Question:
Passage: Hooter College student Chuck has decided academics aren't going to get him anywhere in life, so he's taken to managing a band his classmates have formed called The Splitz, which consists of lead singer Joan, guitarist Gina and drummer Susie.  The Splitz struggle to make a name for themselves and resort to playing in dive bars where the patrons are more interested in boozing and brawling than appreciating the music.
The day after a disastrous show, Chuck escorts Gina to her home, where he meets her former-mobster father, who becomes obsessed with the percentage of the band's income that Chuck is claiming.  Chuck also meets Gina's cousin Vinnie,  a sweet but oversexed meathead who can't score a date, so Chuck encourages him to try hypnosis.
Meanwhile, the evil Dean Hunta informs the heads of three sororities that they'll have to compete in a trio of events to determine who's going to lose their house to make way for a new sewage treatment plant.  The dean favors Sigma Phi's Lois Scagliani and Delta Phi's Fern Hymenstein and informs them that the Phi Betas have to lose.  When asked if she has an axe to grind with the Phi Beta sorority, the Dean replies that it's "just another act of random, senseless violence perpetrated against the underdogs."
At the first competition, a soccer game, Gina is disgusted to see the way that Phi Beta's Midge and her peers are being trampled by their competitors, so she gets into the game herself and the other Splitz quickly follow suit.   Although the Phi Betas lose the game, they gain an all-girl rock band, who immediately become part of their sorority.

Passage: Administrators at Mildew College, an all-girl school, are begging the school's largest benefactor, Mrs. Catsby, to provide an athletic fund for the school. She does not approve of girls playing sports, and informs the administrators that the money will be used for the salaries of the three new Teutonic professors that are arriving that day. Meanwhile, the Stooges have just started a new job as servicemen at a service station, with a strong held belief of "super soyvice!" When they get a customer (three older German men driven by a chauffeur), they proceed to provide their own inept brand of service, angering the men. The mayhem ends when Curly accidentally puts gasoline in the radiator and Moe checks it with a match. The resulting explosion wrecks the car and prompts the Stooges to flee in a nearby ice cream truck that they had coincidentally thrown the German men's suitcases into. Curly climbs in the back while Moe and Larry are in the front.
The Stooges finally stop when they run out of gas. Moe and Larry realize that Curly is still in the back of the truck and is now frozen solid. They thaw him out by tying him to a tree branch over an open fire. This works fine until Curly wakes up on fire and jumps into a nearby lake. When Moe and Larry try to help him out, he pulls them in with him. Now soaked, the boys decide to see if there are any dry clothes in the suitcases they had thrown into the truck.
The suitcases, it turns out, belong to the three new professors for Mildew College, and as the boys, now decked in their gowns and mortarboards, try to hitch a ride, Mrs. Catsby spots them and picks them up, bringing them to the school. During the introductions of the "new professors," a student gets wise with a nonplussed Larry, and in order to test their "mental coordination", Moe begins a rendition of "Swingin' the Alphabet", which starts off fine and eventually transcends into a jazzy, off-time performance.

Passage: Three years after their final competition, the Bellas have graduated from Barden University, but all hate their jobs, and to make matters worse, Beca and Jesse's relationship is doomed, as is Fat Amy and Bumper's relationship. Beca, Fat Amy, Chloe, Aubrey, Lilly, Stacie, Cynthia Rose, Florencia, Jessica, and Ashley are thrilled when Emily, now a senior and leader of the current Barden Bellas, asks them to sing at an event. Arriving  at the reunion, they learn that Emily simply invited them to see the new Bellas.
They later gather at a bar in disappointment, but express how much they miss each other. Aubrey convinces them to join a USO tour, near her Army officer father. Emily fills in for Stacie, who is eight months pregnant. The Bellas land at a base in Spain, greeted by their liaisons, soldiers Chicago and Zeke. They also meet the other three bands, including the mean-spirited female quartet Evermoist. The others use musical instruments, helping them defeat the Bellas in a riff-off.
Chloe begins to fall for Chicago. Fat Amy learns that Fergus, her estranged father and ruthless international crime lord, is staying in their hotel. The Bellas are invited to a party at DJ Khaled's suite, where Fat Amy is invited to a poker tournament. The tournament was a set up by Fergus, who begs to be in  Amy's life, which she agrees to after seeing he has changed. Beca develops a friendship with DJ Khaled's music producer Theo, who is impressed when she easily produces a mix of her own singing on Khaled's editing equipment. Moments later, the party is thrown into chaos when Aubrey accidentally ignites a fire.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question:
Passage: Ice Kings is a 2006 documentary film that was produced, written and directed
by Craig E. Shapiro. The film captures the story of Rhode Island's Mount Saint Charles Academy high school hockey team and their historic streak of 26 consecutive state titles. The film tells the incredible stories of
the young men who kept the streak alive and recaps the tale of the unlikely
public school that knocked the perennial kings from their throne.Ice Kings begins by highlighting the rich hockey history of the state of Rhode Island. Colorful stories of the Providence Reds are told by local residents and legends alike. While Rhode Island may be known by tourists for its beaches and resort towns, the film focuses on the heart of Rhode Island, which is found in the working class cities like Woonsocket. As stated by Mark Patinkin of the Providence Journal, "You sometimes need a window to see into this state, and Ice Kings captures Rhode Island through hockey, as important here as football is in Texas."The film then turns its attention to the man behind the legacy, former Mount Saint Charles Academy rink manager turned coach, Bill Belisle. At that time Mount, a perennial contender for the state title had lost its luster, but with Belisle's tough grit and hard nosed approach their legacy began. "It was said he knew how to fix the Zamboni, the soda machines, and the team." Tales from former players and parents put a face on the historic streak and help explain how one man could will generation after generation to win.
Narrated by CBS Sports' Bill Macatee, Ice Kings is an inspiring look at dedication, sacrifice, and one school's remarkable willingness to win. Mark Patinkin of the Providence Journal states, "High school hockey is a metaphor for the state, and the film gets you thinking about our mill-town heritage, and how the quest for pride and identity plays out here each season on the ice.".

Passage: The documentary tells its story by focusing on the careers of six women—The Fabulous Moolah, Mae Young, Gladys "Kill 'Em" Gillem, Ida Mae Martinez, Ella Waldek and Penny Banner. It begins by describing the beginning of wrestling in the 1930s. By the 1940s, American men had to leave the country to fight in World War II, leaving females to take over the sport. At first, women's wrestling was seen as a side-show, and it was banned in several states. The film mostly focuses on these years—the 1940s—along with the 1950s and 1960s, better known as the "heyday of women's wrestling", when the sport became more accepted and popular. The six women are interviewed and tell their stories of why they entered wrestling. They also share tales of being exploited financially, unruly fans, and being physically abused. The film splices in archival footage of their matches, television clips, and footage from a 1951 movie entitled Racket Girls in between interviews. The film also covers their post-wrestling occupations: lion-tamer, detective, nurse, and yodeler. The film ends with footage from the Gulf Coast Wrestlers Reunion, where they meet to swap stories.

