Word of The Day

Logy: Marked by sluggishness and lack of vitality, groggy.

Sentence:

I felt logy and sleepy after working so hard.

Dramatic Rescue For Indian Tiger

The tiger leapt powerfully to freedom.

Forest guards in India have carried out the dramatic rescue of a pregnant tigress who had hidden in a palm tree after being chased away by villagers.

They tranquilised and then caught the Royal Bengal tigress that had strayed into a village near the Sundarbans Tiger Reserve in eastern India.

The animal was released back into the wild after receiving treatment for minor injuries, officials say.

Tigers have been slowly disappearing from India, mostly because of poaching.

Kanti Ganguly, the Sundarbans affairs minister of the Indian state of West Bengal, told the Associated Press news agency that it took officials nearly 14 hours to tranquilise and catch the tiger on Monday.

He said the animal suffered only minor injuries from stones and burning sticks thrown at her by the frightened villagers in Deulbari, about 250km (150 miles) south of the state capital, Calcutta.

The tiger quickly made for the safety of the forest

Guards nursed her wounds and then took her in a boat to be released deep inside a mangrove reserve on Tuesday.

Officials say that she was only freed after it was felt that she was fit enough to be released into the reserve.

The Sundarbans is a UN designated world heritage site.

It covers nearly 10,000 square kilometres (3,860 square miles) of marshlands and mangrove forests along the coast of the Bay of Bengal, straddling India and Bangladesh.

Correspondents say it is one of the few remaining natural tiger habitats in India.

Tigers have been slowly disappearing from the country because of poaching, a shortage of space, human encroachment on their territory and a lack of properly trained forestry guards.

Incidents of Royal Bengal tigers being attacked by villagers in the Sundarbans are also becoming increasingly commonplace.

The government says India's tiger population has dropped from nearly 3,600 five years ago to about 1,411 today.

Today in History; Joan of Arc's trial begins

1431: During the Hundred Years' War, Joan led the French against the English, claiming to hear the voices of St. Michael, St. Catherine and St. Margaret telling her to free France. She was later accused of heresy and tried for communicating with demons and disobedience to the Church. Trying to save her life, she recanted, but retracted her "confession" two days later. She was burned at Rouen, and, since heretics could not receive a Christian burial, her remains were cast into the Seine River.

Word of The Day

Relegate: To assign to an inferior position, place, or condition. To assign to an appropriate category or class. To assign or refer (a matter or task, for example) to another for appropriate action. To send into exile; to banish.

Franz Liszt

'/\/Introduction\/\'

Franz Liszt (Hungarian; Liszt Ferenc) (October 22, 1811 – July 31, 1886) was a Hungarian composer and virtuoso pianist of the 19th century. He was a renowned performer throughout Europe, noted especially for his showmanship and great skill with the piano. Until today, he is by some considered to have been the greatest pianist in history. As a composer, Liszt was one of the most prominent representatives of the "Neudeutsche Schule"" ("New German School"). He left behind a huge oeuvre, including works from nearly all musical genres.

Franz Liszt (1811-1886)

^<|([}{*~Biography~*}{])|>^

As pianist, composer and personality, Franz Liszt (b.1811) strides across the whole of the nineteenth century and is seminal in his influence on the twentieth. Although Liszt was born along with the first generation of romantic composers (Berlioz, Chopin, Schumann and Mendelssohn), he outlived them all

to become a friend of Wagner and proponent of the "music of the future."

Franz Liszt was born in Hungary to a father who worked for the Esterhazy family, and who soon recognized his son's prodigious gifts. After studies with Czerny and Salieri in Vienna in 1821, Liszt quickly made a name as a piano virtuoso, performing in London and Paris. By fourteen, he had written Don Sanche, an operetta that was produced in Paris. Here he lived from 1823 to 1835, becoming friends with leading literary figures and painters as well as with Berlioz and Chopin. These two composers along with Paganini, who he heard with amazement in 1831, were the primary influences in forming Lizst's complex aesthetic character.

Berlioz inspired thinking in the largest, grandest, and most colorful terms. This was musical thought that was often inspired by literature and that contained programmatic implications. In fact one can think of Berlioz as the beginning of that stream of Romanticism that goes through Liszt to Wagner and beyond into the music of Mahler and Richard Strauss. Liszt was at the center of what became the definitive split between this path and the more conservative and ultimately less influential romantic tradition embodied in the music of Mendelssohn, Schumann and Brahms.

