title: Peter Parker (Sam Raimi film series)

text: The first film characterizes Peter Parker as an intelligent, bookish, and level-headed yet lonely and isolated teenager, focusing on his personality as a shy and bashful outsider before he gains his powers and subsequent struggles of deciding between using his newfound abilities for personal gain or for the betterment of others. By overcoming these struggles, Peter uses his abilities to help people after his uncle Ben is killed by a robber during a robbery, for which Peter was indirectly responsible. Inspired by Ben's last words, Peter is motivated to use his super-human abilities for a more noble cause under the persona of a masked vigilante: "Spider-Man". However, even after taking up the persona of Spider-Man, Peter still retains his socially-inept, awkward and dorky, yet endearingly good-hearted nature, and develops a sarcastic and witty sense of humor in his Spider-Man guise. Peter deals with all his personal struggles, all while wrestling with his feelings for his childhood crush and close friend Mary Jane Watson and handling his close relationship with his best friend Harry Osborn.


title: Peter Parker (Sam Raimi film series)

text: In "Spider-Man 2", director Sam Raimi felt that the film had to thematically explore Peter's internal conflict with his personal wants against his responsibility, the positives and negatives of his chosen path, and how he ultimately decides that he can be happy as a heroic figure. Raimi stated the story was partly influenced by "Superman II", which also explored the titular hero giving up his responsibilities. The sequel's story is mainly taken from the comic book series "The Amazing Spider-Man" No. 50, "Spider-Man No More!" According to Raimi, Peter Parker's story is about "a life out of balance". Peter is caught between a life where he tries to help people and atone for his uncle's death with his Spider-Man alter-ego and another where he tries to balance his studies, occupation as a photographer and his relationship with his family and friends. Peter acknowledges that he cannot be with Mary Jane without endangering her, due to his Spider-Man alter-ego; fearing that if his enemies would ever find out about his true identity, they would target his loved ones. As a result, Peter distances himself from Mary Jane, but eventually rekindles his relationship with her after she finds out about his dual life, and struggles he has faced.


title: Peter Parker (Sam Raimi film series)

text: In "Spider-Man 3," Raimi intended to further develop Peter's character with the planned film focusing on Peter learning that he is not a sinless vigilante and that there can also be humanity in those he considers criminals, especially as the Venom symbiote brings out the darker aspects of Peter's personality upon bonding with him. Raimi himself quoted: "The most important thing Peter right now has to learn is that this whole concept of him as the avenger or him as the hero, he wears this red and blue outfit, with each criminal he brings to justice he's trying to pay down this debt of guilt he feels about the death of Uncle Ben. He considers himself a hero and a sinless person versus these villains that he nabs. We felt it would be a great thing for him to learn a little less black and white view of life and that he's not above these people." Raimi based his ideas out of the original comic books.


title: Peter Parker (Sam Raimi film series)

text: Peter is introduced as a 17-year-old shy, bespectacled outsider at Midtown High School in New York City with a longtime crush on his neighbor Mary Jane Watson. Prior to a school field trip to Columbia University, Peter meets up with his best friend Harry Osborn, who introduces him to his father Norman, the CEO of Oscorp whom Peter idolizes. As Peter, Harry, Mary Jane, and their classmates tour a genetics laboratory at the university, Mary Jane notes one of 15 genetically modified super-spiders in an exhibit missing. The spider in question drops onto Peter as he takes a picture of MJ for the school newspaper and bites him. Peter falls ill upon returning home and passes out in his room.


title: Peter Parker (Sam Raimi film series)

text: The next morning, Peter finds he is no longer near-sighted and that his body is now at peak physical condition. He also discovers he has developed spider-like superpowers, which allow him to avoid injury during a confrontation with rival and bully Flash Thompson, Mary Jane's ex-boyfriend, and Peter knocks Flash out with one punch, though he later apologizes to Mary Jane for the confrontation. After noticing Flash's new car, Peter considers impressing Mary Jane with his own car. Brushing off his Uncle Ben's advice that "with great power comes great responsibility", he enters an underground wrestling tournament to raise the money and wins his first match, but the promoter cheats him of his earnings. When a robber suddenly robs the promoter's office, Peter allows him to escape. Moments later, he discovers Ben was carjacked and killed with a pistol. Enraged, Peter pursues and confronts the carjacker, only to realize it was the robber he let escape. After Peter disarms him, the carjacker flees but dies after falling out a window.


title: Peter Parker (Sam Raimi film series)

text: Upon graduating, Peter, finally taking Ben's words to heart out of guilt, begins using his abilities to fight crime, donning a costume and the person of Spider-Man. This does not impress J. Jonah Jameson, publisher of the "Daily Bugle" newspaper, and he begins a smear campaign against the wall-crawler. Jameson hires Peter as a freelance photographer, as Peter is the only person providing clear images of Spider-Man. Peter moves into an apartment with Harry paid for by Norman upon starting college. He keeps his identity as Spider-Man secret from Harry, who likewise keeps his dating relationship with Mary Jane, who had broken up with Flash, a secret from Peter until she reveals it to him.


title: Peter Parker (Sam Raimi film series)

text: Peter is assigned by Jameson to take pictures at the World Unity Fair, which Mary Jane and Harry attend together with the Oscorp board of directors. Suddenly, the Green Goblin, who is actually Norman with a crazed second personality, attacks the fair and assassinates the board of directors, endangering Mary Jane and Harry. Peter changes into his Spider-Man suit, saving several civilians from the Goblin before rescuing Mary Jane after she falls from a balcony. The Goblin takes note of Spider-Man and proposes a truce to work together. When Spider-Man later refuses, the two fight in a burning building, leaving Spider-Man with a cut on his arm.


title: Peter Parker (Sam Raimi film series)

text: During Thanksgiving dinner with Peter, his Aunt May, MJ, and Harry, Norman notices the cut on Peter's arm and deduces his secret identity as Spider-Man. He later attacks and hospitalizes May in an attempt to "go after [Peter]'s heart". While visiting Peter and May at the hospital, Mary Jane admits to Peter she is infatuated with Spider-Man, who saved her once again from thugs in an alley, and she asks Peter if Spider-Man had ever asked about her. As Peter indirectly reveals his feelings for her, Harry walks in on the two as they are holding hands. Devastated, Harry confides in his father that Mary Jane loves Peter, inadvertently revealing Spider-Man's true weakness. The Goblin kidnaps MJ and holds her and a Roosevelt Island Tramway car full of children hostage along the Queensboro Bridge, forcing Spider-Man to choose whom to save before dropping them. Peter saves both with assistance from a tugboat as the Goblin is jeered by the civilians who side with Spider-Man.


title: Peter Parker (Sam Raimi film series)

text: The Goblin grabs Peter, throws him into an abandoned building, and brutally beats him. When Goblin boasts about how he will later kill Mary Jane, an enraged Peter overpowers Goblin. Norman reveals himself to Peter by taking off his helmet and begs for mercy, trying to reason that his Goblin personality made him commit crime, but covertly controls the jet glider to stab Peter. Warned by his spider-sense, Peter dodges the attack, and the glider fatally impales Norman instead. With his dying breath, Norman asks Peter not to reveal his identity as the Green Goblin to Harry. Peter returns Norman's body to the Osborn house and hides the Goblin's suit and equipment, but Harry arrives to find him standing over his father's body. Harry seizes a gun, intent on shooting Spider-Man, but he escapes.


title: Peter Parker (Sam Raimi film series)

text: At Norman's funeral, Harry swears vengeance toward Spider-Man, whom he deems responsible for his father's death, and asserts that Peter is all the family he has left. Mary Jane confesses to Peter she is in love with him. Peter, however, feels he must protect her from the unwanted attention of his enemies, so he hides his true feelings and tells Mary Jane that they can only be friends. As Peter leaves the funeral, he recalls Ben's words and accepts his responsibility as Spider-Man.


title: Peter Parker (Sam Raimi film series)

text: Two years later, Peter struggles to maintain his personal life while serving as Spider-Man, getting fired from a second job he takes as a pizza delivery boy while also struggling with his studies at Columbia University and finances. He is also growing distant from his two friends, Harry and Mary Jane, who have found success as the new CEO of Oscorp and a Broadway actress, respectively, and discovers Aunt May is facing foreclosure of her home after his surprise birthday party.


title: Peter Parker (Sam Raimi film series)

text: Harry introduces Peter to his idol Dr. Otto Octavius, whose research Oscorp is funding, prior to a demonstration of Octavius' work on fusion power. During the demonstration, Octavius dons a harness with four robotic arms and artificial intelligence. Despite a successful start, the demonstration becomes unstable. Octavius ignores Harry's demands to shut it off while Peter dons his suit to unplug it, but not before the resulting explosion kills Octavius' wife and assistant Rosalie and fuses the harness to his spine, also destroying the inhibitor chip that keeps Octavius in control of the arms.


title: Peter Parker (Sam Raimi film series)

text: As Peter and May go to a bank to argue against her foreclosure, Octavius, now increasingly influenced by the arms and dubbed "Doctor Octopus" or "Doc Ock" by Jameson, robs the bank in an attempt to finance a second attempt at his experiment. Peter dons his suit again and takes on Doc Ock as he holds May hostage. Spider-Man manages to rescue May despite letting Doc Ock flee with the money. After discovering that Mary Jane is getting engaged to Jameson's son John and getting into a fight with a drunken Harry during a party, Peter suffers an emotional breakdown over his inability to balance his life, losing his powers as a result. He decides to give up being Spider-Man after consulting with a doctor, throwing away his suit, which a garbage man discovers and sends to Jameson.


title: Peter Parker (Sam Raimi film series)

text: Peter begins to succeed in his studies and turn his life around, beginning to mend his friendship with Mary Jane. He also reveals to Aunt May his role in inadvertently causing Uncle Ben's death, though May forgives him after initial shock. While Peter helps May move out of her home, she advises him about the hope Spider-Man gives to the people in spite of the sacrifices he must make. This encourages Peter to attempt a comeback as Spider-Man due to increased crime in New York, though his powers remain lost.


title: Peter Parker (Sam Raimi film series)

text: Octavius visits Harry and threatens him to give him the isotope tritium. Harry agrees in exchange for Spider-Man, and tells Octavius to seek Peter, who Harry believes is friends with Spider-Man, but tells Octavius not to harm him. As Mary Jane invites Peter to a café to discuss whether or not he loves her, Octavius locates Peter, tells him to find Spider-Man, and captures Mary Jane. Her endangerment leads to Peter's powers resurrecting. As Jameson admits that he was wrong about Spider-Man, Peter steals his suit back from the "Bugle" and goes after Octavius. As Peter battles Octavius, they fall onto a New York City Subway train. Octavius sabotages the controls and leaves Peter to save the passengers, which he does at a great physical toll. When he faints from exhaustion, the grateful passengers save him from falling and bring him into the train, seeing his unmasked face but promising to keep their knowledge hidden. They unsuccessfully try to protect him when Octavius returns to capture Peter, whom Octavius delivers to Harry.


