still fears Prospero's magic, which is stronger than that of Caliban's god, Setebos. Trinculo and Stephano, two drunkards who are shipwrecked and separated from the rest of their crew, give Caliban liquor; Caliban then conspires with them to kill Prospero. When the group hears music played by the spirit Ariel, Caliban delivers a speech beginning "Be not afeard, the isle is full of noises" that demonstrates sensitivity and loss. The plot to unseat Prospero quickly fails, and Caliban vows to be "wise hereafter." Unlike Ariel, Caliban is not freed at the end of the play.

Carmen (Georges Bizet, Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, 1875)

Carmen is a young gypsy who works in a cigarette factory in Seville. She is arrested by the corporal Don José for fighting, but cajoles him into letting her escape. They meet again at an inn where she tempts him into challenging his captain; that treason forces him to join a group of smugglers. In the final act, the ragtag former soldier encounters Carmen at a bullfight where her lover Escamillo is competing (the source of the "Toreador Song") and stabs her. The libretto was based on a novel of Prosper Merimée.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (Tennessee Williams, 1955)

Centers on a fight between two sons (Gooper and Brick) over the estate of father "Big Daddy" Pollitt, who is dying of cancer. After his friend Skipper dies, ex-football star Brick turns to alcohol and will not have sex with his wife Maggie ("the cat"). Yet Maggie announces to Big Daddy that she is pregnant in an attempt to force a reconciliation with--and win the inheritance for--Brick.

Evita (Andrew Lloyd Webber; Tim Rice; Tim Rice; 1978)

Che Guevara narrates the life story of Eva Peron, a singer and film actress who marries Juan Peron. Juan is elected President of Argentina, and Eva's charity work makes her immensely popular among her people ("Don't Cry for Me Argentina") before her death from cancer. It was made into a 1996 film starring Madonna and Antonio Banderas.

Billy the Kid (1938) by Aaron Copland

Choreographed by Eugene Loring, this ballet depicts episodes in the life of the title Old West outlaw. Early in the ballet, Billy's mother is accidentally killed in a gunfight; Billy then stabs the man who killed her. Sections from the ballet include "Card Game at Night" and a "Gun Battle" that features percussion imitating the title shootout. At the end of the ballet, when Billy is resting in the desert, a posse led by Pat Garrett finds and kills him. The story of Billy's life is bookended at the beginning and end by a section called "The Open Prairie," which depicts settlers moving westwards. The ballet makes extensive use of cowboy songs, such as "The Old Chisholm Trail" and "Goodbye Old Paint" in its depiction of a frontier town, and features a "Jarabe," a Mexican dance in 5/8 time.

Giselle (1841) by Adolphe Adam

Choreographed by Jean Coralli and Jules Perot, Adam wrote Giselle for Perot's lover Carlotta Grisi, who danced the title role at its premiere. Giselle, a peasant girl, falls in love with Loys, who is secretly Duke Albrecht of Silesia in disguise. Although Albrecht is engaged to Princess Bathilde, he pursues his romance with Giselle. After playing "he loves me, he loves me not" with a daisy, Giselle is shocked when the gamekeeper Hilarion, who also loves her, presents Albrecht's sword, revealing Albrecht's noble status. Unable to handle Albrecht's deception and knowing he can never marry her, Giselle goes mad, tearing the necklace her mother has given her, and dies of a broken heart. After her death, Giselle's spirit is enlisted into the Wilis, a group of spirits led by Queen Myrtha. The Wilis corner Hilarion and force him to dance to death; but Giselle stops them from doing the same to Albrecht. Sparing Albrecht, the Wilis let Giselle's ghost return to rest in her grave.

Sleeping Beauty (Spyashchaya krasavitsa) (1890) by Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky

Choreographed by Marius Petipa, Sleeping Beauty (also called The Sleeping Beauty) is based on the fairy tale of the same name, though other fairy tale figures, including Little Red Riding Hood and Cinderella, appear. Split into four sections ("The Christening," "The Spell," "The Vision," and "The Wedding"), Sleeping Beauty relates the story of Princess Aurora, the daughter of King Florestan XXIV. He invites a group of fairies to Aurora's christening, but the evil spirit Carabosse, furious at not being invited, appears and curses Aurora to die on her 16th birthday by pricking her finger with a spindle. However, the powerful Lilac Fairy weakens the curse, so that Aurora will sleep for a hundred years instead. On her 16th birthday, the townspeople perform the "Garland Waltz" and four suitors and Aurora perform the challenging "Rose Adagio." A mysterious figure (Carabosse in disguise) appears and gives Aurora a spindle, on which Aurora pricks herself and falls asleep; the Lilac Fairy then expands the spell over the entire kingdom. A century later, Prince Desire is hunting in the forest when the Lilac Fairy approaches him and leads him to the castle. He wakes Aurora with a kiss and wins her hand in marriage.

The Firebird (L'Oiseau de feu or Zhar-ptitsa) (1910) by Igor Stravinsky

Choreographed by Michel Fokine, The Firebird was the first of several collaborations between Stravinsky and Ballets Russes director Sergei Diaghilev. Prince Ivan, the ballet's protagonist, captures the mythical Firebird, who pledges a feather to Ivan in exchange for her freedom. Ivan later stumbles upon 13 princesses performing the "Dance of the Golden Apples." Ivan follows them back to the castle of Kashchei the Immortal, who has enchanted and imprisoned them. Kashchei, whose magic is represented by a recurring descending chromatic motif, sends bewitched monsters to attack Ivan. Ivan uses the feather to summon the Firebird, who uses her magic to make the monsters perform an "Infernal Dance" before lulling them to sleep with a "Berceuse." While the monsters sleep, Ivan discovers the egg that preserves Kashchei's power inside a tree trunk and destroys it, breaking Kashchei's spell. Ivan frees the princesses, marrying one of them in the ballet's 7/4 finale. Stravinsky created three versions of the ballet suite for a smaller orchestra, which were published in 1911, 1919, and 1945.

The Creatures of Prometheus (Die Geschöpfe des Prometheus) (1801) by Ludwig van Beethoven

Choreographer Salvatore Viganò asked Beethoven to write the music for The Creatures of Prometheus for a performance for Austrian empress Maria Theresa. In the ballet, two statues come to life; Prometheus then takes them to Parnassus and exposes them to "the passions of human existence." They learn music from Orpheus, tragedy and comedy from the Muses, and dance from Pan and Bacchus. The ballet's overture, like Beethoven's First Symphony, begins with dissonant chords giving way into a lilting melody. Its finale contains a theme Beethoven would use in his "Eroica" Symphony (No. 3) and his Op. 35, the Eroica Variations for piano.

Daphnis and Chloe (Daphnis et Chloé) (1912) by Maurice Ravel.

Commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev and choreographed by Michel Fokine, Daphnis and Chloe is based on the only surviving work by Greek author Longus. The ballet starts in a sacred grotto, where Daphnis, Chloe, and other youths arrive to give an offering to three statues of the Nymphs. When cowherd Dorcon challenges Daphnis to a dance contest for a kiss from Chloe, Dorcon is humiliated. A group of pirates abduct Chloe and take her to their island, where she is forced to dance for their leader Bryaxis. The god Pan saves Chloe; after reuniting her with Daphnis, Pan is reminded of his own love for the nymph Syrinx. Daphnis and Chloe then reenact Pan's courtship of Syrinx. The rest of the company joins in a bacchanalian "Danse générale" featuring a wordless chorus. Ravel reworked the music from Daphnis and Chloe into two suites often performed in the concert hall.

Vedas

Consist strictly of four hymnbooks: the Rig (prayers in verse), Sama (musical melodies), Yajur (prose prayers), and Atharva (spells and incantations). Each Veda, though, also contains a Brahmana (interpretation), and the Vedas also incorporate treatises on meditation (Aranyakas) as well as the Upanishads. Written in an archaic form of Sanskrit by early Aryan invaders, possibly between 1500 and 1200 BC, the Vedas concentrate on sacrifices to deities, such as Indra (god of thunder), Varuna (cosmic order), and Agni (fire). The major gods Vishnu and Shiva appear as minor deities in the Vedas; their elevation, as well as the concept of karma, does not develop until the Upanishads.

Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Honus Wagner, Christy Mathewson, and Walter Johnson

Cooperstown

Appalachian Spring (1944) by Aaron Copland

Copland had several working names for Appalachian Spring while composing it, including House of Victory and Ballet for Martha. The latter name refers to its choreographer, Martha Graham, who took its ultimate title from a line in Hart Crane's poem "The Bridge." Graham's ballet depicts a group of pioneers in Pennsylvania, including a newlywed couple, building a farmhouse and encountering a Revivalist preacher and his flock. The ballet's original set was designed by Graham's frequent collaborator Isamu Noguchi. Because Appalachian Spring was first performed in the Library of Congress, Copland was forced to limit the accompanying ensemble to just 13 musicians. The best-known section of the ballet by far is Copland's use of the traditional Shaker hymn "Simple Gifts" in the penultimate section of the suite; the full ballet contains several more movements based on variations on the hymn.

The Barber of Seville (Gioacchino Rossini, Cesare Sterbini, 1816)

Count Almaviva loves Rosina, the ward of Dr. Bartolo. Figaro (who brags about his wit in Largo al factotum) promises to help him win the girl. He tries the guise of the poor student Lindoro, a drunken soldier, and then a replacement music teacher, all of which are penetrated by Dr. Bartolo. Eventually they succeed by climbing in with a ladder and bribing the notary who was to marry Rosina to Dr. Bartolo himself. This opera is also based on a work of Pierre de Beaumarchais and is a prequel to The Marriage of Figaro.

