title: Hong Kong independence

text: On 12 October 2016 the inaugural meeting of the Legislative Council, two Youngspiration legislators Baggio Leung and Yau Wai-ching took the oaths of office as an opportunity to make pro-independence statements. The two claimed that "As a member of the Legislative Council, I shall pay earnest efforts in keeping guard over the interests of the Hong Kong nation," displayed a "Hong Kong is not China" banner, inserted their own words into the oaths and mispronounced "People's Republic of China" as "people's re-fucking of Chee-na". Their oaths were invalidated by the LegCo secretary-general Kenneth Chen and were subsequently challenged by the government in the court. On 7 November 2016, the National People's Congress Standing Committee (NPCSC) interpreted the Article 104 of the Basic Law of Hong Kong to "clarify" the provision of the legislators to swear allegiance to Hong Kong as part of China when they take office. The spokesman of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office stated that "[Beijing] will absolutely neither permit anyone advocating secession in Hong Kong nor allow any pro-independence activists to enter a government institution." Consequently, the court disqualified that the two legislators on 15 November.


title: Hong Kong independence

text: After the disqualification of the two legislators, the government launched the second wave of legal challenge against four more pro-democracy legislators who used the oath-taking ceremony, including Demosistō's Nathan Law as well as Lau Siu-lai, who ran their campaigns with the "self-determination" slogan. On 14 July 2017, the four legislators were unseated by the court.


title: Hong Kong independence

text: On 4 September 2017, the Hong Kong independence issue made a high-profile reappearance as the banners calling for independence surfaced at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) overnight ahead of the new academic year. The school staff quickly removed them. Independence banners and posters surfaced at more universities as seven student unions joined forces to condemn the removal of the banners and posters by campus authorities as a "serious erosion" of academic freedom.


title: Hong Kong independence

text: Quarrels and confrontation between some local and mainland students broke out as a number of mainland Chinese students grouped themselves to tear down the posters advocating Hong Kong independence on the CUHK campus's "democracy wall". The action of the mainland students was praised by the Chinese Communist Youth League which shared the video on its official WeChat account. A commentary titled "A rule must be set to make Hong Kong independence criminal" published on the state-owned "People's Daily" overseas edition website said the discussion on Hong Kong independence should be made illegal, just like it is illegal to promote Nazism in Germany.


title: Hong Kong independence

text: On 11 September, Chief Executive Carrie Lam denounced the pro-independence banners and posters, asserting the students' message ran counter to the "one country, two systems" principle and the Basic Law, "I condemn the continued appearance of such remarks on university campuses, which is in violation of our country's sovereignty, territorial integrity and development interests," she said. She also insisted academic freedom and university autonomy were no excuse for propagating fallacies. On 15 September, ten university heads in Hong Kong, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong Shue Yan University, Lingnan University, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the Education University of Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, the Open University of Hong Kong and the University of Hong Kong, condemned the "recent abuses" of the freedom of expression in a joint statement, adding that all the universities do not support Hong Kong independence as it contravenes the Basic Law.


title: Hong Kong independence

text: In the March 2018 Legislative Council by-elections for the four seats left vacant by the disqualified legislators over the oath-taking controversy, three candidates were disqualified by the Electoral Affairs Commission (EAC) returning officers, including Demosistō's Agnes Chow on the basis of that she "cannot possibly comply with the requirements of the relevant electoral laws, since advocating or promoting 'self-determination' is contrary to the content of the declaration that the law requires a candidate to make to uphold the Basic Law and pledge allegiance to the [Hong Kong Special Administrative Region]." The European Union issued a statement warning that banning Chow from the by-election "risks diminishing Hong Kong's international reputation as a free and open society". Localists Ventus Lau Wing-hong and James Chan Kwok-keung were also barred from running due to their previous pro-independence stance.


title: Hong Kong independence

text: In the November by-election, Lau Siu-lai, ousted pro-democracy legislator in the oath-taking controversy was barred from entering the race by Returning Officer Franco Kwok Wai-fun on the basis of Lau previous advocacy of Hong Kong's self-determination, which showed she had no intention of upholding the Basic Law and pledging allegiance to Hong Kong as a special administrative region of China. In the same month, Legislative Councillor Eddie Chu who ran for the Village Representative election in Yuen Long was asked by Returning Officer Enoch Yuen if he agreed to uphold the Basic Law, agreed to recognise China's sovereignty over Hong Kong, and whether he supported Hong Kong independence. Chu restated his position that he has never supported Hong Kong independence: :I advocate and support the democratisation of the Basic Law and the political system – including but not limited to amending Article 158 and 159 of the Basic Law – as a goal of Hong Kongers’ self-determination after the Central Government blocked universal suffrage." On 2 December, Chu was told that his candidacy was invalid, making him the tenth candidate barred from running in the election for his political belief and the first banned from running in the village-level election.


title: Hong Kong independence

text: In August, a controversy erupted in 2018 when the FCC hosted a lunchtime talk with Andy Chan, convenor of the Hong Kong National Party (HKNP) to take place on 14 August. Victor Mallet, Vice-chairman of the press organisation, chaired the session. The governments of China and Hong Kong had called for the cancellation of the talk, because the issue of independence supposedly crossed one of the "bottom lines" on national sovereignty. After a visit to Bangkok, Mallet was denied a working visa by the Hong Kong government. Mallet was subjected to a four-hour interrogation by immigration officers on his return from Thailand on Sunday 7 October before he was finally allowed to enter Hong Kong.


title: Hong Kong independence

text: In the absence of an official explanation, Mallet's visa rejection was widely seen to be retribution for his role in chairing the Andy Chan talk which the FCC refused to call off. Secretary for Security John Lee insisted the ban on Mallet was unrelated to press freedom, but declined to explain the decision. The incident caused a furious debate over restrictions to freedoms that were promised in the Sino-British Joint Declaration which included a "high degree of autonomy", democratic reforms, and maintenance of the freedom of the press.


title: Hong Kong independence

text: In March, following months of protests, a poll by Reuters found that support for independence had risen to 20%, while opposition had fallen sharply to 56%, and those who were indifferent had doubled to 18%.


title: Hong Kong independence

text: In May 2020, after the decision on Hong Kong national security legislation was published, U.S. congressman Scott Perry proposed a bill "to authorize the President to recognize the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China as a separate, independent country, and for other purposes."


title: Hong Kong independence

text: However, due to the new National Security Law imposed by Beijing, it is now illegal to call for such demands and offenders can be faced with life imprisonment.


title: Hong Kong independence

text: Political parties that support Hong Kong's independence include Hong Kong Indigenous, Hong Kong National Party and Youngspiration. Youngspiration calls for the right to self-determination of the "Hong Kong nation" on their sovereignty. Localist activist group Civic Passion has expressed its support for Hong Kong independence before, but later called for the amendment of the Basic Law of Hong Kong through a civil referendum in the 2016 Legislative Council election. Before disbanding as a result of the 2020 Hong Kong national security law, Demosisto also called for the right to self-determination to determine Hong Kong's future after 2047 when the One Country, Two Systems principle as promised in the Sino-British Joint Declaration and the Hong Kong Basic Law is supposed to expire, although independence wasn't the party's position. Other parties, such as the Alliance of Resuming British Sovereignty over Hong Kong and Independence (BSHI) and the Hong Kong Independence Party, call for the return of British rule.


title: Hong Kong independence

text: According to a survey conducted by the Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute in December 2019, one-fifth of Hong Kong's population supported Hong Kong independence, while 56% of Hongkongers opposed it.


title: Hong Kong independence

text: The Chinese government firmly opposes Hong Kong independence. Former Chinese paramount leader Deng Xiaoping opposed British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's alternative proposals during the Sino-British negotiation in the early 1980s as he believed she "wanted to turn Hong Kong into some kind of an independent or semi-independent political entity".


title: Hong Kong independence

text: After the establishment of the Hong Kong National Party in March 2016, an editorial piece in the Chinese government-owned "Global Times" slammed the Hong Kong National Party by stating that it is "impossible to achieve" independence for Hong Kong and calling it "a practical joke" and "forefront of extremism". The State Council's Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office issued a statement through the official Xinhua News Agency condemning the party: "The action to establish a pro-independence organisation by an extremely small group of people in Hong Kong has harmed the country’s sovereignty, security, endangered the prosperity and stability of Hong Kong, and the core interests of Hong Kong... It is firmly opposed by all Chinese people, including some seven million Hong Kong people. It is also a serious violation of the country's constitution, Hong Kong's Basic Law and the relevant existing laws." The spokesman of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office stated that "[Beijing] will absolutely neither permit anyone advocating secession in Hong Kong nor allow any pro-independence activists to enter a government institution," after the National People's Congress Standing Committee (NPCSC) interpret the Article 104 of the Basic Law of Hong Kong which aimed to disqualify the two Youngspiration legislators Baggio Leung and Yau Wai-ching. On the universities' independence banner row, a commentary titled "A rule must be set to make Hong Kong independence criminal" published on the state-owned "People's Daily" overseas edition website said the discussion on Hong Kong independence should be made illegal, just like it is illegal to promote Nazism in Germany.


title: Hong Kong independence

text: The Hong Kong government issued a statement after the formation of the Hong Kong National Party, stating that "any suggestion that Hong Kong should be independent or any movement to advocate such 'independence' is against the Basic Law, and will undermine the stability and prosperity of Hong Kong and impair the interest of the general public… The SAR Government will take action according to the law."


title: Hong Kong independence

text: The pro-Beijing camp holds the same stance with the Beijing and SAR government and strongly opposes Hong Kong independence. The mainstream pan-democracy camp sympathised with the pro-independence cause but generally opposes Hong Kong independence as they do not think it would be beneficial to Hong Kong, nor practical or achievable. They believe that to fight for genuine democracy and safeguard the high degree of autonomy under the "One Country, Two Systems" principle is the most foreseeable solution.


title: Hong Kong independence

text: Although politicians and scholars like Chin Wan, Wong Yuk-man and Civic Passion's Wong Yeung-tat are seen as leading localist figures and have been close to the Hong Kong independence movement and even had advocated "nation building", they have also cut clear that they do not support Hong Kong independence during the midst of the Hong Kong LegCo candidates' disqualification controversy. They claim they fight for an amendment of the Basic Law through civil referendum to maintain Hong Kong's autonomy similar to that of Greenland's.