title: Peter Parker (Sam Raimi film series)

text: After giving Octavius the tritium, Harry prepares to kill Spider-Man, only to be shocked to see Peter under the mask. Peter convinces Harry to direct him to Octavius' lair, as bigger things are at stake. As Peter arrives at the doctor's waterfront laboratory and attempts to rescue Mary Jane discreetly, Octavius discovers him, and they battle as the nuclear reaction swells and starts threatening the city. Peter ultimately subdues Octavius, reveals his identity, and persuades Octavius to let his dream go for the greater good. Octavius commands the tentacles to obey him, and gives his life to destroy the experiment. Mary Jane sees Peter's true identity and feelings, which he says is why they cannot be together. Peter returns Mary Jane to John and leaves. However, Mary Jane leaves John at the altar during their wedding and runs to Peter's apartment, declaring she is willing to accept any risks that come with being in a relationship with Peter. The two finally become a couple, and Mary Jane sees Peter off as he swings into action as Spider-Man to assist emergency services.


title: Peter Parker (Sam Raimi film series)

text: One and half year later, Peter finally finds stability and success in both his personal life and exploits as Spider-Man. He and Mary Jane are happily dating, and after attending her performance in a new play, he spends time with her at Central Park. A meteor lands nearby and a goo-like alien symbiote oozes out and attaches itself to Peter's moped. After sending Mary Jane home, he talks to Aunt May, who gives him the engagement ring given to her by Uncle Ben, about proposing to MJ. On his way home, Peter is ambushed by Harry, who has utilized his father's equipment and Goblin serum and intends on avenging Norman's death, despite Peter mentioning the truth of Norman's demise. An aerial chase ensues, resulting in Harry getting knocked out cold when Peter sets a trap for him. Having suffered amnesia and forgotten his vendetta against Spider-Man, Harry wakes up in the emergency room, re-embracing Peter and Mary Jane as his best friends.


title: Peter Parker (Sam Raimi film series)

text: Mary Jane is upset by a negative review of her performance, and Peter unsuccessfully tries to relate to her using his experience as Spider-Man. She later neglects to inform him when she loses her role in the play. At work at the "Daily Bugle", Peter finds that a rival freelance photographer, Eddie Brock, has also begun taking pictures of Spider-Man and Jameson pits the two photographers against each other for a staff job. He later finds out about a ceremony in which Spider-Man would be given the key to the city for rescuing Gwen Stacy, the daughter of NYPD commissioner George Stacy and also Peter's college lab partner. Peter, who dons his suit and persona for the ceremony, basks in the crowd's cheers and gives Gwen an upside-down kiss reminiscent of his first kiss with Mary Jane. This upsets Mary Jane, leading to an argument with Peter, who postpones his plans to propose to her.


title: Peter Parker (Sam Raimi film series)

text: Peter also encounters Flint Marko, also known as "Sandman". Upon discovering that Marko was the one who fatally shot Ben, not the carjacker as previously believed, Peter develops a vendetta against Marko and upon falling asleep while listening to police radio, the symbiote oozes out from Peter's closet and bonds with his suit, turning it black. Empowered by the new suit's abilities and with his anger amplified, Peter dons it while confronting Marko in the subway tunnels, leading to Marko's apparent demise when a deluge of water reduces him to mud. When Peter tells May about Marko's apparent death at Spider-Man's hands, she is not amused and warns him about the adverse effects of revenge.


title: Peter Parker (Sam Raimi film series)

text: Meanwhile, Harry regains his memory and vendetta after experiencing a flood of emotions triggered by spending time with Mary Jane. Experiencing another vision of his father, who entices him to attack Peter's heart, Harry blackmails Mary Jane into breaking up with Peter and claiming she had "fallen in love with another man". Harry claims to Peter he is the "other man", enraging Peter, who later confronts Harry at his penthouse wearing the black suit underneath. The former friends engage in a brutal fistfight and Peter emerges on top, insulting Harry by mocking his relationship with his father. Harry throws a pumpkin bomb in a last-ditch attack on Peter, who effortlessly slings the bomb back at Harry's face and leaves.


title: Peter Parker (Sam Raimi film series)

text: Peter thwarts an attempt by Eddie to claim the job at the "Bugle", leading to Brock's dismissal and subsequent falling out with Gwen, whom he was dating at the time. Peter then gains the job with his own picture of Spider-Man, and under influence from the symbiote, begins to act more arrogantly. He takes Gwen to a jazz club where Mary Jane had taken up work and interrupts her performance with his own dance routine. Gwen catches onto Peter's true intentions and leaves, and the resulting fight with the club's bouncers results in Peter inadvertently hitting Mary Jane when she intervenes. Coming to his senses after he sees a horrified MJ, Peter leaves and gets rid of the symbiote suit by utilizing church bells to stun the symbiote. The symbiote falls onto and bonds with Brock, who, unbeknownst to Peter, is at the church praying for God to kill him. This creates a new enemy, Venom, as Brock now knows Spider-Man's secret identity.


title: Peter Parker (Sam Raimi film series)

text: After May visits Peter encouraging him not to give up on Mary Jane, Venom and Sandman join forces against Spider-Man, kidnapping Mary Jane and dangling her from a skyscraper construction site to get Peter's attention. Peter pleads with Harry to help him, but a broken-spirited Harry, whose face was disfigured from the bomb, declines. Peter encounters Venom in his regular suit and tries to free Mary Jane but is ambushed by Sandman. As Peter is savagely beaten by Sandman, Harry, who had discovered the truth of his father's death, arrives in his New Goblin persona to aid his old friend. Peter and Harry form a formidable tandem, defeating Sandman and rescuing Mary Jane, but face difficulty in subduing Venom, who attempts to stab Peter with Harry's glider, but Harry takes the blade for Peter. Remembering the symbiote's weakness to sound, Peter weakens Venom by creating sonic frequencies and pulls Eddie out from the symbiote, preparing to destroy it with a bomb, but Eddie jumps back to the symbiote and is killed with it when the bomb explodes.


title: Peter Parker (Sam Raimi film series)

text: Marko re-emerges behind Peter and explains that Ben's death was an accident rooted in a desperate attempt to save his terminally-ill daughter's life and that it has haunted him since. Peter forgives Marko and allows him to escape. He swings down to a mortally-wounded Harry, who is tended to by Mary Jane. Peter and Harry forgive each other and reaffirm their friendship before Harry dies from his injuries. Peter and Mary Jane attend Harry's funeral with several others and later begin to repair their relationship.


title: Peter Parker (Sam Raimi film series)

text: Many years later, Peter (dubbed "Peter-Two" during the events of the film) is accidentally transported to Earth-616 due to Doctor Strange's interrupted attempt to cast a spell and restore the secret identity of that universe's Peter Parker (dubbed "Peter-One") after it was exposed by Mysterio. Unbeknownst to Peter, his universe's Norman, Octavius, and Marko were also transported into this universe, among other villains. While there, Peter finds another version of himself transported from another universe (dubbed "Peter-Three") who helps him console Peter-One after the death of his Aunt May, who was killed by Norman’s Goblin persona. Peter mentions that he lost Uncle Ben and regretted pursuing the man he thought killed him, warning Peter-One that killing Goblin will not help him cope with May's death, but Peter-One was averse to listen. Peter also mentions to Peter-Three that his relationship with Mary Jane became complicated after the death of his best friend Harry, but they eventually made it work after a long time.


title: Peter Parker (Sam Raimi film series)

text: Peter and the alternate Peters agree to save the villains by developing cures for them, then draw the villains towards the Statue of Liberty. During the skirmish, Peter fights Connors and Dillon, cures Marko and happily reunites with an already-cured Octavius who steps in to help the three Peters. Peter witnesses Peter-One attempting to kill Goblin, and stops him from doing so. Goblin then stabs Peter in the back, though he survives, as the alternate Peters eradicate the crazed Goblin persona of Norman with an anti-serum that Peter had developed for his old friend, curing the latter for good. After all of the villains are defeated and cured, Peter says goodbye to his alternate selves, as he, Peter-Three, and their villains are returned to their home universes.


title: Peter Parker (Sam Raimi film series)

text: This version of Peter appears in the comics "Spider-Man 3: Movie Prequel" and "Spider-Man 3: The Black", which the latter expands the birth of Venom after Peter rejects the symbiote.


title: Peter Parker (Sam Raimi film series)

text: Although he does not physically appear, this version of Parker is referenced in the Marvel Comics event "Spider-Verse" which featured many interpretations of the character from many different media. Tobey Maguire's Spider-Man is mentioned as resembling "the guy from "Seabiscuit"", a film which Maguire also stars in.


title: Peter Parker (Sam Raimi film series)

text: Maguire's portrayal of the character has received a largely positive critical reception. The actor's performance and portrayal of Spider-Man, along with Sam Raimi's characterization of the character, was subject to much of the praise towards Sam Raimi's "Spider-Man" film trilogy; being cited as true to the Spider-Man mythos as through capturing the socially-inept, endearingly awkward and nerdy aspects of the character's personality, along with his witty sense of humor and cheesy one-liners, underlying humanity, internal conflicts, relatability and struggles with his dual alter-ego and his normal life, praising the well-rounded, character-driven and faithful take on the titular character. "The Hollywood Reporter" placed Maguire's portrayal of Spider-Man as the tenth greatest superhero film portrayal of all time. "Entertainment Weekly" placed him as the tenth coolest hero of all time. Andrew Garfield, his successor to the role has described Maguire as "my Spider-Man hero".


title: Peter Parker (Sam Raimi film series)

text: Nick Philpott of Comic Book Resources placed Maguire's version as the 4th best take on Spider-Man, this being lower than both Andrew Garfield's and Tom Holland's take on the web-slinger, opining that he has the effect of the comic book version despite being too old for the role of the character. "The Hollywood Reporter" thought Maguire's portrayal of Spider-Man had less wit than his comicbook counterpart, but still praised him for his sincere, depthful portrayal of the more flawed, human side of the character. Several have shown polarized responses to Maguire's acting when he is possessed by the Venom symbiote in "Spider-Man 3", particularly a scene in which he dances that has been described as "infamous". The possessed Peter has been nicknamed "Emo Peter" or "Bully Maguire" by fans and his scenes have become a popular internet meme.


title: Peter Parker (Sam Raimi film series)

text: Maguire's appearance in "No Way Home" was met with a highly positive reception from both fans and critics. Subsequently, a fan campaign using the hashtag #MakeRaimiSpiderMan4 began on Twitter advocating for Sony to produce a fourth film in the "Spider-Man" series, with Maguire and Dunst reprising their roles.


