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aria
Solo song with instrumental accompaniment in opera, cantata, or oratorio. The strophic or stanzaic aria, in which each new stanza might represent a melodic variation on the first, appeared in opera in C. Monteverdi's Orfeo (1607) and was widely used for decades. The standard aria form c.1650-1775 was the da capo aria, in which the opening melody and text are repeated after an intervening melody-text section (often in a different key, tempo, and meter); the return of the first section was often virtuosically embellished by the singer. Comic operas never limited themselves to da capo form. Even in serious opera, from c.1750 a variety of forms were used; G. Rossini and others often expanded the aria into a complete musical scene in which two or more conflicting emotions were expressed. R. Wagner's operas largely abandoned the aria in favor of a continuous musical texture, but arias have never ceased to be written.


aril
Special covering of certain seeds that commonly develops from the seed stalk. It is often a bright-colored fleshy envelope, as in such woody plants as the yews and nutmeg and in members of the arrowroot family, oxalis, and the castor-oil plant. Animals are attracted to arils and eat the seeds, dispersing them in their wastes. The aril of nutmeg is the source of the spice known as mace.


brig
Two-masted sailing ship with square rigging on both masts. Brigs were both naval and mercantile vessels. As merchantmen, they often followed coastal trading routes, but ocean voyages were not uncommon, and some were even used for whaling and sealing. Naval brigs carried 10-20 guns on a single deck. In the 18th-19th cent., they served as couriers for battle fleets and as training vessels for cadets. Brigs of the early U.S. Navy won distinction on the Great Lakes in the War of 1812. Because square rigging required a large crew, merchant brigs became uneconomical, and in the 19th cent. they began to give way to vessels such as the schooner and the bark.


Erie
City (pop., 1996 est.: 105,000), NW Pennsylvania. Named for the Erie Indians, it was the site of a French fort (1753) on Lake Erie. The site was acquired by the U.S. in 1795, when the town was laid out. Nearby naval shipyards built most of the fleet that defeated the British at the Battle of Lake Erie (1813) in the War of 1812. Economic development began with the opening (1844) of the Erie and Pittsburgh Canal and with railway construction in the 1850s. Pennsylvania's only port on the St. Lawrence Seaway, it is a shipping point for many products, incl. lumber, coal, and petroleum. While early industries were largely agricultural, manufactures, incl. electrical equipment and construction machinery, are now well diversified.


Eris
Ancient Greek personification of strife. Her Roman counterpart was Discordia. The daughter of Nyx and the sister of Ares, she was best known for her role in starting the ...

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