Passage: The film opens with "The Super Fan", an avid Chiefs fan, making his 3rd belt. The film depicts the lives of 5 Chiefs players: Mike Bajurny (brother of producer David Bajurny), Brady Austin, Mike Henderson and Cory Holland.
With the exception of Henderson, all of these players live in an abandoned storage area on the second story of Colisée de Laval, affectionately known as "The Rat's Nest". Several players discuss the living conditions. Some don't mind it, while other say that since the room is near an exit, the apartments will not be used for a fire exit. Henderson mentions that the living situation isn't bad for a young single guy.
Henderson discusses his role with the team. He doesn't think he is limited to being a fighter, but considers himself to have an Owen Nolan-type of role with the team, where he could be tough as needed.
The Super Fan shows how he prepares for a big game: which involves the shining of one of his championship belts.  A shot of the arena is shown with fans mock-fighting each other with security surrounding the ice. Craig Martin discusses a line brawl and how it originated. At the end of the second, the team was trailing 3-0, but the Chiefs would score 7 goals to come back and win.
Families of the players discuss their son's and boyfriend's role with the team. Bajurny's mother does not approve of her son's role as a fighter. Henderson's fiancé discusses how they met and how she feels about him playing professional hockey.
A 6'5", 265 lbs ex-military strong man by the name of Tim Leveque comes to play for the Chiefs. The players discuss Tim coming to the team, and some players are concerned about not knowing his background. He immediately establishes himself as an enforcer. He is shown fighting 6'7", 320 lb Dominic "The Giant" Forcier and beats him.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question:
Passage: Lissitzky was born on November 23, 1890 in Pochinok, a small Jewish community 50 kilometres (31 mi) southeast of Smolensk, former Russian Empire. During his childhood, he lived and studied in the city of Vitebsk, now part of Belarus, and later spent 10 years in Smolensk living with his grandparents and attending the Smolensk Grammar School, spending summer vacations in Vitebsk. Always expressing an interest and talent in drawing, he started to receive instruction at 13 from Yehuda Pen, a local Jewish artist, and by the time he was 15 was teaching students himself. In 1909, he applied to an art academy in Saint Petersburg, but was rejected. While he passed the entrance exam and was qualified, the law under the Tsarist regime only allowed a limited number of Jewish students to attend Russian schools and universities.
Like many other Jews then living in the Russian Empire, Lissitzky went to study in Germany. He left in 1909 to study architectural engineering at a Technische Hochschule in Darmstadt, Germany. During the summer of 1912, Lissitzky, in his own words, "wandered through Europe", spending time in Paris and covering 1,200 kilometres (750 mi) on foot in Italy, teaching himself about fine art and sketching architecture and landscapes that interested him. His interest in ancient Jewish culture had originated during the contacts with a Paris-based group of Russian Jews led by sculptor Ossip Zadkine, a lifetime friend of Lissitzky since early childhood, who exposed Lissitzky to conflicts between different groups within the diaspora. Also in 1912 some of his pieces were included for the first time in an exhibit by the St. Petersburg Artists Union; a notable first step. He remained in Germany until the outbreak of World War I, when he was forced to return home through Switzerland and the Balkans, along with many of his countrymen, including other expatriate artists born in the former Russian Empire, such as Wassily Kandinsky and Marc Chagall.Upon his return to Moscow, Lissitzky attended the Polytechnic Institute of Riga, which had been evacuated to Moscow because of the war, and worked for the architectural firms of Boris Velikovsky and Roman Klein.  During this work, he took an active and passionate interest in Jewish culture which, after the downfall of the openly antisemitic Tsarist regime, was experiencing a renaissance. The new Provisional Government repealed a decree that prohibited the printing of Hebrew letters and that barred Jews from citizenship. Thus Lissitzky soon devoted himself to Jewish art, exhibiting works by local Jewish artists, traveling to Mahilyow to study the traditional architecture and ornaments of old synagogues, and illustrating many Yiddish children's books. These books were Lissitzky's first major foray in book design, a field that he would greatly greatly influence over the course of his career.

Passage: Caspar David Friedrich was born on 5 September 1774, in Greifswald, Swedish Pomerania, on the Baltic coast of Germany. The sixth of ten children, he was brought up in the strict Lutheran creed of his father Adolf Gottlieb Friedrich, a candle-maker and soap boiler. Records of the family's financial circumstances are contradictory; while some sources indicate the children were privately tutored, others record that they were raised in relative poverty. Caspar David was familiar with death from an early age. His mother, Sophie Dorothea Bechly, died in 1781 when he was just seven. A year later, his sister Elisabeth died, while a second sister, Maria, succumbed to typhus in 1791. Arguably the greatest tragedy of his childhood happened in 1787 when his brother Johann Christoffer died: at the age of thirteen, Caspar David witnessed his younger brother fall through the ice of a frozen lake, and drown. Some accounts suggest that Johann Christoffer perished while trying to rescue Caspar David, who was also in danger on the ice.
Friedrich began his formal study of art in 1790 as a private student of artist Johann Gottfried Quistorp at the University of Greifswald in his home city, at which the art department is now named Caspar-David-Friedrich-Institut in his honour. Quistorp took his students on outdoor drawing excursions; as a result, Friedrich was encouraged to sketch from life at an early age. Through Quistorp, Friedrich met and was subsequently influenced by the theologian Ludwig Gotthard Kosegarten, who taught that nature was a revelation of God. Quistorp introduced Friedrich to the work of the German 17th-century artist Adam Elsheimer, whose works often included religious subjects dominated by landscape, and nocturnal subjects. During this period he also studied literature and aesthetics with Swedish professor Thomas Thorild. Four years later Friedrich entered the prestigious Academy of Copenhagen, where he began his education by making copies of casts from antique sculptures before proceeding to drawing from life. Living in Copenhagen afforded the young painter access to the Royal Picture Gallery's collection of 17th-century Dutch landscape painting. At the Academy he studied under teachers such as Christian August Lorentzen and the landscape painter Jens Juel. These artists were inspired by the Sturm und Drang movement and represented a midpoint between the dramatic intensity and expressive manner of the budding Romantic aesthetic and the waning neo-classical ideal. Mood was paramount, and influence was drawn from such sources as the Icelandic legend of Edda, the poems of Ossian and Norse mythology.

Passage: The painting was included in Lichtenstein's first solo exhibition at The Leo Castelli Gallery, a show in which all the works had pre-sold before its opening in February 1962. The exhibition, which ran from February 10 through March 3, 1962, included Engagement Ring, Blam and The Refrigerator. He included the painting in his Artist's Studio—Look Mickey (1973), showing it hanging prominently on the wall of the pictorial space intended to depict his studio as the ideal studio, and implying that his popularity with critic and public ratifies his choice of popular culture subject matter. Reflecting on Look Mickey many years later, he said:
The idea of doing [a cartoon painting] without apparent alteration just occurred to me ... and I did one really almost half seriously to get an idea of what it might look like. And as I was painting this painting I kind of got interested in organizing it as a painting and brought it to some kind of conclusion as an aesthetic statement, which I hadn't really intended to do to begin with. And then I really went back to my other kind of painting, which was pretty abstract. Or tried to. But I had this cartoon painting in my studio, and it was a little too formidable. I couldn't keep my eyes off it, and it sort of prevented me from painting in any other way, and then I decided this stuff was really serious ... I would say I had it on my easel for a week. I would just want to see what it looked like. I tried to make it a work of art. I wasn't trying just to copy. I realized that this was just so much more compelling.
The painting was bequeathed to the Washington National Gallery of Art after Lichtenstein's death in 1997, following a 1990 pledge in honor of the institution's 50th Anniversary. It remains in the gallery's collection, where, as of November 2012, it is on permanent view.Harold Rosenberg once described Lichtensteins reworking of the comics source as follows: "...the difference between a comic strip of Mickey Mouse and a Lichtenstein painting of the same was art history, or the fact that Lichtenstein paints with the idea of the museum in mind.".

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question:
Passage: French painter Michel Marnet meets American singer Terry McKay aboard a liner crossing the Atlantic Ocean. They are both already engaged, he to heiress Lois Clarke, she to Kenneth Bradley. They begin to flirt and to dine together on the ship, but his notoriety and popularity on the ship make them conscious that others are watching. Eventually, they decide that they should dine separately and not associate with each other. At a stop at Madeira, they visit Michel's grandmother Janou, who approves of Terry and wants Michel to settle down.
As the ship is ready to disembark at New York City, the two make an appointment to meet six months later on top of the Empire State Building. Michel chooses six months because that is the amount of time he needs to decide whether he can start making enough money to support a relationship with Terry.  When the rendezvous date arrives, they both head to the Empire State Building.  However, Terry is struck by a car right as she arrives, and is told that she may not be able to walk, though that will not be known for certain for six months. Not wanting to be a burden to Michel, she does not contact him, preferring to let him think the worst. Meanwhile, Terry recovers at an orphanage teaching the children how to sing.
Six months go by, and during Terry's first outing since the accident, the two couples meet by accident at the theater, though Terry manages to conceal her condition. Michel then visits her at her apartment and finally learns the truth. He assures her that they will be together no matter what the diagnosis will be.

Passage: Nickie Ferrante, a well-known playboy, meets Terry McKay aboard the transatlantic ocean liner SS Constitution en route from Europe to New York. Each is involved with someone else. After a series of meetings aboard the ship, they establish a friendship. When Terry joins Nickie on a brief visit to his grandmother Janou while the ship is anchored near her home at Villefranche-sur-Mer on the Mediterranean coast, she sees Nickie with new eyes and their feelings become deeper. During their visit, Janou tells Terry that Nickie is a talented painter but destroys most of his paintings because they don't meet his standards. As the ship returns to New York City, they agree to reunite at the top of the Empire State Building in six months' time if they have succeeded in ending their relationships and starting new careers.
On the day of their rendezvous, Terry, hurrying to reach the Empire State Building, is struck down by a car while crossing a street. Gravely injured, she is rushed to the hospital. Meanwhile, Nickie, waiting for her at the observation deck at the top of the building, is unaware of the accident and, after many hours, leaves at midnight, believing she has rejected him.
After the accident, Terry, now unable to walk, refuses to contact Nickie because of her disability. Instead, she finds work as a music teacher. Nickie has pursued his painting and has his work displayed by Courbet, an art shop owner. Six months after the accident, Terry sees Nickie with his former fiancée at the ballet, which she herself is attending with her former boyfriend. Nickie does not notice her condition because she is seated, and she says hello as he passes her.