title: Paramount leader

text: Paramount leader () is an informal term for the most important political figure in the People's Republic of China (PRC). The paramount leader typically controls the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the People's Liberation Army (PLA), often holding the titles of CCP General Secretary and Chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC). The head of state (president) or head of government (premier) are not necessarily paramount leader—under China's party-state system, CCP roles are politically more important than state titles.


title: Paramount leader

text: The paramount leader is not a formal position nor an office unto itself. The term gained prominence during the era of Deng Xiaoping (1978–1989), when he was able to wield political power without holding any official or formally significant party or government positions at any given time (head of state, head of government or CCP General Secretary). As the leader of the world's largest economy by GDP purchasing power parity (PPP), the second largest economy by nominal GDP, and a potential superpower, the paramount leader is considered to be one of the world's most powerful political figures.


title: Paramount leader

text: There has been significant overlap between paramount leader status and leadership core status, with a majority but not all of paramount leaders being also leadership cores, though they are separate concepts. The term has been used less frequently to describe Deng's successors, Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping, who have all formally held the offices of General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (party leader), President of the People's Republic of China (head of state) and Chairman of the Central Military Commission (commander-in-chief). Jiang, Hu and Xi are therefore usually referred to as president in the international scene, the title used by most other republican heads of state. However, Deng's successors derive their real power from the post of general secretary, which is the primary position in the Chinese power structure and generally regarded by scholars as the post whose holder can be considered paramount leader. The president is a largely ceremonial office according to the Constitution, and the most powerful position in the Chinese political system is the CCP general secretary.


title: Paramount leader

text: Xi Jinping is the current paramount leader. He is considered to have taken on the role in November 2012, when he became CCP general secretary, rather than in March 2013 when he succeeded Hu Jintao as president. The position of general secretary is the highest authority leading China's National People's Congress, State Council, Political Consultative Conference, Supreme People's Court and Supreme People's Procuratorate in Xi's administration.


title: Paramount leader

text: Chairman Mao Zedong was the undisputed ruler of Communist China from its beginning in 1949 and held three chairman offices at once: Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, Chairman of the Central Military Commission and Chairman of the People's Republic of China (1954–1959), making him the leader of the party, military and state, respectively. Following the Cultural Revolution, a rough consensus emerged within the party that the worst excesses were caused by the lack of checks and balances in the exercise of political power and the resulting "rule of personality" by Mao. Beginning in the 1980s, the leadership experimented with a quasi-separation of powers, whereby the offices of general secretary, president and premier were held by different people.


title: Paramount leader

text: In 1985, for example, the CCP General Secretary was Hu Yaobang, the Chinese President was Li Xiannian and the Chinese Premier was Zhao Ziyang. However, Deng Xiaoping was still recognized as the core of the leadership during this period. Both Hu and Zhao fell out of favour in the late 1980s, but Deng was able to retain ultimate political control.


title: Paramount leader

text: The paramount leader label has been applied to Deng's successors, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, though it is generally recognized that they did not wield as much power as Deng despite their having held more offices of leadership. There has also been a greater emphasis on collective leadership, whereby the top leader is a first among equals style figure, exercising power with the consensus of the CCP Politburo Standing Committee. This was particularly apparent during the tenure of Hu Jintao. Beginning in 1993, Jiang formally held the three offices that made him the head of the party, state, and military:


title: Paramount leader

text: When Jiang left the offices of General Secretary and President in 2002 and 2003, respectively, he held onto the position of Chairman of the Central Military Commission. Military power had always been an important facet in the exercise of political power in Communist-ruled China and as such holding the top military post meant that Jiang retained some formal power. When Jiang stepped down from his formal posts between 2002 and 2004, it was ambiguous who the paramount leader was at the time. Hu Jintao held the same trio of positions during his years in power. Hu transferred all three positions onto his successor Xi Jinping between November 2012, when Xi became CCP General Secretary and Chairman of the Central Military Commission; and March 2013, when Xi became president. Since Xi's ascendance to power, two new bodies, the National Security Commission and Central Comprehensively Deepening Reforms Commission, have been established, ostensibly concentrating political power in the paramount leader to a greater degree than anyone since Deng. These bodies were tasked with establishing the general policy direction for national security as well as the agenda for economic reform. Both groups are headed by the General Secretary.


title: Paramount leader

text: All six leaders have had a spouse during their terms of office.The current spouse is Peng Liyuan, wife of General Secretary Xi Jinping.


title: Joanna Cassidy

text: Joanna Cassidy (born Joanna Virginia Caskey, August 2, 1945) is an American actress. She is known for her roles as the replicant Zhora Salome in "Blade Runner" (1982) and Dolores in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" (1988). She has won a Golden Globe Award, was nominated for three Emmy Awards and also was nominated for a Saturn Award and Screen Actors Guild Awards.


title: Joanna Cassidy

text: Cassidy also has starred in films such as "Under Fire" (1983), "The Fourth Protocol" (1987), "The Package" (1989), "Where the Heart Is" (1990), "Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead" (1991), "Vampire in Brooklyn" (1995), and "Ghosts of Mars" (2001). From 2001 to 2005, she played Margaret Chenowith on the HBO drama series "Six Feet Under" for which she received Primetime Emmy Award and Screen Actors Guild Award nominations. From 2011 to 2013, she played Joan Hunt on the ABC series "Body of Proof", and from 2010 to 2013 starred in the HBO Canada comedy series "Call Me Fitz" for which she won two Canadian Screen Awards.


title: Joanna Cassidy

text: Cassidy was born Joanna Virginia Caskey in Camden, New Jersey, the daughter of Virginia and Joe Caskey. She was raised in Haddonfield, and attended Haddonfield Memorial High School, and has described herself as being "a rowdy kid" there. She is known for her infectious, howling laugh which can be heard in the film "The Laughing Policeman" and on her appearances on "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson".


title: Joanna Cassidy

text: Cassidy majored in art at Syracuse University. During her time there, she married Kennard C. Kobrin in 1964, a doctor in residency, and found work as a fashion model. They moved to San Francisco, where her husband set up a psychiatric practice while Cassidy continued modeling. They had a son and a daughter together. In 1968, she landed a bit part in "Bullitt".


title: Joanna Cassidy

text: Cassidy's first film appearance was in "The Outfit" (1973). She appeared in a 1973 Smokey Bear public service announcement (PSA), and on such television series as "", "Starsky & Hutch" and "Taxi". She had a small role in "Stay Hungry" (1976), a film about bodybuilding that featured a young Arnold Schwarzenegger. Cassidy was considered for the role of Wonder Woman for a television series, but lost it to Lynda Carter. She co-starred in the film "Our Winning Season" (1978). Her first regular role was as sheriff's pilot Morgan Wainwright in the action-adventure series "240-Robert" (1979), although the series only lasted for two abbreviated seasons. Afterwards, Cassidy continued to appear in guest roles in series such as "Dallas" and "Falcon Crest", as well as a regular role on the short-lived sitcom "Buffalo Bill" (1983) (for which she earned a Golden Globe Award). She starred on the short-lived NBC television series "Code Name: Foxfire" (1985).


title: Joanna Cassidy

text: In 1982, Cassidy had her first major feature film role as the replicant snake performer Zhora Salome in Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner". The following year, she co-starred in "Under Fire" with Gene Hackman and Nick Nolte. She continued to appear in both films and television; she co-starred in the television miniseries "Hollywood Wives" (1985), and appeared in "The Fourth Protocol" (1987), "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" (1988), "1969", "The Package" (1989), "Where the Heart Is" (1990) and "Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead" (1991). In 1993, she co-starred with Dudley Moore on the sitcom "Dudley", but the series only lasted for six episodes. She played the ex-wife of James Garner's lead character in the television movie, "The Rockford Files: I Still Love L.A." (1994).


title: Joanna Cassidy

text: Her other screen credits from this era include "Barbarians at the Gate" (1993), the miniseries adaptation of Stephen King's "The Tommyknockers" (1993), and Wes Craven's "Vampire in Brooklyn" (1995). Cassidy also provided the voice of Inspector Maggie Sawyer on The WB series "", and had recurring guest roles on television series such as "L.A. Law", "Melrose Place", "", and "The District".


title: Joanna Cassidy

text: Since 2000, Cassidy has appeared in the film "Ghosts of Mars" (2001) directed by John Carpenter, and had a recurring role as Margaret Chenowith on the HBO drama series "Six Feet Under", for which she received Emmy Award and Screen Actors Guild Award nominations. In 2004, she guest-starred in three episodes of "" as T'Les (the Vulcan mother of "Enterprise" crewmember T'Pol), and she had a recurring role as Beverly Bridge on the series "Boston Legal" in 2006. She voiced the villainess Hecubah in the computer game "Nox" (2000) and once again voiced the character of Maggie Sawyer in the 2002 video game "".


title: Joanna Cassidy

text: In the spring of 2007, Cassidy donned Zhora's costume once more, 25 years after the release of "Blade Runner", to recreate a climactic scene from the film for the fall 2007 "Final Cut" release of the film. In the original 1982 release, a stunt performer played out Zhora's death scene, with the physical differences between the performer and Cassidy very evident (including the stuntwoman wearing a different wig). For the "Final Cut", Cassidy's head was digitally transposed onto footage of the stunt performer, making the death scene fit continuity. According to the DVD featurette, "All Our Variant Futures", it was Cassidy herself who suggested this be done; she is captured on video making the suggestion during filming of a retrospective interview related to "Blade Runner".


title: Joanna Cassidy

text: In the second season of the NBC series "Heroes", she is seen in a photo of the 12 senior members of the show's mysterious company. Beyond appearances in photographs, the actress first appeared as Victoria Pratt in the 10th episode of season two, "Truth & Consequences", during which her character was killed.


title: Joanna Cassidy

text: In 2008–2009, Cassidy appeared in episodes of "Ghost Whisperer", "Desperate Housewives", "", and was also seen in the recurring guest role of Amanda Hawthorne, the mother-in-law of Jada Pinkett Smith's eponymous character on the medical drama "Hawthorne".


title: Joanna Cassidy

text: In 2011, Cassidy began to appear in a recurring role on the ABC series "Body of Proof" as Judge Joan Hunt, the mother of Megan Hunt, Dana Delany's character on the series. The series was canceled by ABC after three seasons in May 2013. In 2015, Cassidy was cast as a main character in the Bravo scripted series Odd Mom Out. She plays the role of Candace Von Weber, a snobbish Upper East Side socialite and mother-in-law to the show's protagonist Jill Weber (Jill Kargman). The series was canceled in 2017. In 2019, she co-starred in the Amazon Prime miniseries "Too Old to Die Young" and later had a recurring role on "".


title: Tosca

text: Tosca is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa. It premiered at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome on 14 January 1900. The work, based on Victorien Sardou's 1887 French-language dramatic play, "La Tosca", is a melodramatic piece set in Rome in June 1800, with the Kingdom of Naples's control of Rome threatened by Napoleon's invasion of Italy. It contains depictions of torture, murder, and suicide, as well as some of Puccini's best-known lyrical arias.