It was Paganini's violin playing that inspired Liszt to the greatest heights of virtuosity and showmanship. Liszt stated clearly that he wanted to do for the piano what Paganini had done for the violin, and Liszt went so far as to transcribe a number of the solo violin caprices into highly effective and virtuosic piano music- the Paganini Etudes. The greatest pianists of the time, including Chopin and Mendelssohn, while repelled by some of the vulgar showmanship of Liszt's playing, were none the less awed by probably the greatest technical pianist the world has known. Clara Schumann stated that "Liszt played at sight what we toil over and at the end get nowhere with."

Both Paganini and Liszt combined the highest caliber of virtuosity and musicianship with a conscious and charismatic talent for holding their largely middle class audiences enthrall. In terms of their social impact, they are the prototypes for the performing artist who is most approximated by the rock stars of our time. Liszt's concerts were famous for the fainting and swooning of women in the audience, and while Liszt may have played Beethoven in his studio, his public concerts at this period were not short on display music, mainly composed by himself. In fact, it was Liszt in his egomania who invented the modern solo recital, at first calling them "soliloquies."

From Chopin however, Liszt developed his sense of the piano's potential for intimate poetic expression, meaningful rather than bombastic ornamentation, and the piano's possibilities for the most subtle colorings and shadings. From Chopin's Barcarolle, Op.60 through Liszt's Le Jeaux d'eau a la Villa de Este, we are clearly on the way to the impressionism of Debussy and Ravel. And thus we have in one man, a range of qualities-from poet and visionary to showman and even charlatan - that explains why we are still sorting out the stature of Liszt, the composer.

Liszt developed more slowly as a composer than as a performer. Until 1834, much of his activity was transcribing the works of others into repertoire for his concerts. 1835 to 1839 is the period of the Transcendental Etudes (including No.3, Paysage; No.7, Eroica, and No.10, Allegro agitato molto-Etude in f) and the three books of the Annees de Pelerinages, which contain many important piano works, such as Vallee d'Obermann and the Tre Sonetti di Petrarca. After this came many of the Hungarian Rhapsodies (such us such as No.2; No.8; and No.12), operatic paraphrases (including the Waltz from Gounod's "Faust"; Verdi's "Rigoletto", and the Overture to "Tannheuser" by Wagner), and songs (such as Das Wandern; from Schubert's song cycle, "Die shöne Müllerin" and Der Lindenbaum from his "Wintereisse").

In 1847, Liszt gave up his full time performing career. Since 1834, he had been having a somewhat scandalous affair with the Countess d'Agoult. In 1842 they made Geneva their home and had three children. Cosima, the only one who survived childhood, was born in 1837, later married Hans von Bulow, Liszt's first great pupil, and later left him for Wagner. (Like her father in more ways than one, she lived a long life, dying in 1930.)

The affair with the countess came to an end in 1844. On Lizst's final tour, he played in Kiev where he met Princess Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein. Although she couldn't get the divorce she wanted, the Princess created another scandal by joining Liszt in Weimar in 1849 where he had been appointed Grand Ducal Director of Music Extraordinaire. Freed of the demands of touring, Liszt made Weimar the center of the progressive musical movement. Pianists came from all over Europe to study with him and it was here that Liszt began conducting the works of Berlioz, Wagner and others. The freedom of his piano style was translated to a conducting style that also proved to be influential to the future.

Liszt stayed in Weimar until 1859. These important years produced the Dante ( 1.Inferno; 2.Purgatorio and Magnificat) and Faust (3.Mephistopheles) symphonies, as well as the twelve Symphonic Poems (including No.1, Ce qu'on entend sur la montagne; No.6, Mazeppa; No.9, Hungaria, and No.10, Hamlet), a genre he invented. Perhaps Liszt's greatest piano piece, the Sonata in B , is also from this time (1854). This huge one movement sonata is dominated by a single theme that is ingeniously transformed into strongly contrasting characters and a diabolical fugue toward the end of the piece that some see as a brilliant programmatic telling of Goethe's Faust.

In 1860, Liszt moved to Rome to live a the Villa d'Este and took minor orders becoming Abbe Liszt in 1865. Liszt had long had religious tendencies both sincere and ostentatious. Now dividing his time between Rome, Weimar and Budapest, Liszt also still had affairs that were the talk of Europe. His late style further explored the outer reaches of chromatic harmony (the famous "Tristan" of Wagner had been anticipated by Liszt in a song of 1845) and works such as Nuage Gris and Czardas Macabre clearly anticipate Debussy and even Bartok. Liszt died in 1886 in Bayreuth after making a final jubilee tour that revisited Paris and London.

