Historical fiction is a literary genre in which a fictional plot takes place in the setting of particular real historical events. Although the term is commonly used as a synonym for historical fiction literature, it can also be applied to other types of narrative, including theatre, opera, cinema, and television, as well as video games and graphic novels. It often makes many use of symbolism in allegory using figurative and metaphorical elements to picture a story.
Albany is the capital and oldest city in the U.S. state of New York, and the seat of and most populous city in Albany County. It is located on the west bank of the Hudson River, about 10 miles (16 km) south of its confluence with the Mohawk River.
Andrew Lloyd Webber, Baron Lloyd-Webber, is an English composer and impresario of musical theatre. Several of his musicals have run for more than a decade both in the West End and on Broadway. He has composed 21 musicals, a song cycle, a set of variations, two film scores, and a Latin Requiem Mass.
Albany is a city on the east shore of San Francisco Bay in northwestern Alameda County, California, United States. The population was 20,271 at the 2020 census.
Marian Anderson was an American contralto. She performed a wide range of music, from opera to spirituals. Anderson performed with renowned orchestras in major concert and recital venues throughout the United States and Europe between 1925 and 1965.
Ironweed is a 1983 novel by American author William Kennedy. Ironweed received the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and is the third book in Kennedy's Albany Cycle. It is included in the Western Canon of the critic Harold Bloom. The novel was adapted into a 1987 film of the same name.
Charles Peter Wuorinen was an American composer of contemporary classical music based in New York City. He also performed as a pianist and conductor. Wuorinen composed more than 270 works: orchestral music, chamber music, solo instrumental and vocal works, and operas, such as Brokeback Mountain. His work was termed serialist but he came to disparage that idea as meaningless. Time's Encomium, his only purely electronic piece, received the Pulitzer Prize. Wuorinen taught at several institutions, including Columbia University, Rutgers University and the Manhattan School of Music.
Lyric Opera of Chicago is an American opera company based in Chicago, Illinois. The company was founded in Chicago in 1954, under the name 'Lyric Theatre of Chicago' by Carol Fox, Nicola Rescigno and Lawrence Kelly, with a season that included Maria Callas's American debut in Norma. Fox re-organized the company in 1956 under its present name. Lyric is housed in a theater and related spaces in the Civic Opera Building. These spaces are now owned by Lyric.
Robert Francis Kennedy Jr., also known by his initials RFK Jr., is an American politician, environmental lawyer, anti-vaccine activist, and conspiracy theorist. He is the chairman and founder of Children's Health Defense, an anti-vaccine advocacy group that is a leading proponent of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation. He is on the ballot in some states as an independent candidate in the 2024 United States presidential election. A member of the Kennedy family, he is a son of the U.S. attorney general and senator Robert F. Kennedy, and a nephew of the U.S. president John F. Kennedy and senator Ted Kennedy.
William Joseph Devane is an American actor. He is known for his role as Greg Sumner on the primetime soap opera Knots Landing (1983–1993) and as James Heller on the Fox serial dramas 24 (2001–2010) and 24: Live Another Day (2014). He is also known for his work in films such as Family Plot (1976), Marathon Man (1976), Rolling Thunder (1977), Payback (1999), and Space Cowboys (2000).
William Joseph Kennedy is an American writer and journalist who won the 1984 Pulitzer Prize for his 1983 novel Ironweed.
Daniel Patrick "Dan" O'Connell was a longtime leader of the Democratic Party political machine in Albany County, New York.
Tobias Picker is an American composer, pianist, and conductor, noted for his orchestral works Old and Lost Rivers, Keys To The City, and The Encantadas, as well as his operas Emmeline, Fantastic Mr. Fox, An American Tragedy and Lili Elbe, among many other works.
Ironweed is a 1987 American drama film directed by Héctor Babenco. Adapted to the screen by William Kennedy from his similarly named Pulitzer Prize–winning novel, Ironweed stars Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep, with Carroll Baker, Michael O'Keefe, Diane Venora, Fred Gwynne, Nathan Lane, and Tom Waits in supporting roles. The story concerns the relationship of a homeless couple—Francis, an alcoholic, and Helen, a terminally ill woman—during the years following the Great Depression. Major portions of the film were shot on location in Albany, New York. The film received mixed reviews and was a box-office bomb, but Nicholson and Streep received Oscar nominations for Best Actor and Best Actress, respectively, for their performances.
The history of the Opera web browser began in 1994 when it was started as a research project at Telenor, the largest Norwegian telecommunications company. In 1995, the project branched out into a separate company named Opera Software ASA, with the first publicly available version released in 1996. Opera has undergone extensive changes and improvements, and introduced notable features such as Speed Dial.
Tanpopo Ramen and Sake Bar is a historic diner in Albany, New York, built in 1941 and located at 893 Broadway, one of the oldest streets in Albany. Used as a set for the 1987 film Ironweed, which starred Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep, it was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places in 2000.
The Graz Opera is an Austrian opera house and opera company based in Graz. The orchestra of the opera house also performs concerts as the Graz Philharmonic Orchestra.
The New York State Writers Institute is a literary organization based at the University at Albany in Albany, New York. It sponsors the Albany Book Festival, the Albany Film Festival, Visiting Writers Series, Classic Film Series, the Trolley online literary magazine, and the New York State Summer Writers Institute, and New York State Summer Young Writers Institute in collaboration with Skidmore College.
Michael Dellaira is an American composer. He is a citizen of the United States and Italy and resides in New York City with his wife, the writer Brenda Wineapple.
The Dune prequel series is a sequence of novel trilogies written by Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson. Set in the Dune universe created by Frank Herbert, the novels take place in various time periods before and in between Herbert's original six novels, which began with 1965's Dune. In 1997, Bantam Books made a $3 million deal with the authors for three Dune prequel novels, partially based upon notes left behind by Frank Herbert, that would come to be known as the Prelude to Dune trilogy. Starting with 1999's Dune: House Atreides, the duo have published 15 Dune prequel novels to date.