title: Tosca

text: Puccini saw Sardou's play when it was touring Italy in 1889 and, after some vacillation, obtained the rights to turn the work into an opera in 1895. Turning the wordy French play into a succinct Italian opera took four years, during which the composer repeatedly argued with his librettists and publisher. "Tosca" premiered at a time of unrest in Rome, and its first performance was delayed for a day for fear of disturbances. Despite indifferent reviews from the critics, the opera was an immediate success with the public.


title: Tosca

text: Musically, "Tosca" is structured as a through-composed work, with arias, recitative, choruses and other elements musically woven into a seamless whole. Puccini used Wagnerian leitmotifs to identify characters, objects and ideas. While critics have often dismissed the opera as a facile melodrama with confusions of plot—musicologist Joseph Kerman famously called it a "shabby little shocker"—the power of its score and the inventiveness of its orchestration have been widely acknowledged. The dramatic force of "Tosca" and its characters continues to fascinate both performers and audiences, and the work remains one of the most frequently performed operas. Many recordings of the work have been issued, both of studio and live performances.


title: Tosca

text: The French playwright Victorien Sardou wrote more than 70 plays, almost all of them successful, and none of them performed today. In the early 1880s Sardou began a collaboration with actress Sarah Bernhardt, whom he provided with a series of historical melodramas. His third Bernhardt play, "La Tosca", which premiered in Paris on 24 November 1887, and in which she starred throughout Europe, was an outstanding success, with more than 3,000 performances in France alone.


title: Tosca

text: Puccini had seen "La Tosca" at least twice, in Milan and Turin. On 7 May 1889 he wrote to his publisher, Giulio Ricordi, begging him to get Sardou's permission for the work to be made into an opera: "I see in this "Tosca" the opera I need, with no overblown proportions, no elaborate spectacle, nor will it call for the usual excessive amount of music."


title: Tosca

text: Ricordi sent his agent in Paris, Emanuele Muzio, to negotiate with Sardou, who preferred that his play be adapted by a French composer. He complained about the reception "La Tosca" had received in Italy, particularly in Milan, and warned that other composers were interested in the piece. Nonetheless, Ricordi reached terms with Sardou and assigned the librettist Luigi Illica to write a scenario for an adaptation.


title: Tosca

text: In 1891, Illica advised Puccini against the project, most likely because he felt the play could not be successfully adapted to a musical form. When Sardou expressed his unease at entrusting his most successful work to a relatively new composer whose music he did not like, Puccini took offence. He withdrew from the agreement, which Ricordi then assigned to the composer Alberto Franchetti. Illica wrote a libretto for Franchetti, who was never at ease with the assignment.


title: Tosca

text: When Puccini once again became interested in "Tosca", Ricordi was able to get Franchetti to surrender the rights so he could recommission Puccini. One story relates that Ricordi convinced Franchetti that the work was too violent to be successfully staged. A Franchetti family tradition holds that Franchetti gave the work back as a grand gesture, saying, "He has more talent than I do." American scholar Deborah Burton contends that Franchetti gave it up simply because he saw little merit in it and could not feel the music in the play. Whatever the reason, Franchetti surrendered the rights in May 1895, and in August Puccini signed a contract to resume control of the project.


title: Tosca

text: According to the libretto, the action of "Tosca" occurs in Rome in June 1800. Sardou, in his play, dates it more precisely; "La Tosca" takes place in the afternoon, evening, and early morning of 17 and 18 June 1800.


title: Tosca

text: Italy had long been divided into a number of small states, with the Pope in Rome ruling the Papal States in Central Italy. Following the French Revolution, a French army under Napoleon invaded Italy in 1796, entering Rome almost unopposed on 11 February 1798 and establishing a republic there. Pope Pius VI was taken prisoner, and was sent into exile on February 20, 1798. (Pius VI would die in exile in 1799, and his successor, Pius VII, who was elected in Venice on 14 March 1800, would not enter Rome until July 3. There is thus neither a Pope nor papal government in Rome during the days depicted in the opera.) The new republic was ruled by seven consuls; in the opera this is the office formerly held by Angelotti, whose character may be based on the real-life consul Liborio Angelucci. In September 1799 the French, who had protected the republic, withdrew from Rome. As they left, troops of the Kingdom of Naples occupied the city.


title: Tosca

text: In May 1800 Napoleon, by then the undisputed leader of France, brought his troops across the Alps to Italy once again. On 14 June his army met the Austrian forces at the Battle of Marengo (near Alessandria). Austrian troops were initially successful; by mid-morning they were in control of the field of battle. Their commander, Michael von Melas, sent this news south towards Rome. However, fresh French troops arrived in late afternoon, and Napoleon attacked the tired Austrians. As Melas retreated in disarray with the remains of his army, he sent a second courier south with the revised message. The Neapolitans abandoned Rome, and the city spent the next fourteen years under French domination.


title: Tosca

text: Cesare Angelotti, former consul of the Roman Republic and now an escaped political prisoner, runs into the church and hides in the Attavanti private chapel – his sister, the Marchesa Attavanti, has left a key to the chapel hidden at the feet of the statue of the Madonna. The elderly Sacristan enters and begins cleaning. The Sacristan kneels in prayer as the Angelus sounds.


title: Tosca

text: The painter Mario Cavaradossi arrives to continue work on his picture of Mary Magdalene. The Sacristan identifies a likeness between the portrait and a blonde-haired woman who has been visiting the church recently (unknown to him, it is Angelotti's sister the Marchesa). Cavaradossi describes the "hidden harmony" ("Recondita armonia") in the contrast between the blonde beauty of his painting and his dark-haired lover, the singer Floria Tosca. The Sacristan mumbles his disapproval before leaving.


title: Tosca

text: Angelotti emerges and tells Cavaradossi, an old friend who has republican sympathies, that he is being pursued by the Chief of Police, Baron Scarpia. Cavaradossi promises to assist him after nightfall. Tosca's voice is heard, calling to Cavaradossi. Cavaradossi gives Angelotti his basket of food and Angelotti hurriedly returns to his hiding place.


title: Tosca

text: Tosca enters and suspiciously asks Cavaradossi what he has been doing – she thinks that he has been talking to another woman. After Cavaradossi reassures her, Tosca tries to persuade him to take her to his villa that evening: "Non la sospiri, la nostra casetta" ("Do you not long for our little cottage"). She then expresses jealousy over the woman in the painting, whom she recognises as the Marchesa Attavanti. Cavaradossi explains the likeness; he has merely observed the Marchesa at prayer in the church. He reassures Tosca of his fidelity and asks her what eyes could be more beautiful than her own: "Qual'occhio al mondo" ("What eyes in the world").


title: Tosca

text: After Tosca has left, Angelotti reappears and discusses with the painter his plan to flee disguised as a woman, using clothes left in the chapel by his sister. Cavaradossi gives Angelotti a key to his villa, suggesting that he hide in a disused well in the garden. The sound of a cannon signals that Angelotti's escape has been discovered. He and Cavaradossi hasten out of the church.


title: Tosca

text: The Sacristan re-enters with choristers, celebrating the news that Napoleon has apparently been defeated at Marengo. The celebrations cease abruptly with the entry of Scarpia, his henchman Spoletta and several police agents. They have heard that Angelotti has sought refuge in the church. Scarpia orders a search, and the empty food basket and a fan bearing the Attavanti coat of arms are found in the chapel. Scarpia questions the Sacristan, and his suspicions are aroused further when he learns that Cavaradossi has been in the church; Scarpia mistrusts the painter, and believes him complicit in Angelotti's escape.


title: Tosca

text: When Tosca arrives looking for her lover, Scarpia artfully arouses her jealous instincts by implying a relationship between the painter and the Marchesa Attavanti. He draws Tosca's attention to the fan and suggests that someone must have surprised the lovers in the chapel. Tosca falls for his deceit; enraged, she rushes off to confront Cavaradossi. Scarpia orders Spoletta and his agents to follow her, assuming she will lead them to Cavaradossi and Angelotti. He privately gloats as he reveals his intentions to possess Tosca and execute Cavaradossi. A procession enters the church singing the Te Deum; exclaiming 'Tosca, you make me forget even God!', Scarpia joins the chorus in the prayer.


title: Tosca

text: Scarpia, at supper, sends a note to Tosca asking her to come to his apartment, anticipating that two of his goals will soon be fulfilled at once. His agent, Spoletta, arrives to report that Angelotti remains at large, but Cavaradossi has been arrested for questioning. He is brought in, and an interrogation ensues. As the painter steadfastly denies knowing anything about Angelotti's escape, Tosca's voice is heard singing a celebratory cantata elsewhere in the Palace.


title: Tosca

text: She enters the apartment in time to see Cavaradossi being escorted to an antechamber. All he has time to say is that she mustn't tell them anything. Scarpia then claims she can save her lover from indescribable pain if she reveals Angelotti's hiding place. She resists, but the sound of screams coming through the door eventually breaks her down, and she tells Scarpia to search the well in the garden of Cavaradossi's villa.


title: Tosca

text: Scarpia orders his torturers to cease, and the bloodied painter is dragged back in. He is devastated to discover that Tosca has betrayed his friend. Sciarrone, another agent, then enters with news: there was an upset on the battlefield at Marengo, and the French are marching on Rome. Cavaradossi, unable to contain himself, gloats to Scarpia that his rule of terror will soon be at an end. This is enough for the police to consider him guilty, and they haul him away to be executed.


title: Tosca

text: Scarpia, now alone with Tosca, proposes a bargain: if she gives herself to him, Cavaradossi will be freed. She is revolted, and repeatedly rejects his advances, but she hears the drums outside announcing an execution. As Scarpia awaits her decision, she prays, asking why God has abandoned her in her hour of need: "Vissi d'arte" ("I lived for art"). She tries to offer money, but Scarpia is not interested in that kind of bribe: he wants Tosca herself.


title: Tosca

text: Spoletta returns with the news that Angelotti has killed himself upon discovery, and that everything is in place for Cavaradossi's execution. Scarpia hesitates to give the order, looking to Tosca, and despairingly she agrees to submit to him. He tells Spoletta to arrange a mock execution, both men repeating that it will be "as we did with Count Palmieri", and Spoletta exits.


title: Tosca

text: Tosca insists that Scarpia must provide safe-conduct out of Rome for herself and Cavaradossi. He easily agrees to this and heads to his desk. While he's drafting the document, she quietly takes a knife from the supper table. Scarpia triumphantly strides toward Tosca. When he begins to embrace her, she stabs him, crying "this is Tosca's kiss!" Once she's certain he's dead, she ruefully says "now I forgive him." She removes the safe-conduct from his pocket, lights candles in a gesture of piety, and places a crucifix on the body before leaving.


