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Gioachino Rossini (220th birthday/Leap Year)Google Doodle

1:20 PM Admin No comments

Google honors the italian composer Gioachino Rossini with a funny frog-doodle. Rossini was born 220 years ago, on 29th february 1792. This year is a leap year. And because frog leap Google used to show frogs to symbolize the leap year. So the Google designers decide to celbrate both. And the combine the frogs with a scene of the famous Rossini opera “The Barber of Seville”.

Hop nobody says that Google thinks Rossini’s music is just “croak croak” ;-) Here the Rossini-Doodle:

The scenery plays in a forrest with green gras. Four frogs can be seen. On the left a frogs plays piano. A blond hair frog sings a love song while jumping up. I think she symbolizeses the leap year :-) On the right sits a frog ready to get shaved – what an idea :-)

Gioachino Rossini Photo

Gioachino Rossini

1:03 PM Admin No comments

Gioachino Antonio Rossini (Giovacchino Antonio Rossini in the baptismal certificate) (29 February 1792 – 13 November 1868) was an Italian composer who wrote 39 operas as well as sacred music, chamber music, songs, and some instrumental and piano pieces. His best-known operas include the Italian comedies Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville) and La Cenerentola and the French-language epics Moïse et Pharaon and Guillaume Tell (William Tell). A tendency for inspired, song-like melodies is evident throughout his scores, which led to the nickname "The Italian Mozart." Until his retirement in 1829, Rossini had been the most popular opera composer in history.

Biography

Gioachino Antonio Rossini was born into a family of musicians in Pesaro, a town on the Adriatic coast of Italy which was then part of the Papal States. His father, Giuseppe, was a horn player and inspector of slaughterhouses. His mother, Anna, was a singer and a baker's daughter. Rossini's parents began his musical training early, and by the age of six he was playing the triangle in his father's musical group.

Rossini's father was sympathetic to the French Revolution and welcomedNapoleon Bonaparte's troops when they arrived in northern Italy. When Austriarestored the old regime in 1796, Rossini's father was sent to prison and his mother took him to Bologna, making a living as a leading singer at various theatres of the Romagna region. Her husband would ultimately join her in Bologna. During this time, Rossini was frequently left in the care of his aging grandmother, who had difficulty supervising the boy.

He remained at Bologna in the care of a pork butcher while his father played the horn in the orchestras of the theatres at which his wife sang. The boy had three years of instruction in the playing of the harpsichord from Giuseppe Prinetti, originally from Novara, who played the scale with two fingers only; Prinetti also owned a business selling beer and had a propensity to fall asleep while standing. These qualities made him a subject for ridicule in the eyes of the young Rossini.

Marriage and mid-career

Between 1815 and 1823 Rossini produced 20 operas. Of these Otello formed the climax to his reform of serious opera, and offers a suggestive contrast with the treatment of the same subject at a similar point of artistic development by the composer Giuseppe Verdi. In Rossini's time the tragic close was so distasteful to the public of Rome that it was necessary to invent a happy conclusion to Otello.

Conditions of stage production in 1817 are illustrated by Rossini's acceptance of the subject of Cinderella for a libretto only on the condition that the supernatural element should be omitted. The opera La Cenerentola was as successful as Barbiere. The absence of a similar precaution in construction of his Mosè in Egitto led to disaster in the scene depicting the passage of the Israelites through the Red Sea, when the defects in stage contrivance always raised a laugh, so that the composer was at length compelled to introduce the chorus "Dal tuo stellato soglio" to divert attention from the dividing waves.

In 1822, four years after the production of this work, Rossini married the renowned opera singer Isabella Colbran. In the same year, he moved from Italy to Vienna where his operas were the rage of the audiences. He directed hisCenerentola in Vienna, where Zelmira was also performed. After this he returned to Bologna, but an invitation from Prince Metternich to come to Verona and "assist in the general re-establishment of harmony" was too tempting to refuse, and he arrived at the Congress in time for its opening on October 20, 1822. Here he made friends with Chateaubriand and Dorothea Lieven.

In 1823, at the suggestion of the manager of the King's Theatre, London, he came to England, being much fêted on his way through Paris. In England he was given a generous welcome, which included an introduction to KingGeorge IV and the receipt of £7000 after a residence of five months.

The next year he became musical director of the Théâtre des Italiens in Paris at a salary of £800 per annum. Rossini’s popularity in Paris was so great that Charles X gave him a contract to write five new operas a year, and at the expiration of the contract he was to receive a generous pension for life.

For More Info Please Visit ( Wikipedia.org)

Google doodle Frogs on leap day and Italian Composer Gioachino Rossini's 220th birthday

12:39 PM Admin No comments

For a day that comes rarely to the calendar, Google has doodled a rare two-in-one doodle that commemorates not only the leap day but also the 220th birth anniversary of the Italian composer Gioachino Rossini.

Since the leap years and leap days are usually associated with frogs, the leaping ambhibians, the Google doodle on February 29 has a number of frogs, all four of them.

