Name	Bastille
Location	Paris, France
Type	Medieval fortress, prison
Built	1370–1383
Builder	Charles V of France
Demolished	1789
Condition	remains in Metro station
Events	French Revolution }}

The Bastille () was a fortress-prison in Paris, known formally as Bastille Saint-Antoine—Number 232, rue Saint-Antoine—best known today because of the storming of the Bastille on 14 July 1789, which along with the Tennis Court Oath is considered the beginning of the French Revolution. The event was commemorated one year later by the ''Fête de la Fédération''. The French national holiday, celebrated annually on 14 July is officially the ''Fête Nationale'', and officially commemorates the ''Fête de la Fédération'', but it is commonly known in English as Bastille Day. ''Bastille'' is a French word meaning "castle" or "stronghold", or "bastion"; used with a definite article (''la Bastille'' in French, ''the Bastille'' in English), it refers to the prison.

Early history of the Bastille

The Bastille was built as the Bastion de Saint-Antoine during the Hundred Years' War. The Bastille originated as the Saint-Antoine gate, but from 1370–1383 this gate was extended to create a fortress to defend the east end of Paris and the Hôtel Saint-Pol royal palace. After the war, it was reused as a state prison, with Louis XIII the first king to send prisoners there.

The Bastille was built as an irregular rectangle with eight towers. The building is 70 metres (220 ft) long, 30 metres (90 ft) wide, with towers and walls 25 metres (80 ft) high, surrounded by a broad moat. Originally there were two courtyards inside and residential buildings against the walls. Pairs of towers on the east and west facades served as gates through which the rue Saint-Antoine passed. In the 15th century, these were blocked up, and a new city gate was created to the north on the present day rue de la Bastille. A bastion on the eastern approaches was built later. A very significant military feature of the building was that the walls and towers were of the same height and width and connected by a broad terrace. This enabled soldiers on the wall head to rapidly move to a threatened sector of the fortress without having to descend inside the towers, as well as allowing placement of artillery. A similar provision can be seen today at Château de Tarascon.

Storming

The archives of the Bastille show that the building largely held common criminals (forgers, embezzlers, swindlers, etc.), as well as people imprisoned for religious reasons (Huguenots) and those responsible for printing or writing forbidden pamphlets. People of high rank were sometimes held there too, and so the prison (which could only hold a little over 50 people) was far less sordid a place than most of the Parisian prisons. But the secrecy maintained around the Bastille and its prisoners gave it a sinister reputation.

The confrontation that led to the people of Paris storming the Bastille on 14 July 1789, following several days of disturbances, resulted from the fact that gunpowder and arms had been stored there, and the people (whose fears had been raised by a number of rumors) demanded access to these. The later idea that they wanted to free the prisoners (only 7 of whom remained) has been discounted. The regular garrison consisted of 82 ''invalides'' (veteran soldiers no longer capable of service in the field) under Governor Bernard-René de Launay. They had however been reinforced by a detachment of 32 grenadiers from one of the Swiss mercenary regiments summoned to Paris by the King shortly before 14 July.

A crowd of around 8800 men and women gathered outside around mid-morning, calling for the surrender of the prison, the removal of the guns and the release of the arms and gunpowder. Two people chosen to represent those gathered were invited into the fortress and slow negotiations began. In the early afternoon around 1:00, the crowd broke into the undefended outer courtyard and the chains on the drawbridge to the inner courtyard were cut. A spasmodic exchange of gunfire began; in mid-afternoon the crowd was reinforced by mutinous Gardes Françaises of the Royal Army, and two cannons, all of which were originally supposed to help the governor protect the prison. The governor ordered a ceasefire; in spite of his surrender demands being refused, he capitulated and the ''vainqueurs'' swept in to take control of the fortress at around 5:30.

