title: Batman: The Killing Joke

text: Although a one-shot, the events of "The Killing Joke" were adopted into ongoing comic book storylines. DC Comics officially retired Batgirl in the one-shot comic "Batgirl Special" #1 (July 1988), and when Barbara Gordon reappeared in the "Suicide Squad" series, she was in a wheelchair and became the computer hacker known as the Oracle. This event, along with a Batman storyline that takes place shortly afterward, "A Death in the Family", involving the Joker murdering Robin (Jason Todd), "The Killing Joke", leads Batman's obsession with the Clown Prince of Crime to a personal level. The mantle of Batgirl would eventually be passed to successor Cassandra Cain and later, Stephanie Brown. Gordon's paralysis was later retconned into a temporary event that lasted only three years in DC Comics' 2011 line-wide title relaunch, "The New 52", which saw her restored as the first and only Batgirl.


title: Batman: The Killing Joke

text: The graphic novel won the Eisner Award for Best Graphic Album and garnered Alan Moore the Best Writer award in 1989. Hilary Goldstein of "IGN" praised "The Killing Joke", calling it "easily the greatest Joker story ever told" and adding that "Moore's rhythmic dialogue and Bolland's organic art create a unique story often mimicked but never matched". "IGN" declared "The Killing Joke" the third-greatest Batman graphic novel, after "The Dark Knight Returns" and "." James Donnelly of "Pop Syndicate" called "The Killing Joke" "one of the greatest comics of the 20th century, period". Van Jensen of "ComicMix" said, "Each time [I read "The Killing Joke"] I'm amazed all over again at how Alan Moore and Brian Bolland teamed to pack such intensity, ferocity and humanity into those pages." B.L. Wooldridge of Batman in Comics called the graphic novel "an incredible story, with Moore at his best and awe-inspiring art by painter Brian Bolland". Comics historians Robert Greenberger and Matthew K. Manning describe it as "the definitive Joker story of all time". Manning additionally called it "one of the most powerful and disturbing stories in the history of Gotham City".


title: Batman: The Killing Joke

text: Seb Patrick of "Den of Geek" also had a mixed response, calling "The Killing Joke" "one of the most revered and influential 'Batman' stories ever written and arguably the definitive Joker story", but adding that it's "not at the level of [Alan Moore's] true masterpieces [such as] "Watchmen", "V for Vendetta" [and] "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen"".


title: Batman: The Killing Joke

text: In a 2000 interview, and elsewhere, Moore has been critical of his work, saying: "I don't think it's a very good book. It's not saying anything very interesting". Later qualifying that personal critique, he summarized the book saying: "I was making a point... '[that] there are a lot of similarities between Batman and the Joker.' That was the main point of "The Killing Joke"." In 2003, he further clarified why, with the benefit of hindsight, it was this view that leads him to consider it one his lesser works:


title: Batman: The Killing Joke

text: In a 2004 interview with "Wizard" magazine, Moore was also critical about his decision to disable Barbara Gordon: "I asked DC if they had any problem with me crippling Barbara Gordon – who was Batgirl at the time – and if I remember, I spoke to Len Wein, who was our editor on the project... [He] said, 'Yeah, okay, cripple the bitch'. It was probably one of the areas where they should've reined me in, but they didn't".


title: Batman: The Killing Joke

text: In the introduction to the story as it appears in the trade paperback "DC Universe: The Stories of Alan Moore", Brian Bolland disputes the widely held belief that the story started as a "Batman" annual story and ended up as a prestige-format book. Bolland recalls that the idea for a one-off "Batman" story focusing on the Joker—with Batman more of an incidental character—was his. Bolland says that in 1984, Dick Giordano told him he could do any project for DC he wanted, and Bolland requested to do a Batman/Joker prestige book with Moore as writer. Bolland has also expressed dissatisfaction with the final book, and regrets that its impending schedule for release meant he could not color the book himself (John Higgins was the colorist). Bolland says that "the end result wasn't quite what I'd hoped. I don't think it rates with some of the highlights of Alan's career". March 2008 saw the release of the artwork as Bolland intended it: the twentieth anniversary hardcover edition of "The Killing Joke" is completely recolored by Bolland himself. The book made "The New York Times" Best Seller list in May 2009.


title: Batman: The Killing Joke

text: Critic Mark Vogler wrote that "The Killing Joke" provided the Joker "with a sympathetic back story as it presented some of the villain's most vile offenses". Moore's rendition of the Joker's origin employs elements of the 1951 story "The Man Behind the Red Hood" ("Detective Comics" #168), which established the concept of the Joker originally having been a thief known only as the Red Hood. According to Will Brooker, in his 2001 book "Batman Unmasked: Analyzing a Cultural Icon", the tragic and human elements of the character's story, coupled with his barbaric crimes as the Joker, reveal the character as more of a three-dimensional human being. During an interview with "Salon", Moore explained that the Joker's psychotic nature could have been caused by a "bad decision" in his life.


title: Batman: The Killing Joke

text: Much of the Joker's backstory from "The Killing Joke" is also referred to in 2004's "Pushback" ("" #50-55; reprinted with #66 as "Batman: Hush Returns"), in which the events are observed and reported by the Riddler, who recounts that the pregnant wife of the pre-accident Joker, who is called "Jack" prior to his accident, was kidnapped and murdered by the criminals in order to force his compliance.


title: Batman: The Killing Joke

text: Many have argued that the novel implies that Barbara Gordon is raped by the Joker. The book has been the subject of feminist critique, criticizing the treatment of Barbara Gordon. Author Brian Cronin notes that "[many] readers felt the violence towards Barbara Gordon was too much, and even Moore, in retrospect, has expressed his displeasure with how the story turned out". Author Sharon Packer wrote: "Anyone who feels that feminist critics overreacted to [Gordon's] accident is advised to consult the source material ... Moore's "The Killing Joke" is sadistic to the core. It shows Gordon stripped and mutilated, with before, during and after photos of the attack displayed before her bound and gagged father, the police commissioner. She is more than merely disabled". Gail Simone included the character's paralysis in a list of "major female characters that had been killed, mutilated, and depowered", dubbing the phenomenon "Women in Refrigerators" in reference to a 1994 Green Lantern story where the title character discovers his girlfriend's mutilated body in his refrigerator. Author Jeffrey A. Brown noted "The Killing Joke" as an example of the "relatively unequal violence [female characters] are subjected to" in the major DC/Marvel Comics industry. While male characters may be critically injured or killed, they are more than likely to be returned to their original conception, while "women on the other hand, are more likely to be casually, but irreparably, wounded such as when Barbara Gordon's (the original Batgirl) spine was shattered by the Joker just for fun and has been restricted to a wheelchair for over a decade now".


title: Batman: The Killing Joke

text: The entire story was recolored by Brian Bolland for the 2008 Deluxe Edition. The new colors featured black-and-white flashbacks, as opposed to Higgins' colors, along with one or two items per panel colored in pink or red, up until the helmet of the Red Hood is revealed. In addition to recoloring the pages, Bolland also removed the yellow oval around the bat symbol on Batman's chest. A colored version of Bolland's "An Innocent Guy" was also included. Van Jensen of ComicMix said that "the new colors really do improve the book, giving it a subtlety and grimness not present in the original". James Donnelly of Pop Syndicate said that the original version "is outdone by Bolland's recoloring", which he said "gives the comic a more timeless quality". Seb Patrick of Den of Geek had a lukewarm reaction, calling the recoloring of the flashbacks "superb", but commenting that "some of the [other] changes seem to have less of a point — increasing definition for the sake of it, but giving the book too much of a present-day feel rather than looking like it was printed in the 1980s".


title: Structuralism

text: In sociology, anthropology, archaeology, history, philosophy, and linguistics, structuralism is a general theory of culture and methodology that implies that elements of human culture must be understood by way of their relationship to a broader system. It works to uncover the structures that underlie all the things that humans do, think, perceive, and feel.


title: Structuralism

text: Alternatively, as summarized by philosopher Simon Blackburn, structuralism is:[T]he belief that phenomena of human life are not intelligible except through their interrelations. These relations constitute a structure, and behind local variations in the surface phenomena there are constant laws of abstract structure.Structuralism in Europe developed in the early 20th century, mainly in France and the Russian Empire, in the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and the subsequent Prague, Moscow, and Copenhagen schools of linguistics. As an intellectual movement, structuralism became the heir to existentialism. After World War II, an array of scholars in the humanities borrowed Saussure's concepts for use in their respective fields. French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss was arguably the first such scholar, sparking a widespread interest in structuralism.


title: Structuralism

text: The structuralist mode of reasoning has since been applied in a range of fields, including anthropology, sociology, psychology, literary criticism, economics, and architecture. Along with Lévi-Strauss, the most prominent thinkers associated with structuralism include linguist Roman Jakobson and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan.


title: Structuralism

text: By the late 1960s, many of structuralism's basic tenets came under attack from a new wave of predominantly French intellectuals/philosophers such as historian Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser, and literary critic Roland Barthes. Though elements of their work necessarily relate to structuralism and are informed by it, these theorists eventually came to be referred to as post-structuralists. Many proponents of structuralism, such as Lacan, continue to influence continental philosophy and many of the fundamental assumptions of some of structuralism's post-structuralist critics are a continuation of structuralist thinking.


title: Structuralism

text: Structuralism is an ambiguous term that refers to different schools of thought in different contexts. As such, the movement in humanities and social sciences called structuralism relates to sociology. Emile Durkheim based his sociological concept on 'structure' and 'function', and from his work emerged the sociological approach of structural functionalism.


title: Structuralism

text: Apart from Durkheim's use of the term structure, the semiological concept of Ferdinand de Saussure became fundamental for structuralism. Saussure conceived language and society as a system of relations. His linguistic approach was also a refutation of evolutionary linguistics.


title: Structuralism

text: Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, existentialism, such as that propounded by Jean-Paul Sartre, was the dominant European intellectual movement. Structuralism rose to prominence in France in the wake of existentialism, particularly in the 1960s. The initial popularity of structuralism in France led to its spread across the globe. By the early 1960s, structuralism as a movement was coming into its own and some believed that it offered a single unified approach to human life that would embrace all disciplines.


title: Structuralism

text: Russian functional linguist Roman Jakobson was a pivotal figure in the adaptation of structural analysis to disciplines beyond linguistics, including philosophy, anthropology, and literary theory. Jakobson was a decisive influence on anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, by whose work the term "structuralism" first appeared in reference to social sciences. Lévi-Strauss' work in turn gave rise to the structuralist movement in France, also called French structuralism, influencing the thinking of other writers, most of whom disavowed themselves as being a part of this movement. This included such writers as Louis Althusser and psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, as well as the structural Marxism of Nicos Poulantzas. Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida focused on how structuralism could be applied to literature.