Franz Liszt, genius, showman, vain but generous, worldly but religious, friend and influence on many of the greatest musicians of the period, remains a complex figure for us. While some of his more flamboyant music may be taken less seriously, great pianists have shown that some of the seeming bravura elements have a spiritual element when properly understood and assimilated. Bela Bartok, a composer who would seem to represent the antithesis of some of Liszt's more questionable qualities, said in an essay: "The essence of these works we must find in the new ideas, to which Liszt was the first to give expression, and in the bold pointing toward the future. These things raise Liszt as a composer to the ranks of the great."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

+_-":Facts:"-_+

Born: October 22, 1811 in Raiding, Kingdom of Hungary.

Genres: Romantic

Occupation: Composer, Pianist, Conductor, Pedagogue.

Instrument(s): Piano

Liszt was:

The teacher of Hans von Bülow,

The friend of Erkel, Ferenc

The lover of Hagn, Charlotte von

Connected sentimentally with Kemble, Adelaide

Painted by Franz von Lenbach,

Knew by Anton Romako, and

An Admirer of Richard Wagner

.:.+Works+.:.

OPERA: Don Sanche (1824-5, collab. Paer).

SYMPHONIES: A Faust Symphony, for ten., male ch., orch. (1854-7, rev. 1880); Dante Symphony (1855-6, with choral Magnificat as last movt.).

SYMPHONIC-POEMS: Ce qu'on entend sur la montagne (‘Bergsymphonie’) (What one hears on the mountain) (1848-9, orch. Raff, rev. 1850, 1854); Tasso: lamento e trionfo (1849, orch. Conradi, rev. 1850-1, orch. Raff, rev. 1854); Les Préludes (1848, rev. before 1854); Orpheus (1853-4); Prometheus (1850, orch. Raff, rev. 1855); Mazeppa (1851, orch. with Raff, rev. before 1854; based on 1840 pf. study); Festklänge (1853); Héroïde funèbre (1849-50, orch. Raff, rev. c.1854); Hungaria (1854); Hamlet (1858); Hunnenschlacht (1856-7); Die Ideale (1857); Von der Wiege bis zum Grabe (From the Cradle to the Grave) (1881-2).

MISC. ORCH.: 2 Episodes from Lenau's Faust: 1. Der nächtliche Zug (The Night Ride), 2. Der Tanz in der Dorfschenke (Dance in the Village Inn, also Mephisto Waltz No.1) (before 1861); Mephisto Waltz No.2 (1880-1); Huldigungsmarsch (1853, rev. 1857, orig. for pf.); 3 Odes funèbres (Les Morts; La Notte; Le triomphe funèbre du Tasse (1860-6); Rákóczy March (1865); 6 Hungarian Rhapsodies (orch., in collab. with F. Doppler, from pf. solos. Orch. No.1 is pf. No.14, No.2 (No.12), No.3 (No.6), No.4 (No.2), No.5 (No.5), No.6 (No.9, 2nd version) (date unknown).

PIANO & ORCH.: conc. No.1 in Eb (1849, collab. Raff; rev. 1853, 1856), No.2 in A major (1839, rev. 1849-61); Malédiction, pf., str. (c.1840); Fantasia on Themes from Beethoven's Ruins of Athens (?1852); Fantasia on Hungarian Folk Melodies (Hungarian Fantasia, based on Hungarian Rhapsody No.14 in F minor for solo pf.) (?1852); Totentanz (1849, rev. 1853, 1859); Rapsodie espagnole (c.1863 solo pf., orch. Busoni).

SACRED CHORAL: Die Legende von der heiligen Elisabeth, oratorio, sop., cont., ten., 3 bar., bass, ch., org., orch. (1857-62); Christus, oratorio, sop., cont., ten., bar., bass, ch., org., orch. (1862-7); Cantico del Sol di S. Francesco d'Assisi, bar., male ch., org., orch. (1862, rev. 1880-1); Mass, 4 male vv., org. (1848, rev. 1859; 2nd version, 1869); Missa solemnis, sop., cont., ten., bass, ch., orch. (1855, rev. 1857-8); Missa Choralis, ch., org. (1865); Hungarian Coronation Mass, sop., cont., ten., bass, orch. (1867); Requiem, 2 ten., 2 bass, male vv., org., opt. brass (1867-8); Psalm 13, ten., ch., orch. (1855, rev. 1859); Psalm 116, male vv., pf. (1869); Ave verum corpus, ch., opt. org. (1871); St Christopher, bar., women's ch., pf., harmonium (after 1874); Via Crucis (1878-9); Rosario (1879); Psalm 129, bar., male vv., org. (1881); Qui seminant in lacrimis, mixed ch., org. (1884); Salve Regina, unacc. ch. (1885).

