Wikipedia:Main Page history/2017 September 14

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Claudio Monteverdi

Seven of Claudio Monteverdi's operas are lost, apart from a few fragments, out of ten the Italian composer wrote in whole or in part between 1607 and 1643. A few librettos from these early baroque works have survived. Opera as a genre emerged during Monteverdi's creative lifetime, and he became a principal exponent of this new form, first at the Mantuan court and later as director of music at St Mark's Basilica in Venice. The loss of these works, written during a critical period of early opera history, has been much regretted by historians and musicologists, but reflects the habit of the times, when stage music was thought to have little relevance beyond its initial performance and often vanished quickly. Contemporary documents, including many letters written by Monteverdi, have provided most of the available information on the lost works, and have established that four of them were completed and performed in the composer's lifetime. Of the little music that has survived, the lamento from L'Arianna (1608) is frequently performed. (Full article...)

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Rwandan refugee camp in Zaire

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... that Egyptian tomb S9 suffered deliberate, extensive, and state-sanctioned stone- and grave-robbing?
... that Ida Hinman, author of a popular Washington, D.C. guidebook, died in poverty and her body was identified through a membership pin of the Daughters of the American Revolution?
... that the red colour of the ribbon worm Tubulanus polymorphus may warn predators that it is toxic or unpalatable?
... that baritone Georg Nigl, who names as his favourite roles Monteverdi's Orfeo, Mozart's Papageno, and Alban Berg's Wozzeck, created the title role of Dusapin's Faustus, the Last Night?
... that residents of three adjacent counties in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado have the longest life expectancy in the U.S.?
... that someone told Kate Brew Vaughn that her eggless, sugarless, and butterless World War I Victory Cake was "joyless", but then ate three pieces?

In the news

Hurricane Irma

The IOC awards the 2024 and 2028 Summer Olympics to Paris and Los Angeles respectively by unanimous consent.
Hurricane Irma (satellite image pictured) kills more than 50 people across the Caribbean islands and the United States.
A magnitude 8.1 earthquake strikes Guatemala and Mexico, killing more than 90 people.
Monsoon flooding kills nearly 1,300 people and affects 45 million others in India, Pakistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh.
North Korea conducts its sixth nuclear test.

On this day...

September 14

Isadora Duncan

919 – A coalition of native Irish, led by Niall Glúndub, failed in their attempt to drive the Vikings of the Uí Ímair from Ireland
1752 – In adopting the Gregorian calendar under the terms of the Calendar (New Style) Act 1750, the British Empire skipped eleven days (September 2 was followed directly by September 14).
1927 – In a freak automobile accident, dancer Isadora Duncan (pictured) was strangled to death in Nice, France, by her scarf after it was caught on the wheel of a car in which she was a passenger.
1954 – In a secret nuclear test, a Soviet Tu-4 bomber dropped a 40-kiloton atomic weapon just north of Totskoye village, exposing some 45,000 soldiers and 10,000 civilians to nuclear fallout.
2007 – Late-2000s financial crisis: The Northern Rock bank received a liquidity support facility from the Bank of England, sparking a bank run—the United Kingdom's first in 150 years.

Jeremiah Dummer (b. 1643) · Ponnambalam Arunachalam (b. 1853) · Faith Leech (d. 2013)

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Today's featured picture

Taractrocera ceramas, commonly known as the Tamil grass dart, is a butterfly belonging to the family Hesperiidae. It is found from the Western Ghats to Mumbai, in the hills of southern India and northern Burma. Taken at Kadavoor, Kerala, India.

Photograph: Jeevan Jose

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