title: Structuralism

text: Accordingly, the so-called "Gang of Four" of structuralism is considered to be Lévi-Strauss, Lacan, Barthes, and Michel Foucault.


title: Structuralism

text: The origins of structuralism are connected with the work of Ferdinand de Saussure on linguistics along with the linguistics of the Prague and Moscow schools. In brief, Saussure's structural linguistics propounded three related concepts.


title: Structuralism

text: Structuralism rejected the concept of human freedom and choice, focusing instead on the way that human experience and behaviour is determined by various structures. The most important initial work on this score was Lévi-Strauss's 1949 volume "The Elementary Structures of Kinship". Lévi-Strauss had known Roman Jakobson during their time together at the New School in New York during WWII and was influenced by both Jakobson's structuralism, as well as the American anthropological tradition.


title: Structuralism

text: In "Elementary Structures", he examined kinship systems from a structural point of view and demonstrated how apparently different social organizations were different permutations of a few basic kinship structures. In the late 1950s, he published "Structural Anthropology", a collection of essays outlining his program for structuralism.


title: Structuralism

text: Blending Freud and Saussure, French (post)structuralist Jacques Lacan applied structuralism to psychoanalysis. Similarly, Jean Piaget applied structuralism to the study of psychology, though in a different way. Piaget, who would better define himself as constructivist, considered structuralism as "a method and not a doctrine," because, for him, "there exists no structure without a construction, abstract or genetic."


title: Structuralism

text: Proponents of structuralism argue that a specific domain of culture may be understood by means of a structure that is modelled on language and is distinct both from the organizations of reality and those of ideas, or the imagination—the "third order." In Lacan's psychoanalytic theory, for example, the structural order of "the Symbolic" is distinguished both from "the Real" and "the Imaginary;" similarly, in Althusser's Marxist theory, the structural order of the capitalist mode of production is distinct both from the actual, real agents involved in its relations and from the ideological forms in which those relations are understood.


title: Structuralism

text: Although French theorist Louis Althusser is often associated with structural social analysis, which helped give rise to "structural Marxism," such association was contested by Althusser himself in the Italian foreword to the second edition of "Reading Capital". In this foreword Althusser states the following:


title: Structuralism

text: Despite the precautions we took to distinguish ourselves from the 'structuralist' ideology…, despite the decisive intervention of categories foreign to 'structuralism'…, the terminology we employed was too close in many respects to the 'structuralist' terminology not to give rise to an ambiguity. With a very few exceptions…our interpretation of Marx has generally been recognized and judged, in homage to the current fashion, as 'structuralist'.… We believe that despite the terminological ambiguity, the profound tendency of our texts was not attached to the 'structuralist' ideology.


title: Structuralism

text: In a later development, feminist theorist Alison Assiter enumerated four ideas common to the various forms of structuralism:


title: Structuralism

text: In Ferdinand de Saussure's "Course in General Linguistics", the analysis focuses not on the use of language ("parole", 'speech'), but rather on the underlying system of language ("langue"). This approach examines how the elements of language relate to each other in the present, synchronically rather than diachronically. Saussure argued that linguistic signs were composed of two parts:


title: Structuralism

text: This differed from previous approaches that focused on the relationship between words and the things in the world that they designate.


title: Structuralism

text: Although not fully developed by Saussure, other key notions in structural linguistics can be found in structural "idealism." A structural idealism is a class of linguistic units (lexemes, morphemes, or even constructions) that are possible in a certain position in a given "syntagm", or linguistic environment (such as a given sentence). The different functional role of each of these members of the paradigm is called 'value' (French: "").


title: Structuralism

text: In France, Antoine Meillet and Émile Benveniste continued Saussure's project, and members of the Prague school of linguistics such as Roman Jakobson and Nikolai Trubetzkoy conducted influential research. The clearest and most important example of Prague school structuralism lies in phonemics. Rather than simply compiling a list of which sounds occur in a language, the Prague school examined how they were related. They determined that the inventory of sounds in a language could be analysed as a series of contrasts.


title: Structuralism

text: Thus, in English, the sounds /p/ and /b/ represent distinct phonemes because there are cases ("minimal pairs") where the contrast between the two is the only difference between two distinct words (e.g. 'pat' and 'bat'). Analyzing sounds in terms of contrastive features also opens up comparative scope—for instance, it makes clear the difficulty Japanese speakers have differentiating /r/ and /l/ in English and other languages is because these sounds are not contrastive in Japanese. Phonology would become the paradigmatic basis for structuralism in a number of different fields.


title: Structuralism

text: Based on the Prague school concept, André Martinet in France, J. R. Firth in the UK and Louis Hjelmslev in Denmark developed their own versions of structural and functional linguistics.


title: Structuralism

text: According to structural theory in anthropology and social anthropology, "meaning" is produced and reproduced within a culture through various practices, phenomena, and activities that serve as systems of signification.


title: Structuralism

text: A structuralist approach may study activities as diverse as food-preparation and serving rituals, religious rites, games, literary and non-literary texts, and other forms of entertainment to discover the deep structures by which meaning is produced and reproduced within the culture. For example, Lévi-Strauss analysed in the 1950s cultural phenomena including mythology, kinship (the alliance theory and the incest taboo), and food preparation. In addition to these studies, he produced more linguistically-focused writings in which he applied Saussure's distinction between "langue" and "parole" in his search for the fundamental structures of the human mind, arguing that the structures that form the "deep grammar" of society originate in the mind and operate in people unconsciously. Lévi-Strauss took inspiration from mathematics.


title: Structuralism

text: Another concept used in structural anthropology came from the Prague school of linguistics, where Roman Jakobson and others analysed sounds based on the presence or absence of certain features (e.g., voiceless vs. voiced). Lévi-Strauss included this in his conceptualization of the universal structures of the mind, which he held to operate based on pairs of binary oppositions such as hot-cold, male-female, culture-nature, cooked-raw, or marriageable vs. tabooed women.


title: Structuralism

text: A third influence came from Marcel Mauss (1872–1950), who had written on gift-exchange systems. Based on Mauss, for instance, Lévi-Strauss argued an "alliance" theory—that kinship systems are based on the exchange of women between groups—as opposed to the "'descent'-based" theory described by Edward Evans-Pritchard and Meyer Fortes. While replacing Mauss at his "Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes" chair, the writings of Lévi-Strauss became widely popular in the 1960s and 1970s and gave rise to the term "structuralism" itself.


title: Structuralism

text: In Britain, authors such as Rodney Needham and Edmund Leach were highly influenced by structuralism. Authors such as Maurice Godelier and Emmanuel Terray combined Marxism with structural anthropology in France. In the United States, authors such as Marshall Sahlins and James Boon built on structuralism to provide their own analysis of human society. Structural anthropology fell out of favour in the early 1980s for a number of reasons. D'Andrade suggests that this was because it made unverifiable assumptions about the universal structures of the human mind. Authors such as Eric Wolf argued that political economy and colonialism should be at the forefront of anthropology. More generally, criticisms of structuralism by Pierre Bourdieu led to a concern with how cultural and social structures were changed by human agency and practice, a trend which Sherry Ortner has referred to as 'practice theory'.


title: Structuralism

text: One example is Douglas E. Foley's "Learning Capitalist Culture" (2010), in which he applied a mixture of structural and Marxist theories to his ethnographic fieldwork among high school students in Texas. Foley analyzed how they reach a shared goal through the lens of social solidarity when he observed "Mexicanos" and "Anglo-Americans" come together on the same football team to defeat the school's rivals. However, he also continually applies a marxist lens and states that he," wanted to wow peers with a new cultural marxist theory of schooling."


title: Structuralism

text: Some anthropological theorists, however, while finding considerable fault with Lévi-Strauss's version of structuralism, did not turn away from a fundamental structural basis for human culture. The Biogenetic Structuralism group for instance argued that some kind of structural foundation for culture must exist because all humans inherit the same system of brain structures. They proposed a kind of neuroanthropology which would lay the foundations for a more complete scientific account of cultural similarity and variation by requiring an integration of cultural anthropology and neuroscience—a program that theorists such as Victor Turner also embraced.


title: Structuralism

text: In literary theory, structuralist criticism relates literary texts to a larger structure, which may be a particular genre, a range of intertextual connections, a model of a universal narrative structure, or a system of recurrent patterns or motifs.


title: Structuralism

text: The field of structuralist semiotics argues that there must be a structure in every text, which explains why it is easier for experienced readers than for non-experienced readers to interpret a text. Everything that is written seems to be governed by rules, or "grammar of literature", that one learns in educational institutions and that are to be unmasked.


title: Structuralism

text: A potential problem for a structuralist interpretation is that it can be highly reductive; as scholar Catherine Belsey puts it: "the structuralist danger of collapsing all difference." An example of such a reading might be if a student concludes the authors of "West Side Story" did not write anything "really" new, because their work has the same structure as Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet". In both texts a girl and a boy fall in love (a "formula" with a symbolic operator between them would be "Boy + Girl") despite the fact that they belong to two groups that hate each other ("Boy's Group - Girl's Group" or "Opposing forces") and conflict is resolved by their deaths. Structuralist readings focus on how the structures of the single text resolve inherent narrative tensions. If a structuralist reading focuses on multiple texts, there must be some way in which those texts unify themselves into a coherent system. The versatility of structuralism is such that a literary critic could make the same claim about a story of two "friendly" families ("Boy's Family + Girl's Family") that arrange a marriage between their children despite the fact that the children hate each other ("Boy - Girl") and then the children commit suicide to escape the arranged marriage; the justification is that the second story's structure is an 'inversion' of the first story's structure: the relationship between the values of love and the two pairs of parties involved have been reversed.


title: Structuralism

text: Structuralist literary criticism argues that the "literary banter of a text" can lie only in new structure, rather than in the specifics of character development and voice in which that structure is expressed. Literary structuralism often follows the lead of Vladimir Propp, Algirdas Julien Greimas, and Claude Lévi-Strauss in seeking out basic deep elements in stories, myths, and more recently, anecdotes, which are combined in various ways to produce the many versions of the ur-story or ur-myth.


title: Structuralism

text: There is considerable similarity between structural literary theory and Northrop Frye's archetypal criticism, which is also indebted to the anthropological study of myths. Some critics have also tried to apply the theory to individual works, but the effort to find unique structures in individual literary works runs counter to the structuralist program and has an affinity with New Criticism.