SECULAR CHORAL: Second Beethoven Cantata, sop., cont., ten., bass, double ch., orch. (1869-70); An die Künstler, 2 ten., 2 bass, male ch., orch. (1853, orch. Raff, rev. 1853, 1856); Choruses from Herder's Entfesseltem Prometheus, sop., cont., 2 ten., 2 bass, double ch., orch. (1850, orch. Raff, rev. 1855); Hungaria 1848, cantata, sop., ten., bass, male vv., orch. (1848, orch. Conradi); Für Männergesang, 12 songs, some with acc. (1842-59).

CHAMBER MUSIC: Romance oubliée, pf. qt. (1880); La lugubre gondola, pf. trio (1882, also pf. solo); At Richard Wagner's Grave, str. qt., harp (1883).

PIANO: Étude en 12 Exercises (1826); 24 Grandes Études (1837); Mazeppa (1840, orch. 1851); 6 Études d'exécution transcendante d'après Paganini (1838, rev. 1851 as Grandes Études de Paganini); 12 Études d'exécution transcendante (Transcendental Studies) (1851); Apparitions (1834); Album d'un voyageur (3 books, 1835-6); 3 Sonetti del Petrarca (?1839-46); Venezia e Napoli (c.1840, rev. 1859); Années de pèlerinage, Book 1 ‘Switzerland’, 9 pieces (1848-54, all but 2 pieces based on Album d'un voyageur), Book 2 ‘Italy’, 7 pieces (1837-49), Book 3, 7 pieces (1867-77); Harmonies poétiques et réligieuses, 10 pieces (1845-52); 6 Consolations (1849-50); Grosses Konzertsolo (?1849, arr. 2 pf. c.1855 as Concerto pathétique, and for pf. and orch. as Grand Solo de Concert ?1850); Liebesträume—3 Notturnos (c.1850, transcr. of songs); Scherzo und Marsch (1851); Sonata in B minor (1852-3); Huldigungsmarsch (1853, arr. for orch. 1853, rev. 1857); Berceuse (1854, rev. 1862); 2 Concert Studies (Waldesrauschen, Gnomenreigen) (?1862-3); 2 Légendes (St Francis of Assisi preaching to the birds, St Francis of Paule walking on the waves) (1863); ‘Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen’ prelude (1859); Rapsodie espagnole (c.1863); Weihnachtsbaum, 12 pieces (1874-6); Nuages gris (1881); La lugubre gondola (1882); R.W.-Venezia (1883); Mephisto Waltz No.3 (1883); 4 Valses oubliées (1881-?1885); Csárdás macabre (1881-2); Mephisto Waltz No.4 (1885); Csárdás obstiné (1886); 19 Hungarian Rhapsodies (1846-85, see also ORCH.) (No.1 in C#, 1846; No.2 in C#, 1847; No.3 in Bb; No.4 in Eb; No. 5 Heroïde-élégiaque in E minor; No.6 in Db; No.7 in D minor; No.8 in F#; No.9 in Eb, 1st version pubd. 1848, 2nd version pubd. 1853; No.10 in E; No.11 in A minor; No.12 in C#; No.13 in A minor; No.14 in F minor; No.15 Rákóczy March, 1st version pubd. 1851, 2nd version pubd. 1871; No.16 in A minor, 1882; No.17 in D minor; No.18 in C#, 1885; No.19 in D minor, 1885).

PIANO TRANSCRIPTIONS: Liszt's transcr. of his own works are too numerous for listing here. A selective list follows of his transcr. of works by other composers (operatic transcr. are listed separately): J. S. BACH: Fantasia and Fugue in G minor (BWV 542) (1863); BEETHOVEN: Syms. Nos. 5, 6, and 7 (1837), remaining 6 (1863-4), Septet, Op.20 (1841); BERLIOZ: Symphonie fantastique (1833, finale rev. 1864-5), Harold en Italie (c.1836, rev. 1862), Danse des Sylphes (c.1860); CHOPIN: 6 Chants Polonais (1847-60); MENDELSSOHN: 7 Lieder (1840); PAGANINI: Grand Fantasia de bravoure sur La Clochette (on La Campanella from Violin Conc. in B minor, Op.7) (1831-2, rev. as No.3 of Études d'exécution transcendante d'après Paganini, 1838); ROSSINI: 12 Soirées Musicales (1837), Ov., William Tell (1838); SAINT-SAËNS: Danse macabre (1876); SCHUBERT: 12 Lieder (1837-8), Schwanengesang (1838-9), Winterreise (1839); SCHUMANN: Widmung (1848).