Passage: In 1933, during the Great Depression, New York City vaudeville actress Ann Darrow is hired by financially troubled filmmaker Carl Denham to star in a film with Herb, Carl's cameraman, Mike, Carl's soundman, Preston, Carl's assistant, and actor Bruce Baxter. Ann learns her favorite playwright, Jack Driscoll, is the screenwriter. As their tramp steamer, the SS Venture, journeys to the mysterious Skull Island, Ann and Jack fall in love. The people on the ship consist of Englehorn the captain and his crew, including Hayes, a World War One veteran, Lumpy the cook, Choy the janitor, and the Venture's lookout Jimmy. Captain Englehorn has second thoughts about the voyage, prompted by Lumpy and Hayes' speculation of trouble ahead.
Deep in the southern waters, the Venture receives a radio message informing Englehorn there is a warrant for Carl's arrest due to his defiance of the studio's orders to cease production. The message instructs Englehorn to divert to Rangoon, but the ship becomes lost in fog and runs aground on the rocky shore of Skull Island. Carl and his crew explore the island and are attacked by natives, who kill Mike as well as one of the sailors. Ann screams as she is captured, and a loud roar is heard beyond a wall. After this, the matriarch of the tribe targets Ann, muttering the word "Kong". Englehorn kills one of the natives and his crew break up the attack. Back on the ship, they lighten their load to float off the rocks and carry out repairs, but Jack discovers Ann has been kidnapped and another sailor has been killed. The natives offer Ann as a sacrifice to Kong, a 25 feet (7.6 m) tall gorilla. The crew returns fully armed, but is too late as Kong takes Ann and flees into the jungle. Though initially terrified, Ann wins Kong over with juggling and dancing, and begins to grasp Kong's intelligence and capacity for emotion.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question:
Passage: Sixteen days after his death, Wallace's double-disc second album was released as planned with the shortened title of Life After Death and hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200 charts, after making a premature appearance at No. 176 due to street-date violations. The record album featured a much wider range of guests and producers than its predecessor. It gained strong reviews and in 2000 was certified Diamond, the highest RIAA certification awarded to a solo hip hop album.
Its lead single, "Hypnotize", was the last music video recording in which Wallace would participate. His biggest chart success was with its follow-up "Mo Money Mo Problems", featuring Sean Combs (under the rap alias "Puff Daddy") and Mase. Both singles reached No. 1 in the Hot 100, making Wallace the first artist to achieve this feat posthumously. The third single, "Sky's The Limit", featuring the band 112, was noted for its use of children in the music video, directed by Spike Jonze, who were used to portray Wallace and his contemporaries, including Combs, Lil' Kim, and Busta Rhymes. Wallace was named Artist of the Year and "Hypnotize" Single of the Year by Spin magazine in December 1997.In mid-1997, Combs released his debut album, No Way Out, which featured Wallace on five songs, notably on the third single "Victory". The most prominent single from the record album was "I'll Be Missing You", featuring Combs, Faith Evans and 112, which was dedicated to Wallace's memory. At the 1998 Grammy Awards, Life After Death and its first two singles received nominations in the rap category. The album award was won by Combs's No Way Out and "I'll Be Missing You" won the award in the category of Best Rap Performance By A Duo Or Group in which "Mo Money Mo Problems" was nominated.In 1996, Wallace started putting together a hip hop supergroup, the Commission, which consisted himself, Jay-Z, Lil' Cease, Combs, and Charli Baltimore. The Commission was mentioned by Wallace in the lyrics of "What's Beef" on Life After Death and "Victory" from No Way Out, but a Commission album was never completed. A track on Duets: The Final Chapter, "Whatchu Want (The Commission)", featuring Jay-Z, was based on the group.

Passage: Immediately after Aaliyah's death, there was uncertainty over whether the music video for "Rock the Boat" would ever air. It made its world premiere on BET's Access Granted on October 9, 2001. She won two posthumous awards at the American Music Awards of 2002; Favorite Female R&B Artist and Favorite R&B/Soul Album for Aaliyah. Her second and final film, Queen of the Damned, was released in February 2002. Before its release, Aaliyah's brother, Rashad, re-dubbed some of her lines during post-production. It grossed US$15.2 million in its first weekend, ranking number one at the box office. On the first anniversary of Aaliyah's death, a candlelight vigil was held in Times Square; millions of fans observed a moment of silence; and throughout the United States, radio stations played her music in remembrance. In December 2002, a collection of previously unreleased material was released as Aaliyah's first posthumous album, I Care 4 U. A portion of the proceeds was donated to the Aaliyah Memorial Fund, a program that benefits the Revlon UCLA Women's Cancer Research Program and Harlem's Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. It debuted at number three on the Billboard 200, selling 280,000 copies in its first week. The album's lead single, "Miss You", peaked at number three on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. In August of the following year, clothing retailer Christian Dior donated profits from sales in honor of Aaliyah.In 2005, Aaliyah's second compilation album, Ultimate Aaliyah was released in the UK by Blackground Records. Ultimate Aaliyah is a three disc set, which included a greatest hits audio CD and a DVD. Andy Kellman of AllMusic remarked "Ultimate Aaliyah adequately represents the shortened career of a tremendous talent who benefited from some of the best songwriting and production work by Timbaland, Missy Elliott, and R. Kelly." A documentary movie Aaliyah Live in Amsterdam was released in 2011, shortly before the tenth anniversary of Aaliyah's death. The documentary, by Pogus Caesar, contained previously unseen footage shot of her career beginnings in 1995 when she was appearing in the Netherlands.In March 2012, music producer Jeffrey "J-Dub" Walker announced on his Twitter account that a song "Steady Ground", which he produced for Aaliyah's third album, would be included in the forthcoming posthumous Aaliyah album. This second proposed posthumous album would feature this song using demo vocals, as Walker claims the originals were somehow lost by his sound engineer. Aaliyah's brother Rashad later refuted Walker's claim, claiming that "no official album [is] being released and supported by the Haughton family.".

Passage: After being released from jail, Wallace made a demo tape called "Microphone Murderer", under the name Biggie Smalls, a reference to a character in the 1975 film Let's Do It Again as well as his stature; he stood at 6 feet 3 inches (1.91 m) and weighed 300 to 380 lb (140–170 kg) according to differing accounts. The tape was reportedly made with no serious intent of getting a recording deal. However, it was promoted by New York-based DJ Mister Cee, who had previously worked with Big Daddy Kane, and in 1992 it was heard by the editor of The Source.In March 1992, Wallace was featured in The Source's Unsigned Hype column, dedicated to aspiring rappers, and made a recording off the back of this success. The demo tape was heard by Uptown Records A&R and record producer Sean Combs, who arranged for a meeting with Wallace. He was signed to Uptown immediately and made an appearance on label mates Heavy D & the Boyz's "A Buncha Niggas" (from the album Blue Funk). Soon after Wallace signed his recording contract, Combs was fired from Uptown and started a new label, Bad Boy Records. Wallace followed and signed to the label in mid-1992.On August 8, 1993, Wallace's longtime girlfriend gave birth to his first child, T'yanna. Wallace had split with the girlfriend some time before T'yanna's birth. Despite having dropped out of high school himself, Wallace wanted his daughter to complete her education. He promised her "everything she wanted", saying that if his mother had promised him the same he would have graduated at the top of his class. He continued selling drugs after the birth to support his daughter financially. Once Combs discovered this, he forced Wallace to quit.Later in the year, Wallace, recording as the Notorious B.I.G., gained exposure after featuring on a remix to Mary J. Blige's single "Real Love". He recorded under this name for the remainder of his career, after finding the original moniker "Biggie Smalls" was already in use. "Real Love" peaked at No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and was followed by a remix of Blige's "What's the 411?". He continued this success, to a lesser extent, on remixes with Neneh Cherry ("Buddy X") and reggae artist Super Cat ("Dolly My Baby", also featuring Combs) in 1993. In April 1993, his solo track, "Party and Bullshit", appeared on the Who's the Man? soundtrack. In July 1994, he appeared alongside LL Cool J and Busta Rhymes on a remix to label mate Craig Mack's "Flava in Ya Ear", which reached No. 9 on the Billboard Hot 100.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question:
Passage: Axel Nordstrom manages a glass-bottom boat tourist operation in the waters of Santa Catalina Island, California. His widowed daughter, Jennifer Nelson, occasionally helps by donning a mermaid costume and swimming underneath his boat for the passengers' amusement.
One day, Jennifer accidentally meets Bruce Templeton when his fishing hook snags her costume. He reels in the bottom half, leaving the irate Jennifer floating in the water without pants. Jennifer later discovers that Templeton is a top executive at her new place of employment, a NASA aerospace research laboratory in Long Beach, where she works in public relations.
Templeton later recognizes Jennifer at the research laboratory and hires her for a new full-time assignment: to be his biographer and write his life story. His real purpose is to win her affections. There is a problem: the laboratory's security chief, Homer Cripps, after observing her mysterious behavior and curious, code-like phone calls, concludes that Jennifer is a Soviet spy. To prove his suspicions, he has Jennifer put under surveillance by everyone at the lab. When she learns of this, Jennifer sets out to turn the tables on the bumbling Cripps by pretending that she is a spy, a charade that eventually exposes a real spy.