The Russian Five

César Cui, Aleksandr Borodin, Mily Balakirev, Modest Mussorgsky, and Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov

An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

David Hume

Don Giovanni (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Lorenzo Da Ponte, 1787)

Don Giovanni (the Italian form of "Don Juan") attempts to seduce Donna Anna, but is discovered by her father, the Commendatore, whom he kills in a swordfight. Later in the act, his servant Leporello recounts his master's 2,000-odd conquests in the "Catalogue Aria." Further swordfights and assignations occur prior to the final scene in which a statue of the Commendatore comes to life, knocks on the door to the room in which Don Giovanni is feasting, and then opens a chasm that takes him down to hell.

All for Love (or, the World Well Lost) (John Dryden, 1677)

Dryden wrote that he "professed to imitate the divine Shakespeare" in this play, which retells the story of the Roman leader Mark Antony and the Egyptian queen Cleopatra. In Dryden's version of the tale, the Roman general Ventidius actively tries to separate the two lovers, and encourages Antony to believe that Cleopatra has been secretly consorting with the Roman Dolabella. Another of the central characters in Dryden's play is Antony's wife Octavia, who travels to Alexandria to convince Antony to reconcile. At the end of the play, the eunuch Alexas falsely tells Antony that Cleopatra has committed suicide. Antony falls upon his sword, and the grief-stricken Cleopatra lets herself be bitten by a poisonous snake. The dead lovers are then eulogized by Serapion, a priest of Isis.

South Pacific (Richard Rodgers, Oscar Hammerstein II, and Joshua Logan, 1949)

During the Pacific Theater of World War II, Nellie Forbush, a U.S. Navy nurse, has fallen in love with Emile, a French plantation owner. Emile helps Lt. Cable carry out an espionage mission against the Japanese. The mission is successful, and Emile and Nellie reunite. Featuring the songs "Some Enchanted Evening," "There is Nothing Like a Dame," and "I'm Gonna Wash that Man Right Outta My Hair," it is adapted from James Michener's Tales of the South Pacific.

Volpone (Ben Jonson, 1605)

Each character in this Jonson play is based on an animal archetype. The greedy Venetian noble Volpone (named for the Italian for "fox") cajoles gifts from men named Corbaccio ("raven"), Corvino ("crow"), and Voltore ("vulture") by faking a fatal illness, and separately promising his fortune to each man. At the urging of Volpone's servant Mosca ("fly"), Corbaccio agrees to disinherit his own son Bonario by writing a new will that will name Volpone as sole heir. Volpone also engages in stratagems to sleep with Corvino's wife Celia, although his attempt to rape her is foiled by Bonario. In a subplot, the English traveler Peregrine humiliates a foolish fellow countryman named Sir Politick Would-Be. After a trial, Volpone fakes his death and names Mosca his sole heir; Mosca's ensuing behavior prompts Volpone to reveal himself, resulting in the punishment of all wrongdoing.

Fancy Free (1944) by Leonard Bernstein

Fancy Free, the first ballet choreographed by American dancer Jerome Robbins, was inspired by Paul Cadmus's painting The Fleet's In!. The ballet depicts the antics of three sailors on shore leave in New York City, where they meet two beautiful women. To determine which one will leave dateless, the sailors hold a dance contest, performing a galop, waltz, and a Cuban danzón. However, the women cannot choose a winner, and the sailors quickly start fighting. The women run away, but the men reconcile and the ballet ends with them crossing paths with another attractive woman and starting to pursue her. Fancy Free's success catapulted both Bernstein and Robbins to stardom; Bernstein later adapted Fancy Free into a musical and a film under the title On the Town; the musical features the song "New York, New York."

The Marriage of Figaro (Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Lorenzo Da Ponte, 1786)

Figaro and Susanna are servants of Count Almaviva who plan to marry, but this plan is complicated by the older Marcellina who wants to wed Figaro, the Count who has made unwanted advances to Susanna, and Don Bartolo who has a loan that Figaro has sworn he will repay before he marries. The issues are resolved with a series complicated schemes that involve impersonating other characters including the page Cherubino. The opera is based on a comedy by Pierre de Beaumarchais. Be careful: Many of the same characters also appear in The Barber of Seville!

Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2, by Marcel Duchamp

First painted in 1912, Nude Descending a Staircase created a sensation when shown at the 1913 Armory Show in New York, where one critic referred to it as "an explosion in a shingle factory." Painted in various shades of brown, Nude Descending a Staircase portrays a nude woman in a series of broken planes, capturing motion down several steps in a single image. The painting reflects a Cubist sense of division of space, and its portrait of motion echoes the work of the Futurists.

The Persistence of Memory, by Salvador Dalí

First shown in 1931, The Persistence of Memory is probably the most famous of surrealist paintings. The landscape of the scene echoes Port Lligat, Dalí's home. The ants, flies, clocks, and the Port Lligat landscape are motifs in many other Dalí paintings, and the trompe l'oeil depiction of figures is typical of his works. It currently belongs to MOMA; its 1951 companion piece, The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory, hangs at the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida.

"The Burial of the Dead," "A Game of Chess," "The Fire Sermon," "Death By Water," and "What the Thunder Said"

Five parts of "The Waste Land"

Hermitage

Founded in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1764 by Catherine the Great, its buildings include the Winter Palace, which was once the residence of Russia's tsars. Its most famous pieces include Rembrandt's The Return of the Prodigal Son and Henri Matisse's Red Room.

The Pirates of Penzance (W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan, 1879)

Frederic, having turned twenty-one, is released from his apprenticeship to the title pirates. Reaching shore for the first time, Frederic falls in love with Mabel, the daughter of Major-General Stanley. Frederic realizes that he was apprenticed until his twenty-first birthday, and, having been born on February 29, he must return to his apprenticeship. Mabel vows to wait for him. The Major-General and the police pursue the pirates, who surrender. The pirates are forgiven, and Mabel and Frederic reunite. As the work is actually a light opera, most of the songs are simply titled after their first lines; the most memorable ones include "Pour, oh pour, the pirate sherry" and "I am the very model of a modern Major-General."

Missa solmenis (in D major), op. 123 (1819-23) Beethoven

Generically, a "missa solemnis" ("solemn mass") is a setting of the Catholic liturgy on a more grand scale than a "missa brevis" ("short mass"). Although it uses the traditional text, Beethoven intended the work for concert performance rather than liturgical use. Beethoven became increasingly fascinated by the fugue during his third stylistic period; his Missa solemnis includes two immense examples that conclude the Gloria and Credo movements. The composer dedicated the work to his patron, the Austrian Archduke Rudolf. The Missa solemnis should not be confused with Beethoven's earlier C major mass, op. 86 (1807).

Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge

George Berkeley

George Orwell (1903-1950, United Kingdom)

George Orwell (the pen name of Eric Arthur Blair) condemned the totalitarian government of Joseph Stalin in the fantasy Animal Farm and the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Orwell's speculative fiction was part of a wide-ranging body of work that also included attacks on British colonialism (the essay "Shooting an Elephant" and the novel Burmese Days), first-hand accounts of war (Homage to Catalonia) and poverty (Down and Out in Paris and London, The Road to Wigan Pier), and works of cultural criticism (the essay "Politics and the English Language"). After taking part in the Spanish Civil War and growing alarmed at the authoritarian nature of Russian communism, Orwell wrote the 1945 novel Animal Farm as an allegory of the Russian Revolution and its aftermath. Animal Farm describes barnyard animals who revolt against their owner, and try to create a more equitable society under the leadership of the pig Snowball, who develops principles of "Animalism" such as "Four legs good, two legs bad." However, Snowball is soon ousted by his fellow pig Napoleon, who exploits the other animals, sends the horse Boxer to be slaughtered, and degrades the principles of Animalism to "all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." Four years later, Orwell imagined a future Britain (known as Oceania) under the harsh rule of "Big Brother" in the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. Winston Smith and his lover Julia try to rebel against Big Brother, but are tortured into compliance in the Ministry of Love. Nineteen Eighty-Four also described the distortion of the English language for political purposes ("Newspeak"), and introduced many words and phrases that are still used with reference to oppressive governments (thoughtcrime, doublethink, memory hole, "we've always been at war with Eastasia," "war is peace," "Big Brother is watching you").

Guernica, by Pablo Picasso

Guernica was a Basque town bombed by the Germans during the Spanish Civil War in April 1937. Picasso had already been commissioned to paint a mural for the Spanish Pavilion at the World's Fair, and he completed his massive, black, white, and grey anti-war mural by early June 1937. Picasso's Cubist approach to portraying the figures adds to the sense of destruction and chaos. Guernica was in the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York until 1981, when it was returned to the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Spain.