title: Tosca

text: A shepherd boy is heard offstage singing (in Romanesco dialect) "Io de' sospiri" ("I give you sighs") as church bells sound for matins. The guards lead Cavaradossi in and a jailer informs him that he has one hour to live. He declines to see a priest, but asks permission to write a letter to Tosca. He begins to write, but is soon overwhelmed by memories: "E lucevan le stelle" ("And the stars shone").


title: Tosca

text: Tosca enters and shows him the safe-conduct pass she has obtained, adding that she has killed Scarpia and that the imminent execution is a sham. Cavaradossi must feign death, after which they can flee together before Scarpia's body is discovered. Cavaradossi is awestruck by his gentle lover's courage: "O dolci mani" ("Oh sweet hands"). The pair ecstatically imagine the life they will share, far from Rome. Tosca then anxiously coaches Cavaradossi on how to play dead when the firing squad shoots at him with blanks. He promises he will fall "like Tosca in the theatre".


title: Tosca

text: Cavaradossi is led away, and Tosca watches with increasing impatience as the firing squad prepares. The men fire, and Tosca praises the realism of his fall, "Ecco un artista!" ("What an actor!"). Once the soldiers have left, she hurries towards Cavaradossi, urging him, "Mario, su presto!" ("Mario, up quickly!"), only to find that Scarpia betrayed her: the bullets were real. Heartbroken, she clasps her lover's lifeless body and weeps.


title: Tosca

text: The voices of Spoletta, Sciarrone, and the soldiers are heard, shouting that Scarpia is dead and Tosca has killed him. As the men rush in, Tosca rises, evades their clutches, and runs to the parapet. Crying "O Scarpia, avanti a Dio!" ("O Scarpia, we meet before God!"), she flings herself over the edge to her death.


title: Tosca

text: Sardou's five-act play "La Tosca" contains a large amount of dialogue and exposition. While the broad details of the play are present in the opera's plot, the original work contains many more characters and much detail not present in the opera. In the play the lovers are portrayed as though they were French: the character Floria Tosca is closely modelled on Bernhardt's personality, while her lover Cavaradossi, of Roman descent, is born in Paris. Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, the playwright who joined the project to polish the verses, needed not only to cut back the play drastically, but to make the characters' motivations and actions suitable for Italian opera. Giacosa and Puccini repeatedly clashed over the condensation, with Giacosa feeling that Puccini did not really want to complete the project.


title: Tosca

text: The first draft libretto that Illica produced for Puccini resurfaced in 2000 after being lost for many years. It contains considerable differences from the final libretto, relatively minor in the first two acts but much more appreciable in the third, where the description of the Roman dawn that opens the third act is much longer, and Cavaradossi's tragic aria, the eventual "E lucevan le stelle", has different words. The 1896 libretto also offers a different ending, in which Tosca does not die but instead goes mad. In the final scene, she cradles her lover's head in her lap and hallucinates that she and her Mario are on a gondola, and that she is asking the gondolier for silence. Sardou refused to consider this change, insisting that as in the play, Tosca must throw herself from the parapet to her death. Puccini agreed with Sardou, telling him that the mad scene would have the audiences anticipate the ending and start moving towards the cloakrooms. Puccini pressed his librettists hard, and Giacosa issued a series of melodramatic threats to abandon the work. The two librettists were finally able to give Puccini what they hoped was a final version of the libretto in 1898.


title: Tosca

text: Little work was done on the score during 1897, which Puccini devoted mostly to performances of "La bohème". The opening page of the autograph "Tosca" score, containing the motif that would be associated with Scarpia, is dated January 1898. At Puccini's request, Giacosa irritably provided new lyrics for the act 1 love duet. In August, Puccini removed several numbers from the opera, according to his biographer, Mary Jane Phillips-Matz, "cut[ting] "Tosca" to the bone, leaving three strong characters trapped in an airless, violent, tightly wound melodrama that had little room for lyricism". At the end of the year, Puccini wrote that he was "busting his balls" on the opera.


title: Tosca

text: Puccini asked clerical friends for words for the congregation to mutter at the start of the act 1 Te Deum; when nothing they provided satisfied him, he supplied the words himself. For the Te Deum music, he investigated the melodies to which the hymn was set in Roman churches, and sought to reproduce the cardinal's procession authentically, even to the uniforms of the Swiss Guards. He adapted the music to the exact pitch of the great bell of St. Peter's Basilica, and was equally diligent when writing the music that opens act 3, in which Rome awakens to the sounds of church bells. He journeyed to Rome and went to the Castel Sant'Angelo to measure the sound of matins bells there, as they would be heard from its ramparts. Puccini had bells for the Roman dawn cast to order by four different foundries. This apparently did not have its desired effect, as Illica wrote to Ricordi on the day after the premiere, "the great fuss and the large amount of money for the bells have constituted an additional folly, because it passes completely unnoticed". Nevertheless, the bells provide a source of trouble and expense to opera companies performing "Tosca" to this day.


title: Tosca

text: In act 2, when Tosca sings offstage the cantata that celebrates the supposed defeat of Napoleon, Puccini was tempted to follow the text of Sardou's play and use the music of Giovanni Paisiello, before finally writing his own imitation of Paisello's style. It was not until 29 September 1899 that Puccini was able to mark the final page of the score as completed. Despite the notation, there was additional work to be done, such as the shepherd boy's song at the start of act 3. Puccini, who always sought to put local colour in his works, wanted that song to be in Roman dialect. The composer asked a friend to have a "good romanesco poet" write some words; eventually the poet and folklorist wrote the verse which, after slight modification, was placed in the opera.


title: Tosca

text: In October 1899, Ricordi realized that some of the music for Cavaradossi's act 3 aria, "O dolci mani" was borrowed from music Puccini had cut from his early opera, "Edgar" and demanded changes. Puccini defended his music as expressive of what Cavaradossi must be feeling at that point, and offered to come to Milan to play and sing act 3 for the publisher. Ricordi was overwhelmed by the completed act 3 prelude, which he received in early November, and softened his views, though he was still not completely happy with the music for "O dolci mani". In any event time was too short before the scheduled January 1900 premiere to make any further changes.


title: Tosca

text: By December 1899, "Tosca" was in rehearsal at the Teatro Costanzi. Because of the Roman setting, Ricordi arranged a Roman premiere for the opera, even though this meant that Arturo Toscanini could not conduct it as Puccini had planned—Toscanini was fully engaged at La Scala in Milan. Leopoldo Mugnone was appointed to conduct. The accomplished (but temperamental) soprano Hariclea Darclée was selected for the title role; Eugenio Giraldoni, whose father had originated many Verdi roles, became the first Scarpia. The young Enrico Caruso had hoped to create the role of Cavaradossi, but was passed over in favour of the more experienced Emilio De Marchi. The performance was to be directed by Nino Vignuzzi, with stage designs by Adolfo Hohenstein.


title: Tosca

text: At the time of the premiere, Italy had experienced political and social unrest for several years. The start of the Holy Year in December 1899 attracted the religious to the city, but also brought threats from anarchists and other anticlericals. Police received warnings of an anarchist bombing of the theatre, and instructed Mugnone (who had survived a theatre bombing in Barcelona), that in an emergency he was to strike up the royal march. The unrest caused the premiere to be postponed by one day, to 14 January.


title: Tosca

text: By 1900, the premiere of a Puccini opera was a national event. Many Roman dignitaries attended, as did Queen Margherita, though she arrived late, after the first act. The Prime Minister of Italy, Luigi Pelloux was present, with several members of his cabinet. A number of Puccini's operatic rivals were there, including Franchetti, Pietro Mascagni, Francesco Cilea and Ildebrando Pizzetti. Shortly after the curtain was raised there was a disturbance in the back of the theatre, caused by latecomers attempting to enter the auditorium, and a shout of "Bring down the curtain!", at which Mugnone stopped the orchestra. A few moments later the opera began again, and proceeded without further disruption.


title: Tosca

text: The performance, while not quite the triumph that Puccini had hoped for, was generally successful, with numerous encores. Much of the critical and press reaction was lukewarm, often blaming Illica's libretto. In response, Illica condemned Puccini for treating his librettists "like stagehands" and reducing the text to a shadow of its original form. Nevertheless, any public doubts about "Tosca" soon vanished; the premiere was followed by twenty performances, all given to packed houses.


title: Tosca

text: The Milan premiere at La Scala took place under Toscanini on 17 March 1900. Darclée and Giraldoni reprised their roles; the prominent tenor Giuseppe Borgatti replaced De Marchi as Cavaradossi. The opera was a great success at La Scala, and played to full houses. Puccini travelled to London for the British premiere at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, on 12 July, with Milka Ternina and Fernando De Lucia as the doomed lovers and Antonio Scotti as Scarpia. Puccini wrote that "Tosca" was "<nowiki>[a]</nowiki> complete triumph", and Ricordi's London representative quickly signed a contract to take "Tosca" to New York. The premiere at the Metropolitan Opera was on 4 February 1901, with De Lucia's replacement by Giuseppe Cremonini the only change from the London cast. For its French premiere at the Opéra-Comique on 13 October 1903, the 72-year-old Sardou took charge of all the action on the stage. Puccini was delighted with the public's reception of the work in Paris, despite adverse comments from critics. The opera was subsequently premiered at venues throughout Europe, the Americas, Australia and the Far East; by the outbreak of war in 1914 it had been performed in more than 50 cities worldwide.


title: Tosca

text: Among the prominent early Toscas was Emmy Destinn, who sang the role regularly in a long-standing partnership with the tenor Enrico Caruso. Maria Jeritza, over many years at the Met and in Vienna, brought her own distinctive style to the role, and was said to be Puccini's favorite Tosca. Jeritza was the first to deliver "Vissi d'arte" from a prone position, having fallen to the stage while eluding the grasp of Scarpia. This was a great success, and Jeritza sang the aria while on the floor thereafter. Of her successors, opera enthusiasts tend to consider Maria Callas as the supreme interpreter of the role, largely on the basis of her performances at the Royal Opera House in 1964, with Tito Gobbi as Scarpia. This production, by Franco Zeffirelli, remained in continuous use at Covent Garden for more than 40 years until replaced in 2006 by a new staging, which premiered with Angela Gheorghiu. Callas had first sung Tosca at age 18 in a performance given in Greek, in the Greek National Opera in Athens on 27 August 1942. Tosca was also her last on-stage operatic role, in a special charity performance at the Royal Opera House on 7 May 1965.


title: Tosca

text: Among non-traditional productions, Luca Ronconi, in 1996 at La Scala, used distorted and fractured scenery to represent the twists of fate reflected in the plot. Jonathan Miller, in a 1986 production for the 49th "Maggio Musicale Fiorentino", transferred the action to Nazi-occupied Rome in 1944, with Scarpia as head of the fascist police. In production on the Lake Stage at the Bregenz Festival in 2007 the act 1 set, designed by Johannes Leiacker, was dominated by a huge Orwellian "Big Brother" eye. The iris opens and closes to reveal surreal scenes beyond the action. This production updates the story to a modern Mafia scenario, with special effects "worthy of a Bond film".


