French actress and animal rights activist Brigitte Bardot has died : NPR

Legendary screen siren and animal rights activist Brigitte Bardot has died at age 91. The alluring former model starred in numerous movies, often playing the highly sexualized love interest.

By Elizabeth Blair

Brigitte Bardot, the international sex goddess of cinema in the 1950s and ’60s, has died aged 91. Bardot’s animal rights foundation announced her death in a statement to news agency Agence France-Presse on Sunday, without specifying the time or place of death.

Stylish and seductive, Bardot exuded a kind of free sexuality, rare in the buttoned-up 1950s. She modeled, made movies, influenced fashion around the world and recorded albums. She married four times. Her list of lovers famously included Warren Beatty, Nino Ferrer and singer-songwriter-producer Serge Gainsbourg, with whom she recorded the French hit Bonnie and Clyde.

As an actor, Bardot worked with some of France’s leading directors including Henri-Georges Clouzot in La Vérité (The Truth), Jean-Luc Godard in Le Mépris (Contempt) and Louis Malle in Viva Maria!

Born Catholic to an upper-middle-class couple in Paris in 1934, Bardot studied ballet and modeled before becoming an actor. As a teenager, she appeared several times on the cover of Elle magazine, attracting the attention of Roger Vadim who was six years her senior. The two married in 1952. Bardot’s parents made them wait until she turned 18.

Vadim, an aspiring director, has been credited with turning Bardot into the iconic sex symbol she became. In his 1957 film And God Created Woman, Bardot plays a provocative young woman on a quest for sexual liberation.

Vadim wanted Bardot’s appearances in his films to shake off sexual taboos. He once said that he wanted to “kill the myth, this odd rule in Christian morality, that sex must be coupled with guilt.”

Source: French actress and animal rights activist Brigitte Bardot has died : NPR

Behind the Christmas Carol: Angels We Have Heard on High

By Diana Leagh Matthews

Angels We Have Heard on High commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ found in the Gospel of Luke.  The song focuses on the shepherds encounter with the angels foretelling of the birth of the newborn child. Reports say that in 129 A.D. Pope Telesphorus ordained that the “Gloria” be sung at the Christmas Eve midnight mass.  The phrase became known as the “Angels Hymn” and considered one of the earliest known Christmas hymns.

The “Gloria” is believed to have inspired the chorus in Angels We Have Heard on High.  The tune is believe to be inspired by an unknown tune that was arranged by Edward Shippen Barnes in the early 1900s.

French legend indicates that in medieval times on Christmas Eve, the shepherds would sing and call to one another from one hillside to another.  “They would call “Gloria in excelsis Deo” which means “glory to God in the highest” in Latin. It was how they would spread their holiday message and cheer from points far away to one another. From hillside to valley, the shepherd’s song must have truly sounded like angels calling to one another in celebration of the birth of Christ for the Christians living in nearby regions. Also, the song reflects the shepherd’s joy that the time of the holiday season has arrived yet again.”

Angels We Have Heard on High is of French origin and originally titled “Les anges dans nos campagnes“.  The original author of the song is unknown, but believed to be from Languedoc, France.

The carol was first published in the 1855 the Nouveau Recueil de Cantiques hymn book.

In 1862, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Hexham and Newcastle, northeast England, James Chadwick translated the song into English.  The English version was published that years in the Crown of Jesus Music.

Iain MacMilan translated the English translation into Scots Gaelic.

The version that has become popular worldwide was published later, in 1916, in the book Carols Old and Carols New. The Barnes arrangement is believed to first be published around 1937, probably in the New Church Hymnal.

Imagine being with the shepherds when the angels appeared to them on that amazing Christmas morning.

Source: Behind the Christmas Carol: Angels We Have Heard on High ⋆ Diana Leagh Matthews