title: Structuralism

text: Structuralist economics is an approach to economics that emphasizes the importance of taking into account structural features (typically) when undertaking economic analysis. The approach originated with the work of the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA or CEPAL) and is primarily associated with its director Raúl Prebisch and Brazilian economist Celso Furtado. Prebisch began with arguments that economic inequality and distorted development was an inherent structural feature of the global system exchange. As such, early structuralist models emphasised both internal and external disequilibria arising from the productive structure and its interactions with the dependent relationship developing countries had with the developed world. Prebisch himself helped provide the rationale for the idea of Import substitution industrialization, in the wake of the Great Depression and World War II. The alleged declining terms of trade of the developing countries, the Singer–Prebisch hypothesis, played a key role in this.


title: Structuralism

text: Structuralism is less popular today than other approaches, such as post-structuralism and deconstruction. Structuralism has often been criticized for being ahistorical and for favouring deterministic structural forces over the ability of people to act. As the political turbulence of the 1960s and 1970s (particularly the student uprisings of May 1968) began affecting academia, issues of power and political struggle moved to the center of public attention.


title: Structuralism

text: In the 1980s, deconstruction—and its emphasis on the fundamental ambiguity of language rather than its logical structure—became popular. By the end of the century, structuralism was seen as a historically important school of thought, but the movements that it spawned, rather than structuralism itself, commanded attention.


title: Structuralism

text: Several social theorists and academics have strongly criticized structuralism or even dismissed it. French hermeneutic philosopher Paul Ricœur (1969) criticized Lévi-Strauss for overstepping the limits of validity of the structuralist approach, ending up in what Ricœur described as "a Kantianism without a transcendental subject."


title: Structuralism

text: Anthropologist Adam Kuper (1973) argued that:'Structuralism' came to have something of the momentum of a millennial movement and some of its adherents felt that they formed a secret society of the seeing in a world of the blind. Conversion was not just a matter of accepting a new paradigm. It was, almost, a question of salvation. Philip Noel Pettit (1975) called for an abandoning of "the positivist dream which Lévi-Strauss dreamed for semiology," arguing that semiology is not to be placed among the natural sciences. Cornelius Castoriadis (1975) criticized structuralism as failing to explain symbolic mediation in the social world; he viewed structuralism as a variation on the "logicist" theme, arguing that, contrary to what structuralists advocate, language—and symbolic systems in general—cannot be reduced to logical organizations on the basis of the binary logic of oppositions.


title: Structuralism

text: Critical theorist Jürgen Habermas (1985) accused structuralists like Foucault of being positivists; Foucault, while not an ordinary positivist per se, paradoxically uses the tools of science to criticize science, according to Habermas. (See "Performative contradiction" and "Foucault–Habermas debate".) Sociologist Anthony Giddens (1993) is another notable critic; while Giddens draws on a range of structuralist themes in his theorizing, he dismisses the structuralist view that the reproduction of social systems is merely "a mechanical outcome."


title: Gauls

text: The Gauls (; , "Galátai") were a group of Celtic peoples of mainland Europe in the Iron Age and the Roman period (roughly 5th century BC to 5th century AD). Their homeland was known as Gaul ("Gallia"). They spoke Gaulish, a continental Celtic language.


title: Gauls

text: The Gauls emerged around the 5th century BC as bearers of La Tène culture north and west of the Alps. By the 4th century BC, they were spread over much of what is now France, Belgium, Switzerland, Southern Germany, Austria, and the Czech Republic, by virtue of controlling the trade routes along the river systems of the Rhône, Seine, Rhine, and Danube. They reached the peak of their power in the 3rd century BC. During the 4th and 3rd centuries BC, the Gauls expanded into Northern Italy (Cisalpine Gaul), leading to the Roman–Gallic wars, and into the Balkans, leading to war with the Greeks. These latter Gauls eventually settled in Anatolia, becoming known as Galatians.


title: Gauls

text: After the end of the First Punic War, the rising Roman Republic increasingly put pressure on the Gallic sphere of influence. The Battle of Telamon (225 BC) heralded a gradual decline of Gallic power during the 2nd century BC. The Romans eventually conquered Gaul in the Gallic Wars (58–50 BC), making it a Roman province, which brought about the hybrid Gallo-Roman culture.


title: Gauls

text: The Gauls were made up of many tribes ("toutās"), many of whom built large fortified settlements called oppida (such as Bibracte), and minted their own coins. Gaul was never united under a single ruler or government, but the Gallic tribes were capable of uniting their armies in large-scale military operations, such as those led by Brennus and Vercingetorix. They followed an ancient Celtic religion overseen by druids. The Gauls also produced the Coligny calendar.


title: Gauls

text: The ethnonym "Galli" is generally derived from a Celtic root *"gal"- 'power, ability' (cf. Old Breton "gal" 'power, ability', Irish "gal" 'bravery, courage'). Brittonic reflexes give evidence of an n-stem *"gal-n-", with the regular development *"galn"- > "gall"- (cf. Middle Welsh "gallu", Middle Breton "gallout" 'to be able', Cornish "gallos" 'power'). The ethnic names "Galátai" and "Gallitae", as well as Gaulish personal names such as "Gallus" or "Gallius", are also related. The modern French "gaillard" ('brave, vigorous, healthy') stems from the Gallo-Latin noun *"galia"- or "*gallia-" ('power, strength'). Linguist Václav Blažek has argued that Irish "gall" ('foreigner') and Welsh "gâl" ('enemy, hostile') may be later adaptations of the ethnic name "Galli" that were introduced to the British Isles during the 1st millennium AD.


title: Gauls

text: According to Caesar (mid-1st c. BC), the Gauls of the province of Gallia Celtica called themselves "Celtae" in their own language, and were called "Galli" in Latin. Romans indeed used the ethnic name "Galli" as synonym to "Celtae".


title: Gauls

text: The English "Gaul" does not come from Latin "Galli" but from Germanic "*Walhaz", a term stemming from the Gallic ethnonym "Volcae" that came to designate more generally Celtic and Romance speakers in medieval Germanic languages (e.g. "Welsh", "Waals", "Vlachs").


title: Gauls

text: Gaulish culture developed over the first millennium BC. The Urnfield culture (c. 1300–750 BC) represents the Celts as a distinct cultural branch of the Indo-European-speaking people. The spread of iron working led to the Hallstatt culture in the 8th century BC; the Proto-Celtic language is often thought to have been spoken around this time. The Hallstatt culture evolved into La Tène culture in around the 5th century BC. The Greek and Etruscan civilizations and colonies began to influence the Gauls, especially in the Mediterranean area. Gauls under Brennus invaded Rome circa 390 BC.


title: Gauls

text: By the 5th century BC, the tribes later called Gauls had migrated from Central France to the Mediterranean coast. Gallic invaders settled the Po Valley in the 4th century BC, defeated Roman forces in a battle under Brennus in 390 BC, and raided Italy as far south as Sicily.


title: Gauls

text: In the early 3rd century BC, the Gauls attempted an eastward expansion, toward the Balkan peninsula. At that time it was a Greek province, and the Gauls' intent was to reach and loot the rich Greek city-states of the Greek mainland. But the Greeks exterminated the majority of the Gallic army, and the few survivors were forced to flee.


title: Gauls

text: Many Gauls were recorded as serving in the armies of Carthage during the Punic Wars. One of the leading rebel leaders of the Mercenary War, Autaritus, was of Gallic origin.


title: Gauls

text: During the Balkan expedition, led by Cerethrios, Brennos and Bolgios, the Gauls raided the Greek mainland twice.


title: Gauls

text: At the end of the second expedition the Gallic raiders had been repelled by the coalition armies of the various Greek city-states and were forced to retreat to Illyria and Thrace, but the Greeks were forced to grant safe passage to the Gauls who then made their way to Asia Minor and settled in Central Anatolia. The Gallic area of settlement in Asia Minor was called Galatia; there they created widespread havoc. But they were checked through the use of war elephants and skirmishers by the Greek Seleucid king Antiochus I in 275 BC, after which they served as mercenaries across the whole Hellenistic Eastern Mediterranean, including Ptolemaic Egypt, where they, under Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285-246 BC), attempted to seize control of the kingdom.


title: Gauls

text: In the first Gallic invasion of Greece (279 BC), they defeated the Macedonians and killed the Macedonian king Ptolemy Keraunos. They then focused on looting the rich Macedonian countryside, but avoided the heavily fortified cities. The Macedonian general Sosthenes assembled an army, defeated Bolgius and repelled the invading Gauls.


title: Gauls

text: In the second Gaulish invasion of Greece (278 BC), the Gauls, led by Brennos, suffered heavy losses while facing the Greek coalition army at Thermopylae, but helped by the Heracleans they followed the mountain path around Thermopylae to encircle the Greek army in the same way that the Persian army had done at the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC, but this time defeating the whole of the Greek army. After passing Thermopylae the Gauls headed for the rich treasury at Delphi, where they were defeated by the re-assembled Greek army. This led to a series of retreats of the Gauls, with devastating losses, all the way up to Macedonia and then out of the Greek mainland. The major part of the Gaul army was defeated in the process, and those Gauls survived were forced to flee from Greece. The Gallic leader Brennos was seriously injured at Delphi and committed suicide there. (He is not to be confused with another Gaulish leader bearing the same name who had sacked Rome a century earlier (390 BC).


title: Gauls

text: In 278 BC Gaulish settlers in the Balkans were invited by Nicomedes I of Bithynia to help him in a dynastic struggle against his brother. They numbered about 10,000 fighting men and about the same number of women and children, divided into three tribes, Trocmi, Tolistobogii and Tectosages. They were eventually defeated by the Seleucid king Antiochus I (275 BC), in a battle in which the Seleucid war elephants shocked the Galatians. Although the momentum of the invasion was broken, the Galatians were by no means exterminated, and continued to demand tribute from the Hellenistic states of Anatolia to avoid war. 4,000 Galatians were hired as mercenaries by the Ptolemaic Egyptian king Ptolemy II Philadelphus in 270 BC. According to Pausanias, soon after arrival the Celts plotted “to seize Egypt”, and so Ptolemy marooned them on a deserted island in the Nile River.


title: Gauls

text: Galatians also participated at the victory at Raphia in 217 BC under Ptolemy IV Philopator, and continued to serve as mercenaries for the Ptolemaic dynasty until its demise in 30 BC. They sided with the renegade Seleucid prince Antiochus Hierax, who reigned in Asia Minor. Hierax tried to defeat king Attalus I of Pergamum (241–197 BC), but instead, the Hellenized cities united under Attalus's banner, and his armies inflicted a severe defeat upon the Galatians at the Battle of the Caecus River in 241 BC. After this defeat, the Galatians continued to be a serious threat to the states of Asia Minor. In fact, they continued to be a threat even after their defeat by Gnaeus Manlius Vulso in the Galatian War (189 BC). Galatia declined and at times fell under Pontic ascendancy. They were finally freed by the Mithridatic Wars, in which they supported Rome. In the settlement of 64 BC, Galatia became a client state of the Roman empire, the old constitution disappeared, and three chiefs (wrongly styled "tetrarchs") were appointed, one for each tribe. But this arrangement soon gave way before the ambition of one of these tetrarchs, Deiotarus, a contemporary of Cicero and Julius Caesar, who made himself master of the other two tetrarchies and was finally recognized by the Romans as 'king' of Galatia. The Galatian language continued to be spoken in central Anatolia until the 6th century.