Herbert George Wells (1866-1946, United Kingdom)

H. G. Wells used speculative fiction to explore the social issues of his day from a left-wing perspective. In the 1895 novella The Time Machine, Wells wrote about a "Time Traveller" who visits the year 802,701 A.D, and learns that humanity has diverged into two different species—the surface-dwelling Eloi, who are gentle and beautiful but intellectually limited, and the subterranean Morlocks, who resemble apes but are strong and clever enough to use the Eloi as livestock. The Time Traveller speculates that the Eloi are descended from aristocrats who were once served by the ancestors of the Morlocks. After writing about time travel, Wells helped to establish another of science fiction's key themes by depicting an alien invasion in the 1897 novel The War of the Worlds. The anonymous narrator of The War of the Worlds observes a Martian spaceship that lands in Surrey, and flees the "Tripods" and "Black Smoke" that the Martians use as weapons in the conquest of Earth. The invaders easily overcome human resistance, but eventually perish from lack of immunity to Earth microbes. Wells also wrote several novels about researchers who use science to pursue unethical goals. In the 1896 Wells novel The Island of Dr. Moreau, the shipwrecked Edward Prendick discovers that the title vivisectionist performs painful experiments to transform animals into human-like "Beast Folk." A year later Wells published The Invisible Man, which centers on a student of physics named Griffin who plans to use his invisibility to enact a "reign of terror." However, Griffin's invisibility makes it difficult for him to exist in society (he must cover himself with clothes and thick bandages if he wishes to be seen), and he is eventually killed by an angry crowd.

Talmud

Hebrew for "instruction," the Talmud is a codification of Jewish oral and written law, based on the Torah. It consists of the Mishnah (the laws themselves), and the Gemara (scholarly commentary on the Mishnah). The Gemara developed in two Judaic centers: Palestine and Babylonia, so there are two Talmuds (Palestinian and Babylonian), the latter considered more authoritative by Orthodox Jews. Rabbis and lay scholars finished the Babylonian Talmud around 600.

A Raisin in the Sun (Lorraine Hansberry, 1959)

Her father's 1940 court fight against racist housing laws provided the basis for Hansberry's play about the Younger family, who attempt to move into an all-white Chicago suburb but are confronted by discrimination. The first play by an African-American woman to be performed on Broadway, it also tore down the racial stereotyping found in other works of the time. The title comes from the Langston Hughes poem "Harlem" (often called "A Dream Deferred").

Iago, from The Tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice

Iago is the "ancient," or standard-bearer, of the general Othello, and is passed over for a promotion to lieutenant in favor of the less-experienced Michael Cassio. In addition, Iago believes that his wife, Emilia, may have cheated on him with Othello. Consequently, Iago vows revenge. At the start of the play, Iago and his associate Roderigo alert the Venetian senator Brabantio that Brabantio's daughter, Desdemona, has eloped with Othello. After Desdemona testifies that she married Othello willingly, the Duke of Venice places Othello in charge of defending Cyprus. On the island, Iago ingratiates himself with Othello, and deceitfully warns the general against the "green-eyed monster" of jealousy. Iago then places Desdemona's handkerchief in Cassio's room, causing Othello to believe that Desdemona and Cassio are having an affair. Once Othello has murdered Desdemona, Emilia exposes Iago's plot. Before killing himself, Othello stabs Iago, who survives to be arrested by Cassio.

Museo del Prado

In 1785, Spanish King Charles III commissioned a building to house a natural history museum, but his grandson Ferdinand VII completed the Prado as an art museum in 1819. Deriving its name from the Spanish for "meadow," the Prado's holdings include not only what is universally regarded as the best collection of Spanish paintings, but also a number of works from Flemish masters, such as Diego Velázquez's Las Meninas, Francisco Goya's The Third of May, 1808, and Hieronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights.

Jesus Christ Superstar (Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, 1971)

In the week leading up to the crucifixion, Judas grows angry with Christ's claims of divinity, and Mary Magdalene laments her romantic feelings for Christ. Judas hangs himself, and Christ, though frustrated with God, accepts his fate. Among the songs in this musical are "I Don't Know How to Love Him," "Gethsemane," and "Trial Before Pilate."

She Stoops to Conquer (or, The Mistakes of a Night) (Oliver Goldsmith, 1773)

In this enduringly popular comedy, a wealthy gentleman's son named Charles Marlow is sent to visit the country home of Mr. Hardcastle, who has a beautiful daughter named Kate. On the way, Marlow and his companion George Hastings stop at an alehouse where Kate's half-brother, Tony Lumpkin, tricks them into thinking they are miles from their destination. Tony directs the travelers to Mr. Hardcastle's house, claiming it is an inn. There, Marlow and Hastings rudely treat the Hardcastles as innkeepers, which the Hardcastles patiently endure for the sake of their friendship with Marlow's wealthy father. At the same time, Kate discovers that Marlow is timid and reserved around high-born ladies, but is rakishly charming to lower-class women. Kate therefore "stoops" to impersonating a barmaid in order to woo Marlow. Meanwhile, Mrs. Hardcastle attempts to make her niece Constance Neville marry Tony. Constance, however, is secretly engaged to Hastings, and the pair try to obtain a casket of jewels that belongs to Constance, but which Mrs. Hardcastle carefully guards. In the end, Kate wins Marlow, and Tony discovers that he is older than the Hardcastles have led him to believe. Upon discovering he is an adult, Tony refuses the arranged marriage, freeing Constance to marry Hastings.

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding

John Locke

Salome (Richard Strauss, Hugo Oscar Wilde, 1905)

Jokanaan (a.k.a. John the Baptist) is imprisoned in the dungeons of King Herod. Herod's 15-year-old step-daughter Salome becomes obsessed with the prisoner's religious passion and is incensed when he ignores her advances. Later in the evening Herod orders Salome to dance for him (the "Dance of the Seven Veils"), but she refuses until he promises her "anything she wants." She asks for the head of Jokanaan and eventually receives it, after which a horrified Herod orders her to be killed; his soldiers crush her with their shields.

The Rivals (Richard Brinsley Sheridan, 1775)

Like Sheridan's later play The School for Scandal, The Rivals offers a satirical take on manners and courtship. The play's heroine is Lydia Languish, a wealthy heiress who loves reading novels, and who wants her own life to imitate the tropes of romantic fiction. To win Lydia's heart, the wealthy Captain Jack Absolute pretends to be the impoverished "Ensign Beverley." Lydia is also desired by the "country gentleman" Bob Acres and the Irish baronet Sir Lucius O'Trigger, the latter of whom sends letters via the maid Lucy. However, O'Trigger's letters are actually read and answered by Lydia's guardian Mrs. Malaprop, who is infatuated with O'Trigger and uses the pseudonym "Delia" in her correspondence. (Mrs. Malaprop's comical speech patterns gave rise to the English word "malapropism," which refers to the accidental substitution of one word for another that sounds similar, but has a different meaning.) Jack's father Sir Anthony Absolute eventually exposes Jack's deception, infuriating Lydia. Jack then has an abortive duel with Sir Lucius, leading Mrs. Malaprop to admit that she is "Delia." At the end of the play, Lydia and Jack reconcile, as do their friends, the quarreling lovers Julia and Faulkland.

Rijksmuseum ["Rike's museum"]

Located in Amsterdam, this is the national museum of The Netherlands. Currently housed in a Gothic Revival building designed by P. J. H. Cuypers and completed in 1885, its most distinguished works include Rembrandt's Night Watch, Franz Hals's The Merry Drinker, and Jan Vermeer's The Kitchen Maid.

Uffizi Gallery

Located in Florence, Italy, the Uffizi Gallery was originally designed by Giorgio Vasari to serve as offices for the Florentine magistrates under Cosimo de Medici--hence the name uffizi, meaning "offices". After Cosimo I died in 1574, the new grand duke, Francis I, commissioned the conversion of its top floor into a galley. Its outstanding Renaissance holdings include The Birth of Venus and La Primavera, both by Sandro Botticelli, and Titian's Venus of Urbino.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Located on the edge of Central Park and colloquially known as "the Met," its main building on Fifth Avenue was designed by Richard Morris Hunt. Its collection includes El Greco's View of Toledo, Jacques-Louis David's The Death of Socrates, and John Singer Sargent's Madame X.

The Art Institute of Chicago

Located on the western edge of Grant Park in Chicago, the main building of the Art Institute was built for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition and features two lion statues at its entrance. It has an outstanding collection of French Impressionist and American works such as Georges Seurat's A Sunday on La Grande Jatte-1884, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec's At the Moulin Rouge, Grant Wood's American Gothic, and Edward Hopper's Nighthawks.

Swan Lake (Lebedinoye ozero) (1867) by Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky

Many modern performances of Swan Lake are based on a revised version of Tchaikovsky's score prepared after Tchaikovsky's death by Marius Petipa, Lev Ivanov, and Riccardo Drigo. The ballet opens at Prince Siegfried's 21st birthday party, where Siegfried's mother scolds him for not finding a wife; she plans for him to choose a spouse at a ball the following evening. After the "Dance of the Goblets," Siegfried, his tutor Wolfgang, and his friend Benno go hunting. They are about to shoot a swan when it turns into the beautiful Odette. Odette reveals she was cursed by the sorcerer von Rothbart to turn into a swan during the daytime. The curse can only be broken if one who has never loved before declares his love for her. Odette and the other victims of von Rothbart's curse live on the title lake, which was created by Odette's mother's tears. Their presence is usually signified by one of the ballet's recurring musical themes, a B-minor motif for oboe and harp. Odette and Siegfried begin to fall in love, but morning breaks and Odette returns to her swan form. At the palace, the ball begins with nationalistic dances, including Neapolitan and Hungarian dances and a mazurka. Von Rothbart arrives with his daughter Odile, disguised to look like Odette. (Odette and Odile are normally played by the same ballerina, who wears white as Odette and black as Odile.) They successfully trick Siegfried into declaring his love for Odile, dooming Odette to live as a swan forever. He hurries back to the lake, where he and Odette drown themselves, killing von Rothbart in the process. The exact ending varies from production to production, with some happier than others.

