title: Anthony LaPaglia

text: From about 2012, LaPaglia began accepting work in Australia more frequently. Following major roles in "Underground" (2012) (a biopic about Julian Assange and the comedy "Mental" (2012), LaPaglia had a supporting role in the Neil Armfield's Australian romantic-drama film "Holding the Man", as Bob Caleo. The 2015 film stars Ryan Corr and Craig Stott, with supporting performances from LaPaglia, Guy Pearce and Geoffrey Rush. "Holding the Man" was adapted from Timothy Conigrave's 1995 memoir of the same name. For his role within the film, LaPaglia was nominated for an AACTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role at the 5th AACTA Awards in 2015. In that year LaPaglia returned to his home city, Adelaide, to star in "A Month of Sundays" as Frank, a miserable real estate agent who finds solace and redemption in a chance friendship with an elderly woman (played by Julia Blake) who reminds him of his mother. In 2016 he appeared in his first Australian TV series: "The Code", a political thriller set against rising geopolitical tensions between the US and China. The following year he starred in the four-part miniseries "Sunshine", set in the western Melbourne suburb of the same name, playing the role of mentor to a promising young Sudanese-Australian soccer player. And in 2018, LaPaglia appeared in the fifth season of the comedy "Rake", based loosely on the life and misadventures of Charles Waterstreet.


title: Anthony LaPaglia

text: In 2017, LaPaglia played Vito Rizzuto in the Simon Barry Canadian TV series "Bad Blood", which aired on Citytv, in French on ICI Radio-Canada.


title: Anthony LaPaglia

text: In 2017 starred in "Sunshine", an Australian crime drama series screened on SBS from Wednesday 18 October 2017. The four-part miniseries is an Essential Media production, directed by Daina Reid and written by Matt Cameron and Elise McCredie.


title: Anthony LaPaglia

text: From 2017, stars in veteran filmmaker Neil Jordan's sumptuous series "Riviera". Set in the French Riviera, the series follows Georgina Clios, a midwestern art curator whose life is turned upside down after the death of her billionaire husband Constantine Clios (LaPaglia) in a yacht accident. Georgina becomes immersed in a world of lies, double-dealing and crime, as she seeks to uncover the truth about her husband's death.


title: Anthony LaPaglia

text: LaPaglia currently lives in Santa Monica, California. He has said that he adopted an American accent to help him get acting work after moving to the US. His current accent is neither distinctly American nor is it Australian, but, rather, a combination of both. According to an offhand remark by LaPaglia, he has employed an American accent since 1982. LaPaglia is the godfather of Poppy Montgomery and Adam Kaufman's son, Jackson. LaPaglia's first marriage was to actress Cherie Michan. His second marriage was to actress Gia Carides, whom he met at a party; the two starred in the 1994 Australian movie "Paperback Romance" (a.k.a. "Lucky Break") and married in 1998. Their daughter Bridget was born in January 2003. In April 2015, newspapers reported that LaPaglia and Carides had split after 17 years. He married Alexandra Henkel (his third marriage), who is 18 years younger, on 28 April 2018.


title: Anthony LaPaglia

text: In the 1980s, LaPaglia was a goalkeeper in the National Soccer League, playing for Adelaide City and West Adelaide. LaPaglia was part owner of A-League club Sydney FC until 2008; flying from California to Sydney to attend their matches since their inception in 2005. He was the narrator and executive producer of "The Away Game", a critically acclaimed television documentary exploring the experiences of Australian soccer players in Europe.


title: Anthony LaPaglia

text: He plays occasionally with Hollywood United, an amateur organisation of which he is club president, with others in the entertainment industry including Frank Leboeuf, Vinnie Jones, Steve Jones (of the Sex Pistols) and others.


title: Anthony LaPaglia

text: LaPaglia has a minority shareholding in the International Goalkeepers Academy. The Academy was founded and is operated by James Fraser, who represented the Australian national team leading up to the 1974 FIFA World Cup.


title: Anthony LaPaglia

text: LaPaglia has volunteered as an actor with the Young Storytellers Program. He played in a charity soccer match in 2007 to raise funds for Southern California wildfire relief.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: Joseph Maurice Ravel (7 March 1875 – 28 December 1937) was a French composer, pianist and conductor. He is often associated with Impressionism along with his elder contemporary Claude Debussy, although both composers rejected the term. In the 1920s and 1930s Ravel was internationally regarded as France's greatest living composer.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: Born to a music-loving family, Ravel attended France's premier music college, the Paris Conservatoire; he was not well regarded by its conservative establishment, whose biased treatment of him caused a scandal. After leaving the conservatoire, Ravel found his own way as a composer, developing a style of great clarity and incorporating elements of modernism, baroque, neoclassicism and, in his later works, jazz. He liked to experiment with musical form, as in his best-known work, "Boléro" (1928), in which repetition takes the place of development. Renowned for his abilities in orchestration, Ravel made some orchestral arrangements of other composers' piano music, of which his 1922 version of Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" is the best known.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: A slow and painstaking worker, Ravel composed fewer pieces than many of his contemporaries. Among his works to enter the repertoire are pieces for piano, chamber music, two piano concertos, ballet music, two operas and eight song cycles; he wrote no symphonies or church music. Many of his works exist in two versions: first, a piano score and later an orchestration. Some of his piano music, such as "Gaspard de la nuit" (1908), is exceptionally difficult to play, and his complex orchestral works such as "Daphnis et Chloé" (1912) require skilful balance in performance.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: Ravel was among the first composers to recognise the potential of recording to bring their music to a wider public. From the 1920s, despite limited technique as a pianist or conductor, he took part in recordings of several of his works; others were made under his supervision.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: Ravel was born in the Basque town of Ciboure, France, near Biarritz, from the Spanish border. His father, Pierre-Joseph Ravel, was an educated and successful engineer, inventor and manufacturer, born in Versoix near the Franco-Swiss border. His mother, Marie, "née" Delouart, was Basque but had grown up in Madrid. In 19th-century terms, Joseph had married beneath his status – Marie was illegitimate and barely literate – but the marriage was a happy one. Some of Joseph's inventions were successful, including an early internal combustion engine and a notorious circus machine, the "Whirlwind of Death", an automotive loop-the-loop that was a major attraction until a fatal accident at Barnum and Bailey's Circus in 1903.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: Both Ravel's parents were Roman Catholics; Marie was also something of a free-thinker, a trait inherited by her elder son. He was baptised in the Ciboure parish church six days after he was born. The family moved to Paris three months later, and there a younger son, Édouard, was born. (He was close to his father, whom he eventually followed into the engineering profession.) Maurice was particularly devoted to their mother; her Basque-Spanish heritage was a strong influence on his life and music. Among his earliest memories were folk songs she sang to him. The household was not rich, but the family was comfortable, and the two boys had happy childhoods.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: Ravel senior delighted in taking his sons to factories to see the latest mechanical devices, but he also had a keen interest in music and culture in general. In later life, Ravel recalled, "Throughout my childhood I was sensitive to music. My father, much better educated in this art than most amateurs are, knew how to develop my taste and to stimulate my enthusiasm at an early age." There is no record that Ravel received any formal general schooling in his early years; his biographer Roger Nichols suggests that the boy may have been chiefly educated by his father.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: When he was seven, Ravel started piano lessons with Henri Ghys, a friend of Emmanuel Chabrier; five years later, in 1887, he began studying harmony, counterpoint and composition with Charles-René, a pupil of Léo Delibes. Without being anything of a child prodigy, he was a highly musical boy. Charles-René found that Ravel's conception of music was natural to him "and not, as in the case of so many others, the result of effort". Ravel's earliest known compositions date from this period: variations on a chorale by Schumann, variations on a theme by Grieg and a single movement of a piano sonata. They survive only in fragmentary form.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: In 1888 Ravel met the young pianist Ricardo Viñes, who became not only a lifelong friend, but also one of the foremost interpreters of his works, and an important link between Ravel and Spanish music. The two shared an appreciation of Wagner, Russian music, and the writings of Poe, Baudelaire and Mallarmé. At the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1889, Ravel was much struck by the new Russian works conducted by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. This music had a lasting effect on both Ravel and his older contemporary Claude Debussy, as did the exotic sound of the Javanese gamelan, also heard during the Exposition.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: Émile Decombes took over as Ravel's piano teacher in 1889; in the same year Ravel gave his earliest public performance. Aged fourteen, he took part in a concert at the Salle Érard along with other pupils of Decombes, including Reynaldo Hahn and Alfred Cortot.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: With the encouragement of his parents, Ravel applied for entry to France's most important musical college, the Conservatoire de Paris. In November 1889, playing music by Chopin, he passed the examination for admission to the preparatory piano class run by Eugène Anthiome. Ravel won the first prize in the Conservatoire's piano competition in 1891, but otherwise he did not stand out as a student. Nevertheless, these years were a time of considerable advance in his development as a composer. The musicologist Arbie Orenstein writes that for Ravel the 1890s were a period "of immense growth... from adolescence to maturity".


title: Maurice Ravel

text: In 1891 Ravel progressed to the classes of Charles-Wilfrid de Bériot, for piano, and Émile Pessard, for harmony. He made solid, unspectacular progress, with particular encouragement from Bériot but, in the words of the musicologist Barbara L. Kelly, he "was only teachable on his own terms". His later teacher Gabriel Fauré understood this, but it was not generally acceptable to the conservative faculty of the Conservatoire of the 1890s. Ravel was expelled in 1895, having won no more prizes. His earliest works to survive in full are from these student days: "Sérénade grotesque", for piano, and "Ballade de la Reine morte d'aimer", a "mélodie" setting a poem by Roland de Marès (both 1893).


title: Maurice Ravel

text: Ravel was never so assiduous a student of the piano as his colleagues such as Viñes and Cortot were. It was plain that as a pianist he would never match them, and his overriding ambition was to be a composer. From this point he concentrated on composition. His works from the period include the songs "Un grand sommeil noir" and "D'Anne jouant de l'espinette" to words by Paul Verlaine and Clément Marot, and the piano pieces "Menuet antique" and "Habanera" (for four hands), the latter eventually incorporated into the "Rapsodie espagnole". At around this time, Joseph Ravel introduced his son to Erik Satie, who was earning a living as a café pianist. Ravel was one of the first musicians – Debussy was another – who recognised Satie's originality and talent. Satie's constant experiments in musical form were an inspiration to Ravel, who counted them "of inestimable value".


