IN: Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi (Italian: [dZu'zeppe 'verdi]; 9 or 10 October 1813 - 27 January 1901) was an Italian opera composer. He was born near Busseto to a provincial family of moderate means, and developed a musical education with the help of a local patron. Verdi came to dominate the Italian opera scene after the era of Vincenzo Bellini, Gaetano Donizetti, and Gioachino Rossini, whose works significantly influenced him. By his 30s, he had become one of the pre-eminent opera composers in history.

The writer Friedrich Schiller (four of whose plays were adapted as operas by Verdi) distinguished two types of artist in his 1795 essay On Naive and Sentimental Poetry. The philosopher Isaiah Berlin ranked Verdi in the 'naive' category--"They are not...self-conscious. They do not...stand aside to contemplate their creations and express their own feelings....They are able...if they have genius, to embody their vision fully." (The 'sentimentals' seek to recreate nature and natural feelings on their own terms--Berlin instances Wagner--"offering not peace, but a sword.") Verdi's operas are not written according to an aesthetic theory, or with a purpose to change the tastes of their audiences. In conversation with a German visitor in 1887 he is recorded as saying that, whilst "there was much to be admired in [Wagner's operas] Tannhauser and Lohengrin...in his recent operas [Wagner] seemed to be overstepping the bounds of what can be expressed in music. For him "philosophical" music was incomprehensible." Although Verdi's works belong, as Rosselli admits "to the most artificial of genres...[they] ring emotionally true: truth and directness make them exciting, often hugely so."  That is not to say his operas did not come as great innovations. What sounds to a modern listener as derivative of the bel canto, his first major success, Nabucco, came as a something entirely new. Never before had opera been so harmonically complex and direct. No longer was there the empty vocal display of the bel canto period composers. Granted, there is a significant amount of vocal fireworks, but they exist for the purpose of drama, not to show off singers. Aside from this, his use of the chorus was entirely new. Before Nabucco, an opera's chorus was limited to be only a background voice, another instrument. In Nabucco, this is abolished; he uses the chorus as character, to show the suffering and consensus of the people. The famous "Va, pensiero" is an example of this.  The first of his "big three" operas, Rigoletto, followed by La Traviata, and ending with Il Trovatore, also was revolutionary. In a letter to Rigoletto's librettist, Francesco Maria Piave, he says, "I conceived Rigoletto almost without arias, without finales but only an unending string of duets." And that it is. Rigoletto is one of, if not the earliest operas to abandon the traditional distinction between the sung aria, and the more speech-like recitative.  After these three operas, his works took an increasing amount of time to finish, were significantly longer, and more masterfully orchestrated.

How did he write his operas?

OUT: Rigoletto is one of, if not the earliest operas to abandon the traditional distinction between the sung aria, and the more speech-like recitative.

input: The couple moved to New York in 1927, where Etting made her Broadway debut in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1927. Irving Berlin had recommended her to showman Florenz Ziegfeld. Etting nervously prepared to sing for Ziegfeld at the audition. However, he did not ask her to sing at all; only to walk up and down the room. She was hired on that basis because Ziegfeld did not hire women with big ankles. While the original plan for the show was for Etting to do a tap dance after singing "Shaking the Blues Away", she later remembered she was not a very good dancer. At the show's final rehearsal, Flo Ziegfeld told her, "Ruth, when you get through singing, just walk off the stage". Etting also appeared in Ziegfeld's last "Follies" in 1931.  She went on to appear in a number of other hit shows in rapid succession, including Ziegfeld's Simple Simon and Whoopee!. Etting was not originally signed to perform in Simple Simon; she became part of the cast at the last minute when vocalist Lee Morse was too intoxicated to perform. Ziegfeld asked Etting to replace Morse; she hurried to Boston, where the show was being tried out prior to Broadway. When Etting arrived, songwriters Rodgers and Hart discovered that the song "Ten Cents a Dance" was not written for Etting's voice range. The three spent the night rewriting the song so Etting could perform it.  Toward the end of Simple Simon's Broadway run, Etting persuaded Ziegfeld to add "Love Me Or Leave Me" to the show though the song was originally written for Whoopee!. She had recorded the song in 1928, but Etting's new version of it was impressive enough to earn her a Vitaphone contract to make film shorts.  In Hollywood, Etting made a long series of movie shorts between 1929 and 1936, and three feature movies in 1933 and 1934. She described the short films as either having a simple plot to allow for her to sing two songs or with no plot at all. The idea was to have Etting sing at least two songs in the film. While she received a marquee billing for Roman Scandals, Etting had only two lines in the film and sang just one song. Etting believed she might have had more success in full-length films if she had been given some acting lessons. Her perception was that the studios viewed her only as a vocalist. She later recalled, "I was no actress, and I knew it. But I could sell a song". In 1936, she appeared in London in Ray Henderson's Transatlantic Rhythm. Etting quit the show because she and the other performers had not been paid.  Etting was first heard on radio station WLS when she was living in Chicago. Her appearance drew so much fan mail, the station signed her to a year's contract for twice weekly performances. She had her own twice weekly 15 minute radio show on CBS in the 1930s. By 1934, she was on NBC with sports announcer Ted Husing doing the announcing and Oldsmobile sponsoring her program.

Answer this question "Where was Etting born?"
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