title: Gauls

text: In the Second Punic War the famous Carthaginian general Hannibal used Gallic mercenaries in his invasion of Italy. They played a part in some of his most spectacular victories, including the battle of Cannae. The Gauls were so prosperous by the 2nd century that the powerful Greek colony of Massilia had to appeal to the Roman Republic for defense against them. The Romans intervened in southern Gaul in 125 BC, and conquered the area eventually known as Gallia Narbonensis by 121 BC.


title: Gauls

text: In 58 BC Julius Caesar launched the Gallic Wars and had conquered the whole of Gaul by 51 BC. He noted that the Gauls (Celtae) were one of the three primary peoples in the area, along with the Aquitanians and the Belgae. Caesar's motivation for the invasion seems to have been his need for gold to pay off his debts and for a successful military expedition to boost his political career. The people of Gaul could provide him with both. So much gold was looted from Gaul that after the war the price of gold fell by as much as 20%. While they were militarily just as brave as the Romans, the internal division between the Gallic tribes guaranteed an easy victory for Caesar, and Vercingetorix's attempt to unite the Gauls against Roman invasion came too late. After the annexation of Gaul a mixed Gallo-Roman culture began to emerge.


title: Gauls

text: After more than a century of warfare, the Cisalpine Gauls were subdued by the Romans in the early 2nd century BC. The Transalpine Gauls continued to thrive for another century, and joined the Germanic Cimbri and Teutones in the Cimbrian War, where they defeated and killed a Roman consul at Burdigala in 107 BC, and later became prominent among the rebelling gladiators in the Third Servile War. The Gauls were finally conquered by Julius Caesar in the 50s BC despite a rebellion by the Arvernian chieftain Vercingetorix. During the Roman period the Gauls became assimilated into Gallo-Roman culture and by expanding Germanic tribes. During the crisis of the third century, there was briefly a breakaway Gallic Empire founded by the Batavian general Postumus.


title: Gauls

text: 4th-century Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus wrote that the Gauls were tall, light-skinned, light-haired, and light-eyed:


title: Gauls

text: Almost all Gauls are tall and fair-skinned, with reddish hair. Their savage eyes make them fearful objects; they are eager to quarrel and excessively truculent.


title: Gauls

text: When, in the course of a dispute, any of them calls in his wife, a creature with gleaming eyes much stronger than her husband, they are more than a match for a whole group of foreigners; especially when the woman, with swollen neck and gnashing teeth, swings her great white arms and begins to deliver a rain of punches mixed with kicks, like missiles launched by the twisted strings of a catapult.


title: Gauls

text: 1st-century BC Greek historian Diodorus Siculus described them as tall, generally heavily built, very light-skinned, and light-haired, with long hair and mustaches:


title: Gauls

text: The Gauls are tall of body, with rippling muscles, and white of skin, and their hair is blond, and not only naturally so, but they make it their practice to increase the distinguishing color by which nature has given it. For they are always washing their hair in limewater, and they pull it back from their forehead to the top of the head and back to the nape of the neck... Some of them shave their beards, but others let it grow a little; and the nobles shave their cheeks, but they let the mustache grow until it covers the mouth.


title: Gauls

text: Jordanes, in his "Origins and Deeds of the Goths", indirectly describes the Gauls as light-haired and large-bodied by comparing them to Caledonians, as a contrast to the Spaniards, who he compared to the Silures. He speculates based on this comparison that the Britons originated from different peoples, including said Gauls and Spaniards.


title: Gauls

text: The Silures have swarthy features and are usually born with curly black hair, but the inhabitants of Caledonia have reddish hair and large loose-jointed bodies. They [the Britons] are like the Gauls and the Spaniards, according as they are opposite either nation. Hence some have supposed that from these lands the island received its inhabitants.


title: Gauls

text: In the novel "Satyricon" by Roman courtier Gaius Petronius, a Roman character sarcastically suggests that he and his partner "chalk our faces so that Gaul may claim us as her own" in the midst of a rant outlining the problems with his partner's plan of using blackface to impersonate Aethiopians. This suggests that Gauls were thought of on average to be much paler than Romans.


title: Gauls

text: All over Gaul, archeology has uncovered many pre-Roman gold mines (at least 200 in the Pyrenees), suggesting they were very rich, also evidenced by large finds of gold coins and artefacts. Also there existed highly developed population centers, called "oppida" by Caesar, such as Bibracte, Gergovia, Avaricum, Alesia, Bibrax, Manching and others. Modern archeology strongly suggests that the countries of Gaul were quite civilized and very wealthy. Most had contact with Roman merchants and some, particularly those that were governed by Republics such as the Aedui, Helvetii and others, had enjoyed stable political alliances with Rome. They imported Mediterranean wine on an industrial scale, evidenced by large finds of wine vessels in digs all over Gaul, the largest and most famous of which being the one discovered in Vix Grave, which stands 1.63 m (5′ 4″) high.


title: Gauls

text: Gallic art corresponds to two archaeological material cultures: the Hallstatt culture (c. 1200–450 BC) and the La Tène culture (c. 450–1 BC). Each of these eras has a characteristic style, and while there is much overlap between them, the two styles recognizably differ. From the late Hallstatt onwards and certainly through the entirety of La Tène, Gaulish art is reckoned to be the beginning of what is called Celtic art today. After the end of the La Tène and from the beginning of Roman rule, Gaulish art evolved into Gallo-Roman art.


title: Gauls

text: Hallstatt decoration is mostly geometric and linear, and is best seen on fine metalwork finds from graves. Animals, with waterfowl a particular favorite, are often included as part of ornamentation, more often than humans. Commonly found objects include weapons, in latter periods often with hilts terminating in curving forks ("antenna hilts"), and jewelry, which include fibulae, often with a row of disks hanging down on chains, armlets, and some torcs. Though these are most often found in bronze, some examples, likely belonging to chieftains or other preeminent figures, are made of gold. Decorated situlae and bronze belt plates show influence from Greek and Etruscan figurative traditions. Many of these characteristics were continued into the succeeding La Tène style.


title: Gauls

text: La Tène metalwork in bronze, iron and gold, developing technologically out of the Hallstatt culture, is stylistically characterized by "classical vegetable and foliage motifs such as leafy palmette forms, vines, tendrils and lotus flowers together with spirals, S-scrolls, lyre and trumpet shapes". Such decoration may be found on fine bronze vessels, helmets and shields, horse trappings, and elite jewelry, especially torcs and fibulae. Early on, La Tène style adapted ornamental motifs from foreign cultures into something distinctly new; the complicated brew of influences include Scythian art as well as that of the Greeks and Etruscans, among others. The Achaemenid occupation of Thrace and Macedonia around 500 BC is a factor of uncertain importance.


title: Gauls

text: Gaulish society was dominated by the druid priestly class. The druids were not the only political force, however, and the early political system was complex. The fundamental unit of Gallic politics was the tribe, which itself consisted of one or more of what Caesar called "pagi". Each tribe had a council of elders, and initially a king. Later, the executive was an annually-elected magistrate. Among the Aedui tribe the executive held the title of "Vergobret", a position much like a king, but its powers were held in check by rules laid down by the council.


title: Gauls

text: The tribal groups, or "pagi" as the Romans called them (singular: "pagus"; the French word "pays", "country", comes from this term) were organized into larger super-tribal groups that the Romans called "civitates". These administrative groupings would be taken over by the Romans in their system of local control, and these "civitates" would also be the basis of France's eventual division into ecclesiastical bishoprics and dioceses, which would remain in place—with slight changes—until the French Revolution imposed the modern departmental system.


title: Gauls

text: Though the tribes were moderately stable political entities, Gaul as a whole tended to be politically divided, there being virtually no unity among the various tribes. Only during particularly trying times, such as the invasion of Caesar, could the Gauls unite under a single leader like Vercingetorix. Even then, however, the faction lines were clear.


title: Gauls

text: The Romans divided Gaul broadly into "Provincia" (the conquered area around the Mediterranean), and the northern Gallia Comata ("free Gaul" or "wooded Gaul"). Caesar divided the people of Gaulia Comata into three broad groups: the "Aquitani"; "Galli" (who in their own language were called "Celtae"); and "Belgae". In the modern sense, Gallic tribes are defined linguistically, as speakers of Gaulish. While the Aquitani were probably Vascons, the Belgae would thus probably be counted among the Gauls tribes, perhaps with Germanic elements.


title: Gauls

text: Gaulish or Gallic is the name given to the Celtic language spoken in Gaul before Latin took over. According to Caesar's "Commentaries on the Gallic War", it was one of three languages in Gaul, the others being Aquitanian and Belgic. In Gallia Transalpina, a Roman province by the time of Caesar, Latin was the language spoken since at least the previous century. Gaulish is paraphyletically grouped with Celtiberian, Lepontic, and Galatian as Continental Celtic. Lepontic and Galatian are sometimes considered dialects of Gaulish.


title: Gauls

text: The exact time of the final extinction of Gaulish is unknown, but it is estimated to be around or shortly after the middle of the 1st millennium. Gaulish may have survived in some regions as the mid to late 6th century in France. Despite considerable Romanization of the local material culture, the Gaulish language is held to have survived and had coexisted with spoken Latin during the centuries of Roman rule of Gaul. Coexisting with Latin, Gaulish played a role in shaping the Vulgar Latin dialects that developed into French, with effects including loanwords and calques, sound changes shaped by Gaulish influence, as well as in conjugation and word order. Recent work in computational simulation suggests that Gaulish played a role in gender shifts of words in Early French, whereby the gender would shift to match the gender of the corresponding Gaulish word with the same meaning.


title: Gauls

text: Like other Celtic peoples, the Gauls had a polytheistic religion. Evidence about their religion is gleaned from archaeology and Greco-Roman accounts.


title: Gauls

text: Some deities were venerated only in one region, but others were more widely known. The Gauls seem to have had a father god, who was often a god of the tribe and of the dead (Toutatis probably being one name for him); and a mother goddess who was associated with the land, earth and fertility (Matrona probably being one name for her). The mother goddess could also take the form of a war goddess as protectress of her tribe and its land. There also seems to have been a male celestial god—identified with Taranis—associated with thunder, the wheel, and the bull. There were gods of skill and craft, such as the pan-regional god Lugus, and the smith god Gobannos. Gallic healing deities were often associated with sacred springs, such as Sirona and Borvo. Other pan-regional deities include the horned god Cernunnos, the horse and fertility goddess Epona, Ogmios, Sucellos and his companion Nantosuelta. Caesar says the Gauls believed they all descended from a god of the dead and underworld, whom he likened to Dīs Pater. Some deities were seen as threefold, like the Three Mothers. According to Miranda Aldhouse-Green, the Celts were also animists, believing that every part of the natural world had a spirit.