title: Hong Kong independence

text: The last British colonial governor Chris Patten opposes Hong Kong independence, worrying such activists would "dilute support" for democracy in Hong Kong: "[i]t would be dishonest, dishonourable and reckless of somebody like me, to pretend that the case for democracy should be mixed up with an argument about the independence of Hong Kong – something which is not going to happen, something which dilutes support for democracy, and something which has led to all sorts of antics which should not take place in a mature society aiming to be a full democracy."


title: Hong Kong independence

text: In September 2017, ten university heads in Hong Kong, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong Shue Yan University, Lingnan University, the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the Education University of Hong Kong, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, the Open University of Hong Kong and the University of Hong Kong stated that all the universities do not support Hong Kong independence as it contravenes the Basic Law.


title: Chris Stuckmann

text: Christopher Michael Stuckmann (born April 15, 1988) is an American filmmaker, YouTuber, author, and film critic.


title: Chris Stuckmann

text: As one of the most popular film critics on YouTube, Stuckmann has over 2 million subscribers and over 699 million views on the platform as of December 2022. On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes he is an approved critic and a member of the Critics Choice Association. Stuckmann is known for ending each of his YouTube reviews with the catchphrase "Click right here and get Stuckmann-ised".


title: Chris Stuckmann

text: In mid-2021 it was announced that Stuckmann had signed to write and direct his full feature debut "Shelby Oaks" with Paper Street Pictures.


title: Chris Stuckmann

text: Stuckmann was born in Boston Heights, Ohio, growing up with two older sisters. Stuckmann is partly of German descent. He took an interest in film criticism from a young age, writing brief reviews of films as early as age fourteen. His primary inspiration among professional film critics was Roger Ebert, particularly the television-program "Siskel & Ebert & the Movies" which Ebert co-hosted with Gene Siskel. He writes that by watching these reviews, he "discovered the idea of a debate on a film, but a respectful one".


title: Chris Stuckmann

text: Stuckmann cites his experience watching "Signs" in theaters as a child as his primary inspiration for becoming a filmmaker. Filmmakers Stuckmann has cited as having heavily influenced him include George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, M. Night Shyamalan, and Christopher Nolan. Throughout high school, Stuckmann wrote and directed numerous homemade movies and short films with friends and family.


title: Chris Stuckmann

text: He began publishing YouTube reviews of current films in his twenties and published his first film review in 2009. His reviews initially began under a short-form series titled Quick Movie Reviews. When he began publishing video reviews, there was only a small group of other video bloggers reviewing films on YouTube. He has also expanded into reviewing television shows, anime, and video games. His reviews are generally spoiler-free; however, he will occasionally release additional spoiler reviews for movies he feels would benefit from further, in-depth explanation.


title: Chris Stuckmann

text: He published his first book, "The Film Buff’s Bucket List: The 50 Movies of the 2000s to See Before You Die", in 2016. A year later, he directed and wrote the short film "Auditorium 6". In April 2018, Stuckmann published his second book titled "Anime-Impact: The Movies and Shows that changed the World of Japanese Animation".


title: Chris Stuckmann

text: Stuckmann has become among the most popular film critics on the website, having a following of over 2.01 million subscribers as of November 2022. Stewart Fletcher of Moviepilot ranked Stuckmann's YouTube channel as the number one channel that movie fans should subscribe to, citing Stuckmann's passionate and coherently written reviews as the reason.


title: Chris Stuckmann

text: In a July 2021 video, he announced that he would be minimizing his efforts on doing film criticism videos for a while to focus on his upcoming film, discarding classification grades on his movie reviews and shifting towards discussion/analytic videos for movies he wants to draw attention and support to, as well as informative videos tailored toward people seeking information on making films.


title: Chris Stuckmann

text: In July 2021 it was announced that Stuckmann had recently signed with Gotham Group with multiple horror-scripts in the works. His full-length directorial debut, the horror-film "Shelby Oaks", was planned to enter principal photography in late 2021 in Stuckmann's native Ohio. Stuckmann announced that filming was pushed back to 2022, due to insufficient funds and a potential strike between the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE) and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). He also announced that they would be launching a Kickstarter fundraising project for the film so as to give him the creative leeway to better execute his vision. The Kickstarter, which was launched in March 2022, quickly became the most-funded horror film on the site mere weeks after launch, while also surpassing the film's initial $250,000 goal. The final fundraising campaign ended on March 27, with $1,390,845 raised.


title: Chris Stuckmann

text: Stuckmann has been married to his wife Samantha Elizabeth, who goes by Sam Liz, since 2014. He is also a former Jehovah's Witness and in January 2021 he uploaded a video where he detailed his negative experiences with the religion, and how he eventually left the faith in his early twenties to pursue filmmaking. In the same video, he also publicly came out as pansexual. In November 2021, Stuckmann announced that Liz had given birth to twin boys, Fox and Grayson, that July. In the video, Liz spoke about her health-issues and difficulties with fertility treatments.


title: Sean Cody

text: Sean Cody (company name: MG Premium Ltd.) is a gay pornography label founded in fall 2001. The website predominantly features young, muscular men in solo and hardcore bareback scenes. Sean Cody has a strict model selection, with contracts requiring no prior pornographic experience ("exclusive" men).


title: Sean Cody

text: Sean Cody was run by the company Cody Media Inc from 2003 until 2015 where it was sold to porn conglomerate MindGeek (who owns other competitor studios such as Men.com). This raised some questions around the quality and exclusivity of the content, as the same parent company owned the content-sharing websites that have negatively affected many other studios. A 2014 article by Internet magazine "Slate" explained how "MindGeek has become the porn monopoly, putting industry members in the paradoxical position of working for the very company that profits from the piracy of their work."


title: Sean Cody

text: In January 2012, SeanCody.com's parent company, 808 Holdings, filed suit in a federal court against 122 unidentified file sharers for allegedly trading unauthorized copies of the site's first condom-free video, "Brandon & Pierce Unwrapped", in December 2011. This was the first time Sean Cody sued over online file sharing.


title: Sean Cody

text: Sean Cody alumni include underwear model Simon Dexter; Aaron Savvy, a fitness model and "Ultimate Fighter" performer who has appeared on "Hole in the Wall", a reality TV show; and Dayton O'Connor, Colby Keller, Paul Wagner, Brady Jensen, Brandon Cody, Ryan Rose, Justin Matthews, Jake Porter, Kaleb Stryker, Johnny Donovan and Ricky Donovan ("Dayton", "Colby", "Barry", "Jonah", "Cody", "Pierce", "Taylor", "Porter", "Kaleb", "Nixon", "Kellin", "Joey", "Dean", "Deacon" and "Asher" respectively), now professional porn actors. Dakota Cochrane, who appeared on the 15th season of "The Ultimate Fighter" on FX, modeled as "Danny" on Sean Cody during the latter half of 2007, a decision he now regrets.


title: Sean Cody

text: "Sean" (real first name Ben) appeared on MTV's "True Life" in December 2015, in an episode entitled "I Am a Gay-for-Pay Porn Star," where he talks about his family and his career in gay porn. Fellow Sean Cody performer Forrest also appears in the episode.


title: Sports Authority

text: Sports Authority, Inc. (formerly The Sports Authority) was an American sports retailer. At its peak, Sports Authority operated 463 stores in 45 States and Puerto Rico. The company's website was on the GSI Commerce platform and supported the retail stores as well as other multi-channel programs. A joint venture with ÆON Co., Ltd., operates "Sports Authority" stores in Japan under a licensing agreement.


title: Sports Authority

text: On March 2, 2016, Sports Authority filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and the case was converted to Chapter 7 a few months later. On May 18, 2016, the company's stores were sold to a group of liquidators and on May 25, CEO Michael Foss announced that all of the stores would close by the end of August 2016. On June 30, 2016, Dick's Sporting Goods won the auction for Sports Authority's brand name and intellectual property.


title: Sports Authority

text: On July 15, 2016, the online store closed operations, redirecting users to the Dick's Sporting Goods website. On July 21, 2016, the purchase of Sports Authority's intellectual property by rival Dick's Sporting Goods was approved.


title: Sports Authority

text: Gart Brothers, or Gart Bros. began in 1928, when "Denver Post" newspaper carrier Nathan Gart started the company with $50 in fishing rod samples.


title: Sports Authority

text: In 1971, the Gart Bros. Company opened the "Sportscastle" superstore in Denver, Colorado, at the corner of 10th Avenue and Broadway. The 1980s marked a period of substantial growth for the company through a series of acquisitions. These mergers included Hagan's Sports Ltd. (1987) and Stevens Brown of Salt Lake City (1987). In the fall of 1992, Leonard Green & Partners acquired Thrifty and became the company's largest shareholder.


title: Sports Authority

text: At the same time that Gart Bros. opened the Sportscastle, the Hochberg family and the Cantor family opened their first Sportmart in Niles, Illinois. The company grew to 60 stores in nine states. Gart Bros. and Sportmart merged in 1998. Sportmart briefly operated in Canada in the 1990s before closing down their operations after two years.


title: Sports Authority

text: Oshman's Sporting Goods was founded in Houston, Texas, in 1919 by Jake Oshman. By 1965, Oshman's had become the largest sporting goods chain in Texas, operating 43 Oshman's SuperSports USA stores and 15 traditional stores; the company merged with Gart Bros. in 2001, two years before eventually merging with and changing their name to Sports Authority.


title: Sports Authority

text: The Sports Authority, Inc., was founded in Lakes Mall in Lauderdale Lakes, Florida, by a syndicate of venture capital groups and several key founding executives. Jack A. Smith, formerly COO of Herman's World of Sporting Goods, CEO; Roy M. Cohen, senior vice president and general merchandise manager; Richard Lynch, senior vice president and CFO and Arnold Sedel, vice president of stores operations, were the founding executives. The venture capital syndicate was led by William Blair Venture Partners and included First Chicago Venture Partners, Bain Capital, Phillips-Smith Venture Partners, Marquette Venture Partners, and Bessemer Securities.