title: Maurice Ravel

text: In 1897 Ravel was readmitted to the Conservatoire, studying composition with Fauré, and taking private lessons in counterpoint with André Gedalge. Both these teachers, particularly Fauré, regarded him highly and were key influences on his development as a composer. As Ravel's course progressed, Fauré reported "a distinct gain in maturity... engaging wealth of imagination". Ravel's standing at the Conservatoire was nevertheless undermined by the hostility of the Director, Théodore Dubois, who deplored the young man's musically and politically progressive outlook. Consequently, according to a fellow student, Michel-Dimitri Calvocoressi, he was "a marked man, against whom all weapons were good". He wrote some substantial works while studying with Fauré, including the overture "Shéhérazade" and a violin sonata, but he won no prizes, and therefore was expelled again in 1900. As a former student he was allowed to attend Fauré's classes as a non-participating "auditeur" until finally abandoning the Conservatoire in 1903.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: In May 1897 Ravel conducted the first performance of the "Shéhérazade" overture, which had a mixed reception, with boos mingling with applause from the audience, and unflattering reviews from the critics. One described the piece as "a jolting debut: a clumsy plagiarism of the Russian School" and called Ravel a "mediocrely gifted debutant... who will perhaps become something if not someone in about ten years, if he works hard". Another critic, Pierre Lalo, thought that Ravel showed talent, but was too indebted to Debussy and should instead emulate Beethoven. Over the succeeding decades Lalo became Ravel's most implacable critic. In 1899 Ravel composed his first piece to become widely known, though it made little impact initially: "Pavane pour une infante défunte" ("Pavane for a dead princess"). It was originally a solo piano work, commissioned by the Princesse de Polignac.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: From the start of his career, Ravel appeared calmly indifferent to blame or praise. Those who knew him well believed that this was no pose but wholly genuine. The only opinion of his music that he truly valued was his own, perfectionist and severely self-critical. At twenty years of age he was, in the words of the biographer Burnett James, "self-possessed, a little aloof, intellectually biased, given to mild banter". He dressed like a dandy and was meticulous about his appearance and demeanour. Orenstein comments that, short in stature, light in frame and bony in features, Ravel had the "appearance of a well-dressed jockey", whose large head seemed suitably matched to his formidable intellect. During the late 1890s and into the early years of the next century, Ravel was bearded in the fashion of the day; from his mid-thirties he was clean-shaven.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: Around 1900 Ravel and a number of innovative young artists, poets, critics and musicians joined together in an informal group; they came to be known as Les Apaches ("The Hooligans"), a name coined by Viñes to represent their status as "artistic outcasts". They met regularly until the beginning of the First World War, and members stimulated one another with intellectual argument and performances of their works. The membership of the group was fluid, and at various times included Igor Stravinsky and Manuel de Falla as well as their French friends.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: Among the enthusiasms of the Apaches was the music of Debussy. Ravel, twelve years his junior, had known Debussy slightly since the 1890s, and their friendship, though never close, continued for more than ten years. In 1902 André Messager conducted the premiere of Debussy's opera" Pelléas et Mélisande" at the Opéra-Comique. It divided musical opinion. Dubois unavailingly forbade Conservatoire students to attend, and the conductor's friend and former teacher Camille Saint-Saëns was prominent among those who detested the piece. The Apaches were loud in their support. The first run of the opera consisted of fourteen performances: Ravel attended all of them.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: Debussy was widely held to be an Impressionist composer – a label he intensely disliked. Many music lovers began to apply the same term to Ravel, and the works of the two composers were frequently taken as part of a single genre. Ravel thought that Debussy was indeed an Impressionist but that he himself was not. Orenstein comments that Debussy was more spontaneous and casual in his composing while Ravel was more attentive to form and craftsmanship. Ravel wrote that Debussy's "genius was obviously one of great individuality, creating its own laws, constantly in evolution, expressing itself freely, yet always faithful to French tradition. For Debussy, the musician and the man, I have had profound admiration, but by nature I am different from Debussy... I think I have always personally followed a direction opposed to that of [his] symbolism." During the first years of the new century Ravel's new works included the piano piece "Jeux d'eau" (1901), the String Quartet and the orchestral song cycle "Shéhérazade" (both 1903). Commentators have noted some Debussian touches in some parts of these works. Nichols calls the quartet "at once homage to and exorcism of Debussy's influence".


title: Maurice Ravel

text: The two composers ceased to be on friendly terms in the middle of the first decade of the 1900s, for musical and possibly personal reasons. Their admirers began to form factions, with adherents of one composer denigrating the other. Disputes arose about the chronology of the composers' works and who influenced whom. Prominent in the anti-Ravel camp was Lalo, who wrote, "Where M. Debussy is all sensitivity, M. Ravel is all insensitivity, borrowing without hesitation not only technique but the sensitivity of other people." The public tension led to personal estrangement. Ravel said, "It's probably better for us, after all, to be on frigid terms for illogical reasons." Nichols suggests an additional reason for the rift. In 1904 Debussy left his wife and went to live with the singer Emma Bardac. Ravel, together with his close friend and confidante Misia Edwards and the opera star Lucienne Bréval, contributed to a modest regular income for the deserted Lilly Debussy, a fact that Nichols suggests may have rankled with her husband.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: During the first years of the new century Ravel made five attempts to win France's most prestigious prize for young composers, the Prix de Rome, past winners of which included Berlioz, Gounod, Bizet, Massenet and Debussy. In 1900 Ravel was eliminated in the first round; in 1901 he won the second prize for the competition. In 1902 and 1903 he won nothing: according to the musicologist Paul Landormy, the judges suspected Ravel of making fun of them by submitting cantatas so academic as to seem like parodies. In 1905 Ravel, by now thirty, competed for the last time, inadvertently causing a "furore". He was eliminated in the first round, which even critics unsympathetic to his music, including Lalo, denounced as unjustifiable. The press's indignation grew when it emerged that the senior professor at the Conservatoire, Charles Lenepveu, was on the jury, and only his students were selected for the final round; his insistence that this was pure coincidence was not well received. "L'affaire Ravel" became a national scandal, leading to the early retirement of Dubois and his replacement by Fauré, appointed by the government to carry out a radical reorganisation of the Conservatoire.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: Among those taking a close interest in the controversy was Alfred Edwards, owner and editor of "Le Matin", for which Lalo wrote. Edwards was married to Ravel's friend Misia; the couple took Ravel on a seven-week Rhine cruise on their yacht in June and July 1905, the first time he had travelled abroad.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: By the latter part of the 1900s Ravel had established a pattern of writing works for piano and subsequently arranging them for full orchestra. He was in general a slow and painstaking worker, and reworking his earlier piano compositions enabled him to increase the number of pieces published and performed. There appears to have been no mercenary motive for this; Ravel was known for his indifference to financial matters. The pieces that began as piano compositions and were then given orchestral dress were "Pavane pour une infante défunte" (orchestrated 1910), "Une barque sur l'océan" (1906, from the 1905 piano suite "Miroirs"), the Habanera section of "Rapsodie espagnole" (1907–08), "Ma mère l'Oye" (1908–10, orchestrated 1911), "Valses nobles et sentimentales" (1911, orchestrated 1912), "Alborada del gracioso" (from "Miroirs", orchestrated 1918) and "Le tombeau de Couperin" (1914–17, orchestrated 1919).


title: Maurice Ravel

text: Ravel was not by inclination a teacher, but he gave lessons to a few young musicians he felt could benefit from them. Manuel Rosenthal was one, and records that Ravel was a very demanding teacher when he thought his pupil had talent. Like his own teacher, Fauré, he was concerned that his pupils should find their own individual voices and not be excessively influenced by established masters. He warned Rosenthal that it was impossible to learn from studying Debussy's music: "Only Debussy could have written it and made it sound like only Debussy can sound." When George Gershwin asked him for lessons in the 1920s, Ravel, after serious consideration, refused, on the grounds that they "would probably cause him to write bad Ravel and lose his great gift of melody and spontaneity". The best-known composer who studied with Ravel was probably Ralph Vaughan Williams, who was his pupil for three months in 1907–08. Vaughan Williams recalled that Ravel helped him escape from "the heavy contrapuntal Teutonic manner... "Complexe mais pas compliqué" was his motto."


