Vanessa may refer to:
Vanessa is an American opera in three (originally four) acts by Samuel Barber, opus 32, with an original English libretto by Gian-Carlo Menotti. It was composed in 1956–1957 and was first performed at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City on January 15, 1958 under the baton of Dimitri Mitropoulos in a production designed by Cecil Beaton and directed by Menotti. Barber revised the opera in 1964, reducing the four acts to the three-act version most commonly performed today.
For the Met premiere, Sena Jurinac was contracted to sing the title role. However, she cancelled six weeks before the opening night and Eleanor Steber replaced her, making it her own for a long time. In the role of Erika, Vanessa's niece, was Rosalind Elias, then a young mezzo-soprano. Nicolai Gedda sang the lover Anatol, mezzo Regina Resnik sang the Baroness, Vanessa's mother, while bass, Giorgio Tozzi, sang the old doctor.
The premiere "was an unqualified success with the audience and with many of the critics as well although they were somewhat qualified in their judgment. Of the final quintet, however, New York Times critic Howard Taubman said it is '...a full-blown set-piece that packs an emotional charge and that would be a credit to any composer anywhere today.' ". Other reports substantiate this and it won Barber the Pulitzer Prize. In Europe, however, it met with a chillier reception.
Vanessa (1868) is a painting by John Everett Millais in Sudley House, Liverpool. It is a fancy portrait depicting Jonathan Swift's correspondent Esther Vanhomrigh (1688-1723), who was known by that pseudonym.
Vanessa represents a major departure in Millais's art because he abandons fully for the first time the detailed finish that was still to be seen in Waking and Sleeping, exhibited in the previous year. Influenced by the work of Diego Velázquez and Joshua Reynolds, Millais paints with dramatic, visible brush strokes in vivid colours, creating what has been described as an "almost violently modern" handling of paint.
Esther Vanhomrigh is known as "Swift's Vanessa" because of the fictional name he gave her when he published their correspondence. The portrait is wholly imaginary. No actual image of Esther Vanhomrigh exists. She is holding a letter, presumably written to or from Swift. Her sad expression is related to the fraught nature of the relationship, which was broken up by Swift's relationship to another woman, Esther Johnson whom he called "Stella". Millais also painted a companion piece depicting Stella.
Scandal is a 1986 novel by the Japanese author Shusaku Endō. Endo was a Japanese Catholic writer whose works, among other things, covered various aspects of the Japanese Catholic experience. He was furthermore a member of the Japanese 'literary establishment,' accounting for the importance of PEN meetings in the work. Aging in Japan was also addressed via commentary on the medical problems suffered by an elderly man.
Set in Tokyo during the 1980s, it tells the story of an old Catholic writer struggling with old age and the feeling that he yet has to write his magnum opus. One day, a young woman shows up at a party attended by the main character, Suguro, mentioning loudly that he has not been visiting the ill-reputed street where she works as an artist lately. Because of his reputation as a Christian writer with high moral standards, such behaviour is seen by his publishers as very undesirable and by himself as very embarrassing.
He meets a young girl, Mitsu, telling him about enjo kōsai ("compensated dating"), and Suguro decides to hire her as an assistant to help relieve his rheumatic wife from such activities. As time passes he starts to dream about this young girl, but keeps silent about it so as not to worry his wife.
Scandal is a self-titled, 5-song EP by the band Scandal, released in 1982 by Columbia Records. Although the EP has never been released on CD, all five songs are found on the VH1 Scandal compilation album called We Are the '80s. The EP's album cover photo of the five band members is also reproduced on the VH1 compilation's cover (with an updated photograph).
The song "Win Some, Lose Some" was written in 1979 and first recorded by Bryan Adams on his 1980 self-titled debut album.
The fourth season of the American television drama series Scandal began airing on September 25, 2014, in the United States on ABC and consists of 22 episodes. The season was produced by ABC Studios, in association with ShondaLand Production Company and The Mark Gordon Company; the showrunner being Shonda Rhimes.
The season continues the story of Olivia Pope's crisis management firm, Olivia Pope & Associates, and its staff, as well as staff at the White House in Washington D.C. Season four had nine series regulars, all returning from the previous season, out of which eight are part of the original cast of ten regulars from the first season. The season aired at Thursday 9:00 pm, a new timeslot from the three previous seasons which aired an hour later on the same night. The new timeslot was made to make room for ShondaLand Production Company's new TV series, How to Get Away with Murder.
On May 7, 2015, ABC announced that Scandal was renewed for a fifth season.
The season focuses on Olivia's return to Washington, D.C., after spending two months relocated on an island off the coast of Zanzibar with Jake, and how her absence has affected the people around her.