title: Sports Authority

text: The Sports Authority, Inc. opened its first store in November 1987 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. In 1990, Kmart acquired the company. At the time of acquisition, Kmart had opened two sporting goods stores in Metro Detroit under the Sports Giant name and converted these stores to the Sports Authority name. Five years later, The Sports Authority had expanded to 136 stores in 26 states, and was spun off from parent Kmart.


title: Sports Authority

text: Gart Sports, which also operated Oshman's and Sportmart, completed a "merger of equals" with The Sports Authority on August 4, 2003. At the time of its merger with the Gart Sports Company, The Sports Authority was the largest full-line sporting goods retailer in the United States, and had 205 stores in 33 states. The combined company took the Sports Authority name. With the merger, each share of Sports Authority was exchanged with 0.37 shares of Gart Sports which gave investors in each about 50% of the new merchant. The new company was based in Englewood, Colorado, which was the home of Gart Sports.


title: Sports Authority

text: As of May 2006, the remaining stores that were not operating under the Sports Authority name were re-branded to the Sports Authority name.


title: Sports Authority

text: In January 2006, Sports Authority agreed to be purchased in a leveraged buyout by affiliates of Leonard Green & Partners, a private equity investment firm, in a transaction valued at $1.4 billion. Shareholders approved the deal in May 2006. Upon completion of the merger, Sports Authority ceased to be a publicly listed stock. There were also no public bonds outstanding, and Sports Authority no longer filed financial statements with the SEC.


title: Sports Authority

text: In August 2006, Copeland's Sports, headquartered in San Luis Obispo, California filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and on November 17, 2006, Sports Authority, through a wholly owned subsidiary, assumed the leasehold interests in seven former Copeland's Sports retail store locations.


title: Sports Authority

text: Sports Authority launched new store brand "S.A. Elite" in mid-2010, based on consumer research and testing. These stores are smaller than typical Sports Authority outlets and carry high-end sports apparel and accessories.


title: Sports Authority

text: On February 4, 2016, it was widely reported that Sports Authority was set to declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy, due to debt problems. Later that month, "The Dallas Morning News" reported that the company planned to close all 25 of its stores in Texas. The report did not specify a date for the closures. On March 2, 2016, Sports Authority filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. After considering restructuring, Sports Authority announced that on April 26, they would sell all of their assets, including all of the remaining store locations. Earlier in April, Reuters reported that Academy Sports + Outdoors and Dick's Sporting Goods had expressed interest in purchasing Sports Authority's assets. On May 3, 2016, the company notified the US Bankruptcy Court that it would not reorganize its debt but would auction its assets. Contrary to media reports, the company announced it would not be liquidating its assets, but would be auctioning off its stores and operations, with the intended goal of keeping all of its stores open. On May 18, however, it was announced that the effort to avoid liquidation was unsuccessful, causing the Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing to be converted to Chapter 7. The stores would in fact be closed, part of the American retail trend known as the retail apocalypse.


title: Sports Authority

text: Sports Authority sold different brands of sporting goods from many different vendors. The company also sold products under its own private labels, including Alpine Design (seasonal clothing and outdoor goods), Sims (seasonal clothing and snowboards), Aspire (women's sportswear), SA Gear (men's sportswear and fitness equipment), Tommy Armour and Ram (Golf), Parkside (outdoor games and trampolines), and Bodyfit by Sports Authority (fitness accessories). Many of these products were made by other manufacturers and branded with the Sports Authority private labels.


title: Sports Authority

text: Sports Authority owned the corporate naming rights to Sports Authority Field at Mile High, a stadium in Denver, Colorado, which is the home of the Denver Broncos. The Denver Broncos purchased the stadium naming rights in August 2016, and has since removed the Sports Authority name from the stadium. By 20 June 2018, the stadium operated under the name Broncos Stadium at Mile High until Empower Retirement took over in September 2019.


title: L'Orfeo

text: L'Orfeo (SV 318) (), sometimes called La favola d'Orfeo , is a late Renaissance/early Baroque "favola in musica", or opera, by Claudio Monteverdi, with a libretto by Alessandro Striggio. It is based on the Greek legend of Orpheus, and tells the story of his descent to Hades and his fruitless attempt to bring his dead bride Eurydice back to the living world. It was written in 1607 for a court performance during the annual Carnival at Mantua. While Jacopo Peri's "Dafne" is generally recognised as the first work in the opera genre, and the earliest surviving opera is Peri's "Euridice", "L'Orfeo" is the earliest that is still regularly performed.


title: L'Orfeo

text: By the early 17th century the traditional intermedio—a musical sequence between the acts of a straight play—was evolving into the form of a complete musical drama or "opera". Monteverdi's "L'Orfeo" moved this process out of its experimental era and provided the first fully developed example of the new genre. After its initial performance the work was staged again in Mantua, and possibly in other Italian centres in the next few years. Its score was published by Monteverdi in 1609 and again in 1615. After the composer's death in 1643 the opera went unperformed for many years, and was largely forgotten until a revival of interest in the late 19th century led to a spate of modern editions and performances. At first these performances tended to be concert (unstaged) versions within institutes and music societies, but following the first modern dramatised performance in Paris, in 1911, the work began to be seen in theatres. After the Second World War many recordings were issued, and the opera was increasingly staged in opera houses, although some leading venues resisted it. In 2007, the quatercentenary of the premiere was celebrated by performances throughout the world.


title: L'Orfeo

text: In his published score Monteverdi lists around 41 instruments to be deployed, with distinct groups of instruments used to depict particular scenes and characters. Thus strings, harpsichords and recorders represent the pastoral fields of Thrace with their nymphs and shepherds, while heavy brass illustrates the underworld and its denizens. Composed at the point of transition from the Renaissance era to the Baroque, "L'Orfeo" employs all the resources then known within the art of music, with particularly daring use of polyphony. The work is not orchestrated as such; in the Renaissance tradition instrumentalists followed the composer's general instructions but were given considerable freedom to improvise.


title: L'Orfeo

text: Claudio Monteverdi, born in Cremona in 1567, was a musical prodigy who studied under Marc'Antonio Ingegneri, the" maestro di cappella" (head of music) at Cremona Cathedral. After training in singing, string playing and composition, Monteverdi worked as a musician in Verona and Milan until, in 1590 or 1591, he secured a post as "suonatore di vivuola" (viola player) at Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga's court at Mantua. Through ability and hard work Monteverdi rose to become Gonzaga's "maestro della musica" (master of music) in 1601.


title: L'Orfeo

text: Vincenzo Gonzaga's particular passion for musical theatre and spectacle grew from his family connections with the court of Florence. Towards the end of the 16th century innovative Florentine musicians were developing the intermedio—a long-established form of musical interlude inserted between the acts of spoken dramas—into increasingly elaborate forms. Led by Jacopo Corsi, these successors to the renowned Camerata were responsible for the first work generally recognised as belonging to the genre of opera: "Dafne", composed by Corsi and Jacopo Peri and performed in Florence in 1598. This work combined elements of madrigal singing and monody with dancing and instrumental passages to form a dramatic whole. Only fragments of its music still exist, but several other Florentine works of the same period—"Rappresentatione di Anima, et di Corpo" by Emilio de' Cavalieri, Peri's "Euridice" and Giulio Caccini's identically titled "Euridice"—survive complete. These last two works were the first of many musical representations of the Orpheus myth as recounted in Ovid's "Metamorphoses", and as such were direct precursors of Monteverdi's "L'Orfeo".


title: L'Orfeo

text: The Gonzaga court had a long history of promoting dramatic entertainment. A century before Duke Vincenzo's time the court had staged Angelo Poliziano's lyrical drama "La favola di Orfeo", at least half of which was sung rather than spoken. More recently, in 1598 Monteverdi had helped the court's musical establishment produce Giovanni Battista Guarini's play "Il pastor fido", described by theatre historian Mark Ringer as a "watershed theatrical work" which inspired the Italian craze for pastoral drama. On 6 October 1600, while visiting Florence for the wedding of Maria de' Medici to King Henry IV of France, Duke Vincenzo attended the premiere of Peri's "Euridice". It is likely that his principal musicians, including Monteverdi, were also present at this performance. The Duke quickly recognised the novelty of this new form of dramatic entertainment, and its potential for bringing prestige to those prepared to sponsor it.


title: L'Orfeo

text: Among those present at the "Euridice" performance in October 1600 was a young lawyer and career diplomat from Gonzaga's court, Alessandro Striggio, son of a well-known composer of the same name. The younger Striggio was himself a talented musician; as a 16-year-old, he had played the viol at the wedding festivities of Duke Ferdinando of Tuscany in 1589. Together with Duke Vincent's two young sons, Francesco and Fernandino, he was a member of Mantua's exclusive intellectual society, the , which provided the chief outlet for the city's theatrical works. It is not clear at what point Striggio began his libretto for "L'Orfeo", but work was evidently under way in January 1607. In a letter written on 5 January, Francesco Gonzago asks his brother, then attached to the Florentine court, to obtain the services of a high quality castrato from the Grand Duke's establishment, for a "play in music" being prepared for the Mantuan Carnival.


title: L'Orfeo

text: Striggio's main sources for his libretto were Books 10 and 11 of Ovid's "Metamorphoses" and Book Four of Virgil's "Georgics". These provided him with the basic material, but not the structure for a staged drama; the events of acts 1 and 2 of the libretto are covered by a mere 13 lines in the "Metamorphoses". For help in creating a dramatic form, Striggio drew on other sources—Poliziano's 1480 play, Guarini's "Il pastor fido", and Ottavio Rinuccini's libretto for Peri's "Euridice". Musicologist Gary Tomlinson remarks on the many similarities between Striggio's and Rinuccini's texts, noting that some of the speeches in "L'Orfeo" "correspond closely in content and even in locution to their counterparts in "L'Euridice"". The critic Barbara Russano Hanning writes that Striggio's verses are less subtle than those of Rinuccini, although the structure of Striggio's libretto is more interesting. Rinuccini, whose work had been written for the festivities accompanying a Medici wedding, was obliged to alter the myth to provide a "happy ending" suitable for the occasion. By contrast, because Striggio was not writing for a formal court celebration he could be more faithful to the spirit of the myth's conclusion, in which Orfeo is killed and dismembered by deranged maenads or "Bacchantes". He chose, in fact, to write a somewhat muted version of this bloody finale, in which the Bacchantes threaten Orfeo's destruction but his actual fate is left in doubt.


