Q: I have a test where I am given the following article, what is an answer for the question: What is the name of the opera that Olivier was originally scheduled to direct but backed out of doing? ?  In 1947, Walton was presented with the Royal Philharmonic Society's Gold Medal. In the same year he accepted an invitation from the BBC to compose his first opera. He decided to base it on Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, but his preliminary work came to a halt in April 1948 when Alice Wimborne died. To take Walton's mind off his grief, the music publisher Leslie Boosey persuaded him to be a British delegate to a conference on copyright in Buenos Aires later that year.  While there, Walton met Susana Gil Passo (1926–2010), daughter of an Argentine lawyer. At 22 she was 24 years younger than Walton (Alice Wimborne had been 22 years his senior), and at first she ridiculed his romantic interest in her. He persisted, and she eventually accepted his proposal of marriage. The wedding was held in Buenos Aires in December 1948. From the start of their marriage, the couple spent half the year on the Italian island of Ischia, and by the mid-1950s they lived there permanently.Walton's last work of the 1940s was his music for Olivier's film of Hamlet (1948). After that, he focused his attentions on his opera Troilus and Cressida. On the advice of the BBC, he invited Christopher Hassall to write the libretto. This did not help Walton's relations with the Sitwells, each of whom thought he or she should have been asked to be his librettist. Work continued slowly over the next few years, with many breaks while Walton turned to other things. In 1950 he and Heifetz recorded the Violin Concerto for EMI. In 1951 Walton was knighted. In the same year, he prepared an authorised version of Façade, which had undergone many revisions since its premiere. In 1953, following the accession of Elizabeth II he was again called on to write a coronation march, Orb and Sceptre; he was also commissioned to write a choral setting of the Te Deum for the occasion.Troilus and Cressida was presented at Covent Garden on 3 December 1954. Its preparation was dogged by misfortunes. Olivier, originally scheduled to direct it, backed out, as did Henry...
A: Troilus and Cressida

Q: I have a test where I am given the following article, what is an answer for the question: Who was the mistress of the palace owner once engaged to? ?  In 1765, the inhabitants of Arkham, Massachusetts, are suspicious of the strange phenomena surrounding the grand "palace" that overlooks the town. They suspect the palace's owner, Joseph Curwen, is a warlock. A young girl wanders up to the palace in a trance-like state. She is led by Curwen and his mistress, Hester, down into the dungeons. The girl is subjected to a strange ritual, in which an unseen creature rises up from a covered pit. The townspeople observe the girl wandering off, and they storm the palace to confront its owner. Though the girl appears unharmed, the townspeople surmise that she has been bewitched to forget what happened to her. They drag Curwen out to a tree where they intend to burn him. The mob leader, Ezra Weeden, insists that they do not harm Hester (to whom he had been previously engaged to marry). Before being burned alive, Curwen puts a curse on Arkham and its inhabitants and their descendants, promising to rise from the grave to take his revenge. In 1875, 110 years later, Curwen's great-great-grandson, Charles Dexter Ward, and his wife Anne arrive in Arkham after inheriting the palace. They find the townsfolk hostile towards them and are disturbed by the horrific deformities that afflict many of Arkham's inhabitants. Charles is surprised by how well he seems to know the palace and struck by his strong resemblance to a portrait of Curwen. He and Anne meet Simon, the palace caretaker, who persuades them to stay at the palace and to forget the townspeoples' hostility. Charles becomes more and more obsessed with the portrait of Curwen, and at times seems to change in his personality.
A: Ezra Weeden

Q: I have a test where I am given the following article, what is an answer for the question: What is the name of the person who told Bernhard Cossmann to "listen to the instrumentation" and claimed it was his own? ?  While Raff was able to offer "practical suggestions [in orchestration] which were of great value to Liszt", there may have been "a basic misunderstanding" of the nature of their collaboration. Liszt wanted to learn more about instrumentation and acknowledged Raff's greater expertise in this area. Hence, he gave Raff piano sketches to orchestrate, just as he had done earlier with Conradi—"so that he might rehearse them, reflect on them, and then, as his confidence in the orchestra grew, change them." Raff disagreed, having the impression that Liszt wanted him on equal terms as a full collaborator. While attending an 1850 rehearsal of Prometheus, he told Bernhard Cossmann, who sat next to him, "Listen to the instrumentation. It is by me."Raff continued making such claims about his role in Liszt's compositional process. Some of these accounts, published posthumously by Die Musik in 1902 and 1903, suggest that he was an equal collaborator with Liszt. Raff's assertions were supported by Joachim, who had been active in Weimar at approximately the same time as Raff. Walker writes that Joachim later recalled to Raff's widow "that he had seen Raff 'produce full orchestral scores from piano sketches.'" Joachim also told Raff's biographer Andreas Moser that "the E-flat-major Piano Concerto was orchestrated from beginning to end by Raff." Raff's and Joachim's statements effectively questioned the authorship of Liszt's orchestral music, especially the symphonic poems. This speculation was debased when composer and Liszt scholar Peter Raabe carefully compared all sketches then known of Liszt's orchestral works with the published versions of the same works. Raabe demonstrated that, regardless of the position with first drafts, or of how much assistance Liszt may have received from Raff or Conradi at that point, every note of the final versions represents Liszt's intentions.
A:
Raff