When the rioters entered the Bastille, they collected cartridges and gunpowder for their weapons and then freed the seven prisoners (which they had to do by breaking down the doors, since the keys had already been taken off and paraded through the streets). Later, the governor and some of the guards of the Bastille were murdered under chaotic circumstances, despite having surrendered under a flag of truce, and their heads paraded on pikes.

As a symbolic gesture, the key to the west portal of the Bastille was presented on March 17, 1790 by Marquis de Lafayette to George Washington and is displayed in George Washington's home at Mount Vernon.

Demolition

The propaganda value of the Bastille was quickly seized upon, notably by the showy entrepreneur Pierre-François Palloy, "Patriote Palloy". The fate of the Bastille was uncertain, but Palloy was quick to establish a claim, organising a force of demolition men around the site on the 15th. Over the next few days many notables visited the Bastille and it seemed to be turning into a memorial. But Palloy secured a license for demolition from the Permanent Committee at the Hôtel de Ville and quickly took complete control.

Palloy secured a fair budget and his crew grew in number. He had control over all aspects of the work and the workers, even to the extent of having two hanged for murder. Palloy put much effort into continuing the site as a paying attraction and producing a huge range of souvenirs, including many of the building blocks. Guided tours conducted by former prison guards were also very popular with Parisians. The actual demolition proceeded apace; by November, 1789, the structure was largely demolished. The cut stones of the fortress were used in the construction of the Pont de la Concorde.

The area today

The former location of the fort is currently called the Place de la Bastille. It is home to the Opéra Bastille. The large ditch ''(fossé)'' behind the fort has been transformed into a marina for pleasure boats, the Bassin de l'Arsenal, to the south, and a covered canal, the Canal Saint Martin, extending north from the marina beneath the vehicular roundabout that borders the location of the fort.

Some undemolished remains of one tower of the fort were discovered during excavation for the Métro (rail mass-transit system) in 1899, and were moved to a park (the Square Henri-Galli) a few hundred metres away, where they are displayed today. The original outline of the fort is also marked on the pavement of streets and sidewalks that pass over its former location, in the form of special paving stones. A cafe and some other businesses largely occupy the location of the fort, and the rue Saint Antoine passes directly over it as it opens onto the roundabout of the Bastille.

Bastille prisoners

Marquis de Vaudreuil-Cavagnal, last Governor-General of New France (or Canada), March to May 1762

Marquis de Sade, 1784 to 4 July 1789

Bastille prisoners in fiction

Comte de Rochefort (''The Three Musketeers'', ''Twenty Years After'')

Doctor Alexander Manette (''A Tale of Two Cities'')

M. Thénardier (''Les Miserables'')

"Philippe" (''The Man in the Iron Mask'')

References

External links

Remains of the Bastille - photo of the salvaged remains of one tower, with a brief description

''À bas la Bastille!'': how the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' has written about the Bastille in various editions since 1768.

Category:Defunct prisons in Paris Category:Former buildings and structures of Paris Category:Former fortresses Category:1383 establishments Category:1789 disestablishments Category:Political history of the Ancien Régime Category:1380s architecture Category:Destroyed landmarks Category:Fortifications of Paris Category:Buildings and structures of the French Revolution

af:Bastille ar:سجن الباستيل az:Bastiliya qalası be:Бастылія be-x-old:Бастылія bg:Бастилия ca:La Bastilla cs:Bastila cy:Bastille da:Bastillen de:Bastille et:Bastille el:Βαστίλη es:Bastilla eo:Bastille eu:Bastilla fa:قلعه باستیل fr:Bastille (Paris) fy:Bastille gl:Bastilla ko:바스티유 감옥 hy:Բաստիլ id:Bastille is:Bastille it:Bastiglia (Parigi) he:בסטיליה jv:Baluwarti Bastil ka:ბასტილია kk:Бастилия lb:Bastille lt:Bastilija hu:Bastille mk:Бастилја mr:बॅस्टिल तुरुंग arz:الباستيل nl:Bastille Saint-Antoine ja:バスティーユ牢獄 no:Bastillen nrm:Bastîle oc:Bastilha pnb:باستیل pl:Bastylia pt:Bastilha ro:Bastilia ru:Бастилия scn:Bastigghia simple:Bastille sk:Bastila sl:Bastilja sr:Бастиља fi:Bastilji sv:Bastiljen tr:Bastille Hapishanesi uk:Бастилія ur:باستیل vi:Bastille yi:באסטיל zh:巴士底狱

Roberto Alagna (born 7 June 1963) is a French operatic tenor of Sicilian (Italian) descent. He was born in Clichy-sous-Bois, Seine-Saint-Denis, France.