title: L'Orfeo

text: The libretto was published in Mantua in 1607 to coincide with the premiere and incorporated Striggio's ambiguous ending. However, Monteverdi's score published in Venice in 1609 by Ricciardo Amadino shows an entirely different resolution, with Orpheus transported to the heavens through the intervention of Apollo. According to Ringer, Striggio's original ending was almost certainly used at the opera's premiere, but there is no doubt that Monteverdi believed the revised ending was aesthetically correct. The musicologist Nino Pirrotta argues that the Apollo ending was part of the original plan for the work, but was not staged at the premiere because the small room which hosted the event could not contain the theatrical machinery that this ending required. The Bacchantes scene was a substitution; Monteverdi's intentions were restored when this constraint was removed.


title: L'Orfeo

text: When Monteverdi composed "L'Orfeo" he had a thorough grounding in theatrical music. He had been employed at the Gonzaga court for 16 years, much of it as a performer or arranger of stage music, and in 1604 he had written the ballo "Gli amori di Diane ed Endimone" for the 1604–05 Mantua Carnival. The elements from which Monteverdi constructed his first opera score—the aria, the strophic song, recitative, choruses, dances, dramatic musical interludes—were, as conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt has pointed out, not created by him, but "he blended the entire stock of newest and older possibilities into a unity that was indeed new". Musicologist Robert Donington writes similarly: "[The score] contains no element which was not based on precedent, but it reaches complete maturity in that recently developed form ... Here are words as directly expressed in music as [the pioneers of opera] wanted them expressed; here is music expressing them ... with the full inspiration of genius."


title: L'Orfeo

text: Monteverdi states the orchestral requirements at the beginning of his published score, but in accordance with the practice of the day he does not specify their exact usage. At that time it was usual to allow each interpreter of the work freedom to make local decisions, based on the orchestral forces at their disposal. These could differ sharply from place to place. Furthermore, as Harnoncourt points out, the instrumentalists would all have been composers and would have expected to collaborate creatively at each performance, rather than playing a set text. Another practice of the time was to allow singers to embellish their arias. Monteverdi wrote plain and embellished versions of some arias, such as Orfeo's "Possente spirto", but according to Harnoncourt "it is obvious that where he did not write any embellishments he did not want any sung".


title: L'Orfeo

text: Each act of the opera deals with a single element of the story, and each ends with a chorus. Despite the five-act structure, with two sets of scene changes, it is likely that "L'Orfeo" conformed to the standard practice for court entertainments of that time and was played as a continuous entity, without intervals or curtain descents between acts. It was the contemporary custom for scene shifts to take place in sight of the audience, these changes being reflected musically by changes in instrumentation, key and style.


title: L'Orfeo

text: For the purpose of analysis the music scholar Jane Glover has divided Monteverdi's list of instruments into three main groups: strings, brass and continuo, with a few further items not easily classifiable. The strings grouping is formed from ten members of the violin family ("viole da brazzo"), two double basses ("contrabassi de viola"), and two kit violins ("violini piccoli alla francese"). The "viole da brazzo" are in two five-part ensembles, each comprising two violins, two violas and a cello. The brass group contains four or five trombones (sackbuts), three or four trumpets and two cornetts. The continuo forces include two harpsichords ("duoi gravicembani"), a double harp ("arpa doppia"), two or three chitarroni, two pipe organs ("organi di legno"), three bass viola da gamba, and a regal or small reed organ. Outside of these groupings are two recorders ("flautini alla vigesima secunda"), and possibly one or more citterns—unlisted by Monteverdi, but included in instructions relating to the end of act 4.


title: L'Orfeo

text: Instrumentally, the two worlds represented within the opera are distinctively portrayed. The pastoral world of the fields of Thrace is represented by the strings, harpsichords, harp, organs, recorders and chitarroni. The remaining instruments, mainly brass, are associated with the Underworld, though there is not an absolute distinction; strings appear on several occasions in the Hades scenes. Within this general ordering, specific instruments or combinations are used to accompany some of the main characters—Orpheus by harp and organ, shepherds by harpsichord and chitarrone, the Underworld gods by trombones and regal. All of these musical distinctions and characterisations were in accordance with the longstanding traditions of the Renaissance orchestra, of which the large "L'Orfeo" ensemble is typical.


title: L'Orfeo

text: Monteverdi instructs his players generally to "[play] the work as simply and correctly as possible, and not with many florid passages or runs". Those playing ornamentation instruments such as strings and flutes are advised to "play nobly, with much invention and variety", but are warned against overdoing it, whereby "nothing is heard but chaos and confusion, offensive to the listener". Since at no time are all the instruments played together, the number of players needed is less than the number of instruments. Harnoncourt indicates that in Monteverdi's day the numbers of players and singers together, and the small rooms in which performances were held, often meant that the audience barely numbered more than the performers.


title: L'Orfeo

text: Three of the instruments used in the original performance of "L'Orfeo" have had recent revivals: the cornetto (usually paired with sackbuts), the (a multi-course harp with sharps and flats) and the regal (an organ with fractional-length reed pipes). Instrumental color was widely used in specific dramatic situations during the 17c: in particular the regal was associated with Hades.


title: L'Orfeo

text: In his "personaggi" listed in the 1609 score, Monteverdi unaccountably omits La messaggera (the Messenger), and indicates that the final chorus of shepherds who perform the moresca (Moorish dance) at the opera's end are a separate group ("che fecero la moresca nel fine"). Little information is available about who sang the various roles in the first performance. A letter published at Mantua in 1612 records that the distinguished tenor and composer Francesco Rasi took part, and it is generally assumed that he sang the title role. Rasi could sing in both the tenor and bass ranges "with exquisite style ... and extraordinary feeling". The involvement in the premiere of a Florentine castrato, Giovanni Gualberto Magli, is confirmed by correspondence between the Gonzaga princes. Magli sang the prologue, Proserpina and possibly one other role, either La messaggera or Speranza. The musicologist and historian Hans Redlich mistakenly allocates Magli to the role of Orfeo.


title: L'Orfeo

text: A clue about who played Euridice is contained in a 1608 letter to Duke Vincenzo. It refers to "that little priest who performed the role of Euridice in the Most Serene Prince's "Orfeo"". This priest was possibly Padre Girolamo Bacchini, a castrato known to have had connections to the Mantuan court in the early 17th century. The Monteverdi scholar Tim Carter speculates that two prominent Mantuan tenors, Pandolfo Grande and Francesco Campagnola may have sung minor roles in the premiere.


title: L'Orfeo

text: There are solo parts for four shepherds and three spirits. Carter calculates that through the doubling of roles that the text allows, a total of ten singers—three sopranos, two altos, three tenors and two basses—is required for a performance, with the soloists (except Orfeo) also forming the chorus. Carter's suggested role-doublings include La musica with Euridice, Ninfa with Proserpina and La messaggera with Speranza.


title: L'Orfeo

text: The action takes place in two contrasting locations: the fields of Thrace (acts 1, 2 and 5) and the Underworld (acts 3 and 4). An instrumental toccata (English: "tucket", meaning a flourish on trumpets) precedes the entrance of La musica, representing the "spirit of music", who sings a prologue of five stanzas of verse. After a gracious welcome to the audience she announces that she can, through sweet sounds, "calm every troubled heart". She sings a further paean to the power of music, before introducing the drama's main protagonist, Orfeo, who "held the wild beasts spellbound with his song".


title: L'Orfeo

text: After La musica's final request for silence, the curtain rises on act 1 to reveal a pastoral scene. Orfeo and Euridice enter together with a chorus of nymphs and shepherds, who act in the manner of a Greek chorus, commenting on the action both as a group and as individuals. A shepherd announces that this is the couple's wedding day; the chorus responds, first in a stately invocation ("Come, Hymen, O come") and then in a joyful dance ("Leave the mountains, leave the fountains"). Orfeo and Euridice sing of their love for each other before leaving with most of the group for the wedding ceremony in the temple. Those left on stage sing a brief chorus, commenting on how Orfeo used to be one "for whom sighs were food and weeping was drink" before love brought him to a state of sublime happiness.


title: L'Orfeo

text: Orfeo returns with the main chorus, and sings with them of the beauties of nature. Orfeo then muses on his former unhappiness, but proclaims: "After grief one is more content, after pain one is happier". The mood of contentment is abruptly ended when La messaggera enters, bringing the news that, while gathering flowers, Euridice has received a fatal snakebite. The chorus expresses its anguish: "Ah, bitter happening, ah, impious and cruel fate!", while the Messaggera castigates herself as the bearing of bad tidings ("For ever I will flee, and in a lonely cavern lead a life in keeping with my sorrow"). Orfeo, after venting his grief and incredulity ("Thou art dead, my life, and I am breathing?"), declares his intention to descend into the Underworld and persuade its ruler to allow Euridice to return to life. Otherwise, he says, "I shall remain with thee in the company of death". He departs, and the chorus resumes its lament.


title: L'Orfeo

text: Orfeo is guided by Speranza to the gates of Hades. Having pointed out the words inscribed on the gate ("Abandon hope, all ye who enter here"), Speranza leaves. Orfeo is now confronted with the ferryman Caronte, who addresses Orfeo harshly and refuses to take him across the river Styx. Orfeo attempts to persuade Caronte by singing a flattering song to him ("Mighty spirit and powerful divinity"), and, although the ferryman is moved by his music ("Indeed thou charmest me, appeasing my heart"), he does not allow him to pass, claiming he is incapable of feeling pity. However, when Orfeo takes up his lyre and plays, Caronte is soothed into sleep. Seizing his chance, Orfeo steals the ferryman's boat and crosses the river, entering the Underworld while a chorus of spirits reflects that nature cannot defend herself against man: "He has tamed the sea with fragile wood, and disdained the rage of the winds."


