Portal:The arts

Romance is the eighth studio album by Mexican singer Luis Miguel. It was released by WEA Latina on 19 November 1991. Although the production was originally intended as another collaboration with Juan Carlos Calderón, that plan was scrapped when Calderón was unable to compose songs for the album. Facing a new-material deadline in his recording contract, at his manager's suggestion Miguel chose bolero music for his next project. Mexican singer-songwriter Armando Manzanero was hired by WEA Latina to co-produce the album with Miguel. Recording began in August 1991 at Ocean Way Recording in Hollywood, California, with Bebu Silvetti the arranger. (Full article...)

Norton Priory is a historic site in Norton, Runcorn, Cheshire, England, comprising the remains of an abbey complex dating from the 12th to 16th centuries, and an 18th-century country house; it is now a museum. The remains are a scheduled ancient monument and are recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade I listed building. They are considered to be the most important monastic remains in Cheshire. (Full article...)

The first season of Parks and Recreation originally aired in the United States on the NBC television network between April 9 and May 14, 2009. Produced by Deedle-Dee Productions and Universal Media Studios, the series was created by Greg Daniels and Michael Schur, who served as executive producers with Howard Klein. The season stars Amy Poehler, Rashida Jones, Paul Schneider, Aziz Ansari, Nick Offerman, and Aubrey Plaza. (Full article...)

The first season of Supernatural, an American dark fantasy television series created by Eric Kripke, premiered on September 13, 2005, and concluded on May 4, 2006, after 22 episodes. It focuses on brothers Sam and Dean Winchester as they track down their father, John, who is on the trail of the demon who killed their mother and Sam's girlfriend. During their travels, they use their father's journal to help them carry on the family business—saving people and hunting supernatural creatures. Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles star as Sam and Dean, with Jeffrey Dean Morgan recurring as their father, John, and Nicki Aycox as the demonic Meg Masters. This is the only season to air on The WB, with all subsequent seasons airing on The CW, a joint venture of The WB and UPN. (Full article...)

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a four-act play written by Thomas Russell Sullivan in collaboration with the actor Richard Mansfield. It is an adaptation of Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, an 1886 novella by the Scottish author Robert Louis Stevenson. The story focuses on the respected London doctor Henry Jekyll and his involvement with Edward Hyde, a loathsome criminal. After Hyde murders the father of Jekyll's fiancée, Jekyll's friends discover that Jekyll and Hyde are the same person; Jekyll has developed a potion that allows him to transform himself into Hyde and back again. When he runs out of the potion, he is trapped as Hyde and commits suicide before he can be arrested. (Full article...)

A Contract with God and Other Tenement Stories is a graphic novel by American cartoonist Will Eisner published in 1978. The book's short story cycle revolves around poor Jewish characters who live in a tenement in New York City. Eisner produced two sequels set in the same tenement: A Life Force in 1988, and Dropsie Avenue in 1995. Though the term "graphic novel" did not originate with Eisner, the book is credited with popularizing its use. (Full article...)

Josette Patricia Simon, OBE (born 1959 or 1960) is a British actor who played the part of Dayna Mellanby in the third and fourth series of the television sci-fi series Blake's 7 from 1980 to 1981. She trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London and performed as a 14-year-old in the choir for the world premiere of the finalised Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. She has continued a career in stage productions, appearing in 50 Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) productions, from the single press night performance as a featured character in Salvation Now at the Warehouse theatre in 1982, through to playing Cleopatra in a six-month run of Antony and Cleopatra at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in 2017. The first black woman in an RSC play when she appeared in Salvation Now, Simon has been at the forefront of colour-blind casting, playing roles traditionally taken by white actors, including Maggie, a character who is thought to be based on Marilyn Monroe, in Arthur Miller's After the Fall at the Royal National Theatre in 1990. (Full article...)

