Akhenaten, King Tut, and the Shock of the New: Carlos Conversations

Agricola (40 - 93 AD)
Agricola was a Roman statesman and soldier who, as governor of Britain, conquered large areas of northern England, Scotland and Wales. His life is well known to us today because his son-in-law, the historian Tacitus, wrote a detailed biography of him which survives.
Gnaeus Julius Agricola was born on 13 July 40 AD in southern France, then part of the Roman Empire, into a high-ranking family. He began his career as a military tribune in Britain and may have participated in the crushing of Boudicca's uprising in 61 AD. During the civil war of 69 AD, Agricola supported Vespasian in his successful attempt to become emperor. Agricola was appointed to command a Roman legion in Britain. He then served as governor of Aquitania (south-east France) for three years, and after a period in Rome, in 78 AD he was made governor of Britain.
As soon as he arrived, Agricola began campaigning to assert Roman authority in north Wales. According to Tacitus he crossed the Menai Straits and took Anglesey. From 79 - 80 AD, Agricola moved north to Scotland where he consolidated Roman military control and masterminded the building of a string of forts across the country from west to east. From 81 - 83 AD, Agricola campaigned north of the Forth-Clyde line and confronted the Caledonian tribes under Calgacus at the battle of Mons Graupius in 84 AD. The Caledonians were routed, but despite Agricola's claim that the island had now been conquered, the threat to Roman security from the north was not completely removed.
The following year, Agricola was recalled to Rome and died there on 23 August 93 AD.

Konrad Adenauer (1876 - 1967) war von 1949 bis 1963 erster Bundeskanzler der Bundesrepublik Deutschland sowie von 1951 bis 1955 zugleich Bundesminister des Auswärtigen.
Konrad Adenauer (1876 -- 1967) was a German statesman who led his nation from the ruins of World War II to one of the most prosperous nations in Europe. He was the first chancellor (top official) of the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG, called West Germany), 1949--63. He was the founder and leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), a coalition of Catholics and Protestants. Since its foundation in 1946, the CDU has been the most dominant political party in Germany.

National Archives - Interview with Chancellor Konrad Adenauer - National Security Council. Central Intelligence Agency. (09/18/1947 - 12/04/1981). - This film covers an interview in which Chancellor Adenauer spoke on issues including foreign policy, the Polish - German border, and the economy.

John Adams (1735-1826)
Adams was a leading figure in the American fight for independence and second president of the United States. During his presidency, Washington became the American capital.

John Adams was born on 19 October 1735 in Braintree (now Quincy), Massachusetts, the son of a farmer. Adams graduated from Harvard College in 1755 and became a lawyer. In 1764 he married Abigail Smith, an intelligent and independent woman who provided her husband with considerable support throughout his career.

From the mid-1760's, Adams increasingly began to oppose British legislation in its American colony, beginning with the Stamp Act. Despite his hostility to the British government, in 1770 he defended the British soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre. This made him unpopular but marked him out as a man of high principles.

At the First and Second Continental Congresses, where he represented Massachusetts, Adams used his considerable writing and speaking skills to persuade other colonists firstly of the need for opposition to Britain, and then of the cause for independence. He served on the committee which drafted the Declaration of Independence. During the Revolutionary War, he ran the Board of War, raising and equipping the American army and creating a navy.

In 1778 Adams was sent Paris on a diplomatic mission. He returned there in 1780 and, in 1783, was one of the three Americans to sign the Treaty of Paris, ending the American War of Independence. Between 1785 and 1788, Adams served as the first American ambassador to Britain.

On his return to America, he was elected the first vice-president under George Washington and served for two terms. In the presidential campaign of 1796, which was the first to be contested by political parties, Adams sided with the Federalist Party and was elected president.

Deteriorating relations with France led to an undeclared naval war between the former allies. In 1798, Adams signed the controversial Alien and Sedition Acts which limited rights to free speech. They were widely opposed throughout the country. At the same time, Adams faced opposition from within his own party. He resisted their demands for all-out war with France, but lost the 1800 election to Thomas Jefferson.

Adams retired from politics and settled in his hometown of Quincy. He died on 4 July 1826, having lived to see the election of his eldest son John Quincy as sixth president.

Pietro Alessandro Gaspare Scarlatti (1660-1725) was an Italian composer. Over 600 of his chamber cantatas survive; they represent the peak of the genre. The most outstanding and influential operatic writer of his day, he founded the so-called Neapolitan opera school.