title: Tosca

text: In 1992 a television version of the opera was filmed at the locations prescribed by Puccini, at the times of day at which each act takes place. Featuring Catherine Malfitano, Plácido Domingo and Ruggero Raimondi, the performance was broadcast live throughout Europe.


title: Tosca

text: Luciano Pavarotti, who sang Cavaradossi from the late 1970s, appeared in a special performance in Rome, with Plácido Domingo as conductor, on 14 January 2000, to celebrate the opera's centenary. Pavarotti's last stage performance was as Cavaradossi at the Met, on 13 March 2004.


title: Tosca

text: Early Cavaradossis played the part as if the painter believed that he was reprieved, and would survive the "mock" execution. Beniamino Gigli, who performed the role many times in his forty-year operatic career, was one of the first to assume that the painter knows, or strongly suspects, that he will be shot. Gigli wrote in his autobiography: "he is certain that these are their last moments together on earth, and that he is about to die". Domingo, the dominant Cavaradossi of the 1970s and 1980s, concurred, stating in a 1985 interview that he had long played the part that way. Gobbi, who in his later years often directed the opera, commented, "Unlike Floria, Cavaradossi knows that Scarpia never yields, though he pretends to believe in order to delay the pain for Tosca."


title: Tosca

text: The enduring popularity of "Tosca" has not been matched by consistent critical enthusiasm. After the premiere, Ippolito Valetta of "Nuova antologia" wrote, "<nowiki>[Puccini]</nowiki> finds in his palette all colours, all shades; in his hands, the instrumental texture becomes completely supple, the gradations of sonority are innumerable, the blend unfailingly grateful to the ear." However, one critic described act 2 as overly long and wordy; another echoed Illica and Giacosa in stating that the rush of action did not permit enough lyricism, to the great detriment of the music. A third called the opera "three hours of noise".


title: Tosca

text: The critics gave the work a generally kinder reception in London, where "The Times" called Puccini "a master in the art of poignant expression", and praised the "wonderful skill and sustained power" of the music. In "The Musical Times", Puccini's score was admired for its sincerity and "strength of utterance." After the 1903 Paris opening, the composer Paul Dukas thought the work lacked cohesion and style, while Gabriel Fauré was offended by "disconcerting vulgarities". In the 1950s, the young musicologist Joseph Kerman described "Tosca" as a "shabby little shocker."; in response the conductor Thomas Beecham remarked that anything Kerman says about Puccini "can safely be ignored". Writing half a century after the premiere, the veteran critic Ernest Newman, while acknowledging the "enormously difficult business of boiling [Sardou's] play down for operatic purposes", thought that the subtleties of Sardou's original plot are handled "very lamely", so that "much of what happens, and why, is unintelligible to the spectator". Overall, however, Newman delivered a more positive judgement: "[Puccini's] operas are to some extent a mere bundle of tricks, but no one else has performed the same tricks nearly as well". Opera scholar Julian Budden remarks on Puccini's "inept handling of the political element", but still hails the work as "a triumph of pure theatre". Music critic Charles Osborne ascribes "Tosca"'s immense popularity with audiences to the taut effectiveness of its melodramatic plot, the opportunities given to its three leading characters to shine vocally and dramatically, and the presence of two great arias in "Vissi d'arte" and "E lucevan le stelle". The work remains popular today: according to Operabase, it ranks as fifth in the world with 540 performances given in the five seasons 2009–10 to 2013–14.


title: Tosca

text: By the end of the 19th century the classic form of opera structure, in which arias, duets and other set-piece vocal numbers are interspersed with passages of recitative or dialogue, had been largely abandoned, even in Italy. Operas were "through-composed", with a continuous stream of music which in some cases eliminated all identifiable set-pieces. In what critic Edward Greenfield calls the "Grand Tune" concept, Puccini retains a limited number of set-pieces, distinguished from their musical surroundings by their memorable melodies. Even in the passages linking these "Grand Tunes", Puccini maintains a strong degree of lyricism and only rarely resorts to recitative.


title: Tosca

text: Budden describes "Tosca" as the most Wagnerian of Puccini's scores, in its use of musical leitmotifs. Unlike Wagner, Puccini does not develop or modify his motifs, nor weave them into the music symphonically, but uses them to refer to characters, objects and ideas, and as reminders within the narrative. The most potent of these motifs is the sequence of three very loud and strident chords which open the opera and which represent the evil character of Scarpia—or perhaps, Charles Osborne proposes, the violent atmosphere that pervades the entire opera. Budden has suggested that Scarpia's tyranny, lechery and lust form "the dynamic engine that ignites the drama". Other motifs identify Tosca herself, the love of Tosca and Cavaradossi, the fugitive Angelotti, the semi-comical character of the sacristan in act 1 and the theme of torture in act 2.


title: Tosca

text: The opera begins without any prelude; the opening chords of the Scarpia motif lead immediately to the agitated appearance of Angelotti and the enunciation of the "fugitive" motif. The sacristan's entry, accompanied by his sprightly buffo theme, lifts the mood, as does the generally light-hearted colloquy with Cavaradossi which follows after the latter's entrance. This leads to the first of the "Grand Tunes", Cavaradossi's "Recondita armonia" with its sustained high B flat, accompanied by the sacristan's grumbling counter-melody. The domination, in that aria, of themes which will be repeated in the love duet make it clear that though the painting may incorporate the Marchesa's features, Tosca is the ultimate inspiration of his work. Cavaradossi's dialogue with Angelotti is interrupted by Tosca's arrival, signalled by her motif which incorporates, in Newman's words, "the feline, caressing cadence so characteristic of her." Though Tosca enters violently and suspiciously, the music paints her devotion and serenity. According to Budden, there is no contradiction: Tosca's jealousy is largely a matter of habit, which her lover does not take too seriously.


title: Tosca

text: After Tosca's "Non la sospiri" and the subsequent argument inspired by her jealousy, the sensuous character of the love duet "Qual'occhio" provides what opera writer Burton Fisher describes as "an almost erotic lyricism that has been called pornophony". The brief scene in which the sacristan returns with the choristers to celebrate Napoleon's supposed defeat provides almost the last carefree moments in the opera; after the entrance of Scarpia to his menacing theme, the mood becomes sombre, then steadily darker. As the police chief interrogates the sacristan, the "fugitive" motif recurs three more times, each time more emphatically, signalling Scarpia's success in his investigation. In Scarpia's exchanges with Tosca the sound of tolling bells, interwoven with the orchestra, creates an almost religious atmosphere, for which Puccini draws on music from his then unpublished Mass of 1880. The final scene in the act is a juxtaposition of the sacred and the profane, as Scarpia's lustful reverie is sung alongside the swelling Te Deum chorus. He joins with the chorus in the final statement "Te aeternum Patrem omnis terra veneratur" ("Everlasting Father, all the earth worships thee"), before the act ends with a thunderous restatement of the Scarpia motif.


title: Tosca

text: In the second act of "Tosca", according to Newman, Puccini rises to his greatest height as a master of the musical macabre. The act begins quietly, with Scarpia musing on the forthcoming downfall of Angelotti and Cavaradossi, while in the background a gavotte is played in a distant quarter of the Farnese Palace. For this music Puccini adapted a fifteen-year-old student exercise by his late brother, Michele, stating that in this way his brother could live again through him. In the dialogue with Spoletta, the "torture" motif—an "ideogram of suffering", according to Budden—is heard for the first time as a foretaste of what is to come. As Cavaradossi is brought in for interrogation, Tosca's voice is heard with the offstage chorus singing a cantata, "[its] suave strains contrast[ing] dramatically with the increasing tension and ever-darkening colour of the stage action". The cantata is most likely the "Cantata a Giove", in the literature referred to as a lost work of Puccini's from 1897.


title: Tosca

text: Osborne describes the scenes that follow—Cavaradossi's interrogation, his torture, Scarpia's sadistic tormenting of Tosca—as Puccini's musical equivalent of "grand guignol" to which Cavaradossi's brief "Vittoria! Vittoria!" on the news of Napoleon's victory gives only partial relief. Scarpia's aria "Già, mi dicon venal" ("Yes, they say I am venal") is closely followed by Tosca's "Vissi d'arte". A lyrical andante based on Tosca's act 1 motif, this is perhaps the opera's best-known aria, yet was regarded by Puccini as a mistake; he considered eliminating it since it held up the action. Fisher calls it "a Job-like prayer questioning God for punishing a woman who has lived unselfishly and righteously". In the act's finale, Newman likens the orchestral turmoil which follows Tosca's stabbing of Scarpia to the sudden outburst after the slow movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. After Tosca's contemptuous "E avanti a lui tremava tutta Roma!" ("All Rome trembled before him"), sung on a middle C monotone (sometimes spoken), the music gradually fades, ending what Newman calls "the most impressively macabre scene in all opera." The final notes in the act are those of the Scarpia motif, softly, in a minor key.


title: Tosca

text: The third act's tranquil beginning provides a brief respite from the drama. An introductory 16-bar theme for the horns will later be sung by Cavaradossi and Tosca in their final duet. The orchestral prelude which follows portrays the Roman dawn; the pastoral aura is accentuated by the shepherd boy's song, and the sounds of sheep bells and church bells, the authenticity of the latter validated by Puccini's early morning visits to Rome. Themes reminiscent of Scarpia, Tosca and Cavaradossi emerge in the music, which changes tone as the drama resumes with Cavaradossi's entrance, to an orchestral statement of what becomes the melody of his aria "E lucevan le stelle".


title: Tosca

text: This is a farewell to love and life, "an anguished lament and grief built around the words 'muoio disperato' (I die in despair)". Puccini insisted on the inclusion of these words, and later stated that admirers of the aria had treble cause to be grateful to him: for composing the music, for having the lyrics written, and "for declining expert advice to throw the result in the waste-paper basket". The lovers' final duet "Amaro sol per te", which concludes with the act's opening horn music, did not equate with Ricordi's idea of a transcendental love duet which would be a fitting climax to the opera. Puccini justified his musical treatment by citing Tosca's preoccupation with teaching Cavaradossi to feign death.


title: Tosca

text: In the execution scene which follows, a theme emerges, the incessant repetition of which reminded Newman of the Transformation Music which separates the two parts of act 1 in Wagner's "Parsifal". In the final bars, as Tosca evades Spoletta and leaps to her death, the theme of "E lucevan le stelle" is played "tutta forze" (as loudly as possible). This choice of ending has been strongly criticised by analysts, mainly because of its specific association with Cavaradossi rather than Tosca. Kerman mocked the final music, "Tosca leaps, and the orchestra screams the first thing that comes into its head." Budden, however, argues that it is entirely logical to end this dark opera on its blackest theme. According to historian and former opera singer Susan Vandiver Nicassio: "The conflict between the verbal and the musical clues gives the end of the opera a twist of controversy that, barring some unexpected discovery among Puccini's papers, can never truly be resolved."


