The work of Emanuel Schikaneder and the tradition of the old Viennese popular theatre

The establishment of the ‘Theater am Karntnertor’ in 1712 allowed Stranitzky to call into existence the phenomenon known as Old Viennese Popular Theatre. This first resident theatre was itself responsible for the canalizing of literary and theatrical forces from home and abroad into an art form which gradually became specifically Viennese in character and which at the same time showed signs that it was attempting to elevate itself aesthetically. These signs were already becoming noticeable under Stranitzky, Prehauser and Kurz, but, in the early stages of Vienesse Popular Theatre, only assumed some significance in the works of Phillip Hafner. As an incident which served to make popular theatre more conscious of the presence of literary drama the conflict between these two theatrical genres is important. It associates itself also with a wider sphere of theatrical activity as Joseph 11 attempts to found the German National Theatre and the National Singspiel in Vienna, the latter musical genre having been used by Kurz and Prehauser previously as a characteristic ingredient of Old Viennese Popular Theatre. By Imperial Decree and a series of deaths, the influence of the Old Viennese Popular Theatre diminished greatly in Vienna in 1769 and its main representative, the popular comedian Hans Wurst, was exiled to a life on the Wanderbuhne. The works of Phillip Hafner and, occasionally, those of the earlier popular comedians, also found their way on to the strolling stage. Schikaneder’s experience and taste were wide enough to embrace a variety of aspects from both the Wanderbuhne and the Old Viennese Popular Theatre. Thus his repertoire ranged from the popular ‘Singspiel’ to more formal opera on the one hand, and from popular and spectacular drama to the works of the more respectable playwrights such as Shakespeare, Lessing and Schiller on the other. The variety of Schikaneder’s experience as actor, singer and impresario in the performance of works by others therefore enabled him to utilize that same variety in creating his own works. Throughout he never forgot his allegiance to both the popular and the national stage, an allegiance which is admirably stated via the ‘Singspiel’ particularly in the association between Schikaneder and the Mozart family in Salzburg in 1780. Even from the outset of his career Schikaneder revealed that his theatrical ideals were raised somewhat higher than mere popular appeal and the first German ‘Singspiel’ of the era, his ‘Die Lyranten’ (1776), confirms this attitude. His dramas for the Wanderbuhne in particular likewise reflect the influence of the classical stage and of popular environment as they illustrate a purposeful conciliation between the two extremes in producing works of artistic. Schikaneder’s activities in Vienna centred in the main around the furtherance and development of German ‘Singspiel’. To this end it was important that he should have in his theatre musicians and singers of quality and his policy was directed accordingly. The musical standards of his theatre added therefore to the fame of ‘Singspiel’ to an extent which was never realized by the less ambitious products of Johann Adam Hiller on the Wanderbuhne. The production of ‘Die Zauberflote’ can consequently be regarded only as part of a much wider field of activity, important though the opera undoubtedly is. A direct link with the Old Viennese Popular Theatre is immediately established as the series of Schikaneder’s ‘Zauberopern’ recall the earlier ‘Zaubersingspiele’ between the years 1712 and 1769. In both his dramatic and his musical works the sheer spectacle of the early popular stage is retained, but now with unifying and symbolic aspects. In his attempts to win credibility and resemblance for his ‘Singspiel’ and drama, Schikaneder is further persuaded to provide his work with local colour, a feature which was noted earlier in Hafner. The influence of the Old Viennese Popular Theatre is never completely lacking in Schikaneder’s works and significantly the tradition did not end with his death in 1812. He did, however, impress hi own individuality, his own theatrical and, to a degree, literary sense on that tradition and all his work reflects the inner conviction and purposeful drive of the skilled theatre-craftsman

Travel time reliability: a review of late time valuations, elasticities and demand impacts in the passenger rail market in Great Britain

This paper provides an extensive review and reconciliation of British and European evidence relating to the value of, and demand responses to, rail reliability. In particular, we compare the elasticities implied by stated preference valuations of late time with directly estimated lateness elasticities. We find that the implied lateness elasticities are substantially greater than those directly estimated. A possible explanation for this is that lateness has been over-valued, but more sobering explanations would be to suggest that, whilst rail travellers dislike unreliability, they may be unwilling or unable to reduce their rail travel in response to experiences of poor performance, or else conventional economic approaches to deducing elasticities are not appropriate. The findings have been used to update the recommendations of the UK rail industry’s Passenger Demand Forecasting Handbook

The value of travel time: random utility versus random valuation

This paper identifies, relates and compares two popular modelling approaches to estimate the value of travel time changes. The first (random utility [RU]) assumes that the random component of the model relates to the difference between the utilities of travel options; the second (random valuation [RV]) assumes that it relates to the difference between the value of travel time and a suggested valuation threshold. This paper gives details of the theoretical relationship between the two approaches and compares them empirically at several levels of model sophistication. Datasets from two national studies (the UK and Denmark) are employed. The results show a consistent superiority of the RV approach and a systematic gap in the value of travel time between approaches. A similar pattern across models is found in both countries. This raises questions about the validity of results using the RU approach. The analysis has direct implications for both researchers and policy-makers