title: Maurice Ravel

text: Vaughan Williams's recollections throw some light on Ravel's private life, about which the latter's reserved and secretive personality has led to much speculation. Vaughan Williams, Rosenthal and Marguerite Long have all recorded that Ravel frequented brothels; Long attributed this to his self-consciousness about his diminutive stature, and consequent lack of confidence with women. By other accounts, none of them first-hand, Ravel was in love with Misia Edwards, or wanted to marry the violinist Hélène Jourdan-Morhange. Rosenthal records and discounts contemporary speculation that Ravel, a lifelong bachelor, may have been homosexual. Such speculation recurred in a 2000 life of Ravel by Benjamin Ivry; subsequent studies have concluded that Ravel's sexuality and personal life remain a mystery.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: Ravel's first concert outside France was in 1909. As the guest of the Vaughan Williamses, he visited London, where he played for the Société des Concerts Français, gaining favourable reviews and enhancing his growing international reputation.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: The Société Nationale de Musique, founded in 1871 to promote the music of rising French composers, had been dominated since the mid-1880s by a conservative faction led by Vincent d'Indy. Ravel, together with several other former pupils of Fauré, set up a new, modernist organisation, the Société Musicale Indépendente, with Fauré as its president. The new society's inaugural concert took place on 20 April 1910; the seven items on the programme included premieres of Fauré's song cycle "La chanson d'Ève", Debussy's piano suite "D'un cahier d'esquisses", Zoltán Kodály's "Six pièces pour piano" and the original piano duet version of Ravel's "Ma mère l'Oye". The performers included Fauré, Florent Schmitt, Ernest Bloch, Pierre Monteux and, in the Debussy work, Ravel. Kelly considers it a sign of Ravel's new influence that the society featured Satie's music in a concert in January 1911.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: The first of Ravel's two operas, the one-act comedy "L'heure espagnole" was premiered in 1911. The work had been completed in 1907, but the manager of the Opéra-Comique, Albert Carré, repeatedly deferred its presentation. He was concerned that its plot – a bedroom farce – would be badly received by the ultra-respectable mothers and daughters who were an important part of the Opéra-Comique's audience. The piece was only modestly successful at its first production, and it was not until the 1920s that it became popular.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: In 1912 Ravel had three ballets premiered. The first, to the orchestrated and expanded version of "Ma mère l'Oye", opened at the Théâtre des Arts in January. The reviews were excellent: the "Mercure de France" called the score "absolutely ravishing, a masterwork in miniature". The music rapidly entered the concert repertoire; it was played at the Queen's Hall, London, within weeks of the Paris premiere, and was repeated at the Proms later in the same year. "The Times" praised "the enchantment of the work... the effect of mirage, by which something quite real seems to float on nothing". New York audiences heard the work in the same year. Ravel's second ballet of 1912 was "Adélaïde ou le langage des fleurs", danced to the score of "Valses nobles et sentimentales", which opened at the Châtelet in April. "Daphnis et Chloé" opened at the same theatre in June. This was his largest-scale orchestral work, and took him immense trouble and several years to complete.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: "Daphnis et Chloé" was commissioned in or about 1909 by the impresario Sergei Diaghilev for his company, the Ballets Russes. Ravel began work with Diaghilev's choreographer, Michel Fokine, and designer, Léon Bakst. Fokine had a reputation for his modern approach to dance, with individual numbers replaced by continuous music. This appealed to Ravel, and after discussing the action in great detail with Fokine, Ravel began composing the music. There were frequent disagreements between the collaborators, and the premiere was under-rehearsed because of the late completion of the work. It had an unenthusiastic reception and was quickly withdrawn, although it was revived successfully a year later in Monte Carlo and London. The effort to complete the ballet took its toll on Ravel's health; neurasthenia obliged him to rest for several months after the premiere.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: Ravel composed little during 1913. He collaborated with Stravinsky on a performing version of Mussorgsky's unfinished opera "Khovanshchina", and his own works were the "Trois poèmes de Mallarmé" for soprano and chamber ensemble, and two short piano pieces, "À la manière de Borodine" and "À la manière de Chabrier". In 1913, together with Debussy, Ravel was among the musicians present at the dress rehearsal of "The Rite of Spring". Stravinsky later said that Ravel was the only person who immediately understood the music. Ravel predicted that the premiere of the "Rite" would be seen as an event of historic importance equal to that of end of "Pelléas et Mélisande". At the end of the year Ravel was in England, visiting the novelist Arnold Bennett in his Essex home; the two had known each other since meeting in 1908, when Bennett was living in France.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: When Germany invaded France in 1914 Ravel tried to join the French Air Force. He considered his small stature and light weight ideal for an aviator, but was rejected because of his age and a minor heart complaint. While waiting to be enlisted, Ravel composed "Trois Chansons", his only work for a cappella choir, setting his own texts in the tradition of French 16th-century chansons. He dedicated the three songs to people who might help him to enlist. After several unsuccessful attempts to enlist, Ravel finally joined the Thirteenth Artillery Regiment as a lorry driver in March 1915, when he was forty. Stravinsky expressed admiration for his friend's courage: "at his age and with his name he could have had an easier place, or done nothing". Some of Ravel's duties put him in mortal danger, driving munitions at night under heavy German bombardment. At the same time his peace of mind was undermined by his mother's failing health. His own health also deteriorated; he suffered from insomnia and digestive problems, underwent a bowel operation following amoebic dysentery in September 1916, and had frostbite in his feet the following winter.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: During the war, the Ligue Nationale pour la Defense de la Musique Française was formed by Saint-Saëns, Dubois, d'Indy and others, campaigning for a ban on the performance of contemporary German music. Ravel declined to join, telling the committee of the league in 1916, "It would be dangerous for French composers to ignore systematically the productions of their foreign colleagues, and thus form themselves into a sort of national coterie: our musical art, which is so rich at the present time, would soon degenerate, becoming isolated in banal formulas." The league responded by banning Ravel's music from its concerts.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: Ravel's mother died in January 1917, and he fell into a "horrible despair", compounding the distress he felt at the suffering endured by the people of his country during the war. He composed few works in the war years. The Piano Trio was almost complete when the conflict began, and the most substantial of his wartime works is "Le tombeau de Couperin", composed between 1914 and 1917. The suite celebrates the tradition of François Couperin, the 18th-century French composer; each movement is dedicated to a friend of Ravel's who died in the war.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: After the war, those close to Ravel recognised that he had lost much of his physical and mental stamina. As the musicologist Stephen Zank puts it, "Ravel's emotional equilibrium, so hard won in the previous decade, had been seriously compromised." His output, never large, became smaller. Nonetheless, after the death of Debussy in 1918, he was generally seen, in France and abroad, as the leading French composer of the era. Fauré wrote to him, "I am happier than you can imagine about the solid position which you occupy and which you have acquired so brilliantly and so rapidly. It is a source of joy and pride for your old professor." Ravel was offered the Legion of Honour in 1920, and although he declined the decoration, he was viewed by the new generation of composers typified by Satie's protégés Les Six as an establishment figure. Satie had turned against him, and commented, "Ravel refuses the Légion d'honneur, but all his music accepts it." Despite this attack, Ravel continued to admire Satie's early music, and always acknowledged the older man's influence on his own development. Ravel took a benign view of Les Six, promoting their music, and defending it against journalistic attacks. He regarded their reaction against his works as natural, and preferable to their copying his style. Through the Société Musicale Indépendente, he was able to encourage them and composers from other countries. The Société presented concerts of recent works by American composers including Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson and George Antheil and by Vaughan Williams and his English colleagues Arnold Bax and Cyril Scott.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: Orenstein and Zank both comment that, although Ravel's post-war output was small, averaging only one composition a year, it included some of his finest works. In 1920 he completed "La valse", in response to a commission from Diaghilev. He had worked on it intermittently for some years, planning a concert piece, "a sort of apotheosis of the Viennese waltz, mingled with, in my mind, the impression of a fantastic, fatal whirling". It was rejected by Diaghilev, who said, "It's a masterpiece, but it's not a ballet. It's the portrait of a ballet." Ravel heard Diaghilev's verdict without protest or argument, left, and had no further dealings with him. Nichols comments that Ravel had the satisfaction of seeing the ballet staged twice by other managements before Diaghilev died. A ballet danced to the orchestral version of "Le tombeau de Couperin" was given at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in November 1920, and the premiere of "La valse" followed in December. The following year "Daphnis et Chloé" and "L'heure espagnole" were successfully revived at the Paris Opéra.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: In the post-war era there was a reaction against the large-scale music of composers such as Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss. Stravinsky, whose "Rite of Spring" was written for a huge orchestra, began to work on a much smaller scale. His 1923 ballet score "Les noces" is composed for voices and twenty-one instruments. Ravel did not like the work (his opinion caused a cooling in Stravinsky's friendship with him) but he was in sympathy with the fashion for "dépouillement" – the "stripping away" of pre-war extravagance to reveal the essentials. Many of his works from the 1920s are noticeably sparer in texture than earlier pieces. Other influences on him in this period were jazz and atonality. Jazz was popular in Parisian cafés, and French composers such as Darius Milhaud incorporated elements of it in their work. Ravel commented that he preferred jazz to grand opera, and its influence is heard in his later music. Arnold Schönberg's abandonment of conventional tonality also had echoes in some of Ravel's music such as the "Chansons madécasses" (1926), which Ravel doubted he could have written without the example of "Pierrot Lunaire". His other major works from the 1920s include the orchestral arrangement of Mussorgsky's piano suite "Pictures at an Exhibition" (1922), the opera "L'enfant et les sortilèges" to a libretto by Colette (1926), "Tzigane" (1924) and the Violin Sonata (1927).


title: Maurice Ravel

text: Finding city life fatiguing, Ravel moved to the countryside. In May 1921 he took up residence at Le Belvédère, a small house on the fringe of Montfort-l'Amaury, west of Paris, in the Yvelines département. Looked after by a devoted housekeeper, Mme Revelot, he lived there for the rest of his life. At Le Belvédère Ravel composed and gardened, when not performing in Paris or abroad. His touring schedule increased considerably in the 1920s, with concerts in Britain, Sweden, Denmark, the US, Canada, Spain, Austria and Italy.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: The last composition Ravel completed in the 1920s, "Boléro", became his most famous. He was commissioned to provide a score for Ida Rubinstein's ballet company, and having been unable to secure the rights to orchestrate Albéniz's "Iberia", he decided on "an experiment in a very special and limited direction... a piece lasting seventeen minutes and consisting wholly of orchestral tissue without music". Ravel continued that the work was "one long, very gradual crescendo. There are no contrasts, and there is practically no invention except the plan and the manner of the execution. The themes are altogether impersonal." He was astonished, and not wholly pleased, that it became a mass success. When one elderly member of the audience at the Opéra shouted "Rubbish!" at the premiere, he remarked, "That old lady got the message!" The work was popularised by the conductor Arturo Toscanini, and has been recorded several hundred times. Ravel commented to Arthur Honegger, one of Les Six, "I've written only one masterpiece – "Boléro". Unfortunately there's no music in it."


title: Maurice Ravel

text: At the beginning of the 1930s Ravel was working on two piano concertos. He completed the Piano Concerto in D major for the Left Hand first. It was commissioned by the Austrian pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who had lost his right arm during the war. Ravel was stimulated by the technical challenges of the project: "In a work of this kind, it is essential to give the impression of a texture no thinner than that of a part written for both hands." Ravel, not proficient enough to perform the work with only his left hand, demonstrated it with both hands. Wittgenstein was initially disappointed by the piece, but after long study he became fascinated by it and ranked it as a great work. In January 1932 he premiered it in Vienna to instant acclaim, and performed it in Paris with Ravel conducting the following year. The critic Henry Prunières wrote, "From the opening measures, we are plunged into a world in which Ravel has but rarely introduced us."


