The Phantom

of the Opera

The Phantom of the Opera (original title: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra) is a novel by French writer Gaston Leroux. It was first published as a serialization in "Le Gaulois" from September 23, 1909 to January 8, 1910. Initially, the story sold very poorly upon publication in book form and was even out of print several times during the twentieth century, despite the success of its various film and stage adaptations. The most notable of these were the 1925 film depiction and Andrew Lloyd Webber's 1986 musical. The Phantom of the Opera musical is now the longest running Broadway show in history, and one of the most lucrative entertainment enterprises of all time.

Plot

Christine Daaé's mother died when she was very young. She and her father, a famous violinist, traveled all over Sweden playing folk and religious music. Her father was known to be the best wedding fiddler in the land. During Christine's childhood, her father told her many stories. A character known as the Angel of Music figured heavily in them, especially one about a girl he called Little Lotte, who was able to hear the Angel of Music. When Christine meets and befriends Raoul, he also enjoys her father's many stories.

Later, when Father Daaé is dying - probably of tuberculosis - he tells Christine that when he dies he will send the Angel of Music to her. Christine grieves for her father endlessly. She lives with an elderly woman whose now deceased husband had been her father's benefactor.

Christine is eventually given a position in the chorus at the Paris Opera House. Not long after she arrives there, she begins hearing a voice which sings to her and speaks to her. She believes this must be the Angel of Music and asks him if he is. The Voice agrees and offers to teach her "a little bit of heaven's music." The Voice, however, belongs to Erik, a disfigured genius who was on the construction crew when the Opera was built and who secretly built into the cellars a home for himself. He is the Opera ghost ("Fantôme" in French can be translated as both "ghost" and "phantom") who has been extorting money from the Opera's management for many years. Unknown to Christine, at least at first, he has fallen in love with her.

With the help of the Voice, Christine triumphs at the gala on the night of the old managers' retirement. Her old childhood friend Raoul hears her and remembers his love for her. After the gala, Erik takes Christine to live in his home in the cellars, but after two weeks, when Christine requests release, he agrees, on condition that she wears his ring and is faithful to him.

Up on the roof of the Opera, Christine tells Raoul of Erik taking her to the cellars. Raoul promises to take Christine away where Erik can never find her. Raoul tells Christine he shall act on his promise the following day, to which Christine agrees, but she pities Erik and will not go until she has sung for him one last time. The two leave, unaware that Erik was listening to their conversation. During the week and that night however, Erik has been terrorizing anyone who stood in his way, or in the way of Christine's career, including the managers.

The following night, Erik kidnaps Christine during a production of Faust. Back in the cellars, Erik tries to force Christine into marrying him. If she refuses he will destroy the entire Opera using explosives planted in the cellars, killing everyone in it including himself and Christine. Christine continues to refuse, until she realizes that Raoul and a man known only as 'The Persian', in an attempt to rescue her, have been trapped in Erik's torture chamber. To save them and the people above, Christine agrees to marry Erik and kisses him. Erik, who admits that he has never before in his life received a kiss - not even from his own mother - is overcome with emotion. He lets Christine go and tells her "go and marry the boy whenever you wish", explaining that "I know you love him." They cry together, and then she leaves. Three weeks later, a notice appears in a Paris newspaper stating that Erik is dead.

V (2009 TV series)

This article is about the 2009 series. For other uses, see V (TV series).

V
V intertitle
Genre	Science fiction
Format	Serial drama
Created by	Kenneth Johnson
Developed by	Scott Peters
Starring	Elizabeth Mitchell Morris Chestnut Joel Gretsch Logan Huffman Lourdes Benedicto Laura Vandervoort with Morena Baccarin and Scott Wolf
Country of origin	United States
Language(s)	English
No. of seasons	1
No. of episodes	7 (List of episodes)
Production
Executive producer(s)	Scott Rosenbaum Scott Peters Jace Hall Yves Simoneau Steve Pearlman
Location(s)	Vancouver, British Columbia
Running time	42 minutes

V is an American science fiction television series first broadcast on ABC on November 3, 2009.^[1][2] A re-imagining of the 1983 miniseries created by Kenneth Johnson, the new series chronicles the arrival on Earth of a technologically advanced alien species who ostensibly come in peace, but actually have sinister motives.V stars Morena Baccarin, Morris Chestnut, Joel Gretsch, Elizabeth Mitchell, and Scott Wolf, and is executive produced by Scott Rosenbaum, Scott Peters, and Jace Hall.

