{"id":4954,"date":"2020-01-29T07:45:38","date_gmt":"2020-01-29T07:45:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/?p=4954"},"modified":"2020-01-30T02:48:22","modified_gmt":"2020-01-30T02:48:22","slug":"word-of-the-day-copious","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/2020\/01\/29\/word-of-the-day-copious\/","title":{"rendered":"Word of the Day: Copious"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Today\u2019s word of the day, thanks to Quizlet, is copious<\/em>. According to www.dictionary.com<\/a>, copious means \u201clarge in quantity or number; abundant; plentiful,\u201d or \u201chaving or yielding an abundant supply,\u201d or \u201cexhibiting abundance or fullness, as of thoughts or words.\u201d According to www.etymonline.com<\/a>, it entered the language in the \u201cmid-14c., from Latin copiosus<\/em> \u2018plentiful,\u2019 from copia<\/em> \u2018an abundance, ample supply, profusion, plenty; riches, prosperity; ability, power, might,\u2019 also the name of the Roman goddess of abundance, from assimilated form of com<\/em> \u2018with, together\u2019 (see com-<\/strong><\/a>) + ops<\/em> (genitive opis<\/em>) \u2018power, wealth, resources,\u2019 from PIE root *op-<\/strong><\/a> \u2018to work, produce in abundance.\u2019” It\u2019s interesting how the root words, com<\/em> and ops<\/em>, not only get compounded but also elide into the one word.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On this date in 1595, as many scholars think, Shakespeare\u2019s Romeo and Juliet<\/em> was performed for the first time. Romeo and Juliet<\/em> is an early tragedy among Shakespeare\u2019s work, and it is not one of the great tragedies (those would be Hamlet<\/em>, Othello<\/em>, Lear<\/em>, and Macbeth<\/em>), but it may very well be the best known of his tragedies, and perhaps the best known of all his plays, perhaps because it is assigned in many public schools. It is also probably the most adapted of Shakespeare\u2019s plays because its plot is simple and timeless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On this date in 1728, John Gay\u2019s The Beggar\u2019s Opera<\/em> premiered at the Lincoln Fields Theater in London. The Beggar\u2019s Opera<\/em> is the best known (and perhaps the first) example of ballad opera, a kind of musical theater in 18th<\/sup> century England that combined spoken dialogue with songs using popular tunes (or, sometimes, new tunes written in the popular-song style). The genre was developed in part to satirize Italian opera, which had become popular in London, at least among the upper classes. Wikipedia says about ballad opera, \u201cIt consists of racy and often satirical spoken (English) dialogue, interspersed with songs that are deliberately kept very short (mostly a single short stanza and refrain) to minimize disruptions to the flow of the story, which involves lower class, often criminal, characters, and typically shows a suspension (or inversion) of the high moral values of the Italian opera of the period.\u201d The Beggar\u2019s Opera focuses on the criminal MacHeath, who is a highwayman, a murderer, and a womanizer, not to mention a bigamist. To make a long story short, he and his gang are caught and are ready to be hanged, but because the audience demands a happy ending, they are all given a reprieve. As an aside, Berthold Brecht created an adaptation in his play with music Die Dreigroschenope<\/em> (The Threepenny Opera<\/em>) in which he used the alienation style of theater that he made famous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On this date in 1781 at the Cuvilli\u00e9s Theatre of the Munich Residenz (the former royal palace of the rulers of Bavaria), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart\u2019s first mature opera, Idomeneo, re di Creta ossia Ilia e Idamante<\/em> (Idomeneus, King of Crete, or, Ilia and Idamante)<\/em> was performed for the first time, with the orchestra conducted by the 25-year-old composer. It was based upon an earlier opera, by Andr\u00e8 Campra. Today it is a standard piece in the repertoire of most major opera companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On this date in 1947, Arthur Miller\u2019s All My Sons<\/em> premiered at the Coronet Theater on Broadway in New York. The play was directed by Elia Kazan (he\u2019s a big name in theater), to whom the play was dedicated. It starred Ed Begley, Beth Merrill, Arthur Kennedy, and Karl Malden. It won the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award, the Tony Award for Best Author, and the Tony Award for Best Direction of a Play. It has been adapted for movies twice, once in 1948 starring Edward G. Robinson, and again in 1987 starring James Whitmore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On this date in 1966, at the Palace Theater on Broadway in New York, after a tryout at Fischer\u2019s Theater in Detroit, Bob Fosse\u2019s Sweet Charity<\/em> premiered. The music was by Cy Coleman, the lyrics by Dorothy Fields, and the book by Neil Simon, but it was an idea conceived by Fosse, and he also directed and choreographed it. It featured \u201cBig Spender\u201d and \u201cIf My Friends Could See Me Now,\u201d among other numbers. It won the Tony Award for Best Choreography and was nominated for 8 others, including Best Musical (it lost to Man of La Mancha<\/em>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I guess you could say that, in the history of theater, January 29 has copious reasons to hold its metaphorical head high.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The image is from the Franco Zeffirelli\u2019s 1968 film adaptation of Shakespeare\u2019s Romeo and Juliet<\/em>, starring Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s word of the day, thanks to Quizlet, is copious. According to www.dictionary.com, copious means \u201clarge in quantity or number; abundant; plentiful,\u201d or \u201chaving or yielding an abundant supply,\u201d or […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4956,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[139,140,141,138,137],"class_list":["post-4954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-word-of-the-day","tag-arthur-miller","tag-bob-fosse","tag-musicals","tag-shakespeare","tag-theater","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4954"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4954\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4957,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4954\/revisions\/4957"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.freedomshillprimer.com\/institute\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}