title: Maurice Ravel

text: The Piano Concerto in G major was completed a year later. After the premiere in January 1932 there was high praise for the soloist, Marguerite Long, and for Ravel's score, though not for his conducting. Long, the dedicatee, played the concerto in more than twenty European cities, with the composer conducting; they planned to record it together, but at the sessions Ravel confined himself to supervising proceedings and Pedro de Freitas Branco conducted.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: In October 1932 Ravel suffered a blow to the head in a taxi accident. The injury was not thought serious at the time, but in a study for the "British Medical Journal" in 1988 the neurologist R. A. Henson concludes that it may have exacerbated an existing cerebral condition. As early as 1927 close friends had been concerned at Ravel's growing absent-mindedness, and within a year of the accident he started to experience symptoms suggesting aphasia. Before the accident he had begun work on music for a film, "Don Quixote" (1933), but he was unable to meet the production schedule, and Jacques Ibert wrote most of the score. Ravel completed three songs for baritone and orchestra intended for the film; they were published as "Don Quichotte à Dulcinée". The manuscript orchestral score is in Ravel's hand, but Lucien Garban and Manuel Rosenthal helped in transcription. Ravel composed no more after this. The exact nature of his illness is unknown. Experts have ruled out the possibility of a tumour, and have variously suggested frontotemporal dementia, Alzheimer's disease and Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease. Though no longer able to write music or perform, Ravel remained physically and socially active until his last months. Henson notes that Ravel preserved most or all his auditory imagery and could still hear music in his head.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: In 1937 Ravel began to suffer pain from his condition, and was examined by Clovis Vincent, a well-known Paris neurosurgeon. Vincent advised surgical treatment. He thought a tumour unlikely, and expected to find ventricular dilatation that surgery might prevent from progressing. Ravel's brother Edouard accepted this advice; as Henson comments, the patient was in no state to express a considered view. After the operation there seemed to be an improvement in his condition, but it was short-lived, and he soon lapsed into a coma. He died on 28 December, at the age of 62.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: On 30 December 1937 Ravel was interred next to his parents in a granite tomb at Levallois-Perret cemetery, in north-west Paris. He was an atheist and there was no religious ceremony.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: Marcel Marnat's catalogue of Ravel's complete works lists eighty-five works, including many incomplete or abandoned. Though that total is small in comparison with the output of his major contemporaries, it is nevertheless inflated by Ravel's frequent practice of writing works for piano and later rewriting them as independent pieces for orchestra. The performable body of works numbers about sixty; slightly more than half are instrumental. Ravel's music includes pieces for piano, chamber music, two piano concerti, ballet music, opera and song cycles. He wrote no symphonies or church works.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: Ravel drew on many generations of French composers from Couperin and Rameau to Fauré and the more recent innovations of Satie and Debussy. Foreign influences include Mozart, Schubert, Liszt and Chopin. He considered himself in many ways a classicist, often using traditional structures and forms, such as the ternary, to present his new melodic and rhythmic content and innovative harmonies. The influence of jazz on his later music is heard within conventional classical structures in the Piano Concerto and the Violin Sonata.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: Ravel placed high importance on melody, telling Vaughan Williams that there is "an implied melodic outline in all vital music". As a result, there are few leading notes in his output. Chords of the ninth and eleventh and unresolved appoggiaturas, such as those in the "Valses nobles et sentimentales", are characteristic of Ravel's harmonic language.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: Dance forms appealed to Ravel, most famously the bolero and pavane, but also the minuet, forlane, rigaudon, waltz, czardas, habanera and passacaglia. National and regional consciousness was important to him, and although a planned concerto on Basque themes never materialised, his works include allusions to Hebraic, Greek, Hungarian and gypsy themes. He wrote several short pieces paying tribute to composers he admired – Borodin, Chabrier, Fauré and Haydn, interpreting their characteristics in a Ravellian style. Another important influence was literary rather than musical: Ravel said that he learnt from Poe that "true art is a perfect balance between pure intellect and emotion", with the corollary that a piece of music should be a perfectly balanced entity with no irrelevant material allowed to intrude.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: Ravel completed two operas, and worked on three others. The unrealised three were "Olympia", "La cloche engloutie" and "Jeanne d'Arc". "Olympia" was to be based on Hoffmann's "The Sandman"; he made sketches for it in 1898–99, but did not progress far. "La cloche engloutie" after Hauptmann's "The Sunken Bell" occupied him intermittently from 1906 to 1912, Ravel destroyed the sketches for both these works, except for a ""Symphonie horlogère"" which he incorporated into the opening of "L'heure espagnole". The third unrealised project was an operatic version of Joseph Delteil's 1925 novel about Joan of Arc. It was to be a large-scale, full-length work for the Paris Opéra, but Ravel's final illness prevented him from writing it.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: Ravel's first completed opera was "L'heure espagnole" (premiered in 1911), described as a "comédie musicale". It is among the works set in or illustrating Spain that Ravel wrote throughout his career. Nichols comments that the essential Spanish colouring gave Ravel a reason for virtuoso use of the modern orchestra, which the composer considered "perfectly designed for underlining and exaggerating comic effects". Edward Burlingame Hill found Ravel's vocal writing particularly skilful in the work, "giving the singers something besides recitative without hampering the action", and "commenting orchestrally upon the dramatic situations and the sentiments of the actors without diverting attention from the stage". Some find the characters artificial and the piece lacking in humanity. The critic David Murray writes that the score "glows with the famous Ravel "tendresse"."


title: Maurice Ravel

text: The second opera, also in one act, is "L'enfant et les sortilèges" (1926), a "fantaisie lyrique" to a libretto by Colette. She and Ravel had planned the story as a ballet, but at the composer's suggestion Colette turned it into an opera libretto. It is more uncompromisingly modern in its musical style than "L'heure espagnole", and the jazz elements and bitonality of much of the work upset many Parisian opera-goers. Ravel was once again accused of artificiality and lack of human emotion, but Nichols finds "profoundly serious feeling at the heart of this vivid and entertaining work". The score presents an impression of simplicity, disguising intricate links between themes, with, in Murray's phrase, "extraordinary and bewitching sounds from the orchestra pit throughout".


title: Maurice Ravel

text: Although one-act operas are generally staged less often than full-length ones, Ravel's are produced regularly in France and abroad.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: A substantial proportion of Ravel's output was vocal. His early works in that sphere include cantatas written for his unsuccessful attempts at the Prix de Rome. His other vocal music from that period shows Debussy's influence, in what Kelly describes as "a static, recitative-like vocal style", prominent piano parts and rhythmic flexibility. By 1906 Ravel was taking even further than Debussy the natural, sometimes colloquial, setting of the French language in "Histoires naturelles". The same technique is highlighted in "Trois poèmes de Mallarmé" (1913); Debussy set two of the three poems at the same time as Ravel, and the former's word-setting is noticeably more formal than the latter's, in which syllables are often elided. In the cycles "Shéhérazade" and "Chansons madécasses", Ravel gives vent to his taste for the exotic, even the sensual, in both the vocal line and the accompaniment.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: Ravel's songs often draw on vernacular styles, using elements of many folk traditions in such works as "Cinq mélodies populaires grecques", "Deux mélodies hébraïques" and "Chants populaires". Among the poets on whose lyrics he drew were Marot, Léon-Paul Fargue, Leconte de Lisle and Verlaine. For three songs dating from 1914 to 1915, he wrote his own texts.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: Although Ravel wrote for mixed choirs and male solo voices, he is chiefly associated, in his songs, with the soprano and mezzo-soprano voices. Even when setting lyrics clearly narrated by a man, he often favoured a female voice, and he seems to have preferred his best-known cycle, "Shéhérazade", to be sung by a woman, although a tenor voice is a permitted alternative in the score.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: During his lifetime it was above all as a master of orchestration that Ravel was famous. He minutely studied the ability of each orchestral instrument to determine its potential, putting its individual colour and timbre to maximum use. The critic Alexis Roland-Manuel wrote, "In reality he is, with Stravinsky, the one man in the world who best knows the weight of a trombone-note, the harmonics of a 'cello or a "pp" tam-tam in the relationships of one orchestral group to another."


title: Maurice Ravel

text: For all Ravel's orchestral mastery, only four of his works were conceived as concert works for symphony orchestra: "Rapsodie espagnole", "La valse" and the two concertos. All the other orchestral works were written either for the stage, as in "Daphnis et Chloé", or as a reworking of piano pieces, "Alborada del gracioso" and "Une barque sur l'ocean", ("Miroirs"), "Valses nobles et sentimentales," "Ma mère l'Oye", "Tzigane" (originally for violin and piano) and "Le tombeau de Couperin." In the orchestral versions, the instrumentation generally clarifies the harmonic language of the score and brings sharpness to classical dance rhythms. Occasionally, as in the "Alborada del gracioso", critics have found the later orchestral version less persuasive than the sharp-edged piano original.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: In some of his scores from the 1920s, including "Daphnis et Chloé", Ravel frequently divides his upper strings, having them play in six to eight parts while the woodwind are required to play with extreme agility. His writing for the brass ranges from softly muted to triple-forte outbursts at climactic points. In the 1930s he tended to simplify his orchestral textures. The lighter tone of the G major Piano Concerto follows the models of Mozart and Saint-Saëns, alongside use of jazz-like themes. The critics Edward Sackville-West and Desmond Shawe-Taylor comment that in the slow movement, "one of the most beautiful tunes Ravel ever invented", the composer "can truly be said to join hands with Mozart". The most popular of Ravel's orchestral works, "Boléro" (1928), was conceived several years before its completion; in 1924 he said that he was contemplating "a symphonic poem without a subject, where the whole interest will be in the rhythm".


title: Maurice Ravel

text: Ravel made orchestral versions of piano works by Schumann, Chabrier, Debussy and Mussorgsky's piano suite "Pictures at an Exhibition". Orchestral versions of the last by Mikhail Tushmalov, Sir Henry Wood and Leo Funtek predated Ravel's 1922 version, and many more have been made since, but Ravel's remains the best known. Kelly remarks on its "dazzling array of instrumental colour", and a contemporary reviewer commented on how, in dealing with another composer's music, Ravel had produced an orchestral sound wholly unlike his own.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: Although Ravel wrote fewer than thirty works for the piano, they exemplify his range; Orenstein remarks that the composer keeps his personal touch "from the striking simplicity of "Ma mère l'Oye" to the transcendental virtuosity of "Gaspard de la nuit"". Ravel's earliest major work for piano, "Jeux d'eau" (1901), is frequently cited as evidence that he evolved his style independently of Debussy, whose major works for piano all came later. When writing for solo piano, Ravel rarely aimed at the intimate chamber effect characteristic of Debussy, but sought a Lisztian virtuosity. The authors of "The Record Guide" consider that works such as "Gaspard de la Nuit" and "Miroirs" have a beauty and originality with a deeper inspiration "in the harmonic and melodic genius of Ravel himself".


title: Maurice Ravel

text: Most of Ravel's piano music is extremely difficult to play, and presents pianists with a balance of technical and artistic challenges. Writing of the piano music the critic Andrew Clark commented in 2013, "A successful Ravel interpretation is a finely balanced thing. It involves subtle musicianship, a feeling for pianistic colour and the sort of lightly worn virtuosity that masks the advanced technical challenges he makes in "Alborada del gracioso"... and the two outer movements of "Gaspard de la nuit". Too much temperament, and the music loses its classical shape; too little, and it sounds pale." This balance caused a breach between the composer and Viñes, who said that if he observed the nuances and speeds Ravel stipulated in "Gaspard de la nuit", "Le gibet" would "bore the audience to death". Some pianists continue to attract criticism for over-interpreting Ravel's piano writing.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: Ravel's regard for his predecessors is heard in several of his piano works; "Menuet sur le nom de Haydn" (1909), "À la manière de Borodine" (1912), "À la manière de Chabrier" (1913) and "Le tombeau de Couperin" all incorporate elements of the named composers interpreted in a characteristically Ravellian manner. Clark comments that those piano works which Ravel later orchestrated are overshadowed by the revised versions: "Listen to "Le tombeau de Couperin" and the complete ballet music for "Ma mère L'Oye" in the classic recordings conducted by André Cluytens, and the piano versions never sound quite the same again."