The Sound of Music (Richard Rodgers; Oscar Hammerstein II; Howard Lindsey & Russel Crouse; 1959)

Maria, a young woman studying to be a nun in Nazi-occupied Austria, becomes governess to the seven children of Captain von Trapp. She teaches the children to sing ("My Favorite Things," "Do-Re-Mi"), and she and the Captain fall in love and get married. After Maria and the von Trapps give a concert for the Nazis ("Edelweiss"), they escape Austria ("Climb Ev'ry Mountain"). It was adapted into an Academy Award-winning 1965 film starring Julie Andrews.

Mary Queen of Scots

Mary Stuart, who was the queen of Scotland during the first part of Elizabeth's reign.

The Crucible (Arthur Miller, 1953)

Miller chose the 1692 Salem witch trials as his setting, but the work is really an allegorical protest against the McCarthy anti-Communist "witch-hunts" of the early 1950s. In the story, Elizabeth Proctor fires servant Abigail Williams after she finds out Abigail had an affair with her husband. In response, Abigail accuses Elizabeth of witchcraft. She stands trial and is acquitted, but then another girl accuses her husband, John, and as he refuses to turn in others, he is killed, along with the old comic figure, Giles Corey. Also notable: Judge Hathorne is a direct ancestor of the author Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Guys and Dolls (Frank Loesser, Jo Swerling, and Abe Burrows, 1950)

Nathan Detroit runs an underground craps game but needs a location. To make enough money to use the Biltmore garage for his game, he bets notorious gambler Sky Masterson that Sky can't convince a girl of Nathan's choice to go to Havana with him for dinner; Nathan chooses the righteous missionary Sarah Brown. Sky wins the bet but ends up having to bring a dozen sinning gamblers to a revival meeting. As Nathan attends the meeting, his long-suffering fiancé Adelaide, a nightclub dancer, is increasingly frustrated that their fourteen-year engagement has not led to marriage. At the meeting, Sky bets a large amount of money against the gamblers' souls, winning, and eventually convincing Sarah to marry him and Nathan to marry Adelaide. Adapted from short stories by Damon Runyon, the musical includes songs like "A Bushel and a Peck," "Luck Be a Lady," and "Sit Down, You're Rockin' the Boat."

The Nutcracker (Shchelkunchik) (1892) by Peter Tchaikovsky

Now a Christmastime favorite, The Nutcracker was choreographed by Marius Petipa and Lev Ivanov. The plot, based on an E. T. A. Hoffmann story, opens at a Christmas party, where Drosselmeyer gives his daughter Clara a toy nutcracker, which her brother Fritz soon breaks. At night, the living room becomes a battleground between the evil Mouse King and toys and gingerbread soldiers, led by the Nutcracker. Clara throws her slipper at the Mouse King, distracting him long enough for the Nutcracker to kill him. The Nutcracker then turns into a prince and leads Clara into a magical forest where the "Waltz of the Snowflakes" marks the end of act one. In act two Clara and the prince arrive in the Land of Sweets, where they witness dances representing delicacies from around the world, including Arabian coffee and Spanish chocolate, as well as the Chinese "Dance of the Reed Flutes" and the Russian "Trepak." Mother Ginger has a group of clowns ("Polcinelles") emerge from her skirt to dance before the orchestra plays the "Waltz of the Flowers" and the Sugar Plum Fairy and the Cavalier dance a pas de deux. Finally, the Sugar Plum Fairy dances alone to music that marks one of the first orchestral uses of the celesta.

Long Day's Journey Into Night (Eugene O'Neill, 1956)

O'Neill wrote it fifteen years earlier and presented the manuscript to his third wife with instructions that it not be produced until 25 years after his death. Actually produced three years after he died, it centers on Edmund and the rest of the Tyrone family but is really an autobiographical account of the dysfunction of O'Neill's own family, set on one day in August 1912. The father is a miserly actor, while the mother is a morphine addict, and the brother is a drunk; they argue and cut each other down throughout the play.

Oklahoma! (Richard Rodgers; Oscar Hammerstein II; Oscar Hammerstein II; 1943)

On the eve of Oklahoma's statehood, cowboy Curly McLain and sinister farmhand Judd compete for the love of Aunt Eller's niece, Laurey. Judd falls on his own knife after attacking Curly, and Curly and Laurey get married. A subplot concerns Ado Annie, who chooses cowboy Will Parker over the Persian peddler Ali Hakim. Featuring the songs "Oh What a Beautiful Mornin'" and "Oklahoma," it is often considered the first modern book musical.

Margaret Atwood (1939-present, Canada)

One of Canada's most prominent authors of literary fiction, Atwood has written multiple works that combine speculative elements with psychological realism. In 1985 Atwood published The Handmaid's Tale, which portrays a dystopian near-future in which the United States has been replaced by the patriarchal Republic of Gilead. The Handmaid's Tale is narrated by Offred, whose role as a "handmaid" is to bear children for "the Commander" and his wife, Serena Joy. Offred flees her oppressive existence with the help of Nick, a chauffeur who claims to be a member of the underground Mayday resistance movement. In an epilogue set in the year 2195, the archivist Professor Pieixoto discusses Offred's unknown fate. Atwood later wrote a trilogy set in a post-apocalyptic world where corporations have created bioengineered diseases and people (Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood, and MaddAddam). In addition to her speculative works, Atwood has also written historical fiction (Alias Grace and The Blind Assassin, the latter of which contains a character who is a science fiction author), novels about the relationships between female friends (Cat's Eye and The Robber Bride), and a retelling of Homer's Odyssey from a female point of view (The Penelopiad).

Oresteia (Aeschylus, c. 458 BC)

Originally a four-play cycle, only three works (Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Eumenides) survive. (A "satyr play" entitled Proteus has been lost.) Agamemnon, the first play in the trilogy, describes the murder of Agamemnon and his concubine Cassandra by Agamemnon's adulterous wife, Clytemnestra, and her lover, Aegisthus. The Libation Bearers continues the story, describing how Agamemnon's children, Orestes and Electra, avenge their father by murdering Aegisthus and Clytemnestra. However, the Furies relentlessly pursue Orestes for his matricide, leading to the events of The Eumenides. In this third play, Orestes appeals to Athena, who organizes a trial for him (with Apollo as a defense counsel). Ultimately, when Apollo argues that the man is more important than the woman in a marriage, Orestes is acquitted, and the Furies are renamed the Eumenides, or "The Kindly Ones." The cycle has been retold numerous times in modern literature, notably by Eugene O'Neill in Mourning Becomes Electra and by Jean-Paul Sartre in The Flies.

Tate

Originally known as the National Gallery of British Art when opened in 1897, it was renamed for its benefactor, sugar tycoon Sir Henry Tate. The original Tate Gallery has been renamed Tate Britain, and there are now three additional branches: Tate Modern in London, Tate Liverpool, and Tate St. Ives in Cornwall. The Tate awards the Turner Prize, a highly publicized award for British artists, and its collection includes Whaam! by Roy Lichtenstein and many works by J. M. W. Turner.

I and the Village, by Marc Chagall

Painted in 1911, I and the Village is among Chagall's earliest surviving paintings. It is a dreamlike scene that includes many motifs common to Chagall, notably the lamb and peasant life. In addition to the two giant faces—a green face on the right and a lamb's head on the left—other images include a milkmaid, a reaper, an upside-down peasant woman, a church, and a series of houses, some of them upside-down. I and the Village is currently housed at MOMA.

The Glass Menagerie (Tennessee Williams, 1944)

Partly based on Williams' own family, the drama is narrated by Tom Wingfield, who supports his mother Amanda and his crippled sister Laura (who takes refuge from reality in her glass animals). At Amanda's insistence, Tom brings his friend Jim O'Connor to the house as a gentleman caller for Laura. While O'Connor is there, the horn on Laura's glass unicorn breaks, bringing her into reality, until O'Connor tells the family that he is already engaged. Laura returns to her fantasy world, while Tom abandons the family after fighting with Amanda.

Louvre

Perhaps the world's most famous museum, the Musée du Louvre is located on the right bank of the Seine River in the heart of Paris. Housed in the Louvre Palace, which was a royal residence until 1682, the Louvre was permanently opened to the public as a museum by the French Revolutionary government in 1793. During renovations carried out in the 1980s, a controversial steel-and-glass pyramid designed by I. M. Pei was installed at its entrance. Works housed within the Sully, Richelieu, and Denon Wings of the Louvre include ancient Greek sculptures such as the Winged Victory of Samothrace and the Venus de Milo, Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, and Eugène Delacroix's Liberty Leading the People.

Petrushka (1911, revised 1947) by Igor Stravinsky

Petrushka has a framing story with opening and closing scenes at a Shrovetide fair. The main story is about three puppets: Petrushka, the Ballerina, and the Moor, who are brought to life by the Magician (in some translations, the Charlatan). Petrushka falls in love with the Ballerina, who is smitten with the Moor. The love triangle ends with the Moor killing Petrushka with an axe after the "Dance of the Wet-Nurses" and the "Dance of the Peasant and Bear." The Magician claims that no harm was done, since Petrushka is only a puppet, but at the ballet's end Petrushka's ghost appears and haunts the Magician. Musically, it is most famous for its "Petrushka chord," a dissonant combination of C major and F sharp major triads played by the clarinets.