Early years

Alagna was born outside of the city of Paris in 1963 to a family of Sicilian (Italian) immigrants . As a teenager, the young Alagna began busking and singing pop in Parisian cabarets for tips. Influenced primarily by the films of Mario Lanza, but also from recordings of many historic tenors, he then switched to opera, but remained largely self-taught.

Career

After winning the Luciano Pavarotti Voice Competition, Alagna made his professional debut in 1988 as Alfredo Germont in ''La Traviata'' with the Glyndebourne touring company. This led to many engagements throughout the smaller cities in France and Italy, mainly again as Alfredo, a role he would eventually sing over 150 times. His reputation grew and he was soon invited to sing at major theaters such as La Scala in 1990, Covent Garden in 1992 and the Metropolitan Opera as Rodolfo in 1996. His performances of Roméo in ''Roméo et Juliette'' by Charles Gounod at Covent Garden in 1994 (opposite Leontina Vaduva) catapulted him to international stardom.

Alagna opened the 2006/07 season at La Scala on 7 December 2006 in the new production of ''Aïda'' by Franco Zeffirelli. During the second performance on 10 December, Alagna, whose opening performance was considered ill-at-ease, was booed and whistled from the ''loggione'' (the least expensive seats at the very back of La Scala), and he walked off the stage. The tenor's reaction to his public criticism was denounced as immature and unprofessional by La Scala management and Zeffirelli, who said, “A professional should never behave in this way. Alagna is too sensitive, it is too easy to hurt his feelings. He does not know how to act like a true star.” The role of Radames was taken over successfully for the rest of the performance by his understudy Antonello Palombi, who entered on stage wearing jeans and a black shirt. In 2007 while at the Metropolitan Opera singing the role of Pinkerton in ''Madame Butterfly'', Alagna replaced the indisposed Rolando Villazon as Romeo in ''Roméo et Juliette'' opposite Anna Netrebko for two performances in September and two performances in December. His wife had flown to New York to be with him for the September engagements, and as a result was fired from the Lyric Opera of Chicago for missing her rehearsal dates for ''La Bohème''. Alagna was also engaged by the Metropolitan Opera at the last minute to cover for the indisposed Marco Berti in a 16 October 2007 performance of ''Aida''. After the performance, the audience gave him a standing ovation. The 15 December performance of ''Roméo et Juliette'' starring Alagna and Netrebko was broadcast by the Met into 447 theaters worldwide in high definition and seen by about 97,000 people.

Personal life

Alagna's first wife, Florence Lancien, died of a brain tumor in 1994; they had one daughter, Ornella, who was born in 1992. In 1996, he married Romanian soprano, Angela Gheorghiu. The couple have sung together often onstage and have made many recordings together both of duets and arias and complete operas. Their joint album, ''Duets & Arias'', peaked at #42 in the UK Albums Chart in May 1996. The two singers also starred in a film version of Puccini's ''Tosca'' directed by French film director Benoît Jacquot. In October 2009, Alagna said in an interview in ''Le Figaro'' that he and Angela Gheorghiu had separated. Following the separation, Gheorghiu declined to appear opposite him in ''Carmen'' at the Metropolitan Opera in December 2009.

References

Metropolitan Opera, Alagna, Roberto (Tenor), performance record from MetOpera database

External links

Reviews, articles, photos and future schedules from The Opera Critic

Discography at SonyBMG Masterworks

Concert photos

Roberto Alagna in an excerpt from ''Tosca''.