Passage: Home from the war, Captain Tony Travis eyes an estate in Santa Barbara and wonders what it must be like to be that rich. It is the property of the fabulously wealthy Nora Hunter, who has secretary and friend Sylvia Lockwood impersonate her in public. Longtime guardian Jonathan Connors protects his ward's privacy zealously. During a ship launching, a press photographer takes Nora's picture, but Connors sees to it that the camera film is ruined.
Sylvia tells Nora that she is quitting so that she can accompany her husband, Phil Vernon, whose job requires him to move to Washington. Nora decides to marry her fiance Donald so that Sylvia can be her maid of honor at her wedding, but when Donald returns from military duty, he breaks the news that he has fallen in love with someone else.
Nora hosts a tea, but has Sylvia again pretend to be her. There she meets and takes a liking to Tony, but he is more interested in Sylvia. On hearing him vow that love is more important to him than money, Nora and Sylvia invite him to a weekend at Nora's beach house. Nora helps Tony court Sylvia, so that if he does genuinely love the real Nora, it will not be because of her money. All of her friends tell her she is being foolish, that nobody can resist that much temptation, but she stubbornly persists.

Passage: Sally and Humphrey have just put a down payment on a house, when Sally loses her receptionist job after accidentally destroying the switchboard.  She applies for a Fuller Brush franchise, but needs a reference from her former employer, Harvey Simpson.  Meanwhile, Harvey is in trouble with his wife because he's come home with a suit coat smelling of Fuller Brush powder.  Mrs. Simpson thinks her husband is having an affair, so Harvey calls Humphrey to have Sally go to Harvey's house and explain everything to his wife.  With her reference letter depending on it, Sally goes to the house to find a bogus Mrs. Simpson, a dead body, and missing diamonds. Afraid the police will suspect her of foul play, Sally and Humphrey identify the real culprit and pursue her to her job dancing at a burlesque theater, and then onto a departing ocean liner.  Hilarity ensues as the pair are chased around the ship by a criminal gang trying to silence them, while they hide variously in rooms filled with leaky wine barrels, bunches of bananas, and a talking parrot who nearly gives them away.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question:
Passage: Worlds End State Park is a 780-acre (316 ha) Pennsylvania state park in Sullivan County, Pennsylvania, in the United States. The park, nearly surrounded by Loyalsock State Forest, is in the Loyalsock Creek valley on Pennsylvania Route 154, in Forks and Shrewsbury Townships southeast of the borough of Forksville. The name Worlds End has been used since at least 1872, but its origins are uncertain. Although it was founded as Worlds End State Forest Park by Governor Gifford Pinchot in 1932, the park was officially known as Whirls End State Forest Park from 1936 to 1943.The park's land was once home to Native Americans, followed by settlers who cleared the forests for subsistence farming and later built sawmills. The second growth forests in and surrounding Worlds End State Park are partially a result of the efforts of the young men of the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression. They helped overcome the clearcutting of the early 20th century, and built many of the park's facilities, including the cabins that earned it a place on the National Register of Historic Places.
A wide variety of wildlife is found in the park, which is also part of an Important Bird Area. Located in the Endless Mountains region of the dissected Allegheny Plateau, Worlds End has a continental climate and rocks and fossils from the Carboniferous period. It is one of "Twenty Must-See Pennsylvania State Parks" named by the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, which describes it as "[v]irtually in a class by itself, this wild, rugged and rustic area seems almost untamed". The park offers year-round recreational opportunities, including environmental education, hiking, camping in tents and cabins, whitewater rafting, swimming, cross-country skiing, snowmobiling, hunting, and fishing.

Passage: During the Great Depression, the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) set up nine camps in Tiadaghton State Forest. The camps included two near Upper Pine Bottom State Park: CCC Camp S-82-Pa (Waterville, also known as Haneyville) was on Upper Pine Bottom Run about 2.5 miles (4.0 km) west of the park and operated from May 1933 to 1941; CCC Camp S-129-Pa (Little Pine) was at the site of nearby Little Pine State Park and operated from 1933 to 1937. The CCC planted large numbers of trees in the state forest, did work in the park, and built a pavilion at the site in 1936. Although the roof of a structure was still visible in the park in a 1959 aerial photo, as of 2019 there are no pavilions or other buildings in the park. The United States' entry into the Second World War in 1941 led to the end of the CCC, and all its camps were closed by the summer of 1942.In 1950 the park was known as "Upper Pine Bottom State Forest Picnic Area" and was mentioned in a New York Times article on the Pine Creek Gorge. On November 11, 1954, the Pennsylvania Geographic Board made the picnic area name official. The Pennsylvania Bureau of Forestry's Division of State Parks became the Bureau of State Parks in 1962 and Upper Pine Bottom (and all state parks and picnic areas) were transferred to it from Forestry that year. In 1972, Upper Pine Bottom was one of 10 state forest picnic areas kept by the Bureau of State Parks (35 were transferred to the Bureau of Forestry), and Forrey's 1984 History of Pennsylvania's State Parks referred to it as a state forest picnic area. The Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (Penn DOT) 1993 map still called it a picnic area, but Cupper's 1993 Our Priceless Heritage: Pennsylvania's State Parks 1893–1993 called it a state park, as did the Penn DOT 2002 map.As of 2019 Upper Pine Bottom State Park is a roadside park for day use only, with a small parking lot and a few picnic tables. In addition to picnics, its chief use is as a parking area for local hunters, anglers, hikers, cross country skiers, and snowmobilers. Staff from nearby Little Pine State Park maintain Upper Pine Bottom, and it is one of the smallest state parks in Pennsylvania. Prouty Place State Park, a picnic area to the northwest in Potter County, is also 5 acres (2.0 ha). Only Sand Bridge State Park, another picnic area to the south in Union County, is smaller, at 3 acres (1.2 ha).

Passage: Ricketts Glen State Park is in the Susquehanna River drainage basin, the earliest recorded inhabitants of which were the Iroquoian-speaking Susquehannocks. Their numbers were greatly reduced by disease and warfare with the Five Nations of the Iroquois, and by 1675 they had died out, moved away, or been assimilated into other tribes. After this, the lands of the Susquehanna valley were under the nominal control of the Iroquois, who encouraged displaced tribes from the east to settle there, including the Shawnee and Lenape (or Delaware).On November 5, 1768, the British acquired land, known in Pennsylvania as the New Purchase, from the Iroquois in the Treaty of Fort Stanwix; this included what is now Ricketts Glen State Park. After the American Revolutionary War, Native Americans almost entirely left Pennsylvania. Luzerne County was formed in 1786 from part of Northumberland County, and Fairmount Township, where the waterfalls are, was settled in 1792 and incorporated in 1834. About 1890 a Native American pot, decorated in the style of "the peoples of the Susquehanna region", was found under a rock ledge on Kitchen Creek by Murray Reynolds, for whom a waterfall is named.The Ricketts family began acquiring land in and around what became the park in 1851, when Elijah Ricketts and his brother Clemuel bought about 5,000 acres (2,000 ha) on North Mountain around what is now known as Ganoga Lake. By 1852 they had built a stone house on the lake shore, which they ran "as a lodge and tavern". Elijah's son Robert Bruce Ricketts, for whom the park is named, joined the Union Army as a private at the outbreak of the American Civil War and rose through the ranks to become a colonel. After the war, R. B. Ricketts returned to Pennsylvania and began purchasing the land around the lake from his father in 1869; eventually he controlled or owned more than 80,000 acres (32,000 ha), including the glens and waterfalls.Ricketts and the other settlers living in the area were not aware of the glens and their waterfalls until about 1865, when they were discovered by two of the Ricketts' guests who went fishing and wandered down Kitchen Creek. In 1872 Ricketts built a three-story wooden addition to the stone house; this opened as the North Mountain House hotel in 1873, and was run by Ricketts' brother Frank until 1898.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question:
Passage: Carmen (French pronunciation: [kaʁmɛn]; Spanish: [ˈkaɾmen]) is an opera in four acts by French composer Georges Bizet. The libretto was written by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy, based on a novella of the same title by Prosper Mérimée. The opera was first performed by the Opéra-Comique in Paris on 3 March 1875, where its breaking of conventions shocked and scandalized its first audiences.
Bizet died suddenly after the 33rd performance, unaware that the work would achieve international acclaim within the following ten years.  Carmen has since become one of the most popular and frequently performed operas in the classical canon;  the "Habanera" from act 1 and the "Toreador Song" from act 2 are among the best known of all operatic arias.
The opera is written in the genre of opéra comique with musical numbers separated by dialogue. It is set in southern Spain and tells the story of the downfall of Don José, a naïve soldier who is seduced by the wiles of the fiery gypsy Carmen. José abandons his childhood sweetheart and deserts from his military duties, yet loses Carmen's love to the glamorous torero Escamillo, after which José kills her in a jealous rage. The depictions of proletarian life, immorality, and lawlessness, and the tragic death of the main character on stage, broke new ground in French opera and were highly controversial.
After the premiere, most reviews were critical, and the French public was generally indifferent. Carmen initially gained its reputation through a series of productions outside France, and was not revived in Paris until 1883. Thereafter, it rapidly acquired popularity at home and abroad. Later commentators have asserted that Carmen forms the bridge between the tradition of opéra comique and the realism or verismo that characterised late 19th-century Italian opera.
The music of Carmen has since been widely acclaimed for brilliance of melody, harmony, atmosphere, and orchestration, and for the skill with which Bizet musically represented the emotions and suffering of his characters. After the composer's death, the score was subject to significant amendment, including the introduction of recitative in place of the original dialogue; there is no standard edition of the opera, and different views exist as to what versions best express Bizet's intentions. The opera has been recorded many times since the first acoustical recording in 1908, and the story has been the subject of many screen and stage adaptations.

