Fine Arts

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 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.

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).

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 Richard Wagner and Richard 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.

Sergei Prokofiev (1891

1953)- He wrote seven symphonies, of which the First ("Classical,&#*221; 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 Sergei 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, 1953.

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 Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott, and Henry David 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.

Ralph rayf Vaughan Williams (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.

Igor Stravinsky (1882

1971)-He studied under Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and completed two grand ballets for Sergei 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 Anton Webern, producing the abstract ballet Agon (1957).

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 Joseph 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 Yevgeny Yevtushenko poem, Babi Yar condemned anti-Semitism in both Nazi Germany and the USSR.

Pierre Beauchamp

(1631-1705) taught dance to French King Louis XIV at Versailles for over two decades. An early director of the Western world's first dance institution, the Académie Royale de Danse, he collaborated extensively with Molière's acting company and the composer Jean-Baptiste Lully. He is often credited with codifying the five basic feet positions in ballet. His system of dance notation, later revised by Raoul-Auger Feuillet and Pierre Rameau and today known as "Beauchamp-Feuillet notation," was used until the late 1700s.

Alvin Ailey

(1931-1989) was a pioneering African-American choreographer. He originally danced in the Horton Dance Company run by his mentor Lester Horton. After Horton's unexpected death in 1953, Ailey took over as its artistic director. In 1958 he formed Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater in New York City. His best-known work, Revelations, was based on his upbringing in Texas and is divided into three parts, titled "Pilgrim of Sorrow," "Take Me to the Water," and "Move Members, Move." "Move Members, Move" emphasizes gospel music, including the traditional spiritual "Sinner Man," and concludes with the number "Rocka My Soul in the Bosom of Abraham," which recreates a joyous church service.

Michel Fokine

(1880-1942) was accepted to the Imperial Ballet School in St. Petersburg, Russia, at age nine, eventually becoming a teacher there. He choreographed a four-minute ballet for Anna Pavlova called The Dying Swan, set to "The Swan" from The Carnival of the Animals (the title comes from a Tennyson poem entitled "The Dying Swan"). He mentored Vaslav Nijinsky and featured him in early works like Les Sylphides, a ballet based on the music of Frédéric Chopin. After Sergei Diaghilev hired Fokine to work for the Ballets Russes in Paris, Fokine showcased Nijinsky's talents in several ballets based on the work of famous composers, such as Scheherazade, The Firebird, Petrushka, Daphnis et Chloé, and The Spirit of the Rose. However, once Nijinsky turned to choreography Fokine quit the Ballets Russes, only returning after Nijinsky's dismissal.

Vaslav Nijnsky

(1889-1950) was known as the greatest male dancer of his era, but what he really wanted to do was choreograph. His boss at the Ballets Russes, Sergei Diaghilev, gave him the opportunity in 1912 with The Afternoon of a Faun, set to the music of Claude Debussy, and a year later a riot broke out at the premiere of another ballet he choreographed, his choreography of Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring. (The exact cause of the riot is unclear.) In 1919 Nijinsky was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He never danced again in public, and spent much of the rest of his life in various asylums and institutions.

Martha Graham

(1894-1991) was the first dancer invited to perform at the White House. As a choreographer, she developed the "Graham technique" that creates dramatic tension through "contraction" and "release" of major muscles. Her first major success was her 1958 concert-length ballet Clytemnestra, one of four collaborations with composer Halim Ed-Dabh. She performed the title role in Clytemnestra with her namesake dance company, whose dancers included Merce Cunningham and her husband, Erick Hawkins, both of whom went on to become choreographers in their own right. Hawkins danced the male lead in Appalachian Spring, a ballet with "an American theme" that Graham commissioned from Aaron Copland.

Aaron Copland "COPE"-lund

(1900-1990)- At first a modernist, he was the first American student of Nadia Boulanger in Paris in the 1920s, where 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 Abraham Lincoln's writings. Copland wrote several educational books, beginning with 1939's What to Listen For in Music.

George Balanchine

(1904-1983) trained in his native Georgia (the country) and Russia and briefly worked with Sergei Diaghilev at the Ballets Russes in Paris before being invited by impresario Lincoln Kirstein to the United States, where the two co-founded the New York City Ballet (NYCB) and its associated School of American Ballet. As artistic director of NYCB, Balanchine began the tradition of annually staging The Nutcracker at Christmas. One of his four wives — all dancers — was the company's first major star, Native American prima ballerina Maria Tallchief. He collaborated with composer Igor Stravinsky and visual artist Isamu Noguchi on the 30-minute ballet Orpheus.