title: L'Orfeo

text: In the Underworld, Proserpina, Queen of Hades, who has been deeply affected by Orfeo's singing, petitions King Plutone, her husband, for Euridice's release. Moved by her pleas, Plutone agrees on the condition that, as he leads Euridice towards the world, Orfeo must not look back. If he does, "a single glance will condemn him to eternal loss". Orfeo enters, leading Euridice and singing confidently that on that day he will rest on his wife's white bosom. But as he sings a note of doubt creeps in: "Who will assure me that she is following?". Perhaps, he thinks, Plutone, driven by envy, has imposed the condition through spite? Suddenly distracted by an off-stage commotion, Orfeo looks round; immediately, the image of Euridice begins to fade. She sings, despairingly: "Losest thou me through too much love?" and disappears. Orfeo attempts to follow her but is drawn away by an unseen force. The chorus of spirits sings that Orfeo, having overcome Hades, was in turn overcome by his passions.


title: L'Orfeo

text: Back in the fields of Thrace, Orfeo has a long soliloquy in which he laments his loss, praises Euridice's beauty and resolves that his heart will never again be pierced by Cupid's arrow. An off-stage echo repeats his final phrases. Suddenly, in a cloud, Apollo descends from the heavens and chastises him: "Why dost thou give thyself up as prey to rage and grief?" He invites Orfeo to leave the world and join him in the heavens, where he will recognise Euridice's likeness in the stars. Orfeo replies that it would be unworthy not to follow the counsel of such a wise father, and together they ascend. A shepherds' chorus concludes that "he who sows in suffering shall reap the fruit of every grace", before the opera ends with a vigorous moresca.


title: L'Orfeo

text: In Striggio's 1607 libretto, Orfeo's act 5 soliloquy is interrupted, not by Apollo's appearance but by a chorus of maenads or Bacchantes—wild, drunken women—who sing of the "divine fury" of their master, the god Bacchus. The cause of their wrath is Orfeo and his renunciation of women; he will not escape their heavenly anger, and the longer he evades them the more severe his fate will be. Orfeo leaves the scene and his destiny is left uncertain, as the Bacchantes devote themselves for the rest of the opera to wild singing and dancing in praise of Bacchus. The early music authority Claude Palisca believes that the two endings are not incompatible; Orfeo might evade the fury of the Bacchantes and be rescued by Apollo. However, this alternative ending in any case nearer to original classic myth, where the Bacchantes also appear, but it is made explicit that they torture him to his death, followed by reunion as a shade with Euridice but no apotheosis nor any interaction with Apollo.


title: L'Orfeo

text: The date for the first performance of "L'Orfeo", 24 February 1607, is evidenced by two letters, both dated 23 February. In the first, Francesco Gonzaga informs his brother that the "musical play" will be performed tomorrow; it is clear from earlier correspondence that this refers to "L'Orfeo". The second letter is from a Gonzaga court official, Carlo Magno, and gives more details: "Tomorrow evening the Most Serene Lord the Prince is to sponsor a [play] in a room in the apartments which the Most Serene Lady had the use of ...it should be most unusual, as all the actors are to sing their parts." The "Serene Lady" is Duke Vincenzo's widowed sister Margherita Gonzaga d'Este, who lived within the Ducal Palace. The room of the premiere cannot be identified with certainty; according to Ringer, it may have been the Galleria dei Fiumi, which has the dimensions to accommodate a stage and orchestra with space for a small audience.


title: L'Orfeo

text: There is no detailed account of the premiere, although Francesco wrote on 1 March that the work had "been to the great satisfaction of all who heard it", and had particularly pleased the Duke. The Mantuan court theologian and poet, Cherubino Ferrari wrote that: "Both poet and musician have depicted the inclinations of the heart so skilfully that it could not have been done better ... The music, observing due propriety, serves the poetry so well that nothing more beautiful is to be heard anywhere". After the premiere Duke Vincenzo ordered a second performance for 1 March; a third performance was planned to coincide with a proposed state visit to Mantua by the Duke of Savoy. Francesco wrote to the Duke of Tuscany on 8 March, asking if he could retain the services of the castrato Magli for a little longer. However, the visit was cancelled, as was the celebratory performance.


title: L'Orfeo

text: There are suggestions that in the years following the premiere, "L'Orfeo" may have been staged in Florence, Cremona, Milan and Turin, though firmer evidence suggests that the work attracted limited interest beyond the Mantuan court. Francesco may have mounted a production in Casale Monferrato, where he was governor, for the 1609–10 Carnival, and there are indications that the work was performed on several occasions in Salzburg between 1614 and 1619, under the direction of Francesco Rasi. Years later, during the first flourish of Venetian opera in 1637–43, Monteverdi chose to revive his second opera, "L'Arianna" there, but not "L'Orfeo". There is some evidence of performances shortly after Monteverdi's death: in Geneva in 1643, and in Paris, at the Louvre, in 1647. Although according to Carter the work was still admired across Italy in the 1650s, it was subsequently forgotten, as largely was Monteverdi, until the revival of interest in his works in the late 19th century.<ref name="Fortune/Whenham"></ref>


title: L'Orfeo

text: After years of neglect, Monteverdi's music began to attract the interest of pioneer music historians in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and from the second quarter of the 19th century onwards he is discussed increasingly in scholarly works. In 1881 a truncated version of the "L'Orfeo" score, intended for study rather than performance, was published in Berlin by Robert Eitner. In 1904 the composer Vincent d'Indy produced an edition in French, which comprised only act 2, a shortened act 3 and act 4. This edition was the basis of the first public performance of the work in two-and-a-half centuries, a concert performance at d'Indy's Schola Cantorum on 25 February 1904. The distinguished writer Romain Rolland, who was present, commended d'Indy for bringing the opera to life and returning it "to the beauty it once had, freeing it from the clumsy restorations which have disfigured it"—presumably a reference to Eitner's edition. The d'Indy edition was also the basis of the first modern staged performance of the work, at the Théâtre Réjane, Paris, on 2 May 1911.


title: L'Orfeo

text: An edition of the score by the minor Italian composer Giacomo Orefice (Milan, 1909) received several concert performances in Italy and elsewhere before and after the First World War. This edition was the basis of the opera's United States debut, another concert performance at the New York Met in April 1912. The opera was introduced to London, in d'Indy's edition, when it was sung to piano accompaniment at the Institut Français on 8 March 1924. The first British staged performance, with only small cuts, was given by the Oxford University Operatic Society on 7 December 1925, using an edition prepared for the event by Jack Westrup. In the London "Saturday Review", music critic Dyneley Hussey called the occasion "one of the most important events of recent years"; the production had "indicated at once Monteverdi's claim to rank among the great geniuses who have written dramatic music". Westrup's edition was revived in London at the Scala Theatre in December 1929, the same year in which the opera received its first US staged performance, at Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts. The three Scala performances resulted in a financial disaster, and the opera was not seen again in Britain for 35 years.


title: L'Orfeo

text: Among a flurry of revivals after 1945 was Paul Hindemith's edition, a full period reconstruction of the work prepared in 1943, which was staged and recorded at the Vienna Festival in 1954. This performance had a great impact on the young Nikolaus Harnoncourt, and was hailed as a masterpiece of scholarship and integrity. The first staged New York performance, by the New York City Opera under Leopold Stokowski on 29 September 1960, saw the American operatic debut of Gérard Souzay, one of several baritones who have sung the role of Orfeo. The theatre was criticised by "New York Times" critic Harold C. Schonberg because, to accommodate a performance of Luigi Dallapiccola's contemporary opera "Il prigioniero", about a third of "L'Orfeo" was cut. Schonberg wrote: "Even the biggest aria in the opera, 'Possente spirito', has a good-sized slash in the middle ... ["L'Orfeo"] is long enough, and important enough, not to mention beautiful enough, to have been the entire evening's opera."


title: L'Orfeo

text: By the latter part of the 20th century the opera was being shown all over the world. In 1965, Sadler's Wells, forerunner of English National Opera (ENO), staged the first of many ENO presentations which would continue into the 21st century. Among various celebrations marking the opera's 400th anniversary in 2007 were a semi-staged performance at the Teatro Bibiena in Mantua, a full-scale production by the English Bach Festival (EBF) at the Whitehall Banqueting House in London on 7 February, and an unconventional production by Glimmerglass Opera in Cooperstown, New York, conducted by Antony Walker and directed by Christopher Alden. On 6 May 2010 the BBC broadcast a performance of the opera from La Scala, Milan. Despite the reluctance of some major opera houses to stage "L'Orfeo", it is a popular work with the leading Baroque ensembles. During the period 2008–10, the French-based Les Arts Florissants, under its director William Christie, presented the Monteverdi trilogy of operas ("L'Orfeo", "Il ritorno d'Ulisse" and "L'incoronazione di Poppea") in a series of performances at the Teatro Real in Madrid.


title: L'Orfeo

text: "L'Orfeo" is, in Redlich's analysis, the product of two musical epochs. It combines elements of the traditional madrigal style of the 16th century with those of the emerging Florentine mode, in particular the use of recitative and monodic singing as developed by the Camerata and their successors. In this new style, the text dominates the music; while sinfonias and instrumental ritornelli illustrate the action, the audience's attention is always drawn primarily to the words. The singers are required to do more than produce pleasant vocal sounds; they must represent their characters in depth and convey appropriate emotions.


title: L'Orfeo

text: Monterverdi's recitative style was influenced by Peri's, in "Euridice", although in "L'Orfeo" recitative is less preponderant than was usual in dramatic music at this time. It accounts for less than a quarter of the first act's music, around a third of the second and third acts, and a little under half in the final two acts.


title: L'Orfeo

text: The importance of "L'Orfeo" is not that it was the first work of its kind, but that it was the first attempt to apply the full resources of the art of music, as then evolved, to the nascent genre of opera. In particular, Monteverdi made daring innovations in the use of polyphony, of which Palestrina had been the principal exponent. In "L'Orfeo", Monteverdi extends the rules, beyond the conventions which polyphonic composers, faithful to Palestrina, had previously considered as sacrosanct. Monteverdi was not in the generally understood sense an orchestrator; Ringer finds that it is the element of instrumental improvisation that makes each performance of a Monteverdi opera a "unique experience, and separates his work from the later operatic canon".