Giant spaceships appear over 29 major cities throughout the world, and Anna (Morena Baccarin), the beautiful and charismatic leader of the extra-terrestrial "Visitors", claims to come in peace. As a small number of humans begin to doubt the sincerity of the seemingly benevolent Visitors, FBI counter-terrorism agent Erica Evans (Elizabeth Mitchell) discovers that the aliens have spent decades infiltrating human governments, businesses, and religious institutions and are now in the final stages of their plan to take over the Earth. Erica joins the resistance movement, which includes Ryan (Morris Chestnut), a Visitor sleeper agent who wants to save humanity. The Visitors have won favor among the people of Earth by curing a variety of diseases, and have recruited Earth's youth — including Erica's son Tyler (Logan Huffman) — to serve them unknowingly as spies.

Pandorum

Two astronauts, Bower and Payton, wake up from suspended animation to find themselves alone, with no memory of who they are, what they are doing, or what has happened to the crew of their 60,000 passenger sleeper ship, the Elysium. They are unable to access the ship's bridge and cannot communicate with any other members of the crew, including the flight team they are supposed to relieve. While exploring the spacecraft under Payton's radio guidance, Bower talks with Payton about Pandorum, a psychological condition brought on by extended periods of deep-space travel and hyper-sleep (suspended animation) and its symptoms and effects, including severe paranoia, vivid hallucinations, and homicidal tendencies.

As Bower explores on, he encounters dead bodies and fast-moving humanoid creatures. Escaping from one of them, he then encounters other human survivors, and they work together to reach the ship's nuclear reactor. The reactor will fail permanently if Bower does not reset it very soon. Moving on, the group encounters another survivor, Leland, who tells them the story of what had happened before they awakened. Their mission is revealed to be one of desperation. Earth, suffering from massive overpopulation, dispatched the sleeper ship and its crew on a 123-year voyage to a new, Earth-like planet called Tanis to create a settlement. When the ship receives one last message from Earth, informing them that Earth was no more and that they were the last survivors, one of the three crew members (as there are usually three flight crew active at any one shift) went insane, killed his other two crew mates, then played God by awakening most of the crew and doing what he pleased with them. When he grew bored of it, he went back into suspended animation and left the rest of the crew awake. Genetic augments that every crew member had received prior to the mission (for quick adaptation to the new planet) had instead adapted them to the ship, turning them into the cannibalistic monsters that Bower and the other survivors have been encountering. Leland then renders them unconscious with gas. Upon awakening they find themselves chained up with Leland about to kill them for food.

Meanwhile, Payton discovers another crew member, Gallo, who reveals that he was part of the flight crew that received the final message from Earth. But Gallo's account then diverges from what Bower had heard from the survivor. He claims that his other two crew mates suffered from an onset of Pandorum and that he was eventually obliged to kill them in self-defense. By now, most of the ship's population is either dead or mutated.

Bower manages to convince Leland to allow them to restart the ship's nuclear reactor. The group fights their way down to the reactor and Bower gets it online in the nick of time. While moving through the passenger hypersleep storage area, he sees the pod for Payton's wife, and his memories now allow him to realize that Payton is not who he says he is. Payton is actually Gallo, and the "Gallo" that the audience has been seeing, is actually just the other part of "Payton"'s consciousness (a representation of his younger self), and the man who has been calling himself Payton is in fact the aged Gallo, who was the one to succumb to Pandorum and kill his other two crew mates. The other survivor that Bower met earlier, Leland, finds his way to Payton/Gallo but is killed when Payton stabs him through the left eye with a sedative. Bower finds his way to the bridge then fights with Payton/Gallo while simultaneously battling the symptoms of Pandorum, and during this he inadvertently causes a hull breach. The ship at this point is revealed to have actually been under water for 800 years now, having successfully arrived at the Earth-like planet of Tanis, their original destination, after 123 years of spaceflight. The ship's log shows the mission has been ongoing for a total of 923 years and it is now February of the year 3097. Water then starts pouring in, drowning Payton/Gallo.

Bower escapes with the last known survivor Nadia by ejecting his hypersleep pod from the ship. The hull breach causes the ship's computer to initiate an emergency evacuation, ejecting the remaining 1211 hibernating and unmutated crew members onto the watery surface of Tanis, with its beautiful scenery and two moons visible in the sky, that is to be the new home for humanity.

Gossip Girl Season 2 Finale

Romeo et Juliette

Roméo et Juliette (Romeo and Juliet) is an opéra in five acts by Charles Gounod to a French libretto by Jules Barbier and Michel Carré, based on The Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare. It was first performed at the Théâtre Lyrique (Théâtre-Lyrique Impérial du Châtelet), Paris on 27 April 1867.

The opera entered the repertoire of the Opéra- Comique on 20 January 1873, with Deloffre and Carvalho returning to their roles from the premiere, where it received 391 performances in 14 years.On the 28 November 1888 Roméo et Juliette transferred to the Paris Opéra, with Patti and de Reske in the leading roles. The opera was first seen in London on 11 July 1867 and in New York on 15 November of that year.

The libretto follows the story of Shakespeare's play.