Dao de Jing (or Tao Te Ching or The Way and Its Power)

Philosophical text behind Daoism, a religion-philosophy founded by the semi-legendary Laozi in the sixth century BC, though scholars now believe it was written about 200 years later, during the Warring States period of the late Zhou Dynasty. The Dao de Jing instructs adherents in restraint and passiveness, allowing the natural order of the universe to take precedent.

faith (Shahadah), prayer (Salat), giving charity to those in need (Zakat), fasting during the month of Ramadan (Sawm), and the pilgrimage to Mecca (Hajj)

Pillars of Islam

tetrahedron (4 triangular sides), cube (6 square sides), octahedron (8 triangular sides), dodecahedron (12 pentagonal sides), and icosahedron (20 triangular sides)

Platonic Solids

Campbell's Soup Can, by Andy Warhol

Pop Art parodies (or perhaps reflects) a world in which celebrities, brand names, and media images have replaced the sacred; Warhol's series of Campbell's Soup paintings may be the best illustration of this. Like the object itself, the paintings were often done by the mass-produceable form of serigraphy (silk screening). Also like the subject, the Warhol soup can painting existed in many varieties, with different types of Campbell's Soup or numbers of cans; painting 32 or 100 or 200 identical cans further emphasized the aspect of mass production aspect in the work. The same approach underlies Warhol's familiar series of prints of Marilyn Monroe, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and other pop culture figures.

Romeo and Juliet (1938) by Sergei Prokofiev

Prokofiev composed Romeo and Juliet for the Bolshoi Ballet. Prokofiev originally intended to substitute a happier ending for Shakespeare's tragic one — stating "dead people cannot dance" — but conductor Yuri Fayer talked him out of it (in significant part for political reasons). The "Dance of the Knights" (also called "Montagues and Capulets") is an often-excerpted portion of the ballet noted for its pulsating, driving rhythm, while the Gavotte, or "Departure of the Guests," reuses a theme from Prokofiev's First Symphony (the "Classical"). The score, which calls for such nonstandard instruments as a tenor saxophone, maracas, tambourine, and celesta, was later transformed into three orchestral suites, as well as a set of ten works for solo piano. (The score underwent further revisions — not by Prokofiev himself — in 1940; choreographer Mark Morris has performed Prokofiev's original version with the "happier" ending.)

Apocrypha

Protestants and Jews assign lower authority to the Apocrypha because it was written between 300 and 100 BC, but Catholics and Orthodox Christians consider the books that make up the Apocrypha to be "deuterocanonical," meaning that they are just as important and divinely-inspired as other parts of the Old Testament. "Apocryphal" in general means "something outside an accepted canon," and, in particular, in ancient Greek it meant "hidden things." Scholars differ as to which books make up the Apocrypha, but Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach (or Ecclesiasticus), and Baruch are almost always included.

Proteus, from The Two Gentlemen of Verona

Proteus begins the play as an innocent lover, but develops into the primary antagonist after he visits his friend Valentine in Milan, and becomes infatuated with Valentine's love, Silvia. Although Proteus has sworn that he will be faithful to a woman in Verona named Julia, he breaks his promise and tries to win Silvia for himself. To this end, Proteus betrays Valentine by telling Silvia's father, the duke, that Valentine and Silvia plan to elope. After the duke exiles Valentine, Silvia rejects Proteus because of his treachery towards his friend, and his unfaithfulness to Julia. When Silvia escapes to the woods to find Valentine, Proteus follows her and rescues her from outlaws. Silvia continues to reject Proteus, who threatens to rape her ("I'll force thee yield to my desire") before Valentine intervenes. Proteus repents, and Julia, who has been disguised as Proteus's male page, reveals herself. Proteus then reunites with Julia and resumes his friendship with Valentine, whom the duke permits to marry Silvia.

Book of Mormon

Published in 1830 by the founder of the Mormon Church, Joseph Smith. Mormons believe that the prophet Moroni revealed the location of the Book of Mormon to Smith, and then Smith translated it from a "reformed Egyptian" language. The Book of Mormon is inscribed on thin gold plates, and documents the history of a group of Hebrews who migrated to America around 600 BC. This group divided into two tribes: the Lamanites (ancestors of American Indians), and the highly civilized Nephites, a chosen people instructed by Jesus but killed by the Lamanites around 421.

Regan and the Duke of Cornwall, and Goneril and the Duke of Albany, from King Lear

Regan and Goneril are the elderly King Lear's two evil daughters. After Lear bequeaths his kingdom to them, they conspire to undermine Lear's remaining power and defeat Cordelia, Lear's sole loyal daughter. Angered by the treatment that he has received from his heirs, Lear leaves Regan's home in the middle of a thunderstorm. Gloucester, who desires Lear's reinstatement, aids Cordelia's invading army; he is exposed, and Regan and Cornwall gouge Gloucester's eyes out. While Albany and Cornwall arrange their armies to fight Cordelia, Regan and Goneril both romantically pursue the villainous Edmund. This love triangle results in Goneril killing Regan with poison. Goneril also tries to have Albany killed, but commits suicide when the plot is exposed. Cordelia is captured and executed, and Lear dies of grief soon afterward, leaving the redeemed Albany and Edmund's half-brother Edgar to take charge of the realm

Rent (Jonathan Larson, 1996)

Rent tells the story of impoverished artists living in the East Village of New York City during the AIDS crisis circa 1990. It is narrated by filmmaker Mark Cohen, whose ex-girlfriend Maureen just left him for a woman (Joanne), and whose recovering heroin addict roommate Roger meets the dying stripper Mimi. Mark and Roger's former roommate and itinerant philosopher/hacker Collins comes to town, where he is robbed, then saved by the transvestite Angel, with whom he moves in. Meanwhile, the former fourth roommate of Mark, Roger, and Collins - Benny - has married into a wealthy family and bought the building Mark and Roger now live in, from which he wants to evict them. An adaptation of Puccini's opera La bohéme, Rent won the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and includes songs like "La Vie Bohéme" and "Seasons of Love".

West Side Story (Leonard Bernstein; Stephen Sondheim; Arthur Laurents; 1957)

Riff and Bernardo lead two rival gangs: the blue-collar Jets and the Sharks from Puerto Rico. Tony, a former Jet, falls in love with the Bernardo's sister Maria and vows to stop the fighting, but he kills Bernardo after Bernardo kills Riff in a "rumble." Maria's suitor Chino shoots Tony, and the two gangs come together. Notable songs include "America," "Tonight," "Somewhere," "I Feel Pretty," and "Gee, Officer Krupke." Adapted from Romeo and Juliet, it was made into an Academy Award-winning 1961 film starring Natalie Wood.

Avesta (Zend-Avesta)

Sacred scripture of Zoroastrianism. It consists of five parts: Gathas (poems written by Zoroaster), Visparat (homages to spiritual leaders), Vendidad (legal and medical doctrine), Yashts (hymns to angels and heroes), and Khurda (lesser rituals and hymns). The Gathas may be as old as the 7th century BC, when Zoroaster is thought to have lived, but most of the Avesta was put together by the Sassanid Persian dynasty, between 200 and 640. Zoroastrianism centers on the eternal struggle between a good entity (Ahura Mazda, or Ormuzd) and its evil counterpart (Angra Mainyu, or Ahriman); the religion is still practiced by about 120,000 Parsees in Bombay and a few thousand adherents in Iran and Iraq.

Bhagavad-Gita

Sanskrit for "The Song of God," it is a poem found in Book Six of the Hindu epic Mahabharata. Likely formalized in the 1st or 2nd century, the Bhagavad-Gita begins on the eve of a battle, when the prince Arjuna asks his charioteer Krishna (an avatar of Vishnu) about responsibility in dealing with the suffering that impending battle will cause. Krishna tells Arjuna that humans possess a divine self within a material form, and that Arjuna's duty is to love God and do what is right without thinking of personal gain--some of the main tenets of Hinduism.

The Three-Cornered Hat (El sombrero de tres picos) (1919) by Manuel de Falla

Sergei Diaghilev commissioned this ballet based on a novella by Pedro Antonio de Alarcón; the costumes were designed by Pablo Picasso. The title headgear is worn by the ballet's main villain, a magistrate (corregidor), who attempts to seduce the main female character, a miller's wife. The miller and his wife then trick the magistrate: the miller's wife flirtatiously offers the magistrate some grapes, but then leads him on a chase past the miller, hiding in a bush, who beats the magistrate. That night, the magistrate sends a deputy to arrest the miller on falsified charges; after the arrest, the opening of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony plays to signify the "knocking of fate." The magistrate goes to the miller's home, but falls into a river, causing the miller's wife to flee. The magistrate then undresses and gets into the miller's bed; the miller, having escaped from prison, decides to seduce the magistrate's wife and secretly switches clothes with him. The magistrate, dressed in the miller's clothes, is then arrested by his deputy. The miller and his wife arrive and toss the magistrate up and down in a blanket.

Every Man in His Humour (Ben Jonson, 1598)

Set in Jonson's contemporary London, this comedy is a "humours play," in which each character is a stock type governed by a corresponding "humour" (as theorized in Greek medicine). The plot chiefly concerns Knowell, an old gentleman who worries that his son Edward is becoming too involved with Wellbred, a fun-loving gallant Londoner. Knowell secretly follows his son to London; meanwhile, Wellbred's brother-in-law, the merchant Kitely, worries that Wellbred's behavior will give his business a bad reputation, all the while suspecting his own wife of infidelity. Various subplots involve Knowell's mischievous servant Brainworm, the braggart-captain Bobadill, and two friends of Wellbred who try to be fashionably and poetically melancholic. In the end, the kindly Justice Clement settles all of the grievances amassed over the course of the play. A follow-up, Every Man Out of His Humour, was written one year later.

