From today's featured article
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Francis Poulenc (7 January 1899 – 30 January 1963) was a French composer and pianist. His compositions include
mélodies, solo piano works, chamber music, choral pieces, operas, ballets, and orchestral concert music. Among his frequently performed pieces are the piano suite
Trois mouvements perpétuels (1919), the ballet
Les biches (1923), the
Concert champêtre (1928) for
harpsichord and orchestra, the opera
Dialogues des Carmélites (1957), and the
Gloria (1959) for
soprano, choir and orchestra. Largely self-educated musically, he studied with the pianist
Ricardo Viñes and was influenced by the
avant-garde composer
Erik Satie. Initially composing light-hearted and irreverent works, he also wrote serious, sombre and religious pieces beginning in the 1930s. He was an accomplished pianist, and toured Europe and America performing with the
baritone
Pierre Bernac and the soprano
Denise Duval. One of the first composers to see the importance of the gramophone, he recorded extensively from 1928 onwards. This century has seen many new productions worldwide of his serious works, including Dialogues des Carmélites and
La Voix humaine. (
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Did you know...
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Sutton Hoo helmet
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In the news
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Reina nightclub
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An attack on a nightclub (pictured) in
Istanbul, Turkey, during New Year's celebrations, kills at least 39 people and injures more than 70 others.
- American actress, screenwriter, and author
Carrie Fisher dies at the age of 60, and her mother, actress and singer
Debbie Reynolds, dies one day later at the age of 84.
- English singer, songwriter, and record producer
George Michael dies at the age of 53.
- A
Tupolev Tu-154
crashes near
Sochi, Russia, killing all 92 people on board, including 64 members of the
Alexandrov Ensemble.
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On this day...
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January 7:
Christmas (Julian calendar);
Victory Day in Cambodia;
Festa del Tricolore in Italy
Francis, Duke of Guise
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1558 –
Francis, Duke of Guise (pictured),
retook
Calais, England's last continental possession, for France.
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1782 – The
Bank of North America opened in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as the United States' first
de facto
central bank.
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1979 – The
People's Army of Vietnam captured
Phnom Penh, deposing
Pol Pot and the
Khmer Rouge, which marked the end of large-scale fighting in the
Cambodian–Vietnamese War.
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1989 – Representatives of
Ruhollah Khomeini
delivered a letter to
Mikhail Gorbachev, inviting him to consider Islam as an alternative to communism, and predicting the dissolution of the
Soviet Bloc.
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2015 – The offices of the French satirical weekly newspaper
Charlie Hebdo in Paris were
attacked by a
branch of Al-Qaeda, leaving twelve people dead.
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