Passage: Agrippina (HWV 6) is an opera seria in three acts by George Frideric Handel with a libretto by Cardinal Vincenzo Grimani. Composed for the 1709–10 Venice Carnevale season, the opera tells the story of Agrippina, the mother of Nero, as she plots the downfall of the Roman Emperor Claudius and the installation of her son as emperor. Grimani's libretto, considered one of the best that Handel set, is an "anti-heroic satirical comedy", full of topical political allusions. Some analysts believe that it reflects Grimani's political and diplomatic rivalry with Pope Clement XI.
Handel composed Agrippina at the end of a three-year sojourn in Italy. It premiered in Venice at the Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo on 26 December 1709. It proved an immediate success and an unprecedented series of 27 consecutive performances followed. Observers praised  the quality of the music—much of which, in keeping with the contemporary custom, had been borrowed and adapted from other works, including the works of other composers. Despite the evident public enthusiasm for the work, Handel did not promote further stagings. There were occasional productions in the years following its premiere but Handel's operas, including Agrippina, fell out of fashion in the mid-18th century.
In the 20th century Agrippina was revived in Germany and premiered in Britain and America. Performances of the work have become ever more common, with innovative stagings at the New York City Opera and the London Coliseum in 2007. Modern critical opinion is that Agrippina is Handel's first operatic masterpiece, full of freshness and musical invention which have made it one of the most popular operas of the ongoing Handel revival.

Passage: The search for a singer-actress to play Carmen began in the summer of 1873. Press speculation favoured Zulma Bouffar, who was perhaps the librettists' preferred choice. She had sung leading roles in many of Offenbach's operas, but she was unacceptable to Bizet and was turned down by du Locle as unsuitable. In September an approach was made to Marie Roze, well known for previous triumphs at the Opéra-Comique, the Opéra and in London. She refused the part when she learned that she would be required to die on stage. The role was then offered to Célestine Galli-Marié, who agreed to terms with du Locle after several months' negotiation. Galli-Marié, a demanding and at times tempestuous performer, would prove a staunch ally of Bizet, often supporting his resistance to demands from the management that the work should be toned down. At the time it was generally believed that she and the composer were conducting a love affair during the months of rehearsal.The leading tenor part of Don José was given to Paul Lhérie, a rising star of the Opéra-Comique who had recently appeared in works by Massenet and Delibes. He would later become a baritone, and in 1887 sang the role of Zurga in the Covent Garden premiere of Les pêcheurs de perles. Jacques Bouhy, engaged to sing Escamillo, was a young Belgian-born baritone who had already appeared in demanding roles such as Méphistophélès in Gounod's Faust and as Mozart's Figaro. Marguerite Chapuy, who sang Micaëla, was at the beginning of a short career in which she was briefly a star at London's Theatre Royal, Drury Lane; the impresario James H. Mapleson thought her "one of the most charming vocalists it has been my pleasure to know". However, she married and left the stage altogether in 1876, refusing Mapleson's considerable cash inducements to return.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question:
Passage: Anton Rubinstein was a famous Russian pianist who had lived, performed and composed in Western and Central Europe before he returned to Russia in 1858. He saw Russia as a musical desert compared to Paris, Berlin and Leipzig, whose music conservatories he had visited. Musical life flourished in those places; composers were held in high regard, and musicians were wholeheartedly devoted to their art. With a similar ideal in mind for Russia, he had conceived an idea for a conservatory in Russia years before his 1858 return, and had finally aroused the interest of influential people to help him realize the idea.
Rubinstein's first step was to found the Russian Musical Society (RMS) in 1859. Its objectives were to educate people in music, cultivate their musical tastes and develop their talents in that area of their lives. The first priority of the RMS acted was to expose to the public the music of native composers. In addition to a considerable amount of Western European music, works by Mussorgsky and Cui were premiered by the RMS under Rubinstein's baton. A few weeks after the Society's premiere concert, Rubinstein started organizing music classes, which were open to everyone. Interest in these classes grew until Rubinstein founded the Saint Petersburg Conservatory in 1862.According to musicologist Francis Maes, Rubinstein could not be accused of any lack of artistic integrity. He fought for change and progress in musical life in Russia. Only his musical tastes were conservative—from Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven to the early Romantics up to Chopin. Liszt and Wagner were not included. Neither did he welcome many ideas then new about music, including the role of nationalism in classical music. For Rubinstein, national music existed only in folk song and folk dance. There was no place for national music in larger works, especially not in opera. Rubinstein's public reaction to the attacks was simply not to react. His classes and concerts were well attended, so he felt no reply was actually necessary. He even forbade his students to take sides.

Passage: Igor Stravinsky was the son of Fyodor Stravinsky, the principal bass singer at the Imperial Opera, St Petersburg, and Anna, née Kholodovskaya, a competent amateur singer and pianist from an old-established Russian family. Fyodor's association with many of the leading figures in Russian music, including Rimsky-Korsakov, Borodin and Mussorgsky, meant that Igor grew up in an intensely musical home. In 1901 Stravinsky began to study law at Saint Petersburg University while taking private lessons in harmony and counterpoint. Stravinsky worked under the guidance of Rimsky-Korsakov, having impressed him with some of his early compositional efforts. By the time of his mentor's death in 1908 Stravinsky had produced several works, among them a Piano Sonata in F♯ minor (1903–04), a Symphony in E♭ major (1907), which he catalogued as "Opus 1", and a short orchestral piece, Feu d'artifice ("Fireworks", composed in 1908).In 1909 Feu d'artifice was performed at a concert in St. Petersburg. Among those in the audience was the impresario Sergei Diaghilev, who at that time was planning to introduce Russian music and art to western audiences. Like Stravinsky, Diaghilev had initially studied law, but had gravitated via journalism into the theatrical world. In 1907 he began his theatrical career by presenting five concerts in Paris; in the following year he introduced Mussorgsky's opera Boris Godunov. In 1909, still in Paris, he launched the Ballets Russes, initially with Borodin's Polovtsian Dances from Prince Igor and Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade. To present these works Diaghilev recruited the choreographer Michel Fokine, the designer Léon Bakst and the dancer Vaslav Nijinsky. Diaghilev's intention, however, was to produce new works in a distinctively 20th-century style, and he was looking for fresh compositional talent. Having heard Feu d'artifice he approached Stravinsky, initially with a request for help in orchestrating music by Chopin to create the ballet Les Sylphides. Stravinsky worked on the opening "Nocturne" and the closing "Valse Brillante"; his reward was a much bigger commission, to write the music for a new ballet, The Firebird (L'oiseau de feu) for the 1910 season.Stravinsky worked through the winter of 1909–10, in close association with Fokine who was choreographing The Firebird. During this period Stravinsky made the acquaintance of Nijinsky who, although not dancing in the ballet, was a keen observer of its development. Stravinsky was uncomplimentary when recording his first impressions of the dancer, observing that he seemed immature and gauche for his age (he was 21). On the other hand, Stravinsky found Diaghilev an inspiration, "the very essence of a great personality". The Firebird was premiered on 25 June 1910, with Tamara Karsavina in the main role, and was a great public success. This ensured that the Diaghilev–Stravinsky collaboration would continue, in the first instance with Petrushka (1911) and then The Rite of Spring.