title: Maurice Ravel

text: Apart from a one-movement sonata for violin and piano dating from 1899, unpublished in the composer's lifetime, Ravel wrote seven chamber works. The earliest is the String Quartet (1902–03), dedicated to Fauré, and showing the influence of Debussy's quartet of ten years earlier. Like the Debussy, it differs from the more monumental quartets of the established French school of Franck and his followers, with more succinct melodies, fluently interchanged, in flexible tempos and varieties of instrumental colour. The Introduction and Allegro for harp, flute, clarinet and string quartet (1905) was composed very quickly by Ravel's standards. It is an ethereal piece in the vein of the "Pavane pour une infante défunte". Ravel also worked at unusual speed on the Piano Trio (1914) to complete it before joining the French Army. It contains Basque, Baroque and far Eastern influences, and shows Ravel's growing technical skill, dealing with the difficulties of balancing the percussive piano with the sustained sound of the violin and cello, "blending the two disparate elements in a musical language that is unmistakably his own," in the words of the commentator Keith Anderson.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: Ravel's four chamber works composed after the First World War are the Sonata for Violin and Cello (1920–22), the "Berceuse sur le nom de Gabriel Fauré" for violin and piano (1922), the chamber original of "Tzigane" for violin and piano (1924) and finally the Violin Sonata (1923–27). The two middle works are respectively an affectionate tribute to Ravel's teacher, and a virtuoso display piece for the violinist Jelly d'Arányi. The Violin and Cello Sonata is a departure from the rich textures and harmonies of the pre-war Piano Trio: the composer said that it marked a turning point in his career, with thinness of texture pushed to the extreme and harmonic charm renounced in favour of pure melody. His last chamber work, the Violin Sonata (sometimes called the Second after the posthumous publication of his student sonata), is a frequently dissonant work. Ravel said that the violin and piano are "essentially incompatible" instruments, and that his Sonata reveals their incompatibility. Sackville-West and Shawe-Taylor consider the post-war sonatas "rather laboured and unsatisfactory", and neither work has matched the popularity of Ravel's pre-war chamber works.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: Ravel's interpretations of some of his piano works were captured on piano roll between 1914 and 1928, although some rolls supposedly played by him may have been made under his supervision by Robert Casadesus, a better pianist. Transfers of the rolls have been released on compact disc. In 1913 there was a gramophone recording of "Jeux d'eau" played by Mark Hambourg, and by the early 1920s there were discs featuring the "Pavane pour une infante défunte" and "Ondine", and movements from the String Quartet, "Le tombeau de Couperin" and "Ma mère l'Oye". Ravel was among the first composers who recognised the potential of recording to bring their music to a wider public, and throughout the 1920s there was a steady stream of recordings of his works, some of which featured the composer as pianist or conductor. A 1932 recording of the G major Piano Concerto was advertised as "Conducted by the composer", although he had in fact supervised the sessions while a more proficient conductor took the baton. Recordings for which Ravel actually was the conductor included a "Boléro" in 1930, and a sound film of a 1933 performance of the D major concerto with Wittgenstein as soloist.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: Ravel declined not only the Légion d'honneur, but all state honours from France, refusing to let his name go forward for election to the Institut de France. He accepted foreign awards, including honorary membership of the Royal Philharmonic Society in 1921, the Belgian Ordre de Léopold in 1926, and an honorary doctorate from the University of Oxford in 1928.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: After Ravel's death, his brother and legatee, Edouard, turned the composer's house at Montfort-l'Amaury into a museum, leaving it substantially as Ravel had known it. , the maison-musée de Maurice Ravel remains open for guided tours.


title: Maurice Ravel

text: In his later years, Edouard Ravel declared his intention to leave the bulk of the composer's estate to the city of Paris for the endowment of a Nobel Prize in music, but evidently changed his mind. After his death in 1960, the estate passed through several hands. Despite the substantial royalties paid for performing Ravel's music, the news magazine "Le Point" reported in 2000 that it was unclear who the beneficiaries were. The British newspaper "The Guardian" reported in 2001 that no money from royalties had been forthcoming for the maintenance of the Ravel museum at Montfort-l'Amaury, which was in a poor state of repair.


title: Olympia Dukakis

text: Olympia Dukakis (June 20, 1931 – May 1, 2021) was an American actress. She performed in more than 130 stage productions, more than 60 films and in 50 television series. Best known as a screen actress, she started her career in theater. Not long after her arrival in New York City, she won an Obie Award for Best Actress in 1963 for her off-Broadway performance in Bertolt Brecht's "Man Equals Man".


title: Olympia Dukakis

text: She later moved to film acting and won an Academy Award and a Golden Globe, among other accolades, for her performance in "Moonstruck" (1987). She received another Golden Globe nomination for "Sinatra" (1992) and Emmy Award nominations for "Lucky Day" (1991), "More Tales of the City" (1998) and "Joan of Arc" (1999). Dukakis's autobiography, "Ask Me Again Tomorrow: A Life in Progress", was published in 2003. In 2018, a feature-length documentary about her life, titled "Olympia", was released theatrically in the United States.


title: Olympia Dukakis

text: Olympia Dukakis () was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, on June 20, 1931, the daughter of Alexandra "Alec" ("née" Christos) and Constantine "Costa" S. Dukakis. Her parents were Greek immigrants; her father a refugee from Anatolia and her mother from the Peloponnese. She had a brother named Apollo, six years her junior. As a girl, she dominated in sports and was a three-time New England fencing champion. She contended with pressures within her patriarchal Greek family and around her, "in a neighborhood where ethnic discrimination, particularly against Greeks, was routine."


title: Olympia Dukakis

text: Dukakis was an alumna of Arlington High School in Arlington, Massachusetts, and was educated at Boston University where she majored in physical therapy, earning a BA, which she made use of when treating patients with polio during the height of the epidemic. She later returned to BU and earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in performing arts.


title: Olympia Dukakis

text: Prior to her film career, Dukakis began a decades-long stage life working in 1961 in productions at the Williamstown Summer Theater, in the northwestern corner of Massachusetts. Once out of that corner of New England and hitting the pavement of the Great White Way, it didn't take long for her to be recognized for her talent and skill. In 1963, Dukakis' early life Off-Broadway was rewarded with an Obie Award for Distinguished Performance, as Widow Leocadia Begbick in "Man Equals Man" (a.k.a., "A Man's A Man"). But her stage work began across the summer of 1961, in productions at the Williamstown Summer Theatre, she continued to perform there every few years, with her last appearance on that stage occurring in 2003, where she played multiple roles in "The Chekov Cycle". By 1963, she had begun her career on screen. Transitioning to a professional life centered in New York City, she performed many times in productions in Central Park at the renowned Delacorte Theater. Returning to Western Massachusetts in 2013 for her last stage performance, she played Mother Courage in "Mother Courage and Her Children" at Shakespeare & Company, in Lenox, Massachusetts.


title: Olympia Dukakis

text: With her husband, Louis Zorich, and with other acting couples, she co-founded the Whole Theater Company. The company's first play was "Our Town", in 1973. With Dukakis serving as artistic director, the theater rolled out five productions per season for almost two decades. Across that span, productions included the works of Euripides, Eugene O'Neill, Samuel Beckett, Tennessee Williams, Edward Albee, and Lanford Wilson. Among the actors performing with Dukakis and her husband were José Ferrer, Colleen Dewhurst, Blythe Danner, and Samuel L. Jackson.


title: Olympia Dukakis

text: Dukakis' prolific stage directing credits include many of the classics: "Orpheus Descending", "The House of Bernarda Alba", "Uncle Vanya", and "A Touch of the Poet", as well as the more contemporary; "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and "Kennedy's Children". She also adapted such plays as "Mother Courage" and "The Trojan Women" for her Montclair, New Jersey situated theater company. Her Broadway theatre credits include "Who's Who in Hell" and "Social Security." She appeared in Martin Sherman's one-woman play, "Rose", entirely a monologue about a woman who survived the Warsaw Ghetto, in London and then on Broadway. For the role, she won the 2000 Outer Critics Circle Awards for Outstanding Solo Performance. Twenty-two years after earning her first Obie, she won her second in 1985, a Ensemble Performance Award, for playing Soot Hudlocke in "The Marriage of Bette and Boo".


title: Olympia Dukakis

text: Dukakis appeared in a number of films, including "Steel Magnolias", "Mr. Holland's Opus", "Jane Austen's Mafia!", "The Thing About My Folks" and "Moonstruck", for which she won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. She also played the role of Anna Madrigal in the "Tales of the City" television mini-series, which garnered her an Emmy Award nomination, and appeared on "Search for Tomorrow" as Dr. Barbara Moreno (1983), who romanced Stu Bergman. She appeared as Dolly Sinatra in the mini-series of Frank Sinatra's life (1992).


title: Olympia Dukakis

text: "Moonstruck" (1987) was directed by Norman Jewison who predicted Dukakis would receive honors for the role. She believed him after receiving the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. In addition to her Oscar, she took the Golden Globe in the same category. The honors compounded as she collected the Los Angeles and New York Film Critics Awards, all in recognition of her talent, some acting improvised, as she delivered a serious while hilarious performance. The role of a no-nonsense matriarch, Rose Castorini, plays off Cher's Best Actress Award-winning role as daughter Loretta. She was nominated for the Canadian Academy Award for "The Event" (2003) and in the middle of the first decade of the 21st century, her roles included "3 Needles", "", "In the Land of Women," and "Away From Her", the 2006 film which cast her alongside Gordon Pinsent as the spouses of two Alzheimer's patients.


title: Olympia Dukakis

text: She took on powerful roles on the small screen as well. In 1998, she starred as Charlotte Kiszko in the British TV drama "A Life for a Life: The True Story of Stefan Kiszko" (ITV), based on the actual story of a man wrongfully imprisoned for seventeen years for the murder of a child, Lesley Molseed, after police suppressed evidence of his innocence. In another genre entirely, she provided the voice of Grandpa's love interest for "The Simpsons" episode "The Old Man and the Key" (2002). In 2000, she played alongside Ian Holm, Judi Dench, Joan Sims (her final acting performance before her death in 2001), and Romola Garai (her first professional role) in the television film "The Last of the Blonde Bombshells".