Category:1963 births Category:Living people Category:People from Clichy-sous-Bois Category:French male singers Category:French opera singers Category:French tenors Category:Operatic tenors Category:French buskers Category:French people of Italian descent Category:French people of Sicilian descent

ca:Roberto Alagna da:Roberto Alagna de:Roberto Alagna es:Roberto Alagna fr:Roberto Alagna id:Roberto Alagna it:Roberto Alagna he:רוברטו אלאניה la:Robertus Alagna hu:Roberto Alagna nl:Roberto Alagna ja:ロベルト・アラーニャ pl:Roberto Alagna ro:Roberto Alagna scn:Robbertu Alagna simple:Roberto Alagna sl:Roberto Alagna fi:Roberto Alagna sv:Roberto Alagna zh:羅伯托·阿藍尼亞

Paul Gay (born November 8, 1968) is a notable French bass-baritone who sings opera and other classical forms. He has performed in France, Germany, Russia, and the United States, with a number of significant companies and directors.

Paul Gay's voice has had mixed critical success thus far. Gay's singing as Temrouk in George Bizet's ''Ivan IV'' was criticized by "Classics Today.com". He showed some early promise, according to auditions. He was termed "a reliable Masetto" in Mozart's ''Don Giovanni''.

Gay has secured some title roles. On February 2, 2008, he appeared on NPR in the title role in Édouard Lalo's ''The King of Ys''. In August 2009, he performed the title role of St. Paul in Felix Mendelssohn's 1836 oratorio, St. Paul, with Leon Botstein conducting.

References

External links

Personal website in English

Downloads available for Paul Gay on Naxos.com

Category:1968 births Category:Living people Category:French opera singers

fr:Paul Gay (chanteur)

Karol Maciej Szymanowski (; 3 October 188228 March 1937) was a Polish composer and pianist.

Life

Szymanowski was born into a wealthy land-owning Polish gentry family (of the Korwin/Ślepowron coat-of-arms) in Tymoszówka, then in the Russian Empire, now in Cherkasy Oblast, Ukraine. He studied music privately with his father before going to Gustav Neuhaus' Elizavetgrad School of Music from 1892. From 1901 he attended the State Conservatory in Warsaw, of which he was later director from 1926 until retiring in 1930. Musical opportunities in Russian-occupied Poland being quite limited at the time, he travelled widely throughout Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and the US. These travels, especially those to the Mediterranean area, provided much inspiration to the composer and esthete.

The fruits of these trips included not only musical works, but poetry and his novel on Greek love ''Efebos,'' parts of which were subsequently lost in a fire in 1939. The central chapter was translated by him into Russian and given as a gift in 1919 to Boris Kochno, who was his beloved at the time. Szymanowski also wrote a number of love poems, in French, to the 15-year-old boy. Among these are ''Ganymède'', ''Baedecker'', ''N'importe'', and ''Vagabond''.

Writing about his novel, Szymanowski said, "In it I expressed much, perhaps all that I have to say on this matter, which is for me very important and very beautiful." It remains available in a German translation as ''Das Gastmahl. Ein Kapitel aus dem verlorenen Roman Ephebos.''

Szymanowski maintained a long correspondence with pianist Jan Smeterlin, who was a significant champion of his piano works. Their correspondence was published by Allegro Press in 1969.

Szymanowski died in a sanatorium in Lausanne, Switzerland from tuberculosis.