PIANO TRANSCRIPTIONS FROM OPERAS: BELLINI: Réminiscences des Puritains (1836), Hexaméron (vars. on march from I Puritani, collab. with Thalberg, Pixis, Herz, Czerny, Chopin) (1837), Fantaisie sur les motifs favoris de l'opéra La Sonnambula (1839, rev. 1840-1), Réminiscences de Norma (1841); DONIZETTI: Réminiscences de Lucia di Lammermoor (1835-6), Réminiscences de Lucrezia Borgia (1840); HALÉVY: Réminiscences de La Juive (1835); MEYERBEER: Grande Fantaisie sur des thèmes de l'opéra Les Huguenots (1836), Réminiscences de Robert le Diable (1841); MOZART: Réminiscences de Don Juan (1841); TCHAIKOVSKY: Eugene Onegin: Polonaise (1880); VERDI: Concert Paraphrase on Themes from Ernani (1847), Miserere du Trovatore (1859), Rigoletto: paraphrase de concert (1859), Don Carlos: Coro di festa e marcia funebre (1867-8), Réminiscences de Simon Boccanegra (1882); WAGNER: Phantasiestück on themes from Rienzi (1859), Ov. Tannhäuser (1848), 2 Pieces from Lohengrin (1854), Isoldes Liebestod (1867), Am stillen Herd from Die Meistersinger (1871), Feierlicher Marsch zum heiligen Gral, Parsifal (1882); WEBER: Fantasia on Themes from Der Freischütz (1840), Ov. Oberon (1843), Ov. Der Freischütz (1846).

ORGAN: Prelude and Fugue on the Name of Bach (1885, rev. 1870); Requiem (1879); At Richard Wagner's Grave (1883).

SONGS (selected list): Tre Sonetti di Petrarca (1838-9); Die Loreley (Heine) (1841); Mignons Lied (Goethe) (1842); Es war ein König in Thule (Goethe) (1842); Oh! quand je dors (Hugo) (1842); Du bist wie eine Blume (Heine) (c.1843); Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher (Dumas) (1845, arr. v. and orch. 1858, rev. 1874); En ces lieux (Monnier) (1854); Die drei Zigeuner (Lenau) (1860); Go not, happy day (Tennyson) (1879); Verlassen (Michell) (1880).

:::::Bibilography:::::

http://www.naxos.com/composer_image.asp?composerid=22599

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_Liszt

http://www.d-vista.com/OTHER/franzliszt.html

http://www.classicalarchives.com/bios/codm/liszt.html

http://www.classicsonline.com/composerbio/22599.htm

http://www.classiccat.net/liszt_f/biography.htm

Looted Art Seeks Owners in Jerusalem

Looking for Owners, the new exhibition at Jerusalem's Israel Museum, is like peering through painted windows of the past.

James Snyder says the exhibits have special significance to Israel

It is the first time that art looted in France by the Nazis and never re-claimed is on display in Israel.

James Snyder, the Director the Israel Museum, says hosting the exhibits in Israel, the Jewish state, has special significance.

"The state of Israel itself, in a way, grew from the ashes of the tragedy of WWII so it is very meaningful in a sentimental way and in an emotional way to have an exhibition on the subject of works taken during the War, here in Israel," he said.

Between 1933 and 1945, the Nazis looted, destroyed and hoarded art on a scale unprecedented in history.

The exhibition's catalogue shows black and white pictures of German warehouses packed full of paintings. There is even one of Hitler beaming as he receives a work of art on his birthday.

Hundreds of thousands of paintings were stolen by the Nazis from Jewish families and others. If you include furniture, sculptures and other artefacts, experts say the figure soars in to the millions.

Some items were destined to enrich the personal collections of prominent Nazis, others were swapped on the international art market for artefacts considered more "desirable" and less "degenerate" in the Third Reich. Some were simply sold to fill the coffers of Nazi Germany.

Famed artists

In France alone, an estimated 100,000 paintings were stolen. After the war, thousands were found stashed away in German salt mines, depots and private homes.

