Columbia Encyclopedia

Search results

147 results found

Royal Opera

(Encyclopedia)Royal Opera, one of the principal British opera companies, based at the Royal Opera House (which it shares with the Royal Ballet) in Covent Garden, London. Formed in 1946 as the Covent Garden Opera Co...

Cadogan, William Cadogan, 1st Earl

(Encyclopedia)Cadogan, William Cadogan, 1st Earl kədŭˈgən [key], 1675–1726, British general and diplomat. He is remembered chiefly as the faithful friend and brilliant subordinate of the 1st duke of Marlborou...

melodrama

(Encyclopedia)melodrama [Gr.,=song-drama], originally a spoken text with musical background, as in Greek drama. The form was popular in the 18th cent., when its composers included Georg Benda, J. J. Rousseau, and W...

Creeley, Robert

(Encyclopedia)Creeley, Robert, 1926–2005, American poet, b. Arlington, Mass. He lived in Asia, Europe, and Latin America and taught at various universities in the United States. With Charles Olson, he was a leadi...

Chicago Symphony Orchestra

(Encyclopedia)Chicago Symphony Orchestra, founded in 1891 when businessman Charles Norman Fay invited the German-born conductor Theodore Thomas to establish and lead a new city orchestra; he conducted it until his ...

Plummer, Christopher

(Encyclopedia) Plummer, Christopher (Arthur Christopher Orme), 1929-2021, Canadian-American actor, b. Toronto, Canada. Raised by his mother, Plummer first aspire...

neoexpressionism

(Encyclopedia)neoexpressionism, term given to an international art movement, mainly in painting, that began in the 1960s and 1970s, was a dominant mode in the 1980s, and has continued04/98 into the 1990s. A reactio...

Bering, Vitus Jonassen

(Encyclopedia)Bering, Vitus Jonassen vēˈto͝os yōˈnäsən bārˈĭng [key], 1681–1741, Danish explorer in Russian employ. In 1725 he was selected by Peter I to explore far NE Siberia. Having finally moved men...

hafnium

(Encyclopedia)hafnium hăfˈnēəm [key], metallic chemical element; symbol Hf; at. no. 72; at. wt. 178.49; m.p. about 2,227℃; b.p. 4,602℃; sp. gr. 13.31 at 20℃; valence +4. Hafnium is a lustrous, ductile, si...

Sebald, W. G.

(Encyclopedia)Sebald, W. G. (Winfried Georg Maximilian Sebald), 1944–2001, German novelist, grad. Freiburg Univ. (1965). Sebald's novels are dense, elegiac, and meditative. They mingle fiction with history and th...