The Politics of Service Delivery Reform

This article identifies the leaders, the supporters and the resisters of public service reform. It adopts a principal–agent framework, comparing reality with an ‘ideal’ situation in which citizens are the principals over political policy-makers as their agents, and policy-makers are the principals over public service officials as their agents. Reform in most developing countries is complicated by an additional set of external actors — international financial institutions and donors. In practice, international agencies and core government officials usually act as the ‘principals’ in the determination of reforms. The analysis identifies the interests involved in reform, indicating how the balance between them is affected by institutional and sectoral factors. Organizational reforms, particularly in the social sectors, present greater difficulties than first generation economic policy reforms

Radiative corrections to neutral pion-pair production

We calculate the one-photon loop radiative corrections to the neutral pion-pair photoproduction process $\pi^-\gamma \to \pi^-\pi^0\pi^0$. At leading order this reaction is governed by the chiral pion-pion interaction. Since the chiral $\pi^+\pi^-\to\pi^0\pi^0$ contact-vertex depends only on the final-state invariant-mass it factors out of all photon-loop diagrams. We give analytical expressions for the multiplicative correction factor $R\sim \alpha/2\pi$ arising from eight classes of contributing one-photon loop diagrams. An electromagnetic counterterm has to be included in order to cancel the ultraviolet divergences generated by the photon-loops. Infrared finiteness of the virtual radiative corrections is achieved (in the standard way) by including soft photon radiation below an energy cut-off $\lambda$. The radiative corrections to the total cross section vary between $+2\%$ and $-2\%$ for center-of-mass energies from threshold up to $7m_\pi$. The finite part of the electromagnetic counterterm gives an additional constant contribution of about $1\%$, however with a large uncertainty.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures, submitted to Eur. Phys. J.

Empirical parameterization of the K+- -> pi+- pi0 pi0 decay Dalitz plot

As first observed by the NA48/2 experiment at the CERN SPS, the \p0p0 invariant mass (M00) distribution from \kcnn decay shows a cusp-like anomaly at M00=2m+, where m+ is the charged pion mass. An analysis to extract the pi pi scattering lengths in the isospin I=0 and I=2 states, a0 and a2, respectively, has been recently reported. In the present work the Dalitz plot of this decay is fitted to a new empirical parameterization suitable for practical purposes, such as Monte Carlo simulations of K+- -> pi+- pi0 pi0 decays.Comment: 9 pages, 3 figures

Radiative corrections in K --> 3 pi decays

We investigate radiative corrections to K --> 3 pi decays. In particular, we extend the non-relativistic framework developed recently to include real and virtual photons and show that, in a well-defined power counting scheme, the results reproduce corrections obtained in the relativistic calculation. Real photons are included exactly, beyond the soft-photon approximation, and we compare the result with the latter. The singularities generated by pionium near threshold are investigated, and a region is identified where standard perturbation theory in the fine structure constant alpha may be applied. We expect that the formulae provided allow one to extract S-wave pi pi scattering lengths from the cusp effect in these decays with high precision.Comment: 57 pages, 17 figure

AutoSNPdb: an annotated single nucleotide polymorphism database for crop plants

Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) may be considered the ultimate genetic marker as they represent the finest resolution of a DNA sequence (a single nucleotide), are generally abundant in populations and have a low mutation rate. Analysis of assembled EST sequence data provides a cost-effective means to identify large numbers of SNPs associated with functional genes. We have developed an integrated SNP discovery pipeline, which identifies SNPs from assembled EST sequences. The results are maintained in a custom relational database along with EST source and annotation information. The current database hosts data for the important crops rice, barley and Brassica. Users may rapidly identify polymorphic sequences of interest through BLAST sequence comparison, keyword searches of annotations derived from UniRef90 and GenBank comparisons, GO annotations or in genes corresponding to syntenic regions of reference genomes. In addition, SNPs between specific varieties may be identified for targeted mapping and association studies. SNPs are viewed using a user-friendly graphical interface. The database is freely accessible at http://autosnpdb.qfab.org.au/

The di-iron RIC protein (YtfE) of Escherichia coli interacts with the DNA-binding protein from starved cells (Dps) to diminish RIC-protein-mediated redox stress

The RIC (Repair of Iron Clusters) protein of Escherichia coli is a di-iron hemerythrin-like protein that has a proposed function in repairing stress-damaged iron-sulphur clusters. In this work, we performed a Bacterial Two Hybrid screening to search for RIC-protein interaction partners in E. coli. As a result, the DNA-binding protein from starved cells (Dps) was identified and its potential interaction with RIC was tested by BACTH, Bimolecular-Fluorescence-Complementation and pull-down assays. Using the activity of two Fe-S-containing enzyme as indicators of cellular Fe-S cluster damage, we observed that strains with single deletions of ric or dps have significantly lower aconitase and fumarase activities. In contrast, the double ric dps mutant strain displayed no loss of aconitase and fumarase activity with respect to the wild type. Additionally, while complementation of the ric dps double mutant with ric led to a severe loss of aconitase activity, this effect was no longer observed when a gene encoding a di-iron site variant of the RIC protein was employed. The dps mutant exhibited a large increase in ROS levels, but this increase was eliminated when ric was also inactivated. Absence of other iron storage proteins, or of peroxidase and catalases, had no impact on RIC-mediated redox stress induction. Hence, we show that RIC interacts with Dps in a manner that serves to protect E. coli from RIC-protein-induced ROS