title: Olympia Dukakis

text: In 2008, Dukakis directed the world premiere production of Todd Logan's "Botanic Garden" at Victory Gardens Theatre in Chicago, Illinois. That same year she starred in the revival of Tennessee Williams' "The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore", opposite Kevin Anderson at the Hartford Stage, and co-adapted and starred in the world-premiere of "Another Side of the Island", based on William Shakespeare's "The Tempest", at Alpine Theatre Project in Whitefish, Montana.


title: Olympia Dukakis

text: In 2011, Dukakis guest-starred on "". She played the role of Debby Marsh, an attorney. In 2013, she starred in and executive-produced the 2013 film "Montana Amazon", co-starring Haley Joel Osment. That same year, on May 24, she was honored with the 2,498th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.


title: Olympia Dukakis

text: In 2018, Dukakis starred in "Eleftheromania", which follows an Auschwitz survivor as she recites a true story about a group from the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. The following year, Dukakis reprised the role of Anna Madrigal, which she had first played in 1993, in a Netflix update of Armistead Maupin's "Tales of The City".


title: Olympia Dukakis

text: In 2018, "Olympia", an American documentary film about her life and career, had its festival premiere at DOC NYC. The film, directed by Harry Mavromichalis, features Whoopi Goldberg, Laura Linney, Ed Asner, Lainie Kazan, Armistead Maupin, Austin Pendleton, Diane Ladd and Dukakis' cousin, Governor Michael Dukakis. It was released theatrically in the United States in July 2020.


title: Olympia Dukakis

text: In 1962, Dukakis married fellow Manhattan stage actor Louis Zorich. Planning for a family, they moved out of the city in 1970 to settle in Montclair, New Jersey. It was there they raised their three children: Christina, Peter and Stefan. They had four grandchildren.


title: Olympia Dukakis

text: In her 2003 autobiography, "Ask Me Again Tomorrow: A Life in Progress," Dukakis describes the challenges she faced as a first-generation Greek-American in an area with anti-Greek ethnic bigotry, violence and discrimination; difficulties with her mother and in other relationships; and battles with substances and chronic illness. Her life off the screen and stage was very active. She taught acting for 15 years at NYU and gave master classes for professional theatre universities, colleges and companies across the country. She received the National Arts Club Medal of Honor.


title: Olympia Dukakis

text: Dukakis became an adherent of Goddess worship, a feminist form of modern Paganism, during a production of "The Trojan Women" in 1982. From 1989, she was publicly outspoken about this and produced improvised stage performances based on the movement's myths. For 10 years, beginning in 1985, she studied with Indian mentor Srimata Gayatri Devi in the Vedanta school of Hindu philosophy. A strong advocate for women's rights and LGBT rights, including same-sex marriage, Dukakis embraced the roles of a trans landlady in "Tales of the City", and a butch lesbian in "Cloudburst". She was a figure on the lecture circuit discussing topics such as women living with chronic illness, life in the theater, the environment, and feminism. She is quoted as having said, "I recognize that the real pulse of life is transformation, yet I work in a world dominated by men and the things men value, where transformation is not the coinage. It's not even the language!"


title: Olympia Dukakis

text: After a period of ill health, Dukakis died under hospice care at her home in Manhattan on May 1, 2021, at the age of 89.


title: Frankie Avalon

text: Francis Thomas Avallone (born September 18, 1940), better known as Frankie Avalon, is an American actor, singer, and former teen idol. He had 31 charting U.S. "Billboard" singles from 1958 to late 1962, including number one hits, "Venus" and "Why" in 1959.


title: Frankie Avalon

text: Avalon is also well known for his role in the 1970s musical film "Grease" as "Teen Angel", in which he sings "Beauty School Dropout" to Frenchy (played by Didi Conn).


title: Frankie Avalon

text: Avalon was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Mary and Nicholas Avallone. His mother was originally from Sicily. His father was a butcher from Naples or Salerno, in Campania, Italy. His paternal grandmother was from Sicily.


title: Frankie Avalon

text: In December 1952, Avalon made his American network television debut playing the trumpet in the Honeymooners "Christmas Party" sketch on "The Jackie Gleason Show". Two singles showcasing Avalon's trumpet playing were issued on RCA Victor's "X" sublabel in 1954. His trumpet playing was also featured on some of his LP songs as well. As a teenager he played with Bobby Rydell in Rocco and the Saints.


title: Frankie Avalon

text: In 1959, "Venus" (5 weeks No. 1) and "Why" went to number one on the Billboard Hot 100. "Why" was the last No. 1 of the 1950s.


title: Frankie Avalon

text: Avalon had 31 charted U.S. "Billboard" singles from 1958 to late 1962, including "Just Ask Your Heart" (U.S. No. 7), "I'll Wait for You" (U.S. No. 5), "Bobby Sox to Stockings" (U.S. No. 8), and "A Boy Without a Girl" (U.S. No. 10). He was less popular in the U.K., but did still manage four chart hits with "Why", "Ginger Bread", "Venus" and "Don't Throw Away All Those Teardrops". Most of his hits were written and/or produced by Bob Marcucci, head of Chancellor Records. Avalon concentrated on his acting career which detracted from his recording career, and "Why" of 1959 would be Avalon's final top 10 hit.


title: Frankie Avalon

text: Avalon's first film was a short appearance in "Jamboree" (1957), playing a trumpet and singing "Teacher's Pet".


title: Frankie Avalon

text: In the late 1950s, teen idols were often given roles in films, supporting older male stars in order to attract a younger audience, such as Ricky Nelson in "Rio Bravo" (1959). Alan Ladd's daughter was a Frankie Avalon fan, who recommended that he co-star with her father in the Western "Guns of the Timberland" (1960). Avalon sings two songs, "The Faithful Kind" and "Gee Whiz Whillikins Golly Gee"; both were released as singles.


title: Frankie Avalon

text: Ladd announced he would reteam Avalon and his daughter in "Six Steps to Freedom" but the film was never made.


title: Frankie Avalon

text: Rushes for "Timberland" were seen by John Wayne, who was looking for a young actor to play the (fictitious) role of "Smitty" in his passion project, "The Alamo" (1960). Avalon was cast in his second dramatic part. After making the film Wayne told the press "We're not cutting one bit of any scene in which Frankie appears. I believe he is the finest young talent I've seen in a long time." "Mr Wayne said I was natural as far as acting goes," said Avalon. He added, "My ambition when I was ten years old was to have my own band like Harry James. I never expected anything like this... I'd like to be identified as a singer, dancer, and actor. I don't want to be just one thing."


title: Frankie Avalon

text: Avalon was now in demand as an actor. He provided the singing voice for the lead character in the English-language version of a Japanese musical anime, "Alakazam the Great" (1960), which was done at the behest of the US distributor, American International Pictures. It was the first in what would be a long association with that company.


title: Frankie Avalon

text: For Irwin Allen, Avalon had a small role and sang the title song in the science fiction adventure film, "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" (1961), a solid commercial hit. He had a supporting role in a comedy, "Sail a Crooked Ship" (1961).


title: Frankie Avalon

text: Avalon was teamed with Ray Milland in the science fiction film, "Panic in Year Zero!" (1962), written by Lou Rusoff. Samuel Z. Arkoff of American International Pictures (AIP) said Avalon and Milland were teamed together because "they both have particular types of followers and the combination adds up to an attraction."


title: Frankie Avalon

text: For AIP, Avalon made a war film with Tab Hunter, "Operation Bikini" (1963), singing a few songs in flashback. At MGM, he played the lead in an adventure film set in Africa, "Drums of Africa" (1963).


title: Frankie Avalon

text: Of more significance for Avalon's career was a project originally written by Rusoff, "Beach Party" (1963). This cheerful pop rock-and-roll musical comedy starred Annette Funicello and was directed by William Asher. Arkoff said AIP originally wanted Fabian Forte to co-star with Funicello, but when he proved unavailable, they went with Avalon; it was a big hit and led to several sequels.


title: Frankie Avalon

text: Avalon received an offer to appear in a swashbuckler set in 10th century Spain about Fernán González of Castile, "The Castilian" (1963). This was followed by the "Beach Party" sequel, "Muscle Beach Party" (1963), which proved to be popular. Even more so was the third in the film series "Bikini Beach" (1964), where Avalon had a dual role. In August 1964, Avalon announced he had signed to make ten films in five years for AIP.


title: Frankie Avalon

text: "Pajama Party" (1964) was the unofficial fourth film in the series; it was a science fiction spoof in which Avalon ceded the leading man duties to Tommy Kirk, but he did have a cameo in it, however. He was back as the leading man in "Beach Blanket Bingo" (1965). Avalon later recalled, "'That's the picture of mine that I think people remember best, and it was just a lot of kids having a lot of fun ... a picture about young romance and about the opposition of adults and old people... It was also fun because we got to learn how to fake skydive out of an airplane."


title: Frankie Avalon

text: Avalon also appeared in nearly two dozen TV episodes, including ABC's "The Bing Crosby Show" and "The Patty Duke Show", appearing often as himself. Later, he became a national television spokesperson for Sonic Drive-In. In 1965, he appeared in the "Combat!" TV series episode "Brother, Brother" as a childhood friend of Pfc. Kirby, played by Jack Hogan.


title: Frankie Avalon

text: Avalon and Tuesday Weld supported Bob Hope in the comedy film, "I'll Take Sweden" (1965) for Edward Small. For AIP, he teamed with Dwayne Hickman in a copy of "Some Like It Hot" (1959) called "Ski Party" (1965). That studio also gave him the lead in a military service comedy, "Sergeant Deadhead" (1965), playing another dual role. All this activity meant he was reluctant to appear in another "beach party" film, so Hickman played the lead in "How to Stuff a Wild Bikini" (1965), although Avalon had a cameo.


title: Frankie Avalon

text: The box office performance of these last few films was disappointing, especially "Sergeant Deadhead", for which sequels had been planned. More popular was AIP's "Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine" (1965), a comedy with Vincent Price and Hickman. This was liked well enough to justify a sequel, although Avalon did not appear; Fabian Forte took over the Avalon roll.


title: Frankie Avalon

text: In January 1966, Avalon said he no longer wanted to make beach films. "Even a seagull leaves the beach from time to time, and I'm getting a little sick of sand."