Act 1

In an Overture prologue the curtain rises for a short chorus setting the scene of the rival families in Verona. Act 1 begins with a masked ball in the Capulets’ palace. Tybalt talks to Paris about Juliette, who appears with her father. Roméo, Mercutio, Benvolio and their friends enter, disguised, and Mercutio sings a ballad about Queen Mab, after which Juliette sings a joyful waltz song. The first meeting between Roméo and Juliette takes place, and they fall in love. But Tybalt re-appears and suspects who the hastily re-masked Roméo is; while Tybalt wants immediate revenge, Capulet orders that the ball continue.

Act 2

Act 2 is set in the garden of the Capulets, and after Roméo's page Stephano has helped his master gain access, shows the two young lovers exchanging their vows of love.

Act 3

In the first scene of Act 3 Roméo and Juliette, accompanied by Gertrude, go to the cell of Laurent, and the wedding takes place. Laurent hopes that reconciliation between the houses of the Montagus and the Capulets may thus take place. The next scene is in a street near Capulet's palace where Stephano sings to attract the occupants into the street. Gregoire and Stephano skirmish as men from each family appear. The duel is first between Tybalt and Mercutio, who falls dead, and then between Roméo, determined to avenge his comrade, and Tybalt. Tybalt is killed by Roméo, who is banished by the Duke.

Act 4

In Act 4 Roméo and Juliette are seen in her room at dawn, and after a long duet Roméo departs for exile. Juliette's father comes to remind her of the dying wish of Tybalt, for Juliette to marry Count Paris. The friar gives Juliette a draught which will cause her to sleep, as if dead. After being laid in the family tomb, she will be awakened by Roméo and taken away. (A ballet scene in the grand hall of the palace was inserted at this point.)

Act 5

Act 5 finds Roméo breaking into the tomb having taken poison believing that Juliette is dead. When she awakes from the friar’s potion, there is time for a last duet before the poison takes its effect on Roméo. As her bridegroom weakens Juliette stabs herself, to be united with her lover in death.

This is my favorite song of the whole play. It's called Les Rois du Monde.

You know you've lived in France too long when...

I have lived in France for almost two years. First, I went for 8 months when I was 16 to a small town near the italian border called Gap. Then, at age 19 I went there for another year as a part of an exchange program with my boyfriend to a city called Caen, at the northern part of France. After that my boyfriend returned to Caen alone also for a year and I visited him 2 months on summer and 2 months on Christmas vacation. Now, I'm returning to France for another year this August, but now I'm going to Paris!!.. Yeap, it looks like I'll be living in the most fabulous city of the world for a while..

This is something one of my australian friends sent me about living in France... and I found it hilarious...

So, you know you've lived in France too long when:

• You end 90% of your sentences with "quoi"...
• ...And you begin them all with "bon" or "alors".
• You start to prefer baguettes to sliced bread.
• When you do actually buy sliced bread it no longer amuses you.
• You actually know what your favourite wine is.
• You feel guilty about being pissed in a bar cuz no one else is.
• The notion of food being a supermarket's main product seems unthinkable.
• You know that when shops close for "lunch hour" that actually means 4-5 hours.
• All official paperwork of any kind never takes less than 6 weeks to process.
• Toilet paper is a distant memory.
• Toilet seats are a luxury.
• Paying more than 3€ for a bottle of wine seems extortionate, but finding a Snickers for anything less than a quid seems like a bargain.
• You know the only place open on a Sunday is church.
• You stop buying soda and start drinking coffee after lunch.
• You're disappointed when your accomodation doesn't have a balcony.
• You get offended when people don't "vous" you.
• You understand French jokes.
• You stop hugging people or shaking as hands as a form of greeting, opting instead to "faire des bises".
• You've never seen so many erotic films in your life, most with a 12 certificate which start at around 3pm.
• "Going on holiday" just means going to another part of France.
• You never again make the fatal mistake of saying "Je suis plein(e)" after a meal.
• You know the difference between a crepe and a gaufrette, a croque monsieur and a croque madame.
• Cheese is an acceptable dessert, and your favorite dessert is no longer ice cream but crème brulée.
• You know all of the women in the boulangerie by name.
• You stop putting "xoxo" at the end of your texts and start to opt for "biz".
• You cross the roads without looking.
• You start using French words/phrases to your non-speaking French friends and it seems weird that they can't understand.
• You say "merci" and "s'il vous plait" about 5 times during any one shop transaction.
• You know what URSAAF, TGV and RER stand for - and you hate them all.
• You have to go the mairie at least once a month.
• You don't notice that distinctly "French toilet smell" anymore.
• McDonalds becomes MacDo.
• It's not weird when a total stranger bids you "bonjour" or "bonsoir".
• You say "dis-donc" about 50 times a day (though you're still not quite sure what it means....)
• Random condom machines in the street no longer shock/amuse you.
• You start to say "hop" after every single action you make.