The Little Foxes (Lillian Hellman, 1939)

Set on a plantation in 1900, Hellman attempts to show that by this time any notion of antebellum Southern gentility has been destroyed by modern capitalism and industrialism. Three Hubbard siblings (Regina and her two brothers) scheme to earn vast riches at the expense of other family members, such as Regina's husband Horace and their daughter Alexandra. The title is taken from the Old Testament Song of Solomon: "the little foxes that spoil the vines."

Lyman, Balmer, Paschen, Brackett, and Pfund

Spectral Lines

Sweeney Todd: the Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Stephen Sondheim and Hugh Wheeler, 1979)

Sweeney Todd, a barber, returns to London from Australia, where the evil Judge Turpin, who lusted after his wife, unjustly imprisoned him. Sweeney's daughter, Joanna, escapes Turpin - of whom she had been a ward during her father's incarceration - and falls in love with the sailor Anthony Hope. A vengeful Sweeney begins murdering his customers, and his neighbor, Mrs. Lovett, bakes them into meat pies. Sweeney kills the Judge but, in his fury, accidentally kills a mad beggar woman who was really his long-lost wife. Mrs. Lovett's shop boy, Tobias, grows scared and kills Sweeney. Its famously complex score includes "The Ballad of Sweeney Todd," "The Worst Pies in London," "Johanna," and "God, That's Good," but the show is nearly sung through and it is sometimes nontrivial to identify distinct songs within it.

The Music Man (Meredith Wilson and Franklin Lacey, 1957)

Swindler Harold Hill attempts to con the families of River City, Iowa by starting a boys' band. While there, he falls in love with the librarian Marian Paroo. The scheme is exposed, but the town forgives him. Notable songs include "Trouble" (the origin of the phrase "trouble in River City") "Seventy-Six Trombones," "Shipoopi," "Gary, Indiana," and "Till There was You."

"The Waste Land"

T. S. Eliot's 1922 masterpiece that has the five following parts: "The Burial of the Dead," "A Game of Chess," "The Fire Sermon," "Death By Water," and "What the Thunder Said."

Fiddler on the Roof (Jerry Bock; Sheldon Harnick; Joseph Stein; 1964)

Tevye is a lowly Jewish milkman in Tsarist Russia ("If I Were a Rich Man"), and his daughters are anxious to get married ("Matchmaker"). Tzeitel marries the tailor Motel ("Sunrise, Sunset," "The Bottle Dance"), Hodel gets engaged to the radical student Perchik, and Chava falls in love with a Russian named Fyedka. The families leave their village, Anatevka, after a pogrom. It is adapted from Tevye and his Daughters by Sholem Aleichem.

Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, "Emperor," op. 73 (1809-10) Beethoven

The "Emperor" concerto, composed near the end of Beethoven's "heroic decade," is the last concerto of any type that he completed. Beethoven defies traditional concerto structure in the opening movement by placing the most significant solo material for the piano at the beginning of the movement, rather than near its end. Beethoven did not give the work its title; it was first dubbed "Emperor" by Johann Cramer, who first published the work in England. The "Emperor," which was premiered by pianist Friedrich Schneider, is the only one of Beethoven's piano concertos that the composer himself never performed publicly.

Madama Butterfly (Giacomo Puccini, unimportant librettists, 1904)

The American naval lieutenant Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton is stationed in Nagasaki where, with the help of the broker Goro, he weds the young girl Cio-Cio-San (Madame Butterfly) with a marriage contract with a cancellation clause. He later returns to America leaving Cio-Cio-San to raise their son "Trouble" (whom she will rename "Joy" upon his return). When Pinkerton and his new American wife Kate do return, Cio-Cio-San gives them her son and stabs herself with her father's dagger. The opera is based on a play by David Belasco.

The Sign of Four

The Arthur Conan Doyle novel about the theft of the Agra treasure by four men including Jonathan Small.

Christina's World, by Andrew Wyeth

The Christina of the title is Christina Olson, who lived near the Wyeths' summer home in Cushing, Maine. In the 1948 painting, Christina lays in the cornfield wearing a pink dress, facing away from the viewer, her body partly twisted and hair blowing slightly in the wind. In the far distance is a three-story farmhouse with dual chimneys and two dormers, along with two sheds to its right. A distant barn is near the top middle of the painting. One notable aspect is the subtle pattern of sunlight, which strikes the farmhouse obliquely from the right, shines in the wheel tracks in the upper right, and casts very realistic-looking shadows on Christina's dress. The Olson house was the subject of many Andrew Wyeth paintings for 30 years, and it was named to the National Register of Historic Places for its place in Christina's World.

Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

The Guggenheim Bilbao opened in 1997 and is, like its sister instutition in New York, less famous for its collection than its building, a Frank Gehry design that seems to be an abstract sculpture all its own. Richard Serra's The Matter of Time is permanently installed here.

Cats (Andrew Lloyd Webber; T.S. Eliot; T.S. Eliot)

The Jellicle tribe of cats roams the streets of London. They introduce the audience to various members: Rum Tum Tugger, Mungojerrie, Rumpleteazer, Mr. Mistoffelees, and Old Deuteronomy. Old Deuteronomy must choose a cat to be reborn, and he chooses the lowly Grizabella after she sings "Memory." It is adapted from Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot.

The Mikado (Arthur Sullivan; W.S. Gilbert; 1885)

The Mikado [Emperor of Japan] has made flirting a capital crime in Titipu, so the people have appointed an ineffectual executioner named Ko-Ko. Ko-Ko's ward, Yum-Yum, marries the wandering musician Nanki-Poo, and the two lovers fake their execution. The Mikado visits the town and forgives the lovers of their transgression. It includes the song "Three Little Maids From School Are We."

César Cui, Aleksandr Borodin, Mily Balakirev, Modest Mussorgsky, and Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov

The Russian Five

Guggenheim

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum is located in Manhattan's Upper East Side. Founded as "The Museum of Non-Objective Painting," in 1959 it moved into its current home, a Frank Lloyd Wright building that features a spiral ramp connecting the exhibition areas. Focusing on modern art, its holdings include the world's largest collection of paintings by Wassily Kandinsky.

The Way of the World (William Congreve, 1700)

The Way of the World's complex plot (typical of Restoration comedy) concerns Mirabell and Millimant, two lovers who wish to marry. However, Millimant will lose "half her fortune" unless her choice of husband is approved by her aunt Lady Wishfort, who wants her to marry Sir Wilfull Witwoud. Mirabell enlists the married servants Waitwell and Foible to trick Lady Wishfort into falling in love with Sir Rowland, who is actually Waitwell in disguise, so that the compromised Lady Wishfort will be forced to agree to Mirabell and Millamant's marriage. The scheme is supported by Lady Wishfort's daughter, Mrs. Fainall, but exposed by a woman named Mrs. Marwood, who loves Mirabell. A resolution is reached when the rakish Mr. Fainall tries to blackmail his mother-in-law Lady Wishfort, who asks for Mirabell's help. Mirabell then produces an old contract that invalidates the blackmail attempt, securing Lady Wishfort's blessing for his marriage to Millamant.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Edward Albee, 1962)

The author Virginia Woolf has little to do with the story, except that Martha sings the title to George when she is mad at him in Act I. In fact, Albee got the title from graffiti he saw on a men's room wall. In the drama, George is a professor who married Martha, the college president's daughter, but the two dislike each other. Martha invites another couple, the instructor Nick and his wife Honey, for drinks after a party for her father. All four of them get drunk, and they end up bickering over their flawed marriages: Besides George and Martha's problems, Honey is barren, and Nick married her for her money.

Yijing (or I Ching or Book of Changes)

The basis for ancient Chinese philosophy and religion, the Yijing was created between 1500 and 1000 BC, though legend has it that the dragon-emperor Fuxi derived its eight trigrams from a turtle shell. The trigrams consist of three either broken (yin) or unbroken (yang) lines, and by reading pairs of these trigrams randomly, one could learn about humans, the universe, and the meaning of life. Qin emperor Shi Huangdi burned most scholarly books, but the Yijing escaped because it was not seen as threatening.

Revelation

The final book of the New Testament. In particular, it is singular and the plural form will be counted wrong in NAQT competitions. The full name varies from translation to translation, but sometimes appears as "The Revelation of St. John the Divine" or "Apocalypse of John."

Symphony No. 5 in C minor, op. 67 (1804-08) Beethoven

The iconic opening motif of the Fifth Symphony—a descending major third followed by a descending minor third, in a short-short-short-long rhythmic pattern—has become ubiquitous in popular culture, though the claim that it represents "fate knocking at the door" is an apocryphal invention. The work's third movement, a scherzo and trio in C minor, ends on a G major chord that proceeds directly into a C major final movement; that finale features one of the first orchestral uses (though not the first orchestral use) of trombones. The Fifth was premiered as part of a concert that also included the premiere of the Sixth Symphony.

Hudson Bay

The large sea of eastern Canada is Hudson Bay (no apostrophe). The company named for it is the Hudson's Bay Company (with an apostrophe). Using the wrong form is sufficient for the answer to be counted wrong under NAQT rules.

Boris Godunov (Modest Mussorgsky (composer and librettist), 1874)

The opera's prologue shows Boris Godunov, the chief adviser of Ivan the Terrible, being pressured to assume the throne after Ivan's two children die. In the first act the religious novice Grigori decides that he will impersonate that younger son, Dmitri (the (first) "false Dmitri"), whom, it turns out, Boris had killed. Grigori raises a general revolt and Boris' health falls apart as he is taunted by military defeats and dreams of the murdered tsarevich. The opera ends with Boris dying in front of the assembled boyars (noblemen).