title: L'Orfeo

text: The opera begins with a martial-sounding toccata for trumpets which is repeated twice. When played on period wind instruments the sound can be startling to modern audiences; Redlich calls it "shattering". Such flourishes were the standard signal for the commencement of performances at the Mantuan court; the opening chorus of Monteverdi's 1610 Vespers, also composed for Gonzaga's court, employs the same fanfare. The toccata acted as a salute to the Duke; according to Donington, if it had not been written, precedent would have required it to be improvised. As the brass sound of the toccata fades, it is replaced by the gentler tone of the strings ritornello which introduces La musica's prologue. The ritornello is repeated in shortened form between each of the prologue's five verses, and in full after the final verse. Its function within the opera as a whole is to represent the "power of music"; as such it is heard at the end of act 2, and again at the beginning of act 5, one of the earliest examples of an operatic leitmotiv. It is temporally structured as a palindrome and its form of strophic variations allows Monteverdi to carefully shape musical time for expressive and structural purposes in the context of "seconda prattica".


title: L'Orfeo

text: After the prologue, act 1 follows in the form of a pastoral idyll. Two choruses, one solemn and one jovial are repeated in reverse order around the central love-song "Rosa del ciel" ("Rose of the heavens"), followed by the shepherds' songs of praise. The buoyant mood continues into act 2, with song and dance music influenced, according to Harnoncourt, by Monteverdi's experience of French music. The sudden entrance of La messaggera with the doleful news of Euridice's death, and the confusion and grief which follow, are musically reflected by harsh dissonances and the juxtaposition of keys. The music remains in this vein until the act ends with La musica's ritornello, a hint that the "power of music" may yet bring about a triumph over death. Monteverdi's instructions as the act concludes are that the violins, the organ and harpsichord become silent and that the music is taken up by the trombones, the cornetts and the regal, as the scene changes to the Underworld.


title: L'Orfeo

text: The centrepiece of act 3, perhaps of the entire opera, is Orfeo's extended aria "Possente spirto e formidabil nume" ("Mighty spirit and powerful divinity"), by which he attempts to persuade Caronte to allow him to enter Hades. Monteverdi's vocal embellishments and virtuoso accompaniment provide what Carter describes as "one of the most compelling visual and aural representations" in early opera. Instrumental colour is provided by a chitarrone, a pipe-organ, two violins, two cornetts and a double-harp. This array, according to music historian and analyst John Whenham, is intended to suggest that Orfeo is harnessing all the available forces of music to support his plea. In act 4 the impersonal coldness of the Underworld is broken by the warmth of Proserpina's singing on behalf of Orfeo, a warmth that is retained until the dramatic moment at which Orfeo "looks back". The cold sounds of the sinfonia from the beginning of act 3 then remind us that the Underworld is, after all, entirely devoid of human feeling. The brief final act, which sees Orfeo's rescue and metamorphosis, is framed by the final appearance of La musica's ritornello and the lively moresca that ends the opera. This dance, says Ringer, recalls the jigs danced at the end of Shakespeare's tragedies, and provides a means of bringing the audience back to their everyday world, "just as the toccata had led them into another realm some two hours before. The toccata and the moresca unite courtly reality with operatic illusion."


title: L'Orfeo

text: The first recording of "L'Orfeo" was issued in 1939, a freely adapted version of Monteverdi's music by Giacomo Benvenuti, given by the orchestra of La Scala Milan conducted by Ferrucio Calusio. In 1949, for the recording of the complete opera by the Berlin Radio Orchestra conducted by Helmut Koch, the new medium of long-playing records (LPs) was used. The advent of LP recordings was, as Harold C. Schonberg later wrote, an important factor in the postwar revival of interest in Renaissance and Baroque music, and from the mid-1950s recordings of "L'Orfeo" have been issued on many labels. The 1969 recording by Nikolaus Harnoncourt and the Vienna Concentus Musicus, using Harnoncourt's edition based on period instruments, was praised for "making Monteverdi's music sound something like the way he imagined". In 1981 Siegfried Heinrich, with the Early Music Studio of the Hesse Chamber Orchestra, recorded a version which re-created the original Striggio libretto ending, adding music from Monteverdi's 1616 ballet "Tirsi e Clori" for the Bacchante scenes. Among more recent recordings, that of Emmanuelle Haïm in 2004 has been praised for its dramatic effect.


title: L'Orfeo

text: After the publication of the "L'Orfeo" score in 1609, the same publisher (Ricciardo Amadino of Venice) brought it out again in 1615. Facsimiles of these editions were printed in 1927 and 1972 respectively. Since Eitner's first "modern" edition of "L'Orfeo" in 1884, and d'Indy's performing edition 20 years later—both of which were abridged and adapted versions of the 1609 score—there have been many attempts to edit and present the work, not all of them published. Most of the editions that followed d'Indy up to the time of the Second World War were arrangements, usually heavily truncated, that provided a basis for performances in the modern opera idiom. Many of these were the work of composers, including Carl Orff (1923 and 1939) and Ottorino Respighi in 1935. Orff's 1923 score, using a German text, included some period instrumentation, an experiment he abandoned when producing his later version.


title: L'Orfeo

text: In the post-war period, editions have moved increasingly to reflect the performance conventions of Monteverdi's day. This tendency was initiated by two earlier editions, that of Jack Westrup used in the 1925 Oxford performances, and Gian Francesco Malipiero's 1930 complete edition which sticks closely to Monteverdi's 1609 original. After the war, Hindemith's attempted period reconstruction of the work was followed in 1955 by an edition from August Wenzinger that remained in use for many years. The next 30 years saw numerous editions, mostly prepared by scholar-performers rather than by composers, generally aiming towards authenticity if not always the complete re-creation of the original instrumentation. These included versions by Raymond Leppard (1965), Denis Stevens (1967), Nikolaus Harnoncourt (1969), Jane Glover (1975), Roger Norrington (1976) and John Eliot Gardiner. Only the composers Valentino Bucchi (1967), Bruno Maderna (1967) and Luciano Berio (1984) produced editions based on the convention of a large modern orchestra. In the 21st century editions continue to be produced, often for use in conjunction with a particular performance or recording.


title: Cindy Robinson

text: Cindy Robinson is an American voice actress who voices in animations and video games. Some of her major roles are Makoto Nanaya and Gii from the "Blazblue" series, Betty Boop in commercials, Queen Beryl in "Sailor Moon", Chitose Nanbu in "Ah My Buddha", Kukaku Shiba, Miyako Shiba, Jinta Hanakari (kid) and Kiyone Kotetsu in "Bleach", Zola in the "Blue Dragon" series, Madeline Hatter in "Ever After High" Minerva and Hinoka in "Fire Emblem". She also makes an uncredited appearance as the voice of the Purge Emergency Broadcast System in "The Purge" franchise.


title: Situation Room

text: The Situation Room, officially known as the John F. Kennedy Conference Room, is a conference room and intelligence management center in the basement of the West Wing of the White House. It is run by the National Security Council staff for the use of the President of the United States and his advisors (including the National Security Advisor, the Homeland Security Advisor and the White House Chief of Staff) to monitor and deal with crises at home and abroad and to conduct secure communications with outside (often overseas) persons. The Situation Room is equipped with secure, advanced communications equipment for the president to maintain command and control of U.S. forces around the world.


title: Situation Room

text: The Situation Room was created in 1961 on the order of President John F. Kennedy after the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion was attributed to a lack of real-time information. The room has secure communications systems built into it, and the walls contain wood panels that hide different audio, video and other systems.


title: Situation Room

text: The Situation Room staff is organized around five watch teams that monitor domestic and international events. Each watch team includes three duty officers, a communications assistant, and an intelligence analyst, though the number and composition of the teams may vary, depending on shift requirements and workload. The teams are staffed from a pool of approximately 30 senior personnel from various agencies in the intelligence community and from the military. These members are handpicked from heavily vetted nominations made by their parent agencies and are strictly apolitical. They stand watch on a 24-hour basis, constantly monitoring world events and keeping senior White House staff apprised of significant incidents.


title: Situation Room

text: The mission of the Situation Room is to provide current intelligence and crisis support to the NSC staff, the National Security Advisor, and the President.


title: Situation Room

text: In effect, the Situation Room is a 24/7 meeting place for sensitive information flowing into and out of the White House. It is also the funnel through which most communications, especially classified information, will pass when the president is not in residence. It is an essential link, providing the traveling White House with access to all the information available from Washington's national security community.


title: Situation Room

text: The day begins with the watch team's preparation of the Morning Book. Prepared for the President, Vice-President, and most senior White House staff, the Morning Book contains a copy of the National Intelligence Daily, the State Department's Morning Summary, and diplomatic cables and intelligence reports. The Morning Book is usually in the car when the national security advisor is picked up for work. The morning routine also includes the President's Daily Brief, which is prepared by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, hand-delivered, and briefed by an intelligence community officer to the president and other NSC principals.


title: Situation Room

text: In addition, the Watch Teams produce morning and evening summaries of highly selective material. These summaries, targeted on current interagency issues, are transmitted electronically to the NSC staff.


title: Situation Room

text: The Situation Room staff also provides alerts on breaking events to NSC and White House personnel. Responsibility for informing the president belongs to the national security adviser. Later, a written "Sit Room Note" will be prepared, summarizing the event with up-to-the-minute reports from other centers, perhaps including a photo, diagram, or map. The task of the Situation Room staff is to ensure that the president and national security advisor are informed not only of the current situation but also how the situation is being portrayed by the media.


title: Situation Room

text: Another typical Situation Room activity is arranging the president's phone calls and other sensitive communications with foreign heads of state. This includes coordinating the timing of such calls at each end, providing interpreters where necessary, and ensuring appropriate security and record keeping. In this function, the Situation Room coordinates closely with the White House Communications Agency.


title: Situation Room

text: The only comprehensive renovation of the Situation Room took place from 2006 to 2007. Prior to the renovation, the room used cathode ray tubes for monitors and fax for communication and had computers and telephones with 1985-era technology. The room also had a small kitchen with no sink. Encrypted audio/visual equipment was also unreliable, and such equipment would sometimes go black, "prompting a presidential outburst". The Situation Room was once described as "uncomfortable, unaesthetic and essentially oppressive," while others termed the pre-renovation complex "something of a low-tech dungeon."