title: Frankie Avalon

text: AIP tried to find a new starring formula for Avalon, casting him as a stock car driver in "Fireball 500" (1966), alongside Fabian and Funicello, for director William Asher. It was a medium financial success and led to other AIP stock car films, though none had Avalon starring in them.


title: Frankie Avalon

text: For Harry Alan Towers he played the lead role in "The Million Eyes of Sumuru" (1967), and also had a solid role in "Skidoo" (1968), a comedy from Otto Preminger. In England, he was in AIP's "The Haunted House of Horror" (1968).


title: Frankie Avalon

text: Materializing as a character called Teen Angel, his performance of "Beauty School Dropout" in the hit 1978 film of the musical "Grease" introduced Avalon to a new generation of viewers.


title: Frankie Avalon

text: In early 1979, Avalon portrayed Sergei in the episode "Dewey and Harold and Sarah and Maggie" of the NBC television series "$weepstake$".


title: Frankie Avalon

text: The 1980 film "The Idolmaker", written by Ed Di Lorenzo and directed by Taylor Hackford, was a thinly-disguised biography of Avalon ("Tommy Dee" in the film) as well as 1950s teenage star Fabian Forte (called "Caesare" in the film), along with songwriter/producer Bob Marcucci (called "Vinnie Vacarri"). In the film, Dee clashes with the record producer and younger singer Caesare, who he feels threatens his career. Eventually, Dee and Caesare quit the label, but their record careers collapse just as the British Invasion begins. The real Fabian threatened a lawsuit, despite the filmmakers' insistence that the film presented only fictional characters (though Marcucci was a paid consultant). Avalon denied most of the film's events.


title: Frankie Avalon

text: In 1980 Avalon appeared in the film "Blood Song" as Paul Foley, a serial killer. The movie was shot in October-November 1980 in North Bend/Coos Bay, Oregon. It was released in October 1982.


title: Frankie Avalon

text: He also appeared in the "Happy Days" episode "Poobah Doo Dah" playing himself where he sings his hits "Venus" and "Why".


title: Frankie Avalon

text: Avalon had the idea of returning to beach party films with Funicello. He hired several screenwriters and shopped the screenplay around town, eventually managing to set up the project at Paramount Pictures. "Back to the Beach" (1987) was a moderate success.


title: Frankie Avalon

text: In 1989, Avalon and Funicello appeared as themselves in cameo roles, out jogging the streets in "Troop Beverly Hills". Not long afterward Funicello retired, having been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.


title: Frankie Avalon

text: Avalon then turned to marketing and created Frankie Avalon Products, a line of health and cosmetic aids. He promoted his products on the Home Shopping Network with host Bob Circosta.


title: Frankie Avalon

text: In recent years, Avalon has starred in stage productions of "Grease" in the role of Teen Angel and in "Tony n' Tina's Wedding" as a caricature of himself. Additionally, in 2007, he performed "Beauty School Dropout" with the four remaining female contenders (Kathleen Monteleone, Allie Schulz, Ashley Spencer, and winner Laura Osnes) for the role of Sandy on the NBC television reality show ""


title: Frankie Avalon

text: As part of a long-running concert tour, Avalon has toured with fellow Philadelphian early 1960s teen idols Fabian and Bobby Rydell under the banner "Dick Fox's Golden Boys".


title: Frankie Avalon

text: A cookbook with over 80 recipes from St. Martin's Press, "Frankie Avalon's Italian Family Cookbook", was published in 2015.


title: Frankie Avalon

text: Avalon married Kathryn "Kay" Diebel on January 19, 1963. She was a beauty pageant winner he met while playing cards at a friend's house. He told that friend she was the girl he would marry. His agent warned him that marriage would spoil his teen idol mystique, to no avail.


title: Frankie Avalon

text: The Avalons have eight children – Frankie Jr., Tony, Dina, Laura, Joseph, Nicolas, Kathryn and Carla – and ten grandchildren. Frankie Jr. is a former actor who appeared in the original "The Karate Kid" and is now a musician. Tony, the second-eldest son, plays guitar and taught at the Rock Nation School. Both sons play on tour with their father.


title: Frankie Avalon

text: Avalon was mentioned in the System of a Down song "Old School Hollywood". The song supposedly is about Daron Malakian's experience in a celebrity baseball game, where he and Avalon were both ignored.


title: Frankie Avalon

text: Avalon is also mentioned in "It Takes Two", a song from the hit musical "Hairspray", sung by the character Link Larkin, and in a song by the Wu-Tang Clan called "The City" which refers to his experiences of being a big part of the beach party film genre ("Ride the wave like Frankie Avalon").


title: Frankie Avalon

text: One of numerous obscure cultural references present in Midway's video game "Mortal Kombat 3" was a lo-res image of Frankie Avalon's face that would dart up in the lower right-hand corner of the screen when Goro killed his opponent by knocking him into the spike pit on the Bridge level.


title: Frankie Avalon

text: His song "Venus" was featured in Cranium Command (1989–2005), an attraction at Epcot's Wonders of Life Pavilion (now closed) at Walt Disney World. In the attraction, a 12-year-old boy named Bobby (Scott Curtis), tries to survive the pressures of life and falls in love with a beautiful girl named Annie (Natalie Gregory) at school.


title: Frankie Avalon

text: Avalon and his song "Venus" are mentioned in Wendy Wasserstein's 2005 play "Third". The main character, English professor Laurie Jameson, watches a PBS reunion show featuring Avalon singing the song, and sings a line of it to her daughter. In stage productions of the show, part of the song is played and a portion of the supposed PBS special is screened as part of the scenery.


title: Frankie Avalon

text: Avalon is also referenced in the 1994 film, "The Stöned Age", in which he makes an ending scene cameo appearance.


title: Frankie Avalon

text: His song "Venus" additionally appeared in season 4 of the TV series "Dexter" in which John Lithgow's character, Arthur Mitchell, plays it to remember his deceased sister. Also, "Venus" is sampled in Nick Bertke's, single, "J'Adore Juin", a mashup of sounds from the movie The Apartment.


title: Loperamide

text: Loperamide, sold under the brand name Imodium, among others, is a medication used to decrease the frequency of diarrhea. It is often used for this purpose in inflammatory bowel disease and short bowel syndrome. It is not recommended for those with blood in the stool, mucus in the stool, or fevers. The medication is taken by mouth.


title: Loperamide

text: Common side effects include abdominal pain, constipation, sleepiness, vomiting, and a dry mouth. It may increase the risk of toxic megacolon. Loperamide's safety in pregnancy is unclear, but no evidence of harm has been found. It appears to be safe in breastfeeding. It is an opioid with no significant absorption from the gut and does not cross the blood–brain barrier when used at normal doses. It works by slowing the contractions of the intestines.


title: Loperamide

text: Loperamide was first made in 1969 and used medically in 1976. It is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines. Loperamide is available as a generic medication. In 2020, it was the 330th most commonly prescribed medication in the United States, with more than 700thousand prescriptions.


title: Loperamide

text: Loperamide is effective for the treatment of a number of types of diarrhea. This includes control of acute nonspecific diarrhea, mild traveler's diarrhea, irritable bowel syndrome, chronic diarrhea due to bowel resection, and chronic diarrhea secondary to inflammatory bowel disease. It is also useful for reducing ileostomy output. Off-label uses for loperamide also include chemotherapy-induced diarrhea, especially related to irinotecan use.


title: Loperamide

text: Loperamide should not be used as the primary treatment in cases of bloody diarrhea, acute exacerbation of ulcerative colitis, or bacterial enterocolitis.


title: Loperamide

text: Loperamide is often compared to diphenoxylate. Studies suggest that loperamide is more effective and has lower neural side effects.


title: Loperamide

text: Adverse drug reactions most commonly associated with loperamide are constipation (which occurs in 1.7–5.3% of users), dizziness (up to 1.4%), nausea (0.7–3.2%), and abdominal cramps (0.5–3.0%). Rare, but more serious, side effects include toxic megacolon, paralytic ileus, angioedema, anaphylaxis/allergic reactions, toxic epidermal necrolysis, Stevens–Johnson syndrome, erythema multiforme, urinary retention, and heat stroke. The most frequent symptoms of loperamide overdose are drowsiness, vomiting, and abdominal pain, or burning. High doses may result in heart problems such as abnormal heart rhythms.


title: Loperamide

text: Treatment should be avoided in the presence of high fever or if the stool is bloody. Treatment is not recommended for people who could have negative effects from rebound constipation. If a suspicion exists of diarrhea associated with organisms that can penetrate the intestinal walls, such as or "Salmonella", loperamide is contraindicated as a primary treatment. Loperamide treatment is not used in symptomatic "C. difficile" infections, as it increases the risk of toxin retention and precipitation of toxic megacolon.


title: Loperamide

text: Loperamide should be administered with caution to people with liver failure due to reduced first-pass metabolism. Additionally, caution should be used when treating people with advanced HIV/AIDS, as cases of both viral and bacterial toxic megacolon have been reported. If abdominal distension is noted, therapy with loperamide should be discontinued.


title: Loperamide

text: The use of loperamide in children under two years is not recommended. Rare reports of fatal paralytic ileus associated with abdominal distention have been made. Most of these reports occurred in the setting of acute dysentery, overdose, and with very young children less than two years of age. A review of loperamide in children under 12 years old found that serious adverse events occurred only in children under three years old. The study reported that the use of loperamide should be contraindicated in children who are under 3, systemically ill, malnourished, moderately dehydrated, or have bloody diarrhea. In 1990, all formulations for children of the antidiarrheal loperamide were banned in Pakistan.


title: Loperamide

text: Loperamide is not recommended in the United Kingdom for use during pregnancy or by nursing mothers. In the U.S., loperamide is classified by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as pregnancy category C. Studies in rat models have shown no teratogenicity, but sufficient studies in humans have not been conducted. One controlled, prospective study of 89 women exposed to loperamide during their first trimester of pregnancy showed no increased risk of malformations. This, however, was only one study with a small sample size. Loperamide can be present in breast milk, and is not recommended for breast-feeding mothers.


title: Loperamide

text: Loperamide is a substrate of P-glycoprotein; therefore, the concentration of loperamide increases when given with a P-glycoprotein inhibitor. Common P-glycoprotein inhibitors include quinidine, ritonavir, and ketoconazole. Loperamide is capable of decreasing the absorption of some other drugs. As an example, saquinavir concentrations can decrease by half when given with loperamide.