title: Tosca

text: "Tosca" is scored for three flutes (the second and third doubling piccolo); two oboes; one English horn; two clarinets in B-flat; one bass clarinet in B-flat; two bassoons; one contrabassoon; four French horns in F; three trumpets in F; three tenor trombones; one bass trombone; a percussion section with timpani, cymbals, cannon, one triangle, one bass drum, one glockenspiel, and six church bells; one celesta, one pipe organ; one harp; and strings.


title: Tosca

text: The first complete "Tosca" recording was made in 1918, using the acoustic process. The conductor, Carlo Sabajno, had been the Gramophone Company's house conductor since 1904; he had made early complete recordings of several operas, including Verdi's "La traviata" and "Rigoletto", before tackling "Tosca" with a largely unknown cast, featuring the Italian soprano Lya Remondini in the title role. The next year, in 1919, Sabajno recorded "Tosca" again, this time with more well-known singers, including Valentina Bartolomasi and Attilio Salvaneschi as Tosca and Cavaradossi. Ten years later, in 1929, Sabajno returned to the opera for the third time, recording it, by the electrical process, with the orchestra and chorus of the Teatro alla Scala and with stars Carmen Melis and Apollo Granforte in the roles of Tosca and Scarpia. In 1938 HMV secured the services of the renowned tenor Beniamino Gigli, together with the soprano Maria Caniglia as Tosca and conductor Oliviero De Fabritiis, for a "practically complete" recording that extended over 14 double-sided shellac discs.


title: Tosca

text: In the post-war period, following the invention of long-playing records, "Tosca" recordings were dominated by Maria Callas. In 1953, with conductor Victor de Sabata and the La Scala forces, she made the recording for EMI which for decades has been considered the best of all the recorded performances of the opera. She recorded the role again for EMI in stereo in 1964. A number of Callas's live stage performances of "Tosca" were also preserved. The earliest were two performances in Mexico City, in 1950 and 1952, and the last was in London in 1965. The first stereo recording of the opera was made in 1957 by RCA Victor. Erich Leinsdorf conducted the Rome Opera House orchestra and chorus with Zinka Milanov as Tosca, Jussi Björling as Cavaradossi and Leonard Warren as Scarpia. Herbert von Karajan's acclaimed performance with the Vienna State Opera was in 1963, with Leontyne Price, Giuseppe Di Stefano and Giuseppe Taddei in the leading roles.


title: Tosca

text: The 1970s and 1980s saw a proliferation of "Tosca" recordings of both studio and live performances. Plácido Domingo made his first recording of Cavaradossi for RCA in 1972, and he continued to record other versions at regular intervals until 1994. In 1976, he was joined by his son, Plácido Domingo Jr., who sang the shepherd boy's song in a filmed version with the New Philharmonia Orchestra. More recent commended recordings have included Antonio Pappano's 2000 Royal Opera House version with Angela Gheorghiu, Roberto Alagna and Ruggero Raimondi. Recordings of "Tosca" in languages other than Italian are rare but not unknown; over the years versions in French, German, Spanish, Hungarian and Russian have been issued. An admired English language version was released in 1995 in which David Parry led the Philharmonia Orchestra and a largely British cast. Since the late 1990s numerous video recordings of the opera have been issued on DVD and Blu-ray disc (BD). These include recent productions and remastered versions of historic performances.


title: Tosca

text: The orchestral score of "Tosca" was published in late 1899 by Casa Ricordi. Despite some dissatisfaction expressed by Ricordi concerning the final act, the score remained relatively unchanged in the 1909 edition. An unamended edition was published by Dover Press in 1991.


title: Tosca

text: The 1909 score contains a number of minor changes from the autograph score. Some are changes of phrase: Cavaradossi's reply to the sacristan when he asks if the painter is doing penance is changed from "Pranzai" ("I have eaten.") to "Fame non ho" ("I am not hungry."), which William Ashbrook states, in his study of Puccini's operas, accentuates the class distinction between the two. When Tosca comforts Cavaradossi after the torture scene, she now tells him, "Ma il giusto Iddio lo punirá" ("But a just God will punish him" <nowiki> [Scarpia]</nowiki>); formerly she stated, "Ma il sozzo sbirro lo pagherà" ("But the filthy cop will pay for it."). Other changes are in the music; when Tosca demands the price for Cavaradossi's freedom ("Il prezzo!"), her music is changed to eliminate an octave leap, allowing her more opportunity to express her contempt and loathing of Scarpia in a passage which is now near the middle of the soprano vocal range. A remnant of a "Latin Hymn" sung by Tosca and Cavaradossi in act 3 survived into the first published score and libretto, but is not in later versions. According to Ashbrook, the most surprising change is where, after Tosca discovers the truth about the "mock" execution and exclaims "Finire così? Finire così?" ("To end like this? To end like this?"), she was to sing a five-bar fragment to the melody of "E lucevan le stelle". Ashbrook applauds Puccini for deleting the section from a point in the work where delay is almost unendurable as events rush to their conclusion, but points out that the orchestra's recalling "E lucevan le stelle" in the final notes would seem less incongruous if it was meant to underscore Tosca's and Cavaradossi's love for each other, rather than being simply a melody which Tosca never hears.


title: Lala Lajpat Rai

text: Lala Lajpat Rai (28 January 1865 - 17 November 1928) was an Indian author, freedom fighter, and politician. He played a vital role in the Indian Independence movement. He was popularly known as Punjab Kesari. He was one of the three members of the Lal Bal Pal trimurti. He was also associated with management activities of Punjab National Bank in early years and Lakshmi Insurance Company in their early stages in 1894. He died of a severe head injury after 18 days of trauma injuries during a baton charge by police in Lahore, when he led a peaceful protest march against the all-British Simon Commission Indian constitutional reforms.


title: Lala Lajpat Rai

text: Lala Lajpat Rai was born on 28 January 1865 into an Agrawal Jain family as the eldest son of six children of Munshi Radha Krishna, an Urdu and Persian government school teacher and Gulab Devi Aggarwal at Dhudike in the Faridkot district of the Punjab Province of British India (now in Moga district, Punjab, India). He spent much of his youth in Jagraon. His house still stands in Jagraon and houses a library and museum. He also built the first educational institute R.K. High school in Jagraon.


title: Lala Lajpat Rai

text: In the late 1870s, his father was transferred to Rewari, where he had his initial education in Government Higher Secondary School, Rewari, Punjab province, where his father was posted as an Urdu teacher. In 1880, Lajpat Rai joined Government College at Lahore to study law, where he came in contact with patriots and future freedom fighters, such as Lala Hans Raj and Pandit Guru Dutt. While studying at Lahore he was influenced by the Hindu reformist movement of Swami Dayanand Saraswati, became a member of existing Arya Samaj Lahore (founded 1877) and founder-editor of Lahore-based "Arya Gazette".


title: Lala Lajpat Rai

text: In 1884, his father was transferred to Rohtak, and Rai came along after the completion of his studies at Lahore. In 1886, he moved to Hisar where his father was transferred, and started to practise law and became a founding member of the Bar council of Hisar along with Babu Churamani. In the same year he also founded the Hisar district branch of the Indian National Congress and reformist Arya Samaj with Babu Churamani (lawyer), three Tayal brothers (Chandu Lal Tayal, Hari Lal Tayal and Balmokand Tayal), Dr. Ramji Lal Hooda, Dr. Dhani Ram, Arya Samaj "Pandit Murari Lal", Seth Chhaju Ram Jat (founder of Jat School, Hisar) and Dev Raj Sandhir. In 1888 and again in 1889, he had the honor of being one of the four delegates from Hisar to attend the annual session of the Congress at Allahabad, along with Babu Churamani, Lala Chhabil Das and Seth Gauri Shankar. In 1892, he moved to Lahore to practise before the Lahore High Court. To shape the political policy of India to gain independence. He also practised journalism, and was a regular contributor to several newspapers including The Tribune. In 1886, he helped Mahatma Hansraj establish the nationalistic Dayananda Anglo-Vedic School, Lahore


title: Lala Lajpat Rai

text: In 1914, he quit law practise to dedicate himself to the Indian independence movement and travelled to Britain, and then to the United States in 1917. In October 1917, he founded the Indian Home Rule League of America in New York. He stayed in the United States from 1917 to 1920.


title: Lala Lajpat Rai

text: After joining the Indian National Congress and taking part in political agitation in Punjab, Lala Lajpat Rai Wadwal was deported to Mandalay, but there was insufficient evidence to hold him for subversion. Lajpat Rai's supporters attempted to secure his election to the presidency of the party session at Surat in December 1907, but he did not succeed.


title: Lala Lajpat Rai

text: Graduates of the National College, which he founded inside the Bradlaugh Hall at Lahore as an alternative to British-style institutions, included Bhagat Singh. He was elected President of the Indian National Congress in the Calcutta Special Session of 1920. In 1921, he founded Servants of the People Society, a non-profit welfare organisation, in Lahore, which shifted its base to Delhi after partition, and has branches in many parts of India.


title: Lala Lajpat Rai

text: According to him, Hindu society needs to fight its own battle with caste system, position of women and untouchability.


title: Lala Lajpat Rai

text: Vedas were an important part of Hindu religion and approved everyone should be allowed to read them and recite the mantras. He believed that everyone should be allowed to read and learn from the Vedas.


title: Lala Lajpat Rai

text: Lajpat Rai travelled to the United States in 1917, and then returned during World War I. He toured Sikh communities along the Western Seaboard, visited the Tuskegee University in Alabama, and met with workers in the Philippines. His travelogue, "The United States of America" (1916), details these travels and features extensive quotations from leading African American intellectuals, including W.E.B. Du Bois and Fredrick Douglass. While in the United States he had founded the Indian Home Rule League in New York City and a monthly journal, the "Young India and Hindustan Information Services Association". Rai petitioned the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs, painting a vivid picture of maladministration by the British Raj in India, the aspirations of Indian public for independence amongst many other points which strongly sought the support of the international community for the attainment of Indian independence. The 32-page petition, which was prepared overnight, was discussed in the U.S. Senate in October 1917. The book also argues for the notion of "color-caste," suggesting sociological similarities between race in the US and caste in India. During World War I, Lajpat Rai lived in the United States, but he returned to India in 1919 and in the following year led the special session of the Congress Party that launched the non-co-operation movement. He was imprisoned from 1921 to 1923 and elected to the legislative assembly on his release.


title: Lala Lajpat Rai

text: In 1928, the United Kingdom set up the Simon Commission, headed by Sir John Simon to report on the political situation in India. The commission was boycotted by Indian political parties because it did not include any Indian members, and it was met with country-wide protests. When the Commission visited Lahore on 30 October 1928, Lajpat Rai led a non-violent march in protest against it and gave the slogan "Simon Go Back!". The protesters chanted the slogan and carried black flags.