Richard, Duke of Gloucester, from Richard III.

The quintessential antihero, Richard describes how his hunchbacked appearance has made him "determined to prove a villain" in a monologue that begins "now is the winter of our discontent / made glorious summer by this son of York." In the aftermath of a Yorkist victory in the Wars of the Roses, Richard plots against his brothers King Edward IV and George, Duke of Clarence, and causes Edward to imprison Clarence in the Tower of London. Assassins sent by Richard later kill Clarence, who is drowned in a "malmsey-butt," or cask of wine. Richard also marries and kills the Lady Anne, and orders the deaths of Edward's children (the "princes in the tower"). Although Richard becomes king, he soon faces a rebellion led by Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond. On the eve of a battle at Bosworth Field, Richard is haunted by the ghosts of those he wronged. The battle turns against Richard (who cries "a horse! a horse! my kingdom for a horse!"), and Richmond is crowned as King Henry VII of England.

The Merchant of Venice

The title character of The Merchant of Venice is not Shylock--who is a money-lender--but Antonio.

The Clouds (Aristophanes, c. 423 BC)

This comedy lampoons Athenian philosophers, especially Socrates and his Sophist followers, whose insubstantial, obfuscating arguments are inspired by the title goddesses. The protagonist Strepsiades fears that his horse-obsessed son, Pheidippides, is spending too much money. Consequently, Strepsiades wants Pheidippides to enroll in the Phrontisterion, or "Thinkery" of Socrates to learn specious arguments that can be used to avoid paying debts. Pheidippides refuses, so Strepsiades enrolls in the Thinkery himself. There, Strepsiades learns about new discoveries, such as a technique to measure how far a flea can jump. Eventually Pheidippides is also pressured into studying at the Thinkery, where he and Strepsiades are instructed by the beings Just and Unjust Discourse. Strepsiades believes that the education will enable Pheidippides to foil all creditors, but Pheidippides instead uses his new-found debating skills to justify beating up his father. In response, Strepsiades leads a mob to destroy the Thinkery.

Seven Against Thebes (Aeschylus, c. 467 BC)

This early Greek tragedy tells the story of Oedipus's two sons, Polyneices and Eteocles, who initially agreed to rule Thebes together before Eteocles seized the kingship for himself. Most of the play consists of a conversation between Eteocles, the chorus, and a spy who describes the seven captains who have arrived to besiege the seven gates of Thebes. After each man is described, Eteocles selects the warrior who will face that attacker. When the seventh attacker is revealed to be Polyneices, Eteocles sets off to confront his brother. At the conclusion of the play, it is announced that although Eteocles's forces have turned back the invaders, the brothers have slain each other. Antigone, the sister of Eteocles and Polyneices, vows to defy the laws of Thebes by giving Polyneices a proper burial.

La Bohème (Giacomo Puccini, unimportant librettists, 1896)

This opera tells the story of four extremely poor friends who live in the French (i.e., Students') Quarter of Paris: Marcello the artist, Rodolfo the poet, Colline the philosopher, and Schaunard the musician. Rodolfo meets the seamstress Mimi who lives next door when her single candle is blown out and needs to be relit. Marcello is still attached to Musetta, who had left him for the rich man Alcindoro. In the final act, Marcello and Rodolfo have separated from their lovers, but cannot stop thinking about them. Musetta bursts into their garret apartment and tells them that Mimi is dying of consumption (tuberculosis); when they reach her, she is already dead. La Bohème was based on a novel by Henry Murger and, in turn, formed the basis of the hit 1996 musical Rent by Jonathan Larson.

The Duchess of Malfi (John Webster, 1613)

This play is a product of the Jacobean period, in which the thrilling, macabre, and fantastic were prevalent on stage. The play follows the widowed Duchess, who loves Antonio Bologna, a good-hearted nobleman below her station. Her twin brother Ferdinand denounces her affection for Antonio out of incestuous envy. Her other brother, a Cardinal, hires the former galley-slave Bosola to spy on her. Bosola discovers the Duchess and Antonio have married (and had children), so the Cardinal sends them into exile. Ferdinand subsequently imprisons the Duchess, terrorizes her with asylum patients, and arranges for her to see statues resembling the dead bodies of her husband and children. Executioners sent by Ferdinand then kill the Duchess and her maid Cariola. Paranoia overtakes both brothers; the Cardinal kills his mistress Julia with a poisoned bible, and Ferdinand imagines he has become a werewolf. Bosola, disgusted by his own actions, tries to murder the Cardinal but mistakenly kills Antonio instead. In a climactic confrontation, Bosola, the Cardinal, and Ferdinand all kill each other, leaving the son of the Duchess and Antonio to inherit what remains.

Mourning Becomes Electra (Eugene O'Neill, 1931)

This play is really a trilogy, consisting of "Homecoming," "The Hunted," and "The Haunted." Though it is set in post-Civil War New England, O'Neill used Aeschylus's tragedy The Oresteia as the basis for the plot. Lavinia Mannon desires revenge against her mother, Christine, who with the help of her lover Adam Brant has poisoned Lavinia's father Ezra; Lavinia persuades her brother Orin to kill Brant. A distressed Christine commits suicide, and, after Orin and Lavinia flee to the South Seas, Orin cannot stand the guilt and kills himself as well, leaving Lavinia in the house alone.

Death of a Salesman (Arthur Miller, 1949)

This play questions American values of success. Willy Loman is a failed salesman whose firm fires him after 34 years. Despite his own failures, he desperately wants his sons Biff and Happy to succeed. Told in a series of flashbacks, the story points to Biff's moment of hopelessness, when the former high school star catches his father Willy cheating on his mother, Linda. Eventually, Willy can no longer live with his perceived shortcomings, and commits suicide in an attempt to leave Biff with insurance money.

Oedipus Rex (Sophocles, c. 429 BC, also known by its translated title Oedipus the King)

This tragedy tells the story of Oedipus, a man who became king of Thebes by defeating a monster called the sphinx. After a mysterious plague devastates Thebes, Oedipus sends his brother-in-law Creon to ask the Oracle at Delphi about the cause of the affliction. The Oracle attributes the plague to the fact that the murderer of Laius, the previous king of Thebes, has never been caught and punished. Oedipus then seeks information from the prophet Teiresias, who is provoked into revealing that Oedipus himself was the killer. Oedipus initially rejects this claim, but begins to have doubts after talking with his wife Jocasta, who was once married to Laius. Jocasta recalls a prophecy that Laius would be killed by his own son, but she claims that this prophecy did not come true, because Laius was murdered by highwaymen. This leads Oedipus to recall killing a man who resembled Laius, and a prophecy which had claimed that Oedipus would kill his own father, and marry his own mother. A shepherd from Mount Cithaeron reveals the awful truth: in response to the prophecy about their son, Laius and Jocasta had tried to expose the infant Oedipus in the wilderness. However, the shepherd had taken pity on the child, and sent him away to be raised in another area. Not knowing his true heritage, Oedipus eventually left home to avoid harming the people whom he believed to be his parents, but unknowingly fulfilled the prophecy by killing Laius and marrying Jocasta. Upon learning this, Jocasta commits suicide, and Oedipus blinds himself with Jocasta's brooches. Creon assumes control of Thebes as Oedipus begs to be exiled along with his daughters, Ismene and Antigone.

Lady Macbeth, from Macbeth

Though Macbeth is the play's protagonist, his pursuit of the Scottish throne is largely driven by his wife's ambition. After three witches predict that Macbeth will be king, Lady Macbeth fears that her husband is "too full 'o the milk of human kindness" to commit murder, and bids "spirits" to "unsex" her and imbue her with willpower. She insults Macbeth's masculinity, and urges him to "screw [his] courage to the sticking-place" and kill King Duncan. When Macbeth is unable to frame two grooms for the murder, Lady Macbeth does so in his place. Later, Lady Macbeth is wracked with guilt for her actions. While sleepwalking, she tries to wash imaginary blood from her hands, and cries "out, damned spot!" In the final act, the news of her death prompts Macbeth to deliver the "tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow" soliloquy.

(The Tragical History of the Life and Death of) Doctor Faustus (Christopher Marlowe, c. 1593)

Two scholars named Valdes and Cornelius teach Faustus how to summon a demon, which Faustus promptly does, conjuring Mephistophilis. Faustus then signs his soul over to Lucifer, in exchange for 24 years of healthy life with Mephistophilis as his dutiful servant. Faustus constantly rejects the pleas of an angel to accept the forgiveness of God, instead traveling and gaining worldly fame. At one point, he summons the "shade" of Helen of Troy, and exclaims "was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships, and burnt the topless towers of Ilium?" On the night his deal is scheduled to expire, a clock's chimes announce that Faustus is running out of time to repent. He never does, so devils appear and drag him to hell.

Tybalt, from Romeo and Juliet

Tybalt is a hot-headed member of the Capulet family who is the beloved cousin of Juliet. During the public brawl that begins the play, Tybalt provokes the peaceful Benvolio. At a ball given by the Capulets, Tybalt recognizes the disguised Romeo and calls for a sword, but is prevented from fighting by Lord Capulet. Tybalt then demands a duel with Romeo, who does not wish to fight one of Juliet's kinsmen. Romeo's friend Mercutio is shocked by this "vile submission," and calls Tybalt "king of cats" while challenging him to a duel. (Tybalt shares his name with a feline character from medieval fables about Reynard the Fox.) Romeo tries to intervene in the duel, which allows Tybalt to kill Mercutio. Romeo then kills Tybalt, and is banished from Verona.

