Kathleen Ferrier (22 April 1912 – 8 October 1953) was an English
contralto who achieved an international reputation as a stage, concert
and recording artist. During the Second World War she performed
regularly with the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts.
In 1946 she made her stage debut as Lucretia in the world premiere of
Benjamin Britten's The Rape of Lucretia, and a year later she appeared
as Orfeo in Christoph Willibald Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice. As a
recitalist, Ferrier's repertoire included works by Bach, Brahms, Mahler
and Elgar. Forming working relationships with the conductors John
Barbirolli and Bruno Walter and the accompanist Gerald Moore, she became
known internationally through her three tours of the United States and
her many visits to continental Europe. She continued to perform and
record after being diagnosed with breast cancer in 1951. Among her many
memorials, the Kathleen Ferrier Memorial Scholarship Fund makes annual
awards to aspiring young singers.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kathleen_Ferrier>
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Today's selected anniversaries:
1885:
The first meeting of the Colonial Defence Committee, a standing
committee of the British Colonial Office, was held to discuss the
defence of Barbados.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonial_Defence_Committee>
1918:
The short-lived Transcaucasian Democratic Federative Republic
was established on territory formerly part of the Russian Empire.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcaucasian_Democratic_Federative_Republic>
1951:
Korean War: The Chinese People's Volunteer Army attacked
positions occupied mainly by Australian and Canadian forces, starting
the Battle of Kapyong.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kapyong>
2016:
The Paris Agreement, an international treaty on climate change,
opened for signature and was signed by 175 parties.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Agreement>
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Wiktionary's word of the day:
volcanic winter:
(climatology) A reduction in global temperatures caused by volcanic ash
and droplets of sulfuric acid obscuring the Sun and raising Earth's
albedo (increasing the reflection of solar radiation) after a large,
particularly explosive volcanic eruption.
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/volcanic_winter>
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Wikiquote quote of the day:
If atomic bombs are to be added as new weapons to the arsenals of
a warring world, or to the arsenals of the nations preparing for war,
then the time will come when mankind will curse the names of Los Alamos
and Hiroshima. The people of this world must unite or they will perish.
This war that has ravaged so much of the earth, has written these words.
The atomic bomb has spelled them out for all men to understand. Other
men have spoken them in other times, and of other wars, of other
weapons. They have not prevailed. There are some misled by a false sense
of human history, who hold that they will not prevail today. It is not
for us to believe that. By our minds we are committed, committed to a
world united, before the common peril, in law and in humanity.
--Robert Oppenheimer
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_Oppenheimer>
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