Tragic Kingdom is the third studio album by American rock band No Doubt, released on October 10, 1995, by Trauma Records and Interscope Records. It was the final album to feature original keyboardist Eric Stefani, who left the band in 1994. The album was produced by Matthew Wilder and recorded in 11 studios in the Greater Los Angeles area between March 1993 and October 1995. Between 1995 and 1998, the album spawned seven singles, including "Just a Girl", which charted on the Billboard Hot 100 and the UK Singles Chart, and "Don't Speak", which topped the Billboard Hot 100 Airplay and reached the top five of many international charts. (Full article...)

Southend-on-Sea War Memorial, or Southend War Memorial, is a First World War memorial in Southend-on-Sea, Essex, in south-eastern England. It was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and unveiled in 1921. Southend-on-Sea is a seaside resort famous for its pleasure pier, which was used by the military during the First World War. The town was a stopping point for soldiers en route to the front and, as the war drew on, it also became an important disembarkation point for the evacuation of injured troops. This saw the conversion of several buildings in Southend into hospitals. (Full article...)

Spalding War Memorial is a First World War memorial in the gardens of Ayscoughfee Hall (pronounced /ˈæskəˌfiː/) in Spalding, Lincolnshire, in eastern England. It was designed by the architect Sir Edwin Lutyens. The proposal for a memorial to Spalding's war dead originated in January 1918 with Barbara McLaren, whose husband and the town's Member of Parliament, Francis McLaren, was killed in a flying accident during the war. She engaged Lutyens via a family connection and the architect produced a plan for a grand memorial cloister surrounding a circular pond, in the middle of which would be a cross. The memorial was to be built in the formal gardens of Ayscoughfee Hall, which was owned by the local district council. When McLaren approached the council with her proposal, it generated considerable debate within the community and several alternative schemes were suggested. After a public meeting and a vote in 1919, a reduced-scale version of McLaren's proposal emerged as the preferred option, in conjunction with a clock on the town's corn exchange building. (Full article...)

The Palazzo Pitti (Italian: [paˈlattso ˈpitti]), in English sometimes called the Pitti Palace, is a vast, mainly Renaissance, palace in Florence, Italy. It is situated on the south side of the River Arno, a short distance from the Ponte Vecchio. The core of the present palazzo dates from 1458 and was originally the town residence of Luca Pitti, an ambitious Florentine banker. (Full article...)

Halo 3 Original Soundtrack is the official soundtrack to Bungie's first-person shooter video game Halo 3. Most of the original music was composed by Martin O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori, but also includes a bonus track, "LvUrFR3NZ", which was the winning entry in a contest held before the soundtrack's release. The 2-CD set was released on November 20, 2007. (Full article...)

André Charles Prosper Messager (French: [mɛsaʒe]; 30 December 1853 – 24 February 1929) was a French composer, organist, pianist and conductor. His compositions include eight ballets and thirty opéras comiques, opérettes and other stage works, among which his ballet Les Deux Pigeons (1886) and opéra comique Véronique (1898) have had lasting success; Les p'tites Michu (1897) and Monsieur Beaucaire (1919) were also popular internationally. (Full article...)

Eliza Acton (17 April 1799 – 13 February 1859) was an English food writer and poet who produced one of Britain's first cookery books aimed at the domestic reader, Modern Cookery for Private Families. The book introduced the now-universal practice of listing ingredients and giving suggested cooking times for each recipe. It included the first recipes in English for Brussels sprouts and for spaghetti. It also contains the first recipe for what Acton called "Christmas pudding"; the dish was normally called plum pudding, recipes for which had appeared previously, although Acton was the first to put the name and recipe together. (Full article...)

El Señor Presidente (Mister President ) is a 1946 novel written in Spanish by Nobel Prize-winning Guatemalan writer and diplomat Miguel Ángel Asturias (1899–1974). A landmark text in Latin American literature, El Señor Presidente explores the nature of political dictatorship and its effects on society. Asturias makes early use of a literary technique now known as magic realism. One of the most notable works of the dictator novel genre, El Señor Presidente developed from an earlier Asturias short story, written to protest social injustice in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake in the author's home town. (Full article...)