Jules Verne (1828-1905, France)

Verne offered a brighter vision of technological progress in his novels of adventure, many of which doubled as works of popular science. In Verne's 1864 novel Journey to the Center of the Earth, Professor Lidenbrock explains contemporary theories of geology and paleontology as he leads an expedition that travels beneath the Earth's crust from Iceland to the Italian volcano Stromboli. Verne later wrote the 1870 novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, whose narrator Pierre Aronnax offers extensive commentary on marine biology while accompanying the mysterious Captain Nemo on a voyage in the submarine Nautilus. In a more realistic vein, Verne considered the possibilities presented by new forms of transportation in the 1873 novel Around the World in Eighty Days, which describes a trip taken by the Englishman Phileas Fogg and his French valet Jean Passepartout. During his travels, which are undertaken to win a bet with members of the Reform Club, Fogg falls in love with an Indian woman named Aouda, and is pursued by the Scotland Yard detective Fix, who mistakenly believes that Fogg is a bank robber. Fogg ultimately wins his bet to return to the Reform Club within 80 days of his departure, with the help of an extra day gained by crossing the International Date Line.

Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007, United States)

Vonnegut's fiction provides a darkly humorous response to the absurdities and violence of the twentieth century. During World War II, Vonnegut was a prisoner of war in Germany, and lived through the Allied firebombing of Dresden. That experience was the basis for Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse-Five, in which the soldier Billy Pilgrim becomes "unstuck in time," and perceives his life in a non-linear fashion. Billy travels between the present, past, and future as he is captured by the German army, witnesses the destruction of Dresden, becomes a prosperous optometrist in the town of Ilium, is kidnapped by aliens and placed in a zoo along with the actress Montana Wildhack, and is eventually assassinated. Slaughterhouse-Five contains a number of elements that recur in other Vonnegut novels, including the veteran Eliot Rosewater, aliens from the planet Tralfamadore, the unsuccessful science fiction writer Kilgore Trout, and members of the wealthy Rumfoord family. Vonnegut also wrote the novel Cat's Cradle, which describes a substance called "ice-nine" that instantly turns liquid water into a solid. Ice-nine was created by the atomic scientist Felix Hoenikker, whose life is researched by the novel's narrator John. Another thread in Cat's Cradle concerns the "bittersweet lies" of the prophet Bokonon, who lives on the Caribbean island of San Lorenzo. Bokonon comments on human stupidity after an accident that occurs during the funeral of the San Lorenzan dictator Papa Monzano causes ice-nine to fall into the ocean, destroying almost all life on Earth.

Broadway Boogie Woogie, by Piet Mondrian

While Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and other Cubist paintings represent an extension of Paul Cezanne's division-of-space approach to the canvas, Mondrian's De Stijl works are a still further abstraction, such that the canvas is often divided up into rectangular "tile patterns," as in Composition with Red, Yellow, and Blue. The painting simultaneously echoes the bright lights of a marquee, resembles a pattern of streets as seen from above, and creates a feeling of vitality and vibrancy, not unlike the music itself. This work can also be found at the MOMA.

William Tell (Gioacchino Rossini, unimportant librettists, 1829)

William Tell is a 14th-century Swiss patriot who wishes to end Austria's domination of his country. In the first act he helps Leuthold, a fugitive, escape the Austrian governor, Gessler. In the third act, Gessler has placed his hat on a pole and ordered the men to bow to it. When Tell refuses, Gessler takes his son, Jemmy, and forces Tell to shoot an apple off his son's head. Tell succeeds, but is arrested anyway. In the fourth act, he escapes from the Austrians and his son sets their house on fire as a signal for the Swiss to rise in revolt. The opera was based on a play by Friedrich von Schiller.

American Gothic, by Grant Wood

Wood painted his most famous work after a visit to Eldon, Iowa, when he saw a Carpenter Gothic style house with a distinctive Gothic window in its gable. Upon returning to his studio, he used his sister Nan and his dentist, Dr. Byron McKeeby, as the models for the two figures. The pitchfork and the clothing were more typical of 19th-century farmers than contemporary ones. American Gothic is among the most familiar regionalist paintings, and it is said to be the most parodied of all paintings. It hangs at the Art Institute of Chicago, where it was submitted for a competition by Wood upon its completion in 1930 (Wood won a bronze medal and a $300 prize).

Invisible Man

a 1952 novel by Ralph Ellison about an unnamed African-American protagonist in search of personal identity.

Thomas Wolfe (Thomas Clayton Wolfe)

earlier author of works like Look Homeward, Angel and You Can't Go Home Again

interphase, prophase, metaphase, anaphase, and telophase

five phases of Mitosis

The National Gallery

in Trafalgar Square in London houses a synoptic collection of pre-1900 paintings assembled by government purchase and donation. It is home to British masterpieces including John Constable's The Haywain and both Rain, Steam and Speed and ~The Fighting Temeraire by J.M.W. Turner. The museum also boasts several major highlights of European painting, from arguably the best known of van Gogh's Sunflowers series to exemplar Baroque works like Caravaggio's Supper at Emmaus, The Judgment of Paris by Rubens, and the Rokeby Venus of Velázquez. Major works of the Italian and north European Renaissance are also represented, including van Eyck's The Arnolfini Wedding, Hans Holbein's The Ambassadors, Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne, Raphael's Portrait of Pope Julius II, and the later of Leonardo's two versions of Madonna of the Rocks.

The Invisible Man

is an 1897 novel by H. G. Wells about a man who has turned himself invisible but is slowly being driven insane. Under NAQT rules, players are usually allowed to drop leading articles or add them where they are missing (but not use incorrect ones)--but in this case (and others, for example, Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale and Helprin's Winter's Tale), it creates ambiguity and is wrong.

Mary Wollstonecraft

is best known as an advocate of educational equality for women, particularly in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792)

Pulcinella (1920) by Igor Stravinsky

is usually regarded as the first work of Stravinsky's neoclassical period. Choreographed by Léonide Massine, it was commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev. Diaghilev wanted to update a commedia dell'arte play attributed at the time to Giovanni Pergolesi (that attribution has recently been challenged). The one-act ballet tells the story of Pulcinella, a stock character of commedia dell'arte, and his lover Pimpinella, as well as two girls, Prudenza and Rosetta, and their suitors, Florindo and Cloviello. Pulcinella kisses Rosetta after she dances for him, enraging Pimpinella as well as the two suitors, who, jealous of Pulcinella, beat him up and appear to kill him. However, the "body" of Pulcinella is actually his friend Furbo, who impersonated Pulcinella and played dead. Pulcinella, disguised as a magician, appears, reveals himself, and marries Pimpinella, who forgives him.

Tom Wolfe (Thomas Kennerly Wolfe Jr.)

modern author and journalist who wrote The Right Stuff, The Bonfire of the Vanities, and A Man in Full

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

physician, poet, and humorist who wrote "Old Ironsides" and The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table

The Rite of Spring (Le Sacre du Printemps or Vesna svyashchennaya) (1913) by Igor Stravinsky

subtitled "Pictures of Pagan Russia," was written for the Ballets Russes, and choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky. Inspired by Russian folklorist Nicholas Roerich, who designed the original sets, it is in two parts, "The Adoration of the Earth" and "The Sacrifice." It opens with a high-pitched bassoon solo based on a Lithuanian folk song, which is followed by the dissonant "Augurs of Spring" (sometimes called "Dances of the Young Girls"), which features E-major and E-flat-major chords superimposed on each other and played with seemingly random accents. The piece ends with a girl forced to dance herself to death. Changes of meter are frequent, sometimes changing measure to measure. The original instrumentation featured several unusual percussion instruments, including a gong, tambourines, antique cymbals, and the guiro. Most infamously, a riot broke out at its Paris premiere, although contemporary reports give differing accounts on the Rite's role.

Gayane (1942) by Aram Khachaturian

tells the story of the title heroine, who lives on a cooperative farm (kolkhoz) in Khachaturian's native Armenia with her husband Giko and her father Ovanes, who heads the collective. Giko, a lazy alcoholic, repeatedly beats and abuses the hardworking Gayane. However, Gayane escapes the marriage when she reveals Giko to be an anti-Soviet spy, leading to his arrest; Gayane then marries the soldier Kazakov. The most famous excerpt from Gayane is the frenetic "Sabre Dance," originally part of a group of dances in the final act meant to represent the various Soviet republics. Other notable music from the ballet includes an adagio movement, meant to represent carpet weavers, that was used in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.

La Péri (The Peri) (1912) by Paul Dukas

the last major work by Paul Dukas, tells the story of Iksender (Alexander the Great), who is searching Iran for the Flower of Immortality. He finally finds it at the Ends of the Earth, where it is in the hands of a sleeping Péri (a mythical fairy-like creature from Persian folklore). When Iksender tries to steal the flower, he awakens the Péri, who needs the flower to commune with Ormuzd (the Zoroastrian god Ahura Mazda). The Péri seduces Iksender, who realizes that he doesn't deserve the flower. He surrenders it to the spirit, who ascends to Paradise, leaving him to die alone on Earth. The opening fanfare is often performed independently of the rest of the suite.

The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg

the short story by Mark Twain

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

was a justice of the Supreme Court known as "The Great Dissenter."

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

who married the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and is best known as the author of Frankenstein: or, the Modern Prometheus.