title: Situation Room

text: Planning for the renovation began before the September 11, 2001, attacks, although the project became more urgent afterward.


title: Situation Room

text: Renovations began in August 2006, when the Situation Room complex was gutted down to bricks and bare floor and rebuilt from the ground up. The complex was renovated over about four and a half months and was disruptive, particularly to White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten, whose office was directly above it. "The New York Times" reported that "Staff members described sitting in his room and hearing ear-piercing noise or watching water ripple in glasses on his desk as the floor shook." The renovation yielded several pieces from decades before, including coaxial cables, columns and a frame window from a Franklin D. Roosevelt–era sunken courtyard that was later built over.


title: Situation Room

text: The renovations also included an expansion of the Situation Room's use from only the National Security Council to include the Homeland Security Council and office of the White House chief of staff. Some of the mahogany was removed to reduce noise, and three secure video rooms were added in addition to the two already in place. A secure direct feed to Air Force One was added. Additionally, the room was revamped to make future technological upgrades easier—"so you don't have to carve a hole in an antique mahogany wall to improve it," according to Deputy White House Chief of Staff Joe Hagin.


title: Situation Room

text: Sensors were installed in the ceilings to detect cellular signals to prevent unauthorized communications and bugging by mobile phones, personal digital assistants, and other devices. Before the renovation, the Secret Service confiscated phones but had no other means of preventing smuggled communication devices. The new complex includes a lead-lined cabinet near the reception area for the deposit of personal communication devices upon entry. Close by are glass-encased booths (which the Associated Press described as "retro-looking") for secure and private telephone calls.


title: Situation Room

text: The seating of the room was also changed to add "two tiers of curved computer terminals that can be fed both classified and unclassified data from around the country and the world" for watch officers (who before the renovation were seated "so they stared at walls rather than each other"). The new Situation Room has six flat panel display televisions for secure videoconferencing.


title: Situation Room

text: The renovation was formally completed by mid-May 2007. On May 17, 2007, President George W. Bush and British prime minister Tony Blair participated in a video conference with members of their Iraq teams from the newly renovated Situation Room. The following day, President Bush officially opened the newly refurbished Situation Room in a ribbon-cutting ceremony.


title: Dark-eyed junco

text: The dark-eyed junco (Junco hyemalis) is a species of junco, a group of small, grayish New World sparrows. This bird is common across much of temperate North America and in summer ranges far into the Arctic. It is a very variable species, much like the related fox sparrow ("Passerella iliaca"), and its systematics are still not completely untangled.


title: Dark-eyed junco

text: The dark-eyed junco was formally described by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in his landmark 1758 10th edition of "Systema Naturae" as "Fringilla hyemalis". The description consisted merely of the laconic remark ""F[ringilla] nigra, ventre albo." ("A black 'finch' with white belly") and a statement that it came from America. Linnaeus based his description on the "Snow-Bird" that Mark Catesby had described and illustrated in his "The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands".


title: Dark-eyed junco

text: The Bill of this Bird is white: The Breast and Belly white. All the rest of the Body black; but in some places dusky, inclining to Lead-color. In "Virginia" and "Carolina" they appear only in Winter: and in Snow they appear most. In Summer none are seen. Whether they retire and breed in the North (which is most probable) or where they go, when they leave these Countries in Spring, is to me unknown. [italics in original]


title: Dark-eyed junco

text: The type locality was restricted to South Carolina by the American Ornithologists' Union in 1931. The dark-eyed junco is now placed in the genus "Junco" that was introduced in 1831 by the German naturalist Johann Georg Wagler. The genus name "Junco" is the Spanish word for rush, from the Latin word "juncus". Its modern scientific name means "winter junco", from the Latin word "" "of the winter".


title: Dark-eyed junco

text: Fifteen subspecies are recognised. They form two large or polytypic groups and three to four small or monotypic ones. The six basic groups were formerly considered separate species, but they interbreed extensively in areas of contact. Birders trying to identify subspecies are advised to consult detailed identification references.


title: Dark-eyed junco

text: These subspecies have dark slate-gray heads, breasts and upperparts. Females are brownish-gray, sometimes with reddish-brown flanks. They breed in North American taiga forests from Alaska to Newfoundland and south to the Appalachian Mountains, wintering throughout most of the United States. They are relatively common across their range.


title: Dark-eyed junco

text: The white-winged dark-eyed junco has a medium-gray head, breast, and upperparts with white wing bars. Females are washed brownish. It has more white in the tail than the other subspecies. It is a common endemic breeder in the Black Hills area of South Dakota, Wyoming, Nebraska, and Montana, and winters south to northeastern New Mexico.


title: Dark-eyed junco

text: These subspecies have blackish-gray heads and breasts with brown backs and wings and reddish flanks, tending toward duller and paler plumage in the inland and southern parts of its range. Oregon dark-eyed juncos are less commonly known as brown-backed dark-eyed juncos. This is the most common subspecies group in the west, breeding in the Pacific Coast Ranges from southeastern Alaska to extreme northern Baja California and wintering to the Great Plains and northern Sonora. An unresolved debate exists as to whether this large and distinct group is a full species with its own subspecies.


title: Dark-eyed junco

text: Often considered part of the Oregon/brown-backed group, this subspecies has a lighter gray head and breast than the Oregon/brown-backed dark-eyed juncos, with contrasting dark lores. The back and wings are brown. It has a pinkish-cinnamon color that is richer and covers more of the flanks and breast than in the Oregon/brown-backed dark-eyed juncos. It breeds in the northern Rocky Mountains from southern Alberta to eastern Idaho and western Wyoming and winters in central Idaho and nearby Montana and from southwestern South Dakota, southern Wyoming, and northern Utah to northern Sonora and Chihuahua.


title: Dark-eyed junco

text: This subspecies is essentially rather light gray on top with a rusty back. It breeds in the southern Rocky Mountains from Colorado to central Arizona and New Mexico, and winters into northern Mexico.


title: Dark-eyed junco

text: Often included with "J. h. caniceps" as part of the "gray-headed group", this subspecies differs from the gray-headed junco proper in having a more silvery bill with a dark-colored upper and light-colored lower mandible, a variable amount of rust on the wings, and pale underparts. This makes it similar to the yellow-eyed junco ("Junco phaeonotus"), except for the dark eyes. It is found in the southern mountains of Arizona and New Mexico. It does not overlap with the yellow-eyed junco in its breeding range.


title: Dark-eyed junco

text: The extremely rare Guadalupe junco ("Junco insularis") was formerly considered to be part of this species but is now treated as a species in its own right – perhaps a rather young one, but certainly this population has evolved more rapidly than the various mainland subspecies due to its small population size and the founder effect.


title: Dark-eyed junco

text: Adults generally have gray heads, necks, and breasts, gray or brown backs and wings, and a white belly, but show a confusing amount of variation in plumage details. The white outer tail feathers flash distinctively in flight and while hopping on the ground. The bill is usually pale pinkish.


title: Dark-eyed junco

text: Males tend to have darker, more conspicuous markings than the females. The dark-eyed junco is long and has a wingspan of . Body mass can vary from . Among standard measurements, the wing chord is , the tail is , the bill is and the tarsus is . Juveniles often have pale streaks and may even be mistaken for vesper sparrows ("Pooecetes gramineus") until they acquire adult plumage at 2 to 3 months, but junco fledglings' heads are generally quite uniform in color already, and initially their bills still have conspicuous yellowish edges to the gape, remains of the fleshy wattles that guide the parents when they feed the nestlings.


title: Dark-eyed junco

text: The song is a trill similar to the chipping sparrow's ("Spizella passerina"), except that the red-backed dark-eyed junco's (see below) song is more complex, similar to that of the yellow-eyed junco ("Junco phaeonotus"). The call also resembles that of the black-throated blue warbler's ("Setophaga caerulescens") which is a member of the New World warbler family. Calls include "tick" sounds and very high-pitched tinkling "chip"s. It is known among bird language practitioners as an excellent bird to study for learning "bird language."


title: Dark-eyed junco

text: A sample of the song can be heard at the USGS website (MP3) or at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology website.


title: Dark-eyed junco

text: The dark-eyed junco's breeding habitat is coniferous or mixed forest areas throughout North America. In otherwise optimal conditions it also utilizes other habitats, but at the southern margin of its range it can only persist in its favorite habitat. Northern birds migrate further south, arriving in their winter quarters between mid-September and November and leaving to breed from mid-March onwards, with almost all of them gone by the end of April or so. Many populations are permanent residents or altitudinal migrants, while in cold years they may choose to stay in their winter range and breed there. For example, in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of eastern California, "J. hymealis" populations will migrate to winter ranges lower than their summer range. Seasonally sympatric females show difference in migration and reproductive timing that is dependent on hormone and ovary regulation. The migrant female "J. hyemails" experiences delayed growth in the gonad to allow time for their seasonal migration. The "J. hyemails" migrates down in the north-eastern United States where the resident dark-eyed junco is "J. carolinesis". The "J.carolinesis" have large ovaries and, therefore, doesn't experience gonadal growth delays because it is residential to the area. In winter, juncos are familiar in and around towns, and in many places are the most common birds at feeders. The slate-colored dark-eyed junco is a rare vagrant to western Europe and may successfully winter in Great Britain, usually in domestic gardens.


title: Dark-eyed junco

text: These birds forage on the ground. In winter, they often forage in flocks that may contain several subspecies. They mainly eat seeds supplemented by the occasional insect. A flock has been known to be called a blizzard.


title: Dark-eyed junco

text: They usually nest in a cup-shaped depression on the ground, well hidden by vegetation or other material, although nests are sometimes found in the lower branches of a shrub or tree. The nests have an outer diameter of about and are lined with fine grasses and hair. Normally two clutches of four eggs are laid during the breeding season. The slightly glossy eggs are grayish or pale bluish-white and heavily spotted (sometimes splotched) with various shades of brown, purple or gray. The spotting is concentrated at the large end of the egg. The eggs are incubated by the female for 12 to 13 days. The young leave the nest between 11 and 14 days after hatching.


title: Hazing in Greek letter organizations

text: Hazing in Greek letter organizations is defined as any act or set of acts that constitutes hazing and occurs in connection to a fraternity or sorority.