title: Gauls

text: Greco-Roman writers say the Gauls believed in reincarnation. Diodorus says they believed souls were reincarnated after a certain number of years, probably after spending time in an afterlife, and noted they buried grave goods with the dead.


title: Gauls

text: Gallic religious ceremonies were overseen by priests known as druids, who also served as judges, teachers, and lore-keepers. There is evidence that the Gauls sacrificed animals, almost always livestock. An example is the sanctuary at Gournay-sur-Aronde. It appears some were offered wholly to the gods (by burying or burning), while some were shared between gods and humans (part eaten and part offered). There is also some evidence that the Gauls sacrificed humans, and some Greco-Roman sources claim the Gauls sacrificed criminals by burning them in a wicker man.


title: Gauls

text: The Romans said the Gauls held ceremonies in sacred groves and other natural shrines, called nemetons. Celtic peoples often made votive offerings: treasured items deposited in water and wetlands, or in ritual shafts and wells, often in the same place over generations.


title: Gauls

text: Among the Romans and Greeks, the Gauls had a reputation as head hunters. There is archaeological evidence of a "head cult" among the Gallic Salyes, who embalmed and displayed severed heads, for example at Entremont.


title: Gauls

text: The Roman conquest gave rise to a syncretic Gallo-Roman religion, with deities such as Lenus Mars, Apollo Grannus, and the pairing of Rosmerta with Mercury.


title: Gauls

text: The Gauls were made up of many tribes who controlled a particular territory and often built large fortified settlements called oppida. After completing the conquest of Gaul, the Roman Empire made most of these tribes "civitates". The geographical subdivisions of the early church in Gaul were then based on these, and continued as French dioceses until the French Revolution.


title: Gauls

text: The following is a list of recorded Gaulish tribes, in both Latin and the reconstructed Gaulish language (*), as well as their capitals during the Roman period.


title: Gauls

text: The Gauls played a certain role in the national historiography and national identity of modern France. Attention given to the Gauls as the founding population of the French nation was traditionally second to that enjoyed by the Franks, out of whose kingdom the historical kingdom of France arose under the Capetian dynasty; for example, Charles de Gaulle is on record as stating, "For me, the history of France begins with Clovis, elected as king of France by the tribe of the Franks, who gave their name to France. Before Clovis, we have Gallo-Roman and Gaulish prehistory. The decisive element, for me, is that Clovis was the first king to have been baptized a Christian. My country is a Christian country and I reckon the history of France beginning with the accession of a Christian king who bore the name of the Franks."


title: Gauls

text: However, the dismissal of "Gaulish prehistory" as irrelevant for French national identity has been far from universal. Pre-Roman Gaul has been evoked as a template for French independence especially during the Third French Republic (1870–1940). An iconic phrase summarizing this view is that of "our ancestors the Gauls" ("nos ancêtres les Gaulois"), associated with the history textbook for schools by Ernest Lavisse (1842–1922), who taught that "the Romans established themselves in small numbers; the Franks were not numerous either, Clovis having but a few thousand men with him. The basis of our population has thus remained Gaulish. The Gauls are our ancestors."


title: Gauls

text: "Astérix", the popular series of French comic books following the exploits of a village of "indomitable Gauls", satirizes this view by combining scenes set in classical antiquity with modern ethnic clichés of the French and other nations.


title: Gauls

text: Similarly, in Swiss national historiography of the 19th century, the Gaulish Helvetii were chosen as representing the ancestral Swiss population (compare "Helvetia" as national allegory), as the Helvetii had settled in both the French and the German-speaking parts of Switzerland, and their Gaulish language set them apart from Latin- and German-speaking populations in equal measure.


title: Gauls

text: A genetic study published in "PLOS One" in December 2018 examined 45 individuals buried at a La Téne necropolis in Urville-Nacqueville, France. The people buried there were identified as Gauls. The mtDNA of the examined individuals belonged primarily to haplotypes of H and U. They were found to be carrying a large amount of steppe ancestry (originating near what is now Ukraine and southwestern Russia), and to have been closely related to peoples of the preceding Bell Beaker culture, suggesting genetic continuity between Bronze Age and Iron Age France. Significant gene flow with Great Britain and Iberia was detected. The results of the study partially supported the belief that French people are largely descended from the Gauls.


title: Gauls

text: A genetic study published in the "Journal of Archaeological Science" in October 2019 examined 43 maternal and 17 paternal lineages for the La Téne necropolis in Urville-Nacqueville, France, and 27 maternal and 19 paternal lineages for La Téne tumulus of Gurgy ‘Les Noisats’ near modern Paris, France. The examined individuals displayed strong genetic resemblance to peoples of the earlier Yamnaya culture, Corded Ware culture and Bell Beaker culture. They carried a diverse set of maternal lineages associated with steppe ancestry. The paternal lineages were on the other hand belonged entirely to haplogroup R and R1b, both of whom are associated with steppe ancestry. The evidence suggested that the Gauls of the La Téne culture were patrilineal and patrilocal, which is in agreement with archaeological and literary evidence.


title: Gauls

text: A genetic study published in iScience in April 2022 examined 49 genomes from 27 sites in Bronze Age and Iron Age France. The study found evidence of strong genetic continuity between the two periods, particularly in southern France. The samples from northern and southern France were highly homogenous, with northern samples displaying links to contemporary samples form Great Britain and Sweden, and southern samples displaying links to Celtiberians. The northern French samples were distinguished from the southern ones by elevated levels of steppe-related ancestry. R1b was by far the most dominant paternal lineage, while H was the most common maternal lineage. The Iron Age samples resembled those of modern-day populations of France, Great Britain and Spain. The evidence suggested that the Gauls of the La Téne culture largely evolved from local Bronze Age populations.


title: Melissa Mathison

text: Melissa Marie Mathison (June 3, 1950 – November 4, 2015) was an American film and television screenwriter and an activist for the Tibetan independence movement. She was best known for writing the screenplays for the films "The Black Stallion" (1979) and "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" (1982), the latter of which earned her the Saturn Award for Best Writing and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.


title: Melissa Mathison

text: Mathison later wrote "The Indian in the Cupboard" (1995), based on Lynne Reid Banks' 1980 children's novel of the same name, and "Kundun" (1997), a biographical-drama film about the Dalai Lama. Her final film credit was "The BFG" (2016), which marked her third collaboration with film director Steven Spielberg.


title: Melissa Mathison

text: Mathison was born on June 3, 1950, in Los Angeles, one of five siblings. Her father, Richard Randolph Mathison, was the Los Angeles bureau chief of "Newsweek". Her mother was Margaret Jean (née Kieffer) Mathison, a food writer and convenience-foods entrepreneur. After graduating from Providence High School in 1968, Mathison attended the University of California, Berkeley. Her family was friendly with Francis Ford Coppola, whose children were babysat by Mathison. Coppola offered her a job as his assistant on "The Godfather Part II" (1974), an opportunity for which she left her studies at UC Berkeley.


title: Melissa Mathison

text: With Coppola’s encouragement, she wrote a script for "The Black Stallion", adapted from the novel, that caught Steven Spielberg's attention.


title: Melissa Mathison

text: Mathison wrote the screenplay for "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial" (1982) in collaboration with Steven Spielberg. It was nominated for an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. The script was based on a story, written by John Sayles, that Spielberg provided to Mathison during the filming of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (1981). Spielberg attributes the line "E.T. phone home" to Mathison. She collaborated again with Spielberg for "The BFG" (2016), her final film, which was dedicated in her memory. She also had film credits for "The Escape Artist" (1982) and "The Indian in the Cupboard" (1995).


title: Melissa Mathison

text: Mathison met the Dalai Lama in 1990 when she was writing the script for "Kundun" (1997) and developed a lasting friendship with him. She continued to work as an activist for Tibetan freedom and was on the board of the International Campaign for Tibet.


title: Melissa Mathison

text: From 1983 to 2004, Mathison was married to Harrison Ford; the couple had two children. She died on November 4, 2015, in Los Angeles, aged 65, from neuroendocrine cancer.


title: ASAP Mob

text: ASAP Mob (stylized as A$AP Mob, ASAP being an acronym for "Always Strive And Prosper") is an American hip hop collective formed in 2006 in Harlem, New York City, that consists of rappers (most of whom carry the "ASAP" moniker), record producers, music video directors and fashion designers.


title: ASAP Mob

text: In August 2012, the collective released the mixtape "Lords Never Worry". They released the single "Trillmatic" in December 2013, followed by their debut studio album, "", in October 2016.


title: ASAP Mob

text: In 2006, Steven Rodriguez, professionally known as A$AP Yams, formed the collective with fellow New Yorkers A$AP Bari, A$AP Kham and A$AP Illz. Harlem rapper A$AP Rocky joined later. In the summer of 2011, the group released music videos for Rocky's singles "Peso" and "Purple Swag," produced by A$AP Ty Beats. Rocky followed up with his mixtape "Live.Love.A$AP" in October, signing a record deal with Sony Music Entertainment that month.


title: ASAP Mob

text: On August 27, 2012, A$AP Mob released their debut project, a mixtape titled "Lords Never Worry", as a free download. From September to November, Rocky toured with opening acts Schoolboy Q, Danny Brown, and A$AP Mob in support of his solo debut album.


title: ASAP Mob

text: In January 2013, A$AP Ferg signed a joint venture deal with RCA and Polo Grounds, which released his single "Work" for retail on iTunes. An official remix of "Work", featuring Rocky, French Montana, Schoolboy Q and Trinidad James, followed.


title: ASAP Mob

text: Rocky's debut album "Long. Live. A$AP", was released on January 15, 2013, debuting at number one on the "Billboard" 200 chart, with first-week sales of 139,000 copies in the United States.


title: ASAP Mob

text: A$AP Ferg announced that A$AP Mob would release their debut album after the release of his solo debut album "Trap Lord", on August 20, 2013. The album peaked at number nine on the "Billboard" 200 and number four on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart, with first-week sales of 32,000 copies in the United States. In November 2013, A$AP Rocky announced that A$AP Mob's debut album would be titled "Lords". On December 4, 2013, the album's first single, entitled "Trillmatic." The album title was then changed to "L.O.R.D." On January 13, 2014, the single "See Me" by A$AP Ant was released.