Influences

Szymanowski was influenced by the music of Richard Wagner, Richard Strauss, Max Reger, Alexander Scriabin and the impressionism of Claude Debussy, and Maurice Ravel. He also drew much influence from his countryman Frédéric Chopin and from Polish folk music. Like Chopin he wrote a number of mazurkas for piano. He was specifically influenced by folk music from the Polish Highlands [''Górale''], which he discovered in Zakopane, in the southern Tatra highlands, even writing in an article entitled ''About Górale Music'': "My discovery of the essential beauty of Górale (Polish Highlander) music, dance and architecture is a very personal one; much of this beauty I have absorbed into my innermost soul." (p. 97) According to Jim Samson (1977, p. 200), it is "played on two fiddles and a string bass," and, "has uniquely 'exotic' characteristics, highly dissonant and with fascinating heterophonic effects." Carefully digesting all these elements, eventually Szymanowski developed a highly individual rhapsodic style and a unique harmonic world of his own.

Works

Among Szymanowski's better known orchestral works are four symphonies (No. 3, ''Song of the Night'' with choir and vocal soloists and No. 4, ''Symphonie Concertante'', with piano concertante) and two dream-like violin concertos. His stage works include the ballets ''Harnasie'' and ''Mandragora'' and the operas ''Hagith'' and ''Król Roger'' ('King Roger'). He wrote much piano music, including the four ''Etudes'', Op. 4 (of which No. 3 was once his single most popular piece), many mazurkas and the exquisite and highly individual ''Metopes''. Other works include the ''Three Myths'' for violin and piano, two masterful string quartets, a sonata for violin and piano, a number of orchestral songs (some to texts by Hafiz and James Joyce) and his ''Stabat Mater'', an acknowledged choral masterpiece.

According to Samson (p. 131), "Szymanowski adopted no thorough-going alternatives to tonal organization [...] the harmonic tensions and relaxations and the melodic phraseology have clear origins in tonal procedure, but [...] an underpinning tonal framework has been almost or completely dissolved away."

See also

List of Poles

Young Poland

Notes

References

Hubert Kennedy (1994). ''Karol Szymanowski, his Boy-love Novel, and the Boy he Loved''. In ''Paidika'' 3.3 Amsterdam

Jim Samson (1977). ''Music in Transition: A Study of Tonal Expansion and Atonality, 1900–1920''. New York: W.W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-02193-9.

Készítette : Dr. Nagy-Tóth Andárs & Dr.Fárbás Gergely

Alessandro Martinisi, ''Il sogno sognato di Karol Szymanowski. Re Ruggero tra luce ed ombra''. Prefazione di Alberto Cesare Ambesi. Quintessenza Editrice, Gallarate 2009. ISBN 978-88-901794-2-6

Didier Van Moere, ''Karol Szymanowski'', Fayard, Paris 2008.

Further reading

Mortkowicz-Olczakowa, Hanna (1961). ''Bunt wspomnień.'' Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy.

Łozińska Hempel, Maria (1986). ''Z łańcucha wspomnień.'' Wydawnictwo Literackie.

External links

Szymanowski page at the Polish Music Center

szymanowski.info – biography, list of works, discography, Villa Atma, links

culture.pl – composer profile

Category:1882 births Category:1937 deaths Category:People from Cherkasy Oblast Category:20th-century classical composers Category:Polish composers Category:Opera composers Category:Polish classical pianists Category:Golden Laurel of the Polish Academy of Literature Category:Jurors of the International Chopin Competition Category:LGBT people from Poland Category:LGBT composers

ca:Karol Szymanowski cs:Karol Szymanowski da:Karol Szymanowski de:Karol Szymanowski es:Karol Szymanowski eo:Karol Szymanowski fr:Karol Szymanowski ko:카롤 시마노프스키 it:Karol Szymanowski he:קרול שימנובסקי la:Carolus Szymanowski lv:Karols Šimanovskis hu:Karol Szymanowski nl:Karol Szymanowski ja:カロル・シマノフスキ no:Karol Szymanowski pl:Karol Szymanowski pt:Karol Szymanowski ru:Шимановский, Кароль simple:Karol Szymanowski sl:Karol Szymanowski fi:Karol Szymanowski sv:Karol Szymanowski tr:Karol Szymanowski uk:Кароль Шимановський zh:卡罗尔·席曼诺夫斯基