Problem: Read the following paragraph and extract the answer for the question: What is the name of the production that "aroused a great deal of interest and speculation"?  Impresario and author John Hollingshead, the lessee of London's Gaiety Theatre since 1868, had produced a number of successful musical burlesques and operettas there. Indeed, Hollingshead "boasted that he kept alight 'the sacred lamp of burlesque.'" Gilbert and Sullivan were each well acquainted with the Gaiety and its house artistes.  Gilbert's Robert the Devil (a burlesque of the opera Robert le Diable) had been on the programme on the theatre's opening night on 21 December 1868, with Nellie Farren in the title role, and played successfully for over 100 nights. Constance Loseby and Annie Tremaine (both of whom had roles in Thespis) were also in the cast of Robert, and Arthur Sullivan was in the audience on that opening night as one of Hollingshead's guests. It was a great success, "received with a storm of approbation". Less successfully, Gilbert had also written a play for the theatre in 1869 called An Old Score. Hollingshead would later say that the piece was "too true to nature". By late September or early October 1871, Gaiety programmes announced that "The Christmas Operatic Extravaganza will be written by W. S. Gilbert, with original music by Arthur Sullivan." There would be prominent roles for the popular comedian J. L. Toole, as well as Farren, the theatre's star "principal boy" in all of its burlesques. How and when the pair came to collaborate on Thespis is uncertain. Gilbert was a logical choice for the assignment. With seven operas and plays premièring that year and over a dozen other burlesques, farces and extravaganzas under his belt, he was well known to London theatregoers as a comic dramatist. Sullivan, however, was at this point mainly known for his serious music. His completed music that year included the choral cantata On Shore and Sea, a suite of incidental music for Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, and numerous hymns, including "Onward, Christian Soldiers". He did have two comic operas to his credit, Cox and Box (1866) and The Contrabandista (1867), but the latter was four years in...

A: Thespis

Problem: Given the question: Read the following paragraph and extract the answer for the question: What is the last name of the person whose colleague, Ralph Vaughan Williams, claims he was a great teacher?  Gustav Theodore Holst (born Gustavus Theodore von Holst; 21 September 1874 – 25 May 1934) was an English composer, arranger and teacher. Best known for his orchestral suite The Planets, he composed a large number of other works across a range of genres, although none achieved comparable success. His distinctive compositional style was the product of many influences, Richard Wagner and Richard Strauss being most crucial early in his development. The subsequent inspiration of the English folksong revival of the early 20th century, and the example of such rising modern composers as Maurice Ravel, led Holst to develop and refine an individual style. There were professional musicians in the previous three generations of Holst's family and it was clear from his early years that he would follow the same calling. He hoped to become a pianist, but was prevented by neuritis in his right arm. Despite his father's reservations, he pursued a career as a composer, studying at the Royal College of Music under Charles Villiers Stanford. Unable to support himself by his compositions, he played the trombone professionally and later became a teacher—a great one, according to his colleague Ralph Vaughan Williams. Among other teaching activities he built up a strong tradition of performance at Morley College, where he served as musical director from 1907 until 1924, and pioneered music education for women at St Paul's Girls' School, where he taught from 1905 until his death in 1934. He was the founder of a series of Whitsun music festivals, which ran from 1916 for the remainder of his life. Holst's works were played frequently in the early years of the 20th century, but it was not until the international success of The Planets in the years immediately after the First World War that he became a well-known figure. A shy man, he did not welcome this fame, and preferred to be left in peace to compose and teach. In his later years his uncompromising, personal style of composition struck many music lovers as too austere, and his brief...
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The answer is:
Holst

[Q]: Read the following paragraph and extract the answer for the question: What medical condition might contribute to Nigel's mom not cooking elaborate meals?  The Slaters of Wolverhampton are plagued with Mrs. Slater's chronic debilitating asthma and her cooking limited to what comes in canned goods that she can heat in boiling water. Mr. Alan Slater is sick with worry and has a cantankerous personality. Nigel longs for a life that is more than a succession of canned-food dinners made from what can be heated in boiling water. When dinner is burnt, the standard substitute of toast is always served. He loves toast, with the crunchy outside giving way to buttery softness inside. Despite her infrequent forays into cooking meals from scratch, his mother's attempts to improve her cooking change nothing before or after her death. His father continues in widowhood with the same cooking style and frequent dinners of toast. The experience brings Nigel to conclude that he is not liked. Nigel learns from a friend that the way in which he could attempt a better relationship with his father is to cook a meal for him. His cooking efforts are thwarted by the new housekeeper, the married and "common" Mrs. Joan Potter, who seduces Alan with her apple pie and array of gourmet meals. The two start to spend time together: at one point, she exiting her council house through an upstairs window so as not to be found out by her husband. Without announcement, the Slaters move to the Herefordshire countryside along with Mrs. Potter. Nigel co-exists with her but never accepts her. She makes a competition of cooking when the teenaged Nigel's shows an emerging interest in developing his skills at school home economics class cookery lessons. Mrs. Potter's lemon meringue pie becomes Nigel's quest to learn the secret recipe.
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[A]:
chronic debilitating asthma