title: ASAP Mob

text: On January 18, 2015, A$AP Mob revealed that A$AP Yams had died of acute mixed drug intoxication. On October 15, 2016, A$AP Rocky confirmed that the group's compilation album "" was completed. Dedicated to A$AP Yams, the album was released on October 31, 2016, and featured several artists, including Playboi Carti, Skepta and Tyler, The Creator.


title: ASAP Mob

text: On August 1, 2017, A$AP Rocky announced that "" would be released on August 25, preceded by ASAP Twelvyy's "12" album on August 4 and ASAP Ferg's "Still Striving" album on August 18.


title: ASAP Mob

text: On January 13, 2019, ASAP Ant announced that he was leaving the collective to focus on his solo career. He returned in April, confirming that the collective had begun work on their third studio album, "Cozy Tapes 3".


title: ASAP Mob

text: On January 18, 2015, ASAP Yams was found dead at the age of 26. The cause of death was ruled an overdose due to mixed drug intoxication, although ASAP Mob members and affiliates claimed that Yams had died of asphyxiating on vomit brought on by sleep apnea.


title: Rachel Griffiths

text: Rachel Anne Griffiths (born in 1968) is an Australian actress. Raised primarily in Melbourne, she began her acting career appearing on the Australian series "Secrets" before being cast in a supporting role in the comedy "Muriel's Wedding" (1994), which earned her an AACTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. In 1997, she was the lead in Nadia Tass's drama "Amy". She had a role opposite Julia Roberts in the American romantic comedy "My Best Friend's Wedding" (1997), followed by her portrayal of Hilary du Pré in "Hilary and Jackie" (1998), for which she received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress


title: Rachel Griffiths

text: From 2001 to 2005, Griffiths portrayed masseuse Brenda Chenowith in the HBO series "Six Feet Under", for which she earned a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in 2002 and two Primetime Emmy Award nominations. She subsequently appeared on television as Sarah Walker Laurent on the ABC drama series "Brothers & Sisters" from 2006 to 2011, for which she was nominated for two additional Primetime Emmy Awards.


title: Rachel Griffiths

text: She has also had roles in the films "Blow" (2001), portraying the mother of George Jung; the historical drama "Ned Kelly" (2003); "Step Up" (2006), and the Julian Assange television biopic "" (2012). In 2016, she appeared in a supporting role in Mel Gibson's biographical war drama "Hacksaw Ridge", and in the docudrama miniseries "When We Rise", written by Dustin Lance Black.


title: Rachel Griffiths

text: Onstage, Griffiths appeared in a Melbourne-based production of "Proof" in 2002, which earned her a Helpmann Award, and later made her Broadway debut in a 2011 critically acclaimed production of "Other Desert Cities". In addition to acting, she made her directorial debut with the short film "Tulip" in 1998, and directed several episodes of the Australian television series "Nowhere Boys" in 2015.


title: Rachel Griffiths

text: Griffiths was born in 1968 in Australia, where she spent her early childhood on the Gold Coast. She is the daughter of Anna and Edward Martin Griffiths. She has two older brothers, Ben, and Samuel. She moved to Melbourne at age five, with her mother and two older brothers. Griffiths was raised Roman Catholic. She recalled first being inspired to become an actress after watching the U.S. miniseries "Roots" as a child.


title: Rachel Griffiths

text: Griffiths attended Star of the Sea College, a Catholic girls' high school in Brighton. She earned a Bachelor of Education degree in drama and dance at Victoria College, Rusden. After being rejected from the National Institute of Dramatic Art, Griffiths joined the Woolly Jumpers, a Geelong-based community theatre group. In 1991, she wrote and performed the one-woman show "Barbie Gets Hip", which played at the Melbourne Fringe Festival in 1991.


title: Rachel Griffiths

text: Griffiths portrayed Rhonda Epinstall, the best friend of Toni Collette's titular character, in the 1994 film "Muriel's Wedding". Her performance won her critical acclaim and both the Australian Film Critics Award and the Australian Film Institute Awards for Best Supporting Actress. She followed in 1996 with the role of an earthy, ill-mannered pig farmer's daughter in Michael Winterbottom's "Jude".


title: Rachel Griffiths

text: In 1997, Griffiths sparked controversy after attending uninvited the opening of the Crown Casino in Melbourne, Australia, while topless. She stated a wish to protest the views taken by the media and state government towards the new casino, inspired by the story of Lady Godiva.


title: Rachel Griffiths

text: Griffiths joined forces again with "Muriel's Wedding" director P. J. Hogan for her American film debut, "My Best Friend's Wedding", in 1997. That same year she starred in "My Son the Fanatic", a British film in which she portrayed a tough Yorkshire prostitute who becomes involved with a considerably older Pakistani taxicab driver, played by Om Puri. Griffiths received an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of real-life flautist Hilary du Pré opposite Emily Watson as her sister, famed cellist Jacqueline "Jackie" du Pre, in "Hilary and Jackie" (1998). After the release of "Hilary and Jackie", Griffiths was cast in the starring role in the Australian comedy "Me Myself I" (1999).


title: Rachel Griffiths

text: In 2001, Griffiths appeared opposite Natasha Richardson in the English comedy "Blow Dry", playing a lesbian hairdresser who enters a hairstyling competition with her lover, followed by the Ted Demme-directed "Blow" (2001) opposite Johnny Depp and Ray Liotta, in which she played the mother of Boston cocaine magnate George Jung. Nick Nunziata of "IGN" was critical of Griffiths' performance in the film, writing: "the only performance that doesn't ring true is that of Rachel Griffiths as Jung's mother...she just doesn't connect."


title: Rachel Griffiths

text: The same year Griffiths appeared in "Blow", she was cast as one of the leads in the HBO drama series "Six Feet Under". Her performance as emotionally-scarred massage therapist, Brenda Chenowith, earned her Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild Awards, as well as two Emmy Award nominations over the series' five season-run. In the third season, she missed four episodes due to her first pregnancy; her second pregnancy was written into the show's final season and she appeared in almost every episode of the series.


title: Rachel Griffiths

text: While starring on "Six Feet Under", Griffiths continued to occasionally appear in the films, playing the supportive housewife of Dennis Quaid in the Walt Disney drama "The Rookie" (2002), and in the Australian biopic "Ned Kelly" (2003), opposite Heath Ledger, Geoffrey Rush, and Orlando Bloom. In the spring of 2002, she appeared in a Melbourne production of "Proof" by the American playwright David Auburn, for which she earned a Helpmann Award for Best Female Actor in a Play.


title: Rachel Griffiths

text: In 2006, she became part of the ensemble cast, co-starring alongside Sally Field, Calista Flockhart, Balthazar Getty and Matthew Rhys, of the dramatic series "Brothers & Sisters", in which she portrays Sarah Walker, who inherits control of the family business after her father's death. Griffiths received a 2007 Emmy nomination and a 2008 Emmy nomination for her work on the series, followed by 2008 and 2009 Golden Globe nominations. Griffiths starred on the series until its conclusion in 2011. Additionally, she appeared as Inez Scull in the 2008 miniseries adaptation of Larry McMurtry's "Comanche Moon".


title: Rachel Griffiths

text: Griffiths made her Broadway debut in "Other Desert Cities", directed by Joe Mantello and co-starring Judith Light, Stockard Channing, and Stacy Keach, which began previews on 10 October 2011, opening on 3 November 2011 in Manhattan. David Rooney of "The Hollywood Reporter" praised both Griffith's performance as well as the overall production, writing: "[The play] has acquired a riveting center in the raw performance of Rachel Griffiths, who makes a knockout New York stage debut. With discreet adjustments to the text and more penetrating characterizations all around from the sterling cast, the balance between comedy and intense family drama has been fine-tuned in richly satisfying ways". Ben Brantley of "The New York Times" deemed her performance "a beautifully modulated Broadway debut".


title: Rachel Griffiths

text: In 2012, Griffiths returned to live in her native Australia, after having lived and worked in the United States for a decade. She expressed a desire to work less and spend more time with her children after having worked what she described as "80-hour-weeks" while appearing on "Six Feet Under" and "Brothers & Sisters".


title: Rachel Griffiths

text: In November 2013, "The Sydney Morning Herald" reported that Griffiths was to play Julia Gillard in a television drama based on the book, "The Stalking of Julia Gillard" by Kerry-Anne Walsh. But the project stalled as the proposal for the film was rejected by the Australian television networks.


title: Rachel Griffiths

text: In 2015, she made her debut as a television director when she directed three episodes of the second series of the Australian teen drama "Nowhere Boys".


title: Rachel Griffiths

text: In 2016, Griffiths was cast opposite Guy Pearce and Mary-Louise Parker in the American miniseries "When We Rise", a docudrama focusing on LGBT rights, in which she portrays a nurse during the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the United States. The same year, she appeared in a supporting part opposite Hugo Weaving in the Mel Gibson-directed war drama "Hacksaw Ridge", which earned her an AACTA nomination for Best Supporting Actress. In 2018, she appears in the SBS thriller miniseries "Dead Lucky", which was sold for American distribution to the streaming service SundanceNow in April 2018.


title: Rachel Griffiths

text: In 2017, Griffiths worked promoting the "No Robe" campaign for the Art Series Hotels, which invited hotel guests to pose for nude portraits in their rooms and have them brought to life by artists. She also serves on the board of the Sydney Contemporary art fair.


title: Rachel Griffiths

text: Griffiths married Australian artist Andrew Taylor on 31 December 2002 in the chapel of her high school, Star of the Sea College, in Melbourne. In 2003, she and Taylor had a son, Banjo, followed by a daughter, Adelaide, in 2005. In 2009, she gave birth to her third child Clem in Los Angeles; Griffiths suffered a ruptured uterus giving birth. She spent a total of three days undergoing surgery and recovered from the condition.


title: Rachel Griffiths

text: In 2002, Griffiths stated she was an atheist. However, in a 2015 interview, she revealed she was again a practising Catholic, the faith in which she was raised. In 2017, she spoke out in favour of same-sex marriage in Australia. She has also supported the Global Charter of Basic Rights campaign for Oxfam Australia. She considers herself a feminist.


title: Rachel Griffiths

text: After having lived and worked in the United States for nearly a decade while appearing on the series "Six Feet Under" and "Brothers & Sisters", Griffiths returned to live in her native Australia in 2012.


title: Rachel Griffiths

text: Griffiths has received nominations for multiple awards. In 1994, her role in the comedy-drama film "Muriel's Wedding" (1994) saw her nominated for the AACTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. She received an additional five AACTA nominations: three for Best Actress in a Leading Role for "Amy" (1997), "Me Myself I" (2000) and "The Hard Word" (2002); and two more for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for "Beautiful Kate" (2009) and "Hacksaw Ridge" (2016). Of these six nominations, she won two awards: Best Actress in a Leading Role for "Mariel's Wedding" and Best Actress in a Supporting Role for "Beautiful Kate".