title: Loperamide

text: Loperamide is an antidiarrheal agent, which decreases intestinal movement. As such, when combined with other antimotility drugs, the risk of constipation is increased. These drugs include other opioids, antihistamines, antipsychotics, and anticholinergics.


title: Loperamide

text: Loperamide is an opioid-receptor agonist and acts on the μ-opioid receptors in the myenteric plexus of the large intestine. It works like morphine, decreasing the activity of the myenteric plexus, which decreases the tone of the longitudinal and circular smooth muscles of the intestinal wall. This increases the time material stays in the intestine, allowing more water to be absorbed from the fecal matter. It also decreases colonic mass movements and suppresses the gastrocolic reflex.


title: Loperamide

text: Loperamide's circulation in the bloodstream is limited in two ways. Efflux by P-glycoprotein in the intestinal wall reduces passage of loperamide, and the fraction of drug crossing is then further reduced through first-pass metabolism by the liver. Loperamide metabolizes into an MPTP-like compound, but is unlikely to exert neurotoxicity.


title: Loperamide

text: Efflux by P-glycoprotein also prevents circulating loperamide from effectively crossing the blood–brain barrier, so it can generally only antagonize muscarinic receptors in the peripheral nervous system, and currently has a score of one on the anticholinergic cognitive burden scale. Concurrent administration of P-glycoprotein inhibitors such as quinidine potentially allows loperamide to cross the blood–brain barrier and produce central morphine-like effects. Loperamide taken with quinidine was found to produce respiratory depression, indicative of central opioid action.


title: Loperamide

text: Loperamide has been shown to cause a mild physical dependence during preclinical studies, specifically in mice, rats, and rhesus monkeys. Symptoms of mild opiate withdrawal were observed following abrupt discontinuation of long-term treatment of animals with loperamide.


title: Loperamide

text: When originally approved for medical use in the United States, loperamide was considered a narcotic and was put into Schedule II of the Controlled Substances Act 1970. It was transferred to Schedule V on 17 July 1977, and then decontrolled on 3 November 1982.


title: Loperamide

text: Loperamide hydrochloride was first synthesized in 1969 by Paul Janssen from Janssen Pharmaceuticals in Beerse, Belgium, following previous discoveries of diphenoxylate hydrochloride (1956) and fentanyl citrate (1960).


title: Loperamide

text: The first clinical reports on loperamide were published in 1973 in the" Journal of Medicinal Chemistry" with the inventor being one of the authors. The trial name for it was "R-18553". Loperamide oxide has a different research code: R-58425.


title: Loperamide

text: The trial against placebo was conducted from December 1972 to February 1974, its results being published in 1977 in the journal "Gut".


title: Loperamide

text: In 1973, Janssen started to promote loperamide under the brand name Imodium. In December 1976, Imodium got US FDA approval.


title: Loperamide

text: In March 1988, McNeil Pharmaceutical began selling loperamide as an over-the-counter drug under the brand name Imodium A-D.


title: Loperamide

text: In the 1980s, loperamide also existed in the form of drops (Imodium Drops) and syrup. Initially, it was intended for children's usage, but Johnson & Johnson voluntarily withdrew it from the market in 1990 after 18 cases of paralytic ileus (resulting in six deaths) were registered in Pakistan and reported by the World Health Organization (WHO). In the following years (1990-1991), products containing loperamide have been restricted for children's use in a number of countries (ranging from two to five years of age).


title: Loperamide

text: In the late 1980s, before the US patent expired on 30 January 1990, McNeil started to develop Imodium Advanced containing loperamide and simethicone for treating both diarrhea and gas. In March 1997, the company patented such combination. The drug was approved in June 1997, by the FDA as Imodium Multi-Symptom Relief in the form of a chewable tablet. A caplet formulation was approved in November 2000.


title: Loperamide

text: In November 1993, loperamide was launched as an orally disintegrating tablet based on Zydis technology.


title: Loperamide

text: In 2013, loperamide in the form of 2-mg tablets was added to the WHO Model List of Essential Medicines.


title: Loperamide

text: In 2020, it was discovered by researchers at Goethe University that Loperamide was effective at killing glioblastoma cells.


title: Loperamide

text: Loperamide is sold as a generic medication. In 2016, Imodium was one of the biggest-selling branded over-the-counter medications sold in Great Britain, with sales of £32.7 million.


title: Loperamide

text: Loperamide has typically been deemed to have a relatively low risk of misuse. In 2012, no reports of loperamide abuse were made. In 2015, however, case reports of extremely high-dose loperamide use were published. The primary intent of users has been to manage symptoms of opioid withdrawal such as diarrhea, although a small portion derive psychoactive effects at these higher doses. At these higher doses central nervous system penetration occurs and long term use may lead to tolerance, dependence, and withdrawal on abrupt cessation. Dubbing it "the poor man's methadone", clinicians warned that increased restrictions on the availability of prescription opioids passed in response to the opioid epidemic were prompting recreational users to turn to loperamide as an over-the-counter treatment for withdrawal symptoms. The FDA responded to these warnings by calling on drug manufacturers to voluntarily limit the package size of loperamide for public-safety reasons. However, there is no quantity restriction on number of packages that can be purchased, and most pharmacies do not feel capable of restricting its sale, so it is unclear that this intervention will have any impact without further regulation to place loperamide behind the counter. Since 2015, several reports of sometimes-fatal cardiotoxicity due to high-dose loperamide abuse have been published.


title: Cybercrime

text: A cybercrime is a crime that involves a computer or a computer network. The computer may have been used in committing the crime, or it may be the target. Cybercrime may harm someone's security or finances.


title: Cybercrime

text: There are many privacy concerns surrounding cybercrime when confidential information is intercepted or disclosed, lawfully or otherwise. Internationally, both governmental and non-state actors engage in cybercrimes, including espionage, financial theft, and other cross-border crimes. Cybercrimes crossing international borders and involving the actions of at least one nation-state are sometimes referred to as cyberwarfare. Warren Buffett describes cybercrime as the "number one problem with mankind" and said that cybercrime "poses real risks to humanity."


title: Cybercrime

text: A 2014 report sponsored by McAfee estimated that cybercrime resulted in $445 billion in annual damage to the global economy. Approximately $1.5 billion was lost in 2012 to online credit and debit card fraud in the US. In 2018, a study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), in partnership with McAfee, concluded that nearly 1% of global GDP, close to $600 billion, is lost to cybercrime each year. The World Economic Forum 2020 Global Risk Report confirmed that organized cybercrimes bodies are joining forces to perpetrate criminal activities online, while estimating the likelihood of their detection and prosecution to be less than 1% in the US.


title: Cybercrime

text: Computer crime encompasses a broad range of activities, including computer fraud, financial crimes, scams, cybersex trafficking, and ad fraud.


title: Cybercrime

text: Computer fraud is the act of using a computer to take or alter electronic data, or to gain unlawful use of a computer or system. If computer fraud involves the use of the Internet, it can be considered Internet fraud. The legal definition of computer fraud varies by jurisdiction, but typically involves accessing a computer without permission or authorisation.


title: Cybercrime

text: Forms of computer fraud include hacking into computers to alter information, distributing malicious code such as computer worms or viruses, installing malware or spyware to steal data, phishing, and advance-fee scams.


title: Cybercrime

text: Other forms of fraud may be facilitated using computer systems, including bank fraud, carding, identity theft, extortion, and theft of classified information. These types of crimes often result in the loss of private or monetary information.


title: Cybercrime

text: Cyberterrorism, in general, can be defined as an act of terrorism committed through the use of cyberspace or computer resources. Acts of deliberate, large-scale disruption of computer networks, especially of personal computers attached to the Internet, by means such as computer viruses, computer worms, phishing, malicious software, hardware methods, or programming scripts can all be forms of cyberterrorism.


title: Cybercrime

text: Government officials and information technology security specialists have documented a significant increase in Internet problems and server scams since early 2001. Within the United States, there is a growing concern among government agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that such intrusions are part of an organized effort by cyberterrorist foreign intelligence services or other groups to map potential security holes in critical systems.


title: Cybercrime

text: Cyberextortion is a type of extortion that occurs when a website, e-mail server, or computer system is subjected to or threatened with attacks by malicious hackers, such as denial-of-service attacks. Cyberextortionists demand money in return for promising to stop the attacks and to offer "protection". According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, cybercrime extortionists are increasingly attacking corporate websites and networks, crippling their ability to operate, and demanding payments to restore their service. More than 20 cases are reported each month to the FBI and many go unreported in order to keep the victim's name out of the public domain. Perpetrators typically use a distributed denial-of-service attack. However, other cyberextortion techniques exist, such as doxing, extortion, and bug poaching.


title: Cybercrime

text: Ransomware is a type of malware used in cyberextortion to restrict access to files, sometimes threatening permanent data erasure unless a ransom is paid. The Kaspersky Lab 2016 Security Bulletin report estimated that a business falls victim to ransomware every 40 minutes, and predicted that number would decrease to 11 minutes by 2021. With ransomware remaining one of the fastest-growing cybercrimes in the world, global ransomware damage is predicted to cost up to $20 billion in 2021.


title: Cybercrime

text: Cybersex trafficking is the transportation of victims and then the live streaming of coerced sexual acts or rape on webcam. Victims are abducted, threatened, or deceived and transferred to "cybersex dens". The dens can be in any location where the cybersex traffickers have a computer, tablet, or phone with an internet connection. Perpetrators use social media networks, videoconferences, dating pages, online chat rooms, apps, dark web sites, and other platforms. They use online payment systems and cryptocurrencies to hide their identities. Millions of reports of its occurrence are sent to authorities annually. New legislation and police procedures are needed to combat this type of cybercrime.


title: Cybercrime

text: The U.S. Department of Defense notes that cyberspace has emerged as a national-level concern through several recent events of geostrategic significance, including the attack on Estonia's infrastructure in 2007, allegedly by Russian hackers. In August 2008, Russia again allegedly conducted cyberattacks, this time in a coordinated and synchronized kinetic and non-kinetic campaign against the country of Georgia. Fearing that such attacks may become the norm in future warfare among nation-states, the military commanders will adapt the concept of cyberspace operations impact in the future.


title: Cybercrime

text: These crimes are committed by a selected group of criminals. Unlike crimes using the computer as a tool, these crimes require the technical knowledge of the perpetrators. As such, as technology evolves, so too does the nature of the crime. These crimes are relatively new, having been in existence for only as long as computers have—which explains how unprepared society and the world, in general, are towards combating these crimes. There are numerous crimes of this nature committed daily on the internet. They are seldom committed by loners, instead usually involving large syndicate groups.