We want to show the efforts made by France, even now, more than 60 years after the war, to find the rightful owners of the artwork Exhibition curator Isabelle le Masne de Charmont

Most were returned to France and either reclaimed or auctioned but about 2,000 paintings remain unclaimed.

These include works worth millions of dollars by famed European artists such as Claude Monet, Eugene Delacroix and George Seurat.

The French curator of the exhibition, Isabelle le Masne de Charmont, says her government decided to assemble the works partly as a tribute to memory, but also to show the efforts made by France, even now, more than 60 years after the war, to find the rightful owners of the artwork.

The unclaimed works of art have also been archived online for the public to view, in an effort to help return more art.

Whether its paintings are Monets or minor works by unknown artists, this exhibition is about more than art.

It is about the history of those who stole it and the people the works were stolen from. For some of those visiting the Israel Museum, the paintings are a last tangible link to a family lost or a past destroyed.

Sense of loss

Holocaust survivor Norbert Seigal came from Tel Aviv to see the exhibition. It brought back a lot of memories, he told me.

I didn't know what they were doing at the time but I know now they were looking for paintings Norbert Seigal

"I was born in Tschernowitz, then part of Romania. It was known as a cultural city, full of painters. I was a little boy when the Nazis came in 1941 but I remember when German soldiers broke down the door of our house with guns and started looking at the walls.

"I didn't know what they were doing at the time but I know now they were looking for paintings. My parents and I stood there with our hands up, waiting for the end. But they didn't kill us, they sent us to a concentration camp instead."

Leah Oz-Ari said she grew up feeling the terrible losses caused by the Holocaust, even though she was born in Israel.

"I remember my mother crying a lot. She lost all her family. My father used to search the newspapers desperately for news, to know if any of his family had survived.

"It's so important to me to be able to come to this exhibition and see what people and countries have done to save these paintings. To me, it's more important than seeing the paintings themselves. It's very emotional."

There is an international effort under way to return art stolen by the Nazis. But many collectors died in concentration camps.

The paintings they left behind are a surviving testimony to the horrors of the Holocaust.

Today in History

Spotlight: Sky-watchers in South America, most of North America, and much of Western Europe, Africa and western Asia will be treated to a full lunar eclipse tonight. A lunar eclipse occurs at a time of a full moon, when the sun, earth and moon are lined up exactly, with the earth in the middle. The earth casts a shadow composed of two cone-shaped parts — the umbra and the penumbra, one inside the other. When the entire moon passes through the umbral shadow, a total lunar eclipse occurs. Tonight's eclipse will last about 3 1/2 hours; the total eclipse will start about 90 minutes into the event and last about 50 minutes.

Word of The Day

Electronic Wallet: Computer technology that stores a coded credit card number in the hard drive and permits purchases at web sites without reentering card information.

Soviet Prima Ballerina Dies at 66

Bessmertnova was a star of the Bolshoi's "golden age"

Russian prima ballerina Natalia Bessmertnova has died after a long illness at the age of 66, the Bolshoi Theatre announced in Moscow.

Bessmertnova became a Bolshoi star in the Soviet period in 1961, marrying artistic director, Yuri Grigorovich, and later teaching in retirement.

Her husband gave her lead roles in his own productions, such as Spartacus.

In 1995, she took part in a historic strike at the Bolshoi over changes which prompted Grigorovich to resign.

Their refusal to perform Romeo and Juliet resulted in the first cancellation in more than 200 years of the company's history.

Bessmertnova died at a Moscow hospital after suffering from an unspecified grave illness, Bolshoi spokeswoman Yekaterina Novikova said.

Bolshoi director Anatoly Iksanov reacted by calling her death a "huge loss for the Bolshoi Theatre and for our whole culture".

She had been "the pride and glory of the company to which she devoted her entire life", he added.

Despite the strike of 1995, she returned to the Bolshoi in 2001-03 to teach, according to the company's website.

She won many Soviet prizes for her dancing, and is especially remembered for the part of Giselle.

She is survived by her husband.

Nicolaus Copernicus, Astronomer

1473: Nicolaus Copernicus, astronomer, mathematician, church canon, governor, administrator, jurist, astrologer and doctor, was born on this day in 1473 in Poland, then Royal Prussia. He proposed a heliocentric theory of the solar system, meaning that the planets revolve around the Sun as the fixed point and that Earth is a planet which also turns once daily on its own axis. His discoveries completely overturned the traditional geocentric theory and is the fundamental starting point of modern astronomy. He published his theory in the book De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Bodies).