title: Rachel Griffiths

text: Achieving further success overseas, Griffiths was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1999 for her role in the biographical film "Hilary and Jackie" (1998). This performance made her the seventh Australian woman to be nominated for an Academy Award in an acting category. She has also been nominated for two BAFTA Awards, four Golden Globe Awards (winning one for "Six Feet Under"), four Primetime Emmy Awards and six Screen Actors Guild Awards (winning two for "Six Feet Under").


title: La bohème

text: La bohème (; ) is an opera in four acts, composed by Giacomo Puccini between 1893 and 1895 to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, based on "Scènes de la vie de bohème" (1851) by Henri Murger. The story is set in Paris around 1830 and shows the Bohemian lifestyle (known in French as "") of a poor seamstress and her artist friends.


title: La bohème

text: The world premiere of "La bohème" was in Turin on 1 February 1896 at the Teatro Regio, conducted by the 28-year-old Arturo Toscanini. Since then, "La bohème" has become part of the standard Italian opera repertory and is one of the most frequently performed operas worldwide.


title: La bohème

text: In 1946, fifty years after the opera's premiere, Toscanini conducted a commemorative performance of it on radio with the NBC Symphony Orchestra. A recording of the performance was later released by RCA Victor on vinyl record, tape and compact disc. It is the only recording ever made of a Puccini opera by its original conductor (see "Recording history" below).


title: La bohème

text: As credited on its title page, the libretto of "La bohème" is based on Henri Murger's 1851 novel, "Scènes de la vie de bohème", a collection of vignettes portraying young bohemians living in the Latin Quarter of Paris in the 1840s. Although often called a novel, the book has no unified plot. Like the 1849 play drawn from the book by Murger and Théodore Barrière, the opera's libretto focuses on the relationship between Rodolfo and Mimì, ending with her death. Also like the play, the libretto combines two characters from the novel, Mimì and Francine, into the single character of Mimì. Early in the composition stage Puccini was in dispute with the composer Ruggero Leoncavallo, who said that he had offered Puccini a completed libretto and felt that Puccini should defer to him. Puccini responded that he had had no idea of Leoncavallo's interest and that having been working on his own version for some time, he felt that he could not oblige him by discontinuing with the opera. Leoncavallo completed his own version in which Marcello was sung by a tenor and Rodolfo by a baritone. It was not as successful as Puccini's and is now rarely performed.


title: La bohème

text: Much of the libretto is original. Major sections of acts two and three are the librettists' invention, with only a few passing references to incidents and characters in Murger. Most of acts one and four follow the book, piecing together episodes from various chapters. The final scenes in acts one and four—the scenes with Rodolfo and Mimì—resemble both the play and the book. The story of their meeting closely follows chapter 18 of the book, in which the two lovers living in the garret are not Rodolphe and Mimì at all, but rather Jacques and Francine. The story of Mimì's death in the opera draws from two different chapters in the book, one relating Francine's death and the other relating Mimì's.


title: La bohème

text: The published libretto includes a note from the librettists briefly discussing their adaptation. Without mentioning the play directly, they defend their conflation of Francine and Mimì into a single character: "Chi può non confondere nel delicato profilo di una sola donna quelli di Mimì e di Francine?" ("Who cannot confuse in the delicate profile of one woman the personality both of Mimì and of Francine?"). At the time, the book was in the public domain, Murger having died without heirs, but rights to the play were still controlled by Barrière's heirs.


title: La bohème

text: The world première performance of "La bohème" took place in Turin on 1 February 1896 at the Teatro Regio and was conducted by the young Arturo Toscanini. The role of Rodolfo was played by Evan Gorga with Cesira Ferrani as Mimi, but Gorga was unable to accommodate the high tessitura and the music had to be transposed down for him. The initial response of the audience at the first performance was subdued and critical responses were polarized. Despite this varied introductory response, the opera quickly became popular throughout Italy and productions were soon mounted by the following companies: The Teatro di San Carlo (14 March 1896, with Elisa Petri as Musetta and Antonio Magini-Coletti as Marcello); The Teatro Comunale di Bologna (4 November 1896, with Amelia Sedelmayer as Musetta and Umberto Beduschi as Rodolfo); The Teatro Costanzi (17 November 1896, with Maria Stuarda Savelli as Mimì, Enrico Giannini-Grifoni as Rodolfo, and Maurizio Bensaude as Marcello); La Scala (15 March 1897, with Angelica Pandolfini as Mimì, Camilla Pasini as Musetta, Fernando De Lucia as Rodolfo, and Edoardo Camera as Marcello); La Fenice (26 December 1897, with Emilia Merolla as Mimì, Maria Martelli as Musetta, Giovanni Apostolu and Franco Mannucci as Rodolfo, and Ferruccio Corradetti as Marcello); Teatro Regio di Parma (29 January 1898, with Solomiya Krushelnytska as Mimì, Lina Cassandro as Musetta, Pietro Ferrari as Rodolfo, and Pietro Giacomello as Marcello); Paris Opera (13 June 1898); and the Teatro Donizetti di Bergamo (21 August 1898, with Emilia Corsi as Mimì, Annita Barone as Musetta, Giovanni Apostolu as Rodolfo, and Giovanni Roussel as Marcello).


title: La bohème

text: The first performance of "La bohème" outside Italy was at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on 16 June 1896. The opera was performed in Alexandria, Lisbon, and Moscow in early 1897. The United Kingdom premiere took place at the Theatre Royal in Manchester, on 22 April 1897, in a presentation by the Carl Rosa Opera Company supervised by Puccini. This performance was given in English and starred Alice Esty as Mimì, Bessie McDonald as Musetta, Robert Cunningham as Rodolfo, and William Paull as Marcello. On 2 October 1897 the same company gave the opera's first staging at the Royal Opera House in London and on 14 October 1897 in Los Angeles for the opera's United States premiere. The opera reached New York City on 16 May 1898 when it was performed at Wallack's Theatre with Giuseppe Agostini as Rodolfo. The first production of the opera actually produced by the Royal Opera House itself premiered on 1 July 1899 with Nellie Melba as Mimì, Zélie de Lussan as Musetta, Fernando De Lucia as Rodolfo, and Mario Ancona as Marcello.


title: La bohème

text: "La bohème" premiered in Germany at the Kroll Opera House in Berlin on 22 June 1897. The French premiere of the opera was presented by the Opéra-Comique on 13 June 1898 at the Théâtre des Nations. The production used a French translation by Paul Ferrier and starred Julia Guiraudon as Mimì, Jeanne Tiphaine as Musetta, Adolphe Maréchal as Rodolfo, and Lucien Fugère as Marcello. The Czech premiere of the opera was presented by the National Theatre on 27 February 1898.


title: La bohème

text: "La bohème" continued to gain international popularity throughout the early 20th century and the Opéra-Comique alone had already presented the opera one hundred times by 1903. The Belgian premiere took place at La Monnaie on 25 October 1900 using Ferrier's French translation with Marie Thiérry as Mimì, Léon David as Rodolfo, Eugène-Charles Badiali as Marcello, sets by Pierre Devis, Armand Lynen, and Albert Dubosq, and Philippe Flon conducting. The Metropolitan Opera staged the work for the first time on 26 December 1900 with Nellie Melba as Mimì, Annita Occhiolini-Rizzini as Musetta, Albert Saléza as Rodolfo, Giuseppe Campanari as Marcello, and Luigi Mancinelli conducting. "La bohème" was the last opera performed at New York's Metropolitan Opera's original 1883 building on April 16, 1966, conducted by George Schick.


title: La bohème

text: The opera was first performed in Brazil at the Theatro da Paz in Belém on 21 April 1900 with the Brazilian soprano Tilde Maragliano as Mimì, Maria Cavallini as Musetta, Giuseppe Agostini as Rodolfo and Alessandro Modesti as Marcello. The conductor was Giorgio Polacco


title: La bohème

text: The following year "La bohème" was presented at the Teatro Amazonas in Manaus, Brazil, on 2 July 1901 with Elvira Miotti as Mimì, Mabel Nelma as Musetta, Michele Sigaldi as Rodolfo, and Enrico De Franceschi as Marcello. Other premieres soon followed:


title: La bohème

text: Puccini died in Brussels on 29 November 1924, and the news of his death reached Rome during a performance of "La bohème". The opera was immediately stopped, and the orchestra played Chopin's "Funeral March" for the stunned audience.


title: La bohème

text: The first production of "La bohème" at the Salzburg Festival did not occur until as late as July 2012. However, that festival has not shown much interest in the operas of Puccini, only ever having one production each of "Tosca" and "Turandot" in its entire history.


title: La bohème

text: Despite the opera's popularity with audiences, Puccini has been the target of condescension by some music critics who find his music insufficiently sophisticated or difficult. The composer Benjamin Britten wrote in 1951, "[A]fter four or five performances I never wanted to hear "Bohème" again. In spite of its neatness, I became sickened by the cheapness and emptiness of the music."


title: La bohème

text: Marcello is painting while Rodolfo gazes out of the window. They complain of the cold. In order to keep warm, they burn the manuscript of Rodolfo's drama. Colline, the philosopher, enters shivering and disgruntled at not having been able to pawn some books. Schaunard, the musician of the group, arrives with food, wine and cigars. He explains the source of his riches: a job with an eccentric English gentleman, who ordered him to play his violin to a parrot until it died. The others hardly listen to his tale as they set up the table to eat and drink. Schaunard interrupts, telling them that they must save the food for the days ahead: tonight they will all celebrate his good fortune by dining at Cafe Momus, and he will pay.


title: La bohème

text: The friends are interrupted by Benoît, the landlord, who arrives to collect the rent. They flatter him and him with wine. In his drunkenness, he begins to boast of his amorous adventures, but when he also reveals that he is married, they thrust him from the room—without the rent payment—in comic moral indignation. The rent money is divided for their evening out in the "Quartier Latin".


title: La bohème

text: Marcello, Schaunard and Colline go out, but Rodolfo remains alone for a moment in order to finish an article he is writing, promising to join his friends soon. There is a knock at the door. It is a girl who lives in another room in the building. Her candle has blown out, and she has no matches; she asks Rodolfo to light it. She is briefly overcome with faintness, and Rodolfo helps her to a chair and offers her a glass of wine. She thanks him. After a few minutes, she says that she is better and must go. But as she turns to leave, she realizes that she has lost her key.