title: Hazing in Greek letter organizations

text: Hazing is often cited as one of the most harmful aspects of fraternities and sororities and poses a major threat to their existence, drawing great criticism from educators and administrators. As fraternities and sororities are very diverse in their structures, regulations, governing entities, and memberships, and as hazing can take on many forms, the issue of hazing within these organizations is complex and multifaceted.


title: Hazing in Greek letter organizations

text: While most educational institutions include hazing in their disciplinary procedures, definitions of hazing can vary substantially.


title: Hazing in Greek letter organizations

text: Any action taken or situation created, intentionally, whether on or off fraternity premises, to produce mental or physical discomfort, embarrassment, harassment, or ridicule. Such activities may include but are not limited to the following: use of alcohol, paddling in any form, creation of excessive fatigue, physical and psychological shocks, quests, treasure hunts, scavenger hunts, road trips or any other such activities carried on outside or inside of the confines of the chapter house; wearing of public apparel which is conspicuous and not normally in good taste, engaging in public stunts and buffoonery, morally degrading or humiliating games and activities, and other activities which are not consistent with academic achievement, fraternal law, ritual or policy or the regulations and policies of the educational institution or applicable state law.


title: Hazing in Greek letter organizations

text: Hazing is a crime in 44 states. For example, the Arizona Revised Statutes provides the following definition:


title: Hazing in Greek letter organizations

text: "Hazing" means any intentional, knowing or reckless act committed by a student, whether individually or in concert with other persons, against another student, and in which both of the following apply:


title: Hazing in Greek letter organizations

text: (a) The act was committed in connection with an initiation into, an affiliation with or the maintenance of membership in any organization that is affiliated with an educational institution.


title: Hazing in Greek letter organizations

text: (b) The act contributes to a substantial risk of potential physical injury, mental harm or degradation or causes physical injury, mental harm or personal degradation.


title: Hazing in Greek letter organizations

text: Generally, institutions of higher education will have their own definitions of hazing, though they may closely mirror definitions found in their respective state statutes. For example, the University of Arizona provides the following definition of hazing in its "University of Arizona Hazing Policy", revised October 25, 2001:


title: Hazing in Greek letter organizations

text: (a) The act was committed in connection with an initiation into, an affiliation with or the maintenance of membership in any organization that is affiliated with the University.


title: Hazing in Greek letter organizations

text: Note that the University of Arizona’s definition of hazing is virtually identical to the definition outlined in the Arizona Revised Statutes.


title: Hazing in Greek letter organizations

text: The current North American Interfraternity Conference (NIC) definition of hazing also includes anything that could turn into hazing. This is the reason that many potentially innocent activities, such as a scavenger hunt, are included under hazing; they could start out as perfectly legal events, but could easily be modified to include some activity that could make it hazing (ex. stealing some of the items on the list or adding heavy drinking before or during). Requiring candidates, or even members as there is "brother on brother hazing", to attend events or be at a certain place at a certain time is also hazing. Many also consider the use of the term 'pledge' to be hazing. Things like physical activity will be condoned if there are fraters that are in the US Army or other armed forces present, whereas if those members weren't there it would be considered hazing.(Godwin, 2012)


title: Hazing in Greek letter organizations

text: Due to the nature of hazing, the secretive nature of Greek letter organizations, and the fear of negative repercussions, hazing is largely underreported. Most, if not all, hazing activities take place either during pledge (or “interest”) activities or rituals, which are almost always secretive. Additionally, since many Greek letter organizations, such as those governed by the National Pan-Hellenic Council (NPHC) and the National Association of Latino Fraternal Organizations (NALFO), prohibit their pledges (also known as “interests” or “new members”) from revealing their association with their organization until they have been initiated, it becomes increasingly difficult for institutions to reach out to members in anti-hazing efforts. It also becomes virtually impossible for these pledges or interests to reach out for help, especially if they wish to remain members, pledges, or interests of their organizations. However, Cheryl Drout and Christie Corsoro of State University of New York at Fredonia state, "Hazing, which is officially banned by all national Greek organizations, frequently comes to the public’s attention through the popular news media when the activities become fatal” (Drout & Corsoro, 2003). Unfortunately for multitudes of members of Greek organizations, “Sororities and fraternities have come to be synonymous with elitism, sexual assault, high-risk hazing (initiation ceremonies) and other bad behavior on American university campuses” (Marcus, 2007).


title: Hazing in Greek letter organizations

text: Fraternities and sororities are commonly associated with paddling of members, especially new members or pledges, as part of their hazing rituals.


title: Hazing in Greek letter organizations

text: Many educational institutions have developed anti-hazing programs, which encourage alternatives to hazing through the planning of purposeful activities, inform students of how to take action and avoid being a bystander, and provide clear consequences for those students and/or organizations who violate hazing policies . Additionally, hazing has become a central focus of programs designed to help Greek letter organizations become more value congruent through institutionalized standards and expectations .


title: Hazing in Greek letter organizations

text: Attempts at preventing hazing have also targeted Greek letter organizations at the national level. note the important role of culture change within the North American fraternity and sorority movement and even encourage the closure of chapters that consistently partake in illegal and risky activities and pose threats to their local and university communities. propose the creation of a recognized pledge program in which national fraternity and sorority leaders participate, under the recognized supervision of university officials, as well as the yearly evaluation of fraternities and sororities to determine their eligibility for continued recognition and sponsorship. Again, such a proposal is difficult since many NPHC and NALFO organizations, not to mention other organizations not governed by these umbrella organizations, keep their pledge, interest, or new member programs completely secretive.


title: Hazing in Greek letter organizations

text: Greek letter organizations have themselves taken measures to prevent hazing within their member chapters. As such, individual national organizations have taken various measures to ensure the safety of members with regard to hazing. The National Panhellenic Conference, which governs 26 national and international women’s sororities, includes sanctions against both individuals and groups ranging from member/chapter probation to expulsion of offending members or revocation of the chapter’s charter. The organization also runs an anti-hazing hotline for anonymous incident reporting.


title: Hazing in Greek letter organizations

text: Similarly, the North American Interfraternity Conference released a resolution condemning the practice. In 2010, NIC CEO and President Peter Smithhisler derided the use of hazing as a means of building comradery:


title: Hazing in Greek letter organizations

text: “The intention of the hazer is to create unity, to create trust, to establish a person’s commitment to the organization,” he said. “But in reality, what he is doing is creating a bond among the hazees while eliminating the trust between hazer and hazee, ultimately breaking down the bond of brotherhood.”


title: Hazing in Greek letter organizations

text: Additionally, there are individual national Greek Letter Organizations taking the initiative against activities related to hazing. For example, in 2012 Phi Beta Sigma fraternity adopted an anti-hazing campaign to eradicate hazing practices in its individual chapters, providing numerous support resources to effectively combat the practice.


title: Hazing in Greek letter organizations

text: In an article by Hank Nuwer, a professor of journalism and an author of books on hazing, he compared the hazing rituals of fraternities to cults. Nuwer talks about the aspects of hazing that make the pledge keep coming back to the fraternity and the ramifications of dropping out. Nuwer consulted with a professor in psychology, Margaret Thaler Singer, to get a better understanding of the characteristics of cults to relate those behaviors with fraternity hazing. Nuwer believes that hazing, along with a cult, is a “’systematic’ manipulation and coercion to effect ‘psychological and social influence’” (Nuwer, B7). The first aspect Nuwer wrote about was “’enforced dependency’” (Nuwer, B7). He talked about how the hazing process where fraternities make their pledges stay at the house the whole time, keeping them sleep deprived and cutting them off from daily activities makes them dependent on their fraternity. Even though the "pledges" may fall behind in school or lose friends outside of their fraternity, the fraternity convinces the pledge that after the hazing ceases, it will all be worth it. This reassurance keeps the pledges coming back, reliant on the people who are hazing them; relating to the next aspect of "family" (Nuwer, B7). Fraternities continually tell their pledges they are joining a family. This aspect appeals to most college freshman that are having a hard time making friends in a different environment. Last, Nuwer discussed how fraternities "make it hard for their members to leave" (Nuwer, B7). He says that those who decide not to join after being hazed have already given up so much for the fraternity that they feel alone and may even experience post-traumatic stress. Nuwer gives solutions to hazing in fraternities including stronger consequences for those involved in the hazing and that colleges should become more intertwined with the Greek letter community to learn about hazing and to stop it.


title: Hazing in Greek letter organizations

text: In "On Fraternities & Manliness", an article on the motivations for hazing, Emily Smith states that such actions come from a desire to prove a state of "manliness." Hazing practices in fraternity life began to appear shortly after the Civil War. Veterans brought the hazing practices of their battalions back with them, adopting such activities into fraternity life. The purpose of hazing was perceived as a way of providing young males an outlet to prove their manliness through rites and trials, showing themselves to be men and not boys. Other hazing practices served to put an individual in his place, reducing his sense of personal omnipotence to "subsume his individuality into something larger and better than himself" (Smith, 2015).


title: Hazing in Greek letter organizations

text: The 1977 film "Fraternity Row", set in the 1950s, deals with the subject of hazing at a college fraternity, depicting a number of such practices and culminating with Gregory Harrison as a victim of a hazing ritual that inadvertently takes a fatal turn.


title: Hazing in Greek letter organizations

text: The 2016 film "Goat" is based on the book "Goat: A Memoir" by Brad Land, described as a "searing memoir of fraternity culture and the perils of hazing provides an unprecedented window into the emotional landscape of young men."


title: Hazing in Greek letter organizations

text: The 2017 film "Burning Sands" is a story about five students pledging a historically black fraternity at a historically black college.


title: Amniotic sac

text: The amniotic sac, also called the bag of waters or the membranes, is the sac in which the embryo and later fetus develops in amniotes. It is a thin but tough transparent pair of membranes that hold a developing embryo (and later fetus) until shortly before birth. The inner of these membranes, the amnion, encloses the amniotic cavity, containing the amniotic fluid and the embryo. The outer membrane, the chorion, contains the amnion and is part of the placenta. On the outer side, the amniotic sac is connected to the yolk sac, the allantois, and via the umbilical cord, the placenta.