Passage: On 10 June 1859, the 19-year-old Tchaikovsky graduated as a titular counselor, a low rung on the civil service ladder. Appointed to the Ministry of Justice, he became a junior assistant within six months and a senior assistant two months after that. He remained a senior assistant for the rest of his three-year civil service career.Meanwhile, the Russian Musical Society (RMS) was founded in 1859 by the Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna (a German-born aunt of Tsar Alexander II) and her protégé, pianist and composer Anton Rubinstein. Previous tsars and the aristocracy had focused almost exclusively on importing European talent. The aim of the RMS was to fulfill Alexander II's wish to foster native talent. It hosted a regular season of public concerts (previously held only during the six weeks of Lent when the Imperial Theaters were closed) and provided basic professional training in music. In 1861, Tchaikovsky attended RMS classes in music theory taught by Nikolai Zaremba at the Mikhailovsky Palace (now the Russian Museum). These classes were a precursor to the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, which opened in 1862. Tchaikovsky enrolled at the Conservatory as part of its premiere class. He studied harmony and counterpoint with Zaremba and instrumentation and composition with Rubinstein.The Conservatory benefited Tchaikovsky in two ways. It transformed him into a musical professional, with tools to help him thrive as a composer, and the in-depth exposure to European principles and musical forms gave him a sense that his art was not exclusively Russian or Western. This mindset became important in Tchaikovsky's reconciliation of Russian and European influences in his compositional style. He believed and attempted to show that both these aspects were "intertwined and mutually dependent". His efforts became both an inspiration and a starting point for other Russian composers to build their own individual styles.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question: Passage: Two songs, "Kreuzberg" and "I Still Remember", explore sexuality and homosexuality; the former is an account of promiscuity in the Berlin area of the same name, while the latter details an unrequited crush of a boy for his schoolmate.The leading track, "Song for Clay (Disappear Here)", was inspired by Less Than Zero, a novel by Bret Easton Ellis which depicts excessive hedonism and its effects on individuals. The song title references the protagonist Clay and a billboard in the book which displays the phrase "Disappear Here", while the action is relocated to Les Trois Garçons restaurant in Shoreditch, East London. "Waiting for the 7.18" provides an escapist counterpoint by mentioning a trip to Brighton following disillusionment with working life in the capital. The fifth song on A Weekend in the City, "Uniform", references London again and criticises the youth subculture in the area. It is directly inspired by Douglas Rushkoff's Merchants of Cool documentary, which details the corporate exploitation of popular culture by advertisement companies.Okereke read Guy Debord's The Society of the Spectacle and Henri Lefebvre's Critique of Everyday Life, works which analyse how people experience leisure in modern societies, and was inspired to pen several songs which detail the drug and drink culture present in a metropolis. "The Prayer" is based on drug use during nights out in clubs, while "On" specifies the effects and after-effects of cocaine. Okereke tried to treat the tracks as explanations of people's actions, rather than moralising tales; he has stated, "In a time when so many people feel they can't communicate or feel hemmed in, I can see the appeal of cocaine." "Sunday" details the morning-after hangover following a drunken and promiscuous night out, while "SRXT" takes the form of a suicide note following the loneliness and despair of hedonism in the metropolis. The album closer is named after Seroxat, a trade name for the antidepressant paroxetine, and was crafted following the suicide attempts of two of Okereke's friends after they left university in 2005.

Passage: By 2008, Gaga had relocated to Los Angeles to work extensively with her record label to complete her debut album, The Fame, and to set up her own creative team called the Haus of Gaga, modeled on Andy Warhol's Factory. The Fame was released on August 19, 2008, reached number one in Austria, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Switzerland and the UK, and the top five in Australia and the US. Its first two singles, "Just Dance" and "Poker Face", reached number one in the United States, Australia, Canada and the UK. The latter was also the world's best-selling single of 2009, with 9.8 million copies sold that year, and spent a record 83 weeks on Billboard magazine's Digital Songs chart. Three other singles, "Eh, Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say)", "LoveGame" and "Paparazzi", were released from the album; the last one reached number one in Germany. Remixed versions of the singles from The Fame, except "Eh, Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say)", were included on Hitmixes in August 2009. At the 52nd Annual Grammy Awards, The Fame and "Poker Face" won Best Dance/Electronica Album and Best Dance Recording, respectively.Following her opening act on The Pussycat Dolls' 2009 Doll Domination Tour in Europe and Oceania, Gaga headlined her worldwide The Fame Ball Tour, which ran from March to September 2009. While traveling the globe, she wrote eight songs for The Fame Monster, a reissue of The Fame. Those new songs were also released as a standalone EP on November 18, 2009. Its first single, "Bad Romance", was released one month earlier and went number one in Canada and the UK, and number two in the US, Australia and New Zealand. "Telephone", with Beyoncé, followed as the second single from the EP and became Gaga's fourth UK number one. Its third single was "Alejandro", which reached number one in Finland and attracted controversy when its music video was deemed blasphemous by the Catholic League. Both tracks reached the top five in the US. The video for "Bad Romance" became the most watched on YouTube in April 2010, and that October, Gaga became the first person with more than one billion combined views. At the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards, she won eight awards from 13 nominations, including Video of the Year for "Bad Romance". She was the most nominated artist for a single year, and the first female to receive two nominations for Video of the Year at the same ceremony. The Fame Monster won the Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Album, and "Bad Romance" won Best Female Pop Vocal Performance and Best Short Form Music Video at the 53rd Annual Grammy Awards.

Passage: Curtis was the band's sole lyricist, and he typically composed his lyrics in a notebook, independently of the eventual music to evolve. The music itself was largely written by Sumner and Hook as the group jammed during rehearsals. Curtis's imagery and word choice often referenced "coldness, pressure, darkness, crisis, failure, collapse, loss of control". In 1979, NME journalist Paul Rambali wrote, "The themes of Joy Division's music are sorrowful, painful and sometimes deeply sad." Music journalist Jon Savage wrote that "Curtis's great lyrical achievement was to capture the underlying reality of a society in turmoil, and to make it both universal and personal," while noting that "the lyrics reflected, in mood and approach, his interest in romantic and science-fiction literature." Critic Robert Palmer wrote that William S. Burroughs and J. G. Ballard were "obvious influences" to Curtis, and Morris also remembered the singer reading T. S. Eliot. Deborah Curtis also remembered Curtis reading works by writers such as Fyodor Dostoevsky, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, Franz Kafka, and Hermann Hesse.Curtis was unwilling to explain the meaning behind his lyrics and Joy Division releases were absent of any lyric sheets. He told the fanzine Printed Noise, "We haven't got a message really; the lyrics are open to interpretation. They're multidimensional. You can read into them what you like." The other Joy Division members have said that at the time, they paid little attention to the contents of Curtis' lyrics. In a 1987 interview with Option, Morris said that they "just thought the songs were sort of sympathetic and more uplifting than depressing. But everyone's got their own opinion." Deborah Curtis recalled that only with the release of Closer did many who were close to the singer realise "[h]is intentions and feelings were all there within the lyrics". The surviving members regret not seeing the warning signs in Curtis's lyrics. Morris said that "it was only after Ian died that we sat down and listened to the lyrics...you'd find yourself thinking, 'Oh my God, I missed this one'. Because I'd look at Ian's lyrics and think how clever he was putting himself in the position of someone else. I never believed he was writing about himself. Looking back, how could I have been so bleedin' stupid? Of course he was writing about himself. But I didn't go in and grab him and ask, 'What's up?' I have to live with that".

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question: Passage: Tom is chasing Jerry around Mammy Two Shoes, while she is yelling out confusing instructions on where to chase Jerry. She has a broom ready to hit Jerry but instead she bungles things by clumsily hitting Tom on the head causing the cat to forget who he is and believing he is a mouse like Jerry, except he's rude. Tom terrorizes Two Shoes by shaking the chair, causing her to fall off it, before she quickly flees from the deranged cat. Jerry then overhears the terrified Two Shoes on the phone talking to a doctor about Tom. She hears from the Doctor that Tom is suffering from amnesia - a term she doesn't understand. Seeing Tom approaching her with mischief on his mind, Two Shoes has to cut her phone conversation short before she can find out more details about Tom's current illness. The hapless housemaid begs Tom to leave her alone and attempts to evade him by walking away on stilts. Tom mischievously pulls the stilts from under her, causing Two Shoes to fall down with an enormous crash, silencing her. The deranged feline then runs back into the mouse hole and break Jerry's bed, Jerry finds Tom even more annoying as a 'rodent' than as a cat, and so plots to bring him back.

Passage: The cartoon opens with a circle showing Jerry running but as the circle grows, it is revealed that Jerry is going nowhere as Tom captured his tail. When Tom's owner calls Tom he lets Jerry's tail go, freeing him back into his cage. The owner of Tom and a large mansion tells Tom he is going away for a while, that the mansion is in perfect shape and that he does not want Tom blaming the mouse for any destruction this time. Of course, this means Tom will spend most of the cartoon chasing Jerry across the mansion, causing extensive damage.
First, Tom kicks Jerry out of the mansion, sits on the sofa and eats lots of food stolen from the refrigerator while watching television (A clip of Muscle Beach Tom is shown). Afterwards, traditional chase and damage happen. Among the sequences include Jerry shoving Tom into a VCR and shelving the resulting cassette-sized cat, Tom trapping Jerry in a coffeemaker, Jerry trapping Tom in a refrigerator, Jerry sucking Tom and half the living room into a vacuum cleaner and finally Tom chasing Jerry through the yard and into the house on a riding lawnmower to which Tom accidentally crashes the lawnmower into his owner's returning car, who then tells Tom that he "makes a better hood ornament than a house cat".