Anges de Mille

(1905-1993), the niece of the film director Cecil B. DeMille and granddaughter of the economist Henry George, worked extensively with American Ballet Theater, but the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo commissioned her most famous work, Rodeo. That ballet, featuring music by Aaron Copland (possibly assisted by an uncredited Leonard Bernstein), details a love rectangle between characters known as American Cowgirl, Champion Roper, Head Wrangler, and Rancher's Daughter. Her other notable stage ballets include Three Virgins and a Devil and Fall River Legend (based on the life of Lizzie Borden). De Mille also found success in musical theater, creating a revolutionary "dream ballet" for Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma!.

Jerome Robbins

(1918-1998) is probably best known for his work with Leonard Bernstein. He broke through as a choreographer with an experimental ballet about three sailors on leave in New York City, Fancy Free, which he then helped rework into the hit 1944 musical On the Town. Known for being temperamental and difficult to work with, he conceived, choreographed, and directed the 1957 original production of West Side Story and won an Oscar for co-directing the 1961 film version (despite quitting early in the process due to creative differences). He also choreographed and directed the original production of Fiddler on the Roof. He acted as an uncredited "show doctor," rescuing several floundering Broadway shows, including A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and Funny Girl.

Bob Fosse

(1927-1987) came to prominence in the 1953 film Kiss Me Kate. While he and dance partner Carol Haney only had small roles, the dance that Fosse choreographed for them in the number "From This Moment On" launched Fosse's career. Fosse's unique style, featuring turned-in knees, rolled shoulders, sideways movement, and "jazz hands," found its greatest expression on Broadway, where he choreographed the musicals The Pajama Game, Damn Yankees, Redhead, Sweet Charity, Pippin, and Chicago. Many of his works featured his wife Gwen Verdon, who won four Tonys under his choreography or direction. Fosse also directed the films Cabaret and All That Jazz, winning an Oscar for Cabaret. Many commentators have described his cameo as The Snake in a 1974 film adaptation of The Little Prince as a forerunner to the dance style of Michael Jackson.

Twla Tharp

(1941-present) made her mark in the mid-1970s with the "crossover ballets" Deuce Coupe (performed by the Joffrey Ballet to music by The Beach Boys) and Push Comes to Shove (starring Mikhail Baryshnikov), both marked by a fusion of diverse musical and dance styles. She found success on Broadway with the "jukebox musical" Movin' Out, set to the catalog of Billy Joel; she subsequently built musicals around the songs of Bob Dylan and Frank Sinatra. She created the children's ballet The Princess and the Goblin and collaborated with director Milos Forman on the Hollywood films Hair, Ragtime, and Amadeus.

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 musical to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Gershwin died of a brain tumor at age 38.

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.

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

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.

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 Chloé (1912) for Sergei Diaghilev, and followed it with Mother Goose and La Valse. He also re-orchestrated Modest Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition. His health declined after a 1932 taxi accident; unsuccessful brain surgery ended his life.

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 anti-war poems of Wilfred Owen, who was killed during World War I.

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, in which screws, wood, rubber bands, and other items are attached to piano strings in order to create a percussion sound.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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 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 the 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, 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Centers on a fight between two sons, Gooper and Brick, over the estate of their 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.

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 west. 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 thirteen 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-time 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 the 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 the 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.

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).

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 thirteen 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.

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 Persistence of Memory, by Salvador Dalí

First shown in 1931, The Persistence of Memory is probably the most famous surrealist painting. 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 the MOMA; its 1951 companion piece, The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory, hangs at the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida.

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.

Gayane (1942) by Aram Khachaturian

Gayane 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 hard-working 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.

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.

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.

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").

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.

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

La Péri, 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.

Rijksmuseum RYKES "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 Milkmaid.

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 (which are often decorated for special occasions, e.g. with jerseys when Chicago sports teams are in the playoffs). It has an outstanding collection of French Impressionist and American works such as Georges Seurat's A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, 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 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 the 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.

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 I. In Act II 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.

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.

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.)

Pulcinella (1920) by Igor Stravinsky

Pulcinella 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.

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.

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."

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.

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

The Rite of Spring, 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 Paul Cézanne'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.

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.

Broadway Boogie Woogie, by Piet Mondrian

While Les Demoiselles d'Avignon and other Cubist paintings represent an extension of Paul Cézanne'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 Blue and Yellow. 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.

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).

Nude Descending a Staircase, No 2

by Marcel Duchamp. Nude Descending a Staircase was painted in 1912 and 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.

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).

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 Vincent van Gogh's Sunflowers series to exemplar Baroque works like Caravaggio's Supper at Emmaus, The Judgment of Paris by Peter Paul Rubens, and the Rokeby Venus of Diego Velázquez. Major works of the Italian and north European Renaissance are also represented, including Jan 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.

Stephen Sondheim (1930-present)

is one of the most celebrated lyricists and composers in musical theater. Sondheim's career has included eight 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 the painter Georges Seurat and won the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

George Gershwin's (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.

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 the 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 the 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.

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.

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).

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.

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.