Problem: Read the following paragraph and extract the answer for the question: What is the name of the person that had a flair for writing Italian-style arias?  Handel joined the Hamburg opera house when it was experiencing a period of considerable artistic success. This blossoming followed the arrival of Reinhard Keiser, who had become musical director at the Gänsemarkt in about 1697, and in 1703 succeeded Johann Kusser as the theatre's manager. Born in 1674, Keiser had studied under Johann Schelle and probably Johann Kuhnau at the Thomasschule zu Leipzig.  In 1694 he was employed as a court composer at Brunswick, where in three years he composed seven operas, at least one of which (Mahumeth) was performed in Hamburg. According to Handel's biographer Donald Burrows, Keiser was a good judge of popular taste, with a flair for writing Italian-style arias.  Between 1697 and 1703, prior to Handel's arrival, about a dozen more Keiser operas had been staged at the Gänsemarkt. Despite his on-stage successes, Keiser was an unreliable general manager, with expensive private tastes and little financial acumen, often at odds with his creditors.It is possible that Keiser, who had connections in the Halle area, had heard of Handel and was directly instrumental in securing the latter's post in the Gänsemarkt orchestra; certainly he was a considerable influence on the younger man in the three years that Handel spent in Hamburg. Another important Gänsemarkt colleague was the house composer and singer Johann Mattheson, who noted Handel's rapid progress in the orchestra from back-desk violinist to harpsichord soloist, a role in which, said Mattheson, "he showed himself a man—a thing which no one had before suspected, save I alone". Mattheson was less complimentary on Handel's early efforts at composition: "He composed very long, long arias, and really interminable cantatas", before, it seems, "the lofty schooling of opera ... trimmed him into other fashions".

A: Reinhard Keiser


Problem: Read the following paragraph and extract the answer for the question: What features a panoramic view of the entire area from Lava Point?  The park is located in southwestern Utah in Washington, Iron and Kane counties. Geomorphically, it is located on the Markagunt and Kolob plateaus, at the intersection of three North American geographic provinces: the Colorado Plateau, the Great Basin, and the Mojave Desert. The northern part of the park is known as the Kolob Canyons section and is accessible from Interstate 15, exit 40.The 8,726-foot (2,660 m) summit of Horse Ranch Mountain is the highest point in the park; the lowest point is the 3,666-foot (1,117 m) elevation of Coal Pits Wash, creating a relief of about 5,100 feet (1,600 m).Streams in the area take rectangular paths because they follow jointing planes in the rocks. The stream gradient of the Virgin River, whose North Fork flows through Zion Canyon in the park, ranges from 50 to 80 feet per mile (9.5 to 15.2 m/km) (0.9–1.5%)—one of the steepest stream gradients in North America. The road into Zion Canyon is 6 miles (9.7 km) long, ending at the Temple of Sinawava, which is named for the coyote god of the Paiute Indians. The canyon becomes more narrow near the Temple and a hiking trail continues to the mouth of The Narrows, a gorge only 20 feet (6 m) wide and up to 2,000 feet (610 m) tall. The Zion Canyon road is served by a free shuttle bus from early April to late October and by private vehicles the other months of the year. Other roads in Zion are open to private vehicles year-round. The east side of the park is served by Zion-Mount Carmel Highway (SR-9), which passes through the Zion–Mount Carmel Tunnel and ends at Mount Carmel. On the east side of the park, notable park features include Checkerboard Mesa and the East Temple. The Kolob Terrace area, northwest of Zion Canyon, features a slot canyon called The Subway, and a panoramic view of the entire area from Lava Point. The Kolob Canyons section, further to the northwest near Cedar City, features one of the world's longest natural arches, Kolob Arch. Other notable geographic features of the park include the Virgin River Narrows, Emerald...

A: The Kolob Terrace area


Problem: Read the following paragraph and extract the answer for the question: What is the first name of the person who had a music hall fascination?  From the time of his earliest recordings in the 1960s, Bowie employed a wide variety of musical styles. His early compositions and performances were strongly influenced by rock and rollers like Little Richard and Elvis Presley, and also the wider world of show business. He particularly strove to emulate the British musical theatre singer-songwriter and actor Anthony Newley, whose vocal style he frequently adopted, and made prominent use of for his 1967 debut release, David Bowie (to the disgust of Newley himself, who destroyed the copy he received from Bowie's publisher). Bowie's music hall fascination continued to surface sporadically alongside such diverse styles as hard rock and heavy metal, soul, psychedelic folk, and pop.Musicologist James Perone observes Bowie's use of octave switches for different repetitions of the same melody, exemplified in his commercial breakthrough single, "Space Oddity", and later in the song "Heroes", to dramatic effect; Perone notes that "in the lowest part of his vocal register ... his voice has an almost crooner-like richness."Voice instructor Jo Thompson describes Bowie's vocal vibrato technique as "particularly deliberate and distinctive". Schinder and Schwartz call him "a vocalist of extraordinary technical ability, able to pitch his singing to particular effect." Here, too, as in his stagecraft and songwriting, the singer's role playing is evident: historiographer Michael Campbell says that Bowie's lyrics "arrest our ear, without question. But Bowie continually shifts from person to person as he delivers them ... His voice changes dramatically from section to section." In a 2014 analysis of 77 "top" artists' vocal ranges, Bowie was 8th, just behind Christina Aguilera and just ahead of Paul McCartney. In addition to the guitar, Bowie also played a variety of keyboards, including piano, Mellotron, Chamberlin, and synthesizers; harmonica; alto and baritone saxophones; stylophone; viola; cello; koto (in the Heroes track "Moss Garden"); thumb piano; drums (on the Heathen...

A: David


Problem: Read the following paragraph and extract the answer for the question: Who is Erasmus' cousin married to?  The novel begins in England during the Age of Enlightenment but long before the days of Darwin and the Slavery Abolition Act 1833. The novel is broken into two books, beginning in 1752 and 1753 and ending in 1765, with a decade or so separating the two. Matthew Paris is a central character in the novel, a physician several years older than his cousin Erasmus. Prior to the beginning of the story Paris had been imprisoned for writings on the age of the earth that clashed with a literal interpretation of the Bible, his wife Ruth dying while he was incarcerated. Wishing to escape his past, he accepts a position as surgeon on the Liverpool Merchant, a slave ship built and owned by his uncle William Kemp. The elder Kemp's son, Erasmus Kemp, a young man in his early twenties, has a long-standing hatred for his cousin dating back to his younger years. He participates in a play initially, and is enamored with seventeen-year-old Sarah Wolpert, the daughter of a friend of his father. The ship's crew is made up of men available at the time around the Liverpool docks, and many are recruited by blackmail and deception. As the ship sets off toward the African continent to collect its cargo, it becomes clear that Paris and the ship's captain, Saul Thurso, have very different world views.

A:
Ruth