title: La bohème

text: Her candle goes out in the draught and Rodolfo's candle goes out too; the pair stumble in the dark. Rodolfo, eager to spend time with the girl, to whom he is already attracted, finds the key and pockets it, feigning innocence. He takes her cold hand ("Che gelida manina"—"What a cold little hand") and tells her of his life as a poet, then asks her to tell him more about her life. The girl says her name is Mimì ("Sì, mi chiamano Mimì"—"Yes, they call me Mimì"), and describes her simple life as an embroiderer. Impatiently, the waiting friends call Rodolfo. He answers and turns to see Mimì bathed in moonlight (duet, Rodolfo and Mimì: "O soave fanciulla"—"Oh lovely girl"). They realize that they have fallen in love. Rodolfo suggests remaining at home with Mimì, but she decides to accompany him to the Cafe Momus. As they leave, they sing of their newfound love.


title: La bohème

text: A great crowd, including children, has gathered with street sellers announcing their wares (chorus: "Aranci, datteri! Caldi i marroni!"—"Oranges, dates! Hot chestnuts!"). The friends arrive; Rodolfo buys Mimì a bonnet from a vendor, while Colline buys a coat and Schaunard a horn. Parisians gossip with friends and bargain with the vendors; the children of the streets clamor to see the wares of Parpignol, the toy seller. The friends enter the Cafe Momus.


title: La bohème

text: As the men and Mimì dine at the cafe, Musetta, formerly Marcello's sweetheart, arrives with her rich (and elderly) government minister admirer, Alcindoro, whom she is tormenting. It is clear she is tired of him. To the delight of the Parisians and the embarrassment of her patron, she sings a risqué song (Musetta's waltz: "Quando me'n vo'"—"When I go along"), hoping to reclaim Marcello's attention. The ploy works; at the same time, Mimì recognizes that Musetta truly loves Marcello. To be rid of Alcindoro for a bit, Musetta pretends to be suffering from a tight shoe and sends him to the shoemaker to get her shoe mended. Alcindoro leaves, and Musetta and Marcello fall rapturously into each other's arms.


title: La bohème

text: The friends are presented with their bill. However, Schaunard's purse has gone missing and no one else has enough money to pay. The sly Musetta has the entire bill charged to Alcindoro. The sound of a military band is heard, and the friends leave. Alcindoro returns with the repaired shoe seeking Musetta. The waiter hands him the bill and, dumbfounded, Alcindoro sinks into a chair.


title: La bohème

text: Peddlers pass through the barriers and enter the city. Mimì appears, coughing violently. She tries to find Marcello, who is currently living in a little tavern where he paints signs for the innkeeper. She tells him of her hard life with Rodolfo, who abandoned her the night before, and of Rodolfo's terrible jealousy ("O buon Marcello, aiuto!"—"Oh, good Marcello, help me!"). Marcello tells her that Rodolfo is asleep inside, and expresses concern about Mimì's cough. Rodolfo wakes up and comes out looking for Marcello. Mimì hides and overhears Rodolfo first telling Marcello that he left Mimì because of her coquettishness, but finally confessing that his jealousy is a sham: he fears she is slowly being consumed by a deadly illness (most likely tuberculosis, known by the catchall name "consumption" in the nineteenth century). Rodolfo, in his poverty, can do little to help Mimì and hopes that his pretended unkindness will inspire her to seek another, wealthier suitor ("Marcello, finalmente"—"Marcello, finally").


title: La bohème

text: Out of kindness towards Mimì, Marcello tries to silence him, but she has already heard all. Her weeping and coughing reveal her presence, and Rodolfo hurries to her. Musetta's laughter is heard and Marcello goes to find out what has happened. Mimì tells Rodolfo that she is leaving him, and asks that they separate amicably (Mimì: "Donde lieta uscì"—"From here she happily left"); but their love for one another is too strong for the pair to part. As a compromise, they agree to remain together until the spring, when the world is coming to life again and no one feels truly alone. Meanwhile, Marcello has found Musetta, and the couple quarrel fiercely about Musetta's flirtatiousness: an antithetical counterpoint to the other pair's reconciliation (quartet: Mimì, Rodolfo, Musetta, Marcello: "Addio dolce svegliare alla mattina!"—"Goodbye, sweet awakening in the morning!").


title: La bohème

text: Marcello and Rodolfo are trying to work, though they are primarily talking about their girlfriends, who have left them and found wealthy lovers. Rodolfo has seen Musetta in a fine carriage and Marcello has seen Mimì dressed like a queen. The men both express their nostalgia (duet: "O Mimì, tu più non torni"—"O Mimì, will you not return?"). Schaunard and Colline arrive with a very frugal dinner and all parody eating a plentiful banquet, dance together and sing, before Schaunard and Colline engage in a mock duel.


title: La bohème

text: Musetta suddenly appears; Mimì, who took up with a wealthy viscount after leaving Rodolfo in the spring, has left her patron. Musetta found her that day in the street, severely weakened by her illness, and Mimì begged Musetta to bring her to Rodolfo. Mimì, haggard and pale, is assisted onto a bed. Briefly, she feels as though she is recovering. Musetta and Marcello leave to sell Musetta's earrings in order to buy medicine, and Colline leaves to pawn his overcoat ("Vecchia zimarra"—"Old coat"). Schaunard leaves with Colline to give Mimì and Rodolfo some time together. Mimì tells Rodolfo that her love for him is her whole life (aria/duet, Mimì and Rodolfo: "Sono andati?"—"Have they gone?").


title: La bohème

text: To Mimì's delight, Rodolfo presents her with the pink bonnet he bought her, which he has kept as a souvenir of their love. They remember past happiness and their first meeting—the candles, the lost key. Mimì is overwhelmed by a seizure of coughing. The others return, with a gift of a muff to warm Mimì's hands and a cordial to soothe her cough. Mimì gently thanks Rodolfo for the muff, which she believes is a present from him, reassures him that she is better, and falls asleep. Musetta prays. Schaunard discovers that Mimì has died. Rodolfo rushes to the bed, calling Mimì's name in anguish. He sobs helplessly as the curtain falls.


title: La bohème

text: The discography of "La bohème" is a long one with many distinguished recordings, including the 1972 Decca recording conducted by Herbert von Karajan with Luciano Pavarotti as Rodolfo and Mirella Freni as Mimì (made before Pavarotti became an international superstar of opera), and the 1973 RCA Victor recording conducted by Sir Georg Solti with Montserrat Caballé as Mimì and Plácido Domingo as Rodolfo which won the 1974 Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording. The 1959 recording conducted by Tullio Serafin with Renata Tebaldi as Mimì and Carlo Bergonzi was included in the soundtrack of the 1987 movie "Moonstruck".


title: La bohème

text: The earliest commercially released full-length recording was probably that recorded in February 1917 and released on HMV's Italian label La Voce del Padrone. Carlo Sabajno conducted the La Scala Orchestra and Chorus with Gemma Bosini and Reno Andreini as Mimì and Rodolfo. One of the most recent is the 2008 Deutsche Grammophon release conducted by Bertrand de Billy with Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazón as Mimì and Rodolfo.


title: La bohème

text: There are several recordings with conductors closely associated with Puccini. In the 1946 RCA Victor recording, Arturo Toscanini, who conducted the world premiere of the opera, conducts the NBC Symphony Orchestra with Jan Peerce as Rodolfo and Licia Albanese as Mimì. It is the only recording of a Puccini opera by its original conductor. Thomas Beecham, who worked closely with Puccini when preparing a 1920 production of "La bohème" in London, conducted a performance of the opera in English released by Columbia Records in 1936 with Lisa Perli as Mimì and Heddle Nash as Rodolfo. Beecham also conducts on the 1956 RCA Victor recording with Victoria de los Ángeles and Jussi Björling as Mimì and Rodolfo.


title: La bohème

text: Although the vast majority of recordings are in the original Italian, the opera has been recorded in several other languages. These include: a recording in French conducted by Erasmo Ghiglia with Renée Doria and Alain Vanzo as Mimì and Rodolfo (1960); a recording in German with Richard Kraus conducting the Deutsche Oper Berlin Orchestra and Chorus with Trude Eipperle and Fritz Wunderlich as Mimì and Rodolfo (1956); and the 1998 release on the Chandos Opera in English label with David Parry conducting the Philharmonia Orchestra and Cynthia Haymon and Dennis O'Neill as Mimì and Rodolfo.


title: La bohème

text: Enrico Caruso, who was closely associated with the role of Rodolfo, recorded the famous aria "Che gelida manina" in 1906. This aria has been recorded by nearly 500 tenors in at least seven different languages between 1900 and 1980. In 1981 the A.N.N.A. Record Company released a six LP set with 101 different tenors singing the aria.


title: La bohème

text: In 1957 Illica's widow died and his papers were given to the Parma Museum. Among them was the full libretto to "La bohème". It was discovered that the librettists had prepared an act which Puccini decided not to use in his composition. It is noteworthy for explaining Rodolfo's jealous remarks to Marcello in act 3.


title: La bohème

text: The "missing act" is located in the timeline between the Café Momus scene and act 3 and describes an open-air party at Musetta's dwelling. Her protector has refused to pay further rent out of jealous feelings, and Musetta's furniture is moved into the courtyard to be auctioned off the following morning. The four Bohemians find in this an excuse for a party and arrange for wine and an orchestra. Musetta gives Mimì a beautiful gown to wear and introduces her to a Viscount. The pair dances a quadrille in the courtyard, which moves Rodolfo to jealousy. This explains his act 3 reference to the "moscardino di Viscontino" (young fop of a Viscount). As dawn approaches, furniture dealers gradually remove pieces for the morning auction.


title: La bohème

text: Ruggero Leoncavallo composed an opera based the same source material, also titled "La bohème"; this episode is included in Leoncavallo's treatment which premiered in 1897.


title: La bohème

text: In 1959 "Musetta's Waltz" was adapted by songwriter Bobby Worth for the pop song "Don't You Know?", a hit for Della Reese. Earlier, it was used for another song, "One Night of Love".


title: La bohème

text: In 1969 in Paris, American free-jazz pianist Dave Burrell recorded his "La Vie de Bohème" with a seven-piece group of European and American musicians. The music on the double-LP is improvised and experimental, but the listener can still discern Puccini's themes, as well as the narrative arc of the complete opera.


title: La bohème

text: "Rent", a 1996 musical by Jonathan Larson, is based on "La bohème". Here the lovers, Roger and Mimi, are faced with AIDS and progress through the action with songs such as "Light My Candle", which have direct reference to "La bohème". Many of the character names are retained or are similar (e.g. the character Angel is given the surname "Schunard"), and at another point in the play, Roger's roommate and best friend Mark makes a wry reference to "Musetta's Waltz", which is a recurring theme throughout the first act and is played at the end of the second act.


title: La bohème

text: The opera was adapted into a 1983 short story by the novelist V. S. Pritchett for publication by the Metropolitan Opera Association.