Passage: Mammy Two Shoes stumbles upon entering the kitchen, which has been ransacked by Jerry, and berates the residents of the house, Tom and Butch. She warns them that the one who catches Jerry can stay, and the other will be kicked out. The two cats frantically search for Jerry, eventually realizing they were both unsuspectingly aided by him. They scramble to catch the mouse, but become tangled. They tiptoe across the floor until Jerry hits one of their feet with a log.
Tom and Butch then grab Jerry together and decide to have a gun duel. Tom turns around early and shoots Butch, but finds out he has a novelty gun, allowing Butch to chase Tom into the wall. Tom sees the same brand name on it and assumes it is another novelty gun, but Butch shoots, with Tom barely dodging the bullet. Jerry then enters an oven. Tom and Butch slam the door and turn on the gas, but Jerry sneaks out, lights a match and drops it in the oven, leaving Tom and Butch in blackface.
Jerry is then caught by both cats simultaneously. Jerry squeezes out, but is grabbed by Butch. Tom grabs his tail as he flees and after Tom bops Butch on the head, Butch slips the mouse into a box before continuing the fight. Jerry escapes and rings a gong, ending the fight momentarily, and coaches Tom and Butch to hit each other. After Jerry rings the gong, both cats realise they have been tricked and glance towards Jerry. Realising he is trapped, the mouse chooses Butch via counting-out and sits down in his hand.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question: Passage: Paul is a young womanizer living in a small Southern town, where he earns a living fixing cars for his uncle. Paul still lives with his mother, Elvira, who works as a clown cheering up children at the local hospital. He spends most of his time hanging out with his best friend and self-proclaimed partner-in-crime, Tip, and their friends Bo and Bust-Ass. Among his friends, Paul has a reputation as a ladies' man, but he is not at all known for being involved with long-term relationships; most of Paul's romances last only a few weeks, and he's slept with nearly every girl in town. Paul is beginning to reach a point where he would like to lead a different life, and that feeling becomes all the more clear when he meets Noel, Tip's teenage sister who returns home after attending a boarding school. Noel is more thoughtful and mature than the girls Paul is used to. Paul and Noel soon fall in love, but for Paul this is a different sort of relationship than he's accustomed to — Noel is still a virgin, and her contemplative nature gives him a desire to be a better, stronger person, but Tip does not approve of Paul dating his younger sister, which leads to a rift between these longtime friends.

Passage: A boy obsessed with football finds his life changing dramatically once he adds a little Samba. Danny plays on the football team at the all-boys Catholic school he attends in Belfast. Danny's three best friends, who also play on the team, all have different ambitions for their lives. Mickey wants to be a fashion designer so he can get rich and date supermodels. Gary wants to become a magician so he can get rich and meet beautiful women (and presumably saw them in half). And Spike likes to beat people up, so he wants to become a mercenary and do it for a living. But Danny dreams of making football his life.
The players Danny most admires are South Americans, such as Pele and Carlos Riga, who he feels have a special rhythm and flexibility. Wanting to add some of these qualities to his own game, Danny has an idea: he'll take Samba lessons, in the hope that dancing like a South American will help him play like a South American. To the surprise of himself and his friends, Danny turns out to be a pretty good Latin dancer and finds himself smitten with a student in his dance class, Lucy. However, Lucy happens to have a boyfriend, who is a fierce competitor on one of Danny's rival teams. The film also stars Brian Flanagan who plays an inspiring cameo role along with members of Celbridge Town Football Club.

Passage: Small-town church organist Marion Cullen falls in love with traveling salesman Jimmy Decker. When she learns that the couple who raised her are not really her parents, and that she is actually the illegitimate daughter of a showgirl, she sets out for New York City in search of Jimmy. However, she discovers that he is engaged to Enid Hollister, his boss' daughter. Dr. Travers, who is in love with Marion, offers to help her, but she decides to try to make it on her own.
Jobs are scarce, however. She ends up with other hopeful showgirls, among them Dixie Dare, hoping to audition for a part in Ford Humphries' new production. The philandering Humphries likes what he sees in Marion and hires her as a piano accompanist. Dixie gets a job as well, and she and Marion become friends and roommates.
Travers sees Humphries and Marion together, and knowing the former's reputation, brings Jimmy to Humphries' party. Jimmy tells Marion that he loves her, but she refuses to break up his marriage. When she also refuses Humphries' advances, he fires her. He then decides to use one of the songs she had composed for his production, claiming he wrote it. When she learns of this, she confronts him, although he denies everything. Jimmy goes to Humphries' suite to convince him to do the right thing. During their argument, Humphries stumbles and falls onto the balcony below and lapses into a coma from his injuries. Jimmy flees the scene; however, the police have a description of him and suspect him of attempted murder. To shield Jimmy, Marion confesses to the non-existent crime. Desperate, Travers operates for hours on Humphries, who regains consciousness and explains what really happened in front of witnesses before dying. Marion is released and becomes engaged to Travers, as Jimmy wishes them well.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question:
Passage: In 1983, theater and opera director Peter Sellars proposed to American composer John Adams that he write an opera about Nixon's 1972 visit to China. Sellars was intrigued by Nixon's decision to make the visit, seeing it as both "a ridiculously cynical election ploy ... and a historical breakthrough". Adams, who had not previously attempted an opera, was initially skeptical, assuming that Sellars was proposing a satire. Sellars persisted, however, and Adams, who had interested himself in the origin of myths, came to believe the opera could show how mythic origins may be found in contemporary history.  Both men agreed that the opera would be heroic in nature, rather than poking fun at Nixon or Mao.  Sellars invited Alice Goodman to join the project as librettist,  and the three met at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C. in 1985 to begin intensive study of the six characters, three American and three Chinese, upon whom the opera would focus. The trio endeavored to go beyond the stereotypes about figures such as Nixon and Chinese Chairman Mao Tse-tung and to examine their personalities.As Adams worked on the opera, he came to see Nixon, whom he had once intensely disliked, as an "interesting character", a complicated individual who sometimes showed emotion in public.  Adams wanted Mao to be "the Mao of the huge posters and Great Leap Forward; I cast him as a heldentenor".  Mao's wife, on the other hand, was to be "not just a shrieking coloratura, but also someone who in the opera's final act can reveal her private fantasies, her erotic desires, and even a certain tragic awareness.  Nixon himself is a sort of Simon Boccanegra, a self-doubting, lyrical, at times self-pitying melancholy baritone."Goodman explained her characterizations:
A writer tends to find her characters in her self, so I can tell you ... that Nixon, Pat, Mme. Mao, Kissinger and the chorus were all 'me.' And the inner lives of Mao and Chou En-Lai, who I couldn't find in myself at all, were drawn from a couple of close acquaintances.

Passage: Nixon in China is an opera in three acts by John Adams, with a libretto by Alice Goodman. Adams' first opera, it was inspired by U.S. President Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to China. The work premiered at the Houston Grand Opera on October 22, 1987, in a production by Peter Sellars with choreography by Mark Morris. When Sellars approached Adams with the idea for the opera in 1983, Adams was initially reluctant, but eventually decided that the work could be a study in how myths come to be, and accepted the project. Goodman's libretto was the result of considerable research into Nixon's visit, though she disregarded most sources published after the 1972 trip.
To create the sounds he sought, Adams augmented the orchestra with a large saxophone section, additional percussion, and electronic synthesizer. Although sometimes described as minimalist, the score displays a variety of musical styles, embracing minimalism after the manner of Philip Glass alongside passages echoing 19th-century composers such as Wagner and Johann Strauss. With these ingredients, Adams mixes Stravinskian 20th-century neoclassicism, jazz references, and big band sounds reminiscent of Nixon's youth in the 1930s. The combination of these elements varies frequently, to reflect changes in the onstage action.
Following the 1987 premiere, the opera received mixed reviews; some critics dismissed the work, predicting it would soon vanish. However, it has been presented on many occasions since, in both Europe and North America, and has been recorded twice. In 2011, the opera received its Metropolitan Opera debut, a production based on the original sets, and in the same year was given an abstract production in Toronto by the Canadian Opera Company. Recent critical opinion has tended to recognize the work as a significant and lasting contribution to American opera.