title: Lala Lajpat Rai

text: The police superintendent in Lahore, James A. Scott, ordered the police to "lathi" charge the protesters and personally assaulted Rai. Despite being severely injured, Rai subsequently addressed the crowd and said "I declare that the blows struck at me today will be the last nails in the coffin of British rule in India".


title: Lala Lajpat Rai

text: Rai did not fully recover from his injuries and died on 17 November 1928. Doctors thought that James Scott's blows had hastened his death. However, when the matter was raised in the British Parliament, the British government denied any role in Rai's death. Bhagat Singh, an HSRA revolutionary who was a witness to the event, swore to avenge the death of Rai, who was a significant leader of the Indian independence movement. He joined other revolutionaries, Shivaram Rajguru, Sukhdev Thapar and Chandra Shekhar Azad, in a plot to kill Scott to send a message to the British government. However, in a case of mistaken identity, Singh was signalled to shoot on the appearance of John P. Saunders, an assistant superintendent of the Lahore Police. He was shot by Rajguru and Singh while leaving the District Police Headquarters in Lahore on 17 December 1928. Chanan Singh, a head constable who was chasing them, was fatally injured by Azad's covering fire.


title: Lala Lajpat Rai

text: This case did not stop Singh and his fellow-members of the Hindustan Socialist Republican Association from claiming that retribution had been exacted.


title: Lala Lajpat Rai

text: Lajpat Rai was a heavyweight veteran leader of the Indian Nationalist Movement, Indian independence movement led by the Indian National Congress, Hindu reform movements and Arya Samaj, who inspired young men of his generation and kindled latent spirit of patriotism in their hearts with journalistic writings and lead-by-example activism. Young men in the independence movement, such as Chandrasekhar Azad and Bhagat Singh, were inspired by Rai.


title: Lala Lajpat Rai

text: In late 19th and early 20th century Lala Lajpat Rai himself was founder of many organisations, including Hisar congress, Hisar Bar Council, national DAV managing Committee. Lala Lajpat Rai was also head of the "Lakshmi Insurance Company," and commissioned the Lakshmi Building in Karachi, which still bears a plaque in remembrance of him. Lakhsmi Insurance Company was merged with Life Insurance Corporation of India when en masse nationalisation of Life Insurance business happened during 1956.


title: Lala Lajpat Rai

text: In 1927, Lajpat Rai established a trust in his mother's memory to build and run a tuberculosis hospital for women, reportedly at the location where his mother, Gulab Devi, had died of tuberculosis in Lahore. This became known as the Gulab Devi Chest Hospital and opened on 17 July 1934. Now the Gulab Devi Memorial hospital is one of the biggest hospital of present Pakistan which services over 2000 patients at a time as its patients.


title: Lala Lajpat Rai

text: In 1926, Lala Lajpat Rai established RK Trust in the memory of his father Sh. RadhaKrishan. In 1956, RK Trust established Lala Lajpat Rai Memorial college in Jagraon. Later the college was taken under DAV Management and rename as Lajpat Rai DAV College. RK Trust also manages the R.K. high school in Jagraon. Lala Lajpat Rai's younger brother Lala Dhanpat Rai was appointed by him to be the first headmaster of the R.K. high school.


title: Lala Lajpat Rai

text: Erected in the early 20th century, a statue of Lajpat Rai at Lahore, was later moved central square in Shimla after the partition of India. In 1959, the Lala Lajpat Rai trust was formed on the eve of his Centenary Birth Celebration by a group of Punjabi philanthropists (including R.P Gupta and B.M Grover) who have settled and prospered in the Indian State of Maharashtra, which runs the Lala Lajpat Rai College of Commerce and Economics in Mumbai. "Lala Lajpat Rai Memorial Medical College, Meerut" is named after him. In 1998, Lala Lajpat Rai Institute of Engineering and Technology, Moga was named after him. In 2010, the Government of Haryana set up the Lala Lajpat Rai University of Veterinary & Animal Sciences in Hisar in his memory.


title: Lala Lajpat Rai

text: Lajpat Nagar and Lala Lajpat Rai square with his statue in Hisar; Lajpat Nagar and Lajpat Nagar Central Market in New Delhi, Lala Lajpat Rai memorial park in Lajpat Nagar, Lajpat Rai Market in Chandani Chowk, Delhi; Lala Lajpat Rai Hall of Residence at Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) in Kharagpur; Lala Lajpat Rai Hospital in Kanpur; the bus terminus, several institutes, schools and libraries in his hometown of Jagraon are named in his honor including a bus terminal with statue of him at the entry gate. Further, there are several roads named after him in numerous metropolis and other towns of India.


title: Lala Lajpat Rai

text: Homi Master directed a 1929 Indian silent film, titled "Punjab Kesari" (or "The Lion of Punjab"), about Lala Lajpat Rai. "Vande Mataram Ashram" a 1927 silent film by the Indian filmmaker Bhalji Pendharkar, was inspired by Rai's and Madan Mohan Malaviya's opposition to the Western-style educational system introduced by the British Raj; it was censored by the colonial government's regional film censorship board.


title: Lala Lajpat Rai

text: A documentary film about Lajpat Rai, directed by K. Viswanath, was produced by the Government of India's Films Division.


title: Lala Lajpat Rai

text: A protest is brewing and threatening to become a full-fledged rebellion in the aftermath of the arrest of Lala Lajpat Rai is referenced at the starting scene of 2022 released movie 'RRR'.


title: Lala Lajpat Rai

text: Lala Lajpat Rai is also showcased in 2022 released movie 'Dasvi", The protagonist tries to say Lala ji.


title: Lala Lajpat Rai

text: In S. S. Rajamouli's period fiction film RRR protest for his arrest at Calcutta (only name mentioned) in Ram Charan introduction with 1000 people, historically, Lala Lajpat Rai never got arrested in Calcutta.


title: Lala Lajpat Rai

text: Along with founding "Arya Gazette" as its editor, he regularly contributed to several major Hindi, Punjabi, English and Urdu newspapers and magazines. He also authored the following published books.


title: United Arab Emirates dirham

text: The dirham (; , abbreviation: د.إ in Arabic, Dh (singular) and Dhs (plural) or DH in Latin; ISO code: AED) is the official currency of the United Arab Emirates. The dirham is subdivided into 100 .


title: United Arab Emirates dirham

text: The name "dirham" is a loan from greek δραχμή (drakhmé). Due to centuries of trade and usage of the currency, "dirham" survived through the Ottoman Empire.


title: United Arab Emirates dirham

text: Before 1966, all the emirates that now form the UAE used the Gulf rupee, which was pegged at parity to the Indian rupee. On 6 June 1966, India decided to devalue the Gulf rupee against the Indian rupee. Not accepting the devaluation, several of the states still using the Gulf rupee adopted their own or other currencies. All the Trucial States except Abu Dhabi adopted the Qatar and Dubai riyal, which was equal to the Gulf rupee prior to the devaluation. These emirates briefly adopted the Saudi riyal during the transition from the Gulf rupee to the Qatar and Dubai riyal. Abu Dhabi used the Bahraini dinar, at a rate of 10 Gulf rupees = 1 dinar. In 1973, the UAE adopted the UAE dirham as its currency. Abu Dhabi adopted the UAE dirham in place of the Bahraini dinar, at 1 dinar = 10 dirhams, while in the other emirates, the Qatar and Dubai riyal was exchanged at par.


title: United Arab Emirates dirham

text: In 1973, coins were introduced in denominations of 1, 5, 10, 25, and 50 fils and 1 dirham. The 1, 5, and 10 fils are struck in bronze, with the higher denominations in cupro-nickel. The fils coins were the same size and composition as the corresponding Qatar and Dubai dirham coins. In 1995, the 5 fils, 10 fils, 50 fils, and 1 dirham coins were reduced in size, with the new 50 fils being curve-equilateral-heptagonal shaped.


title: United Arab Emirates dirham

text: The value and numbers on the coins are written in Eastern Arabic numerals and the text is in Arabic. The 1, 5 and 10 fils coins are rarely used in everyday life, so all amounts are rounded up or down to the nearest multiples of 25 fils. The 1 fils coin is a rarity and does not circulate significantly. In making a change there is a risk of confusing the old 50 fils coin for the modern 1 dirham coin because the coins are almost the same size.


title: United Arab Emirates dirham

text: Since 1976 the Currency Board of the United Arab Emirates has minted several commemorative coins celebrating different events and rulers of the United Arab Emirates. For details, see Commemorative coins of the United Arab Emirates dirham.


title: United Arab Emirates dirham

text: By August 2006 it became publicly known that the Philippine one peso coin is the same size as one dirham. As 1 peso is only worth 8 fils, this has led to vending machine fraud in the UAE.


title: United Arab Emirates dirham

text: Pakistan's 5 rupee coin, the Omani 50 Baisa coin and the Moroccan 1 dirham are also the same sizes as the Emirati one dirham coin. Although 1mm thinner, one dirham coins have also been found in ten cent coin rolls in Australia. A falcon watermark is present on all dirham notes to prevent fraud.


title: United Arab Emirates dirham

text: On 20 May 1973, the UAE Currency Board introduced notes in denominations of 1, 5, 10, 50, and 100 dirhams; a Dhs 1,000 note was issued on 3 January 1976. A second series of note was introduced in 1982 which omitted the Dh 1 and Dhs 1,000 notes. Dhs 500 notes were introduced in 1983, followed by Dhs 200 in 1989. Dhs 1,000 notes were reintroduced in 2000. Banknotes are currently available in denominations of Dhs 5 (brown), Dhs 10 (green), Dhs 20 (light blue), Dhs 50 (purple), Dhs 100 (pink), Dhs 200 (green/brown), Dhs 500 (navy blue) and Dhs 1,000 (greenish blue).


title: United Arab Emirates dirham

text: The obverse texts are written in Arabic with numbers in Eastern Arabic numerals; the reverse texts are in English with numbers in Arabic numerals. The 200 dirham denomination is scarce as it was only produced in 1989; any circulating today come from bank stocks. The 200 dirham denomination has since been reissued and is now in circulation since late May 2008 – it has been reissued in a different colour; Yellow/Brown to replace the older Green/Brown.


title: United Arab Emirates dirham

text: On 22 March 2008, The Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates released a Dhs 50 note. The security thread was a 3-mm wide, colour-shifting windowed security thread with demetalized UAE 50, and it bore the new coat of arms. On 7 December 2021, a redesigned polymer Dhs 50 note was released to commemorate the golden jubilee of the country on 2 December 2021, making it the UAE's first polymer banknote. Additional new polymer banknotes of Dhs 5 and Dhs 10 were introduced on 21 April 2022, with the Dhs 1000 set to be released on the first half of 2023.