The doodle is inspired by Gioachino Antonio Rossini's famous 1816 comic opera The Barber of Seville (Il barbiere di Siviglia), one of the most performed operas. Of the four frogs in the scene, one is at the piano and the soprano is the only one leaping. The barber frog is Figaro and the frog getting a shave is Count Almaviva (Characters created by French playright Pierre Beaumarchais and The Barber of Seville is one of the three Figaro plays penned by him).

Rossini's other famous operas include William Tell (1829), Semiramide (1823) andCinderella (1817).

Young Gioachino Rossini's Photo

Gioachino Antonio Rossini Photo

A tendency for inspired, song-like melodies is evident throughout his scores, which led to the nickname "The Italian Mozart." Until his retirement in 1829, Rossini had been the most popular opera composer in history.

The Most Beutiful Girls in the World

2:32 AM Admin 1 comment

The Most Beutiful Girl in the World

The most beautiful girl in the world is Miss World 2008 Ksenia Sukhinova from Russia.

Miss Russia, Ksenia Sukhinova, was crowned Miss World 2008 in Johannesburg. The 1.78 m beauty will spend her year making appearances for various charities and important events. The 1st runner-up was Miss India, Parvathy Omanakuttan, and the 2nd runner-up was Miss Trinidad & Tobago, Gabrielle Walcott, with Angola (Brigith dos Santos) and South Africa (Tansey Coetzee) as finalists.
The Most Beutiful Girls in the World Photos

The Most Beutiful Girls in the World

Olympic Games 2012

1:28 PM Admin No comments

The 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games are being hosted in London and other UK towns and cities during July, August and September.

Section UK has received requests from overseas members asking for UK members to buy tickets on their behalf. The games are a friendship and sporting event. The IPA does not have an allocation of tickets and is not able to purchase tickets on behalf of others. Information about buying tickets can be found on the official website at http://www.london2012.com/ .

This year’s games will be a challenge for the UK Police Service. Many officers will be sent to London (and other locations) from across the UK to assist with policing the games, with officers being away from home for several days at a time.

It will not be possible either for serving police officers or IPA members to arrange visits or access to any of the Olympic venues.

Section UK has published Olympic related information on its website at www.ipa-uk.org/Olympics-2012 .

London 2012 Stadium-Olympic Games 2012

Olympic Games 2012 Logo

Olympic Games 2012 Stadium,London

Olympic Games 2012 Simpson

Pakistan's Mohammad Aamir has been Released

11:52 AM Admin No comments

Pakistan's Mohammad Amir has been released after serving half of his six-month sentence. Photograph: Andrew Boyers/Action Images

The Pakistan cricketer Mohammad Amir has been released from a young offenders institution after serving half of a six-month sentence for his part in a fixing scam.

Amir, 19, who had been tipped to become a leading fast bowler, was freed from Portland Prison in Dorset on Wednesday morning, sources said.

He was one of three Pakistan cricketers who received custodial sentences of at London's Southwark crown court in November over a scandal that rocked world sport.

After his release, Amir released a statement that only referred to Pakistan's recent victories over England in their first Test matches since the fixing-tainted 2010 series. "I am delighted for the Pakistani cricket team. My thoughts are with them," Amir said in a statement by his solicitors. "I wish them every success. I will not be making any further comment."

Amir's mentor, Asif Bajwa, said: "Amir is in high spirits and he will meet with his lawyers to decide when to appeal in Court of Arbitration against ICC's five-year suspension. Now that he has served his punishment, I am very optimistic that ICC will also look into the long term suspension."

The former Test captain Salman Butt, 27, was jailed for two and a half years for his role as the "orchestrator" of a plot to bowl deliberate no-balls in the 2010 Lord's Test against England.

The former world No2 Test bowler Mohammad Asif, 29, received a 12-month prison term for delivering one of the fraudulent no-balls.

Mazhar Majeed, 36, the corrupt London-based sports agent at the heart of the fixing scandal, was jailed for two years and eight months.

All three players are also serving five-year bans from cricket imposed by the International Cricket Council (ICC).

The fixing scandal emerged after an undercover News of the World reporter approached Majeed in August 2010 pretending to be a wealthy Indian businessman seeking major international cricketers for a tournament.

The agent, from Croydon in south London, was secretly filmed accepting £150,000 in cash from the journalist as part of an arrangement to rig games.

Majeed promised the reporter that Asif and Amir would deliver three no-balls at specific points during the Test between Pakistan and England at Lord's from 26 to 29 August, 2010.

He claimed he had been carrying out fixing for two and a half years and had seven players from Pakistan's national side working for him.

The trial judge, Mr Justice Cooke, said Amir was "unsophisticated, uneducated and impressionable" and "readily leant on by others", but noted there was evidence that he also discussed rigging an earlier match with a betting contact in Pakistan.

He alluded to the young bowler's claim that he and his family had faced threats over his part in the fixing, and said this was supported by ICC evidence about the strength of the "underworld influences" who control illegal betting overseas.

Amir, who admitted bowling two intentional no-balls at Lord's, was named player of the series for his spells of wicket-taking against England in the summer of 2010.

He became the youngest cricketer ever to take 50 Test wickets and thrilled the crowds during the tour with his ability to rip through top-order batsmen.

Amir and Butt failed in an attempt to have their sentences reduced at the court of appeal in November.

Source--http://www.guardian.co.uk/