Passage: Productions during the 1980s included the company's first presentations of Pelléas and Mélisande (1981), Parsifal (1986) and Billy Budd (1988). 1980s productions that remained in the repertory for many years included Xerxes directed by Hytner, and Rigoletto and The Mikado directed by Jonathan Miller. In 1984 ENO toured the United States; the travelling company, led by Elder, consisted of 360 people; they performed Gloriana, War and Peace, The Turn of the Screw, Rigoletto and Patience. This was the first British company to be invited to appear at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, where Patience received a standing ovation and Miller's production of Rigoletto, depicting the characters as mafiosi, was greeted with a mixture of enthusiasm and booing. In 1990 ENO was the first major foreign opera company to tour the Soviet Union, performing the Miller production of The Turn of the Screw, Pountney's production of Macbeth, and Hytner's much-revived Xerxes.The 'Powerhouse' era ended in 1992, when all three of the triumvirate left at the same time. The new general director was Dennis Marks, formerly head of music programmes at the BBC, and the new music director was Sian Edwards. Pountney's post of director of productions was not filled. Marks, inheriting a large financial deficit from his predecessors, worked to restore the company's finances, concentrating on restoring ticket sales to sustainable levels. A new production by Miller of Der Rosenkavalier was a critical and financial success, as was a staging of Massenet's Don Quixote, described by the critic Hugh Canning as "the kind of old-fashioned theatre magic which the hair-shirted Powerhouse regime despised".Marks was obliged to spend much time and effort in securing the funding for an essential restoration of the Coliseum, a condition on which ENO had acquired the freehold of the theatre in 1992. At the same time the Arts Council was contemplating a cut in the number of opera performances in London, at the expense of ENO, rather than Covent Garden. By increasing ticket sales in successive years, Marks demonstrated that the Arts Council's proposition was unrealistic. After what The Independent described as "a sustained period of criticism and sniping at the ENO by music critics", Edwards resigned as music director at the end of 1995. Paul Daniel became ENO's next music director. In 1997, Marks resigned. No official reason was announced, but one report stated that he and the ENO board had disagreed about his plans to move the company from the Coliseum to a purpose-built new home. Daniel took over the management of the company until a new general director was appointed.Daniel inherited from Marks a company thriving artistically and financially. The 1997–1998 season played to 75 per cent capacity and made a surplus of £150,000. Daniel led the campaign against yet another proposal to merge Covent Garden and ENO, which was rapidly abandoned. In 1998 Nicholas Payne, director of opera at Covent Garden, was appointed as ENO's general director. Productions in the 1990s included the company's first stagings of Beatrice and Benedict (1990), Wozzeck (1990), Jenůfa (1994), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1995), Die Soldaten (1996), and Dialogues of the Carmelites (1999). Co-productions, enabling opera houses to share the costs of joint enterprises, became important in this decade.  In 1993 ENO and Welsh National Opera collaborated on productions of Don Pasquale, Ariodante and The Two Widows.

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.


Question: Passage: A number of performers and groups, including several early leaders, have been recognized for their contributions to taiko performance. Daihachi Oguchi was best known for developing kumi-daiko performance. Oguchi founded the first kumi-daiko group called Osuwa Daiko in 1951, and facilitated the popularization of taiko performance groups in Japan.Seidō Kobayashi is the leader of the Tokyo-based taiko group Oedo Sukeroku Taiko as of December 2014. Kobayashi founded the group in 1959 and was the first group to tour professionally. Kobayashi is considered a master performer of taiko. He is also known for asserting intellectual control of the group's performance style, which has influenced performance for many groups, particularly in North America.In 1968, Seiichi Tanaka founded the San Francisco Taiko Dojo and is regarded as the Grandfather of Taiko and primary developer of taiko performance in the United States. He was a recipient of a 2001 National Heritage Fellowship awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts  and since 2013 is the only taiko professional presented with the Order of the Rising Sun 5th Order: Gold and Silver Rays by Emperor Akihito of Japan, in recognition of Grandmaster Seiichi Tanaka's contributions to the fostering of US-Japan relations as well as the promotion of Japanese cultural understanding in the United States.In 1969, Den Tagayasu (田耕, Den Tagayasu) founded Ondekoza, a group well known for making taiko performance internationally visible and for its artistic contributions to the tradition. Den was also known for developing a communal living and training facility for Ondekoza on Sado Island in Japan, which had a reputation for its intensity and broad education programs in folklore and music.Performers and groups beyond the early practitioners have also been noted. Eitetsu Hayashi is best known for his solo performance work. Hayashi joined Ondekoza when he was 19, and after parting from the group helped found Kodo, one of the best known and most influential taiko performance groups in the world. Hayashi soon left the group to begin a solo career and has performed in venues such as Carnegie Hall in 1984, the first featured taiko performer there. He was awarded the 47th Education Minister's Art Encouragement Prize, a national award, in 1997 as well as the 8th Award for the Promotion of Traditional Japanese Culture from the Japan Arts Foundation in 2001.

Passage: By 1970, Takemitsu's reputation as a leading member of avant-garde community was well established, and during his involvement with Expo '70 in Osaka, he was at last able to meet more of his Western colleagues, including Karlheinz Stockhausen. Also, during a contemporary music festival in April 1970, produced by the Japanese composer himself ("Iron and Steel Pavilion"), Takemitsu met among the participants Lukas Foss, Peter Sculthorpe, and Vinko Globokar. Later that year, as part of a commission from Paul Sacher and the Zurich Collegium Musicum, Takemitsu incorporated into his Eucalypts I parts for international performers: flautist Aurèle Nicolet, oboist Heinz Holliger, and harpist Ursula Holliger.Critical examination of the complex instrumental works written during this period for the new generation of "contemporary soloists" reveals the level of his high-profile engagement with the Western avant-garde, in works such as Voice for solo flute (1971), Waves for clarinet, horn, two trombones and bass drum (1976), Quatrain for clarinet, violin, cello, piano and orchestra (1977). Experiments and works that incorporated traditional Japanese musical ideas and language continued to appear in his output, and an increased interest in the traditional Japanese garden began to reflect itself in works such as In an Autumn Garden for gagaku orchestra (1973), and A Flock Descends into the Pentagonal Garden for orchestra (1977).Throughout this apogee of avant-garde work, Takemitsu's musical style seems to have undergone a series of stylistic changes. Comparison of Green (for orchestra, 1967) and A Flock Descends into the Pentagonal Garden (1977) quickly reveals the seeds of this change. The latter was composed according to a pre-compositional scheme, in which pentatonic modes were superimposed over one central pentatonic scale (the so-called "black-key pentatonic") around a central sustained central pitch (F-sharp), and an approach that is highly indicative of the sort of "pantonal" and modal pitch material seen gradually emerging in his works throughout the 1970s. The former, Green (or November Steps II) written 10 years earlier, is heavily influenced by Debussy, and is, in spite of its very dissonant language (including momentary quarter-tone clusters), largely constructed through a complex web of modal forms. These modal forms are largely audible, particularly in the momentary repose toward the end of the work. Thus in these works, it is possible to see both a continuity of approach, and the emergence of a simpler harmonic language that was to characterise the work of his later period.
His friend and colleague Jō Kondō said, "If his later works sound different from earlier pieces, it is due to his gradual refining of his basic style rather than any real alteration of it.".

Passage: Rakoto's opportunity for national fame arrived with the 1958 visit of French President Charles de Gaulle to Madagascar. The visit was in conjunction with the dissolution of colonial status and naming of Philibert Tsiranana as Prime Minister, part of the island's transition to full independence in 1960. Tsiranana had previously seen the flutist perform and invited Rakoto and his group of 18 musicians to accompany de Gaulle and perform traditional pieces during a portion of the French statesman's walking tour through the capital city of Antananarivo. Following this performance, Rakoto dedicated himself full-time to a career in music, performing regularly at traditional celebrations on the island. Tsiranana, who became president of Madagascar two years later, was the first to refer to the artist as Rakoto Frah, the name that the musician would use for the rest of his career.International recognition of Rakoto Frah and his performance of traditional sodina music began with his first overseas voyage to Algeria in 1967. The artist led a troupe of 18 Malagasy musicians selected to represent the island's various ethnic groups at the International Festival of Algiers. Among the 80 competitors hailing from a variety of countries, Rakoto Frah's troupe won the gold medal. This success was followed by performances in Japan, England, the United States, India, Germany, China, Norway, Finland, Australia and France, making him one of the first musicians to perform traditional Malagasy music at music festivals and concerts outside of Madagascar. At these performances, he was often accompanied by supporting musicians under the group name Orchestre Nationale. By exposing international audiences to sodina performances, Rakoto Frah promoted the instrument and the traditional musical heritage of Madagascar across the globe. The government of President Tsirananana fell into disfavor and was overturned in 1972, and Rakoto Frah's close association with the unpopular former head of state led the artist to be marginalized for the first half of the administration of his successor, Didier Ratsiraka (1975–1993).

Instruction: In this task, you're given passages that contain mentions of names of people, places, or things. Some of these mentions refer to the same person, place, or thing. Your job is to write questions that evaluate one's understanding of such references. Good questions are expected to link pronouns (she, her, him, his, their, etc.) or other mentions to people, places, or things to which they may refer. Do not ask questions that can be answered correctly without understanding the paragraph or having multiple answers. Avoid questions that do not link phrases referring to the same entity. For each of your questions, the answer should be one or more phrases in the paragraph, and it should be unambiguous.