The operas by Alessandro Scarlatti that primarily influenced his younger contemporaries were written during his first sojourn in Naples, when he felt obliged to cater to Neapolitan taste--one that preferred simple, immediately attractive melodies, embellished with coloratura, and that elevated the importance of the solo singer, especially the castrato, to unprecedented heights, and, as a result, severely limited the number of ensembles and the role of the orchestra. Three other important features of this period are the increasing use of the dacapo form of aria, which by the turn of the century virtually ousted all other forms; the establishing of the so-called Italian overture, or sinfonia, as a tripartite form--quick, slow, quick--first introduced in the 1696 revival of Scarlatti's Tutto il mal ... (1681); and the inclusion in most of the operas of two comic characters who are an integral part of the plot.

Scarlatti's greatest operas are those he wrote after he left Naples in 1702. In them the orchestra is more important and colorful, the melodies are more subtly expressive and phrased, the harmony is clearer and more varied, and the texture ranges from simple homophony to rich polyphony. It was these operas that influenced, in varying degrees and in different ways, such composers as George Frederick Handel, Johann Adolf Hasse, and Scarlatti's son Domenico, the last two being among the most significant figures in the transition period between the baroque and the Viennese school of the late 18th century.

Scarlatti was born in Palermo on May 2, 1660, the eldest son of Pietro and Eleonora d'Amato Scarlata. Details of his early life are sketchy; he probably went to relatives in Rome in 1672 in company with his two sisters, Anna Maria and Melchiorra, and, tradition has it, became a pupil of Giacomo Carissimi. This tradition is supported by the earliest record of Scarlatti as a musician, namely, a commission, dated Jan. 27, 1679, to compose an oratorio for the Arciconfraternità del SS. Crocifisso, for which Carissimi had written several similar works.

In April of the previous year Scarlatti married Antonia Anzalone; they had 10 children, of whom by far the most distinguished was Domenico. The first of Scarlatti's operas to bring him fame, Gli equivoci nel sembiante (1679), also brought him an appointment, for the libretto of his next opera, L'honestà negli amori (1680), describes him as chapelmaster (maestro di cappella) to Queen Christina of Sweden, who spent most of her life in Rome after her abdication.

In 1683 Scarlatti was put in charge of the entire opera season at Naples, producing in December his first original work for the city,Psiche. The following year he became chapelmaster to the royal chapel in Naples, an appointment that was largely, if not wholly, due to an influential official whose mistress was Scarlatti's sister Melchiorra. In the ensuing scandal the highly esteemed second chapelmaster, Provenzale, who had expected to be promoted, resigned, the official was fired, and Melchiorra was ordered to leave the city or enter a convent!

During the next 18 years Scarlatti composed at least 38 operas, in addition to serenatas, cantatas, and church music; all but six of the operas were performed initially in Naples, and many of them received performances elsewhere. But although his fame was spreading, Scarlatti was becoming increasingly frustrated by the kind of music he was expected to produce. In 1702 he was granted 4 months' leave of absence, but once out of Naples it is clear he had no intention of returning, and for the next 7 years he looked in vain for a position that would satisfy his needs and wishes.

At first Scarlatti enjoyed the patronage of Prince Ferdinand de' Medici in Florence, for whose private theater he wrote several operas; no permanent position transpired, however, and in 1703 he accepted a very inferior post as assistant chapelmaster at the church of S. Maria Maggiore, Rome. In 1707 he became principal chapelmaster, but this did nothing to lessen his frustration, for in Rome at this time opera was virtually nonexistent, owing to strong papal disapproval. But he continued to write operas for Prince Ferdinand, most of which have not survived, and composed his first opera for Venice (1707), where he spent some months.

Although Scarlatti's operatic production had waned during this period, his reputation had not, and in 1709 he returned to his old post at Naples, with an increase in salary and free to compose as he wished. Here he remained until 1717, producing some of his best operas, notably Tigrane (1715), and receiving a knighthood from the Pope the following year. But Rome still held a great fascination for him, and in 1717, encouraged by a change in the papal attitude toward opera, he settled there. In the ensuing 5 years or so he composed his last works for the stage, including his one comic essay in the genre, I trionfo dell'onore (1718), and, according to the libretto, his 114th opera--Griselda (1721). (This is the last of 35 complete extant operas from a known total of 115.)

In 1722 or 1723 Scarlatti returned to Naples, where he lived in complete retirement, composing very little, and virtually ignored. In 1724 Hasse, then aged 25, became his pupil and close friend. Scarlatti died on Oct. 24, 1725.