Although too erratic in technique to earn the distinction of virtuoso, Rudolf Nureyev still took a place among the most brilliant dancers in history. His flamboyance and charisma garnered him a truly massive audience; it's possible that his dancing has been seen by more people than that of any other

Bombast, Dramatic, Intense, Masculine, Mythic, Severe, Soviet ballet: the bolshoi and the kirov

The dramatic duo of Victorian London, playwright Sir William Schwenck Gilbert and composer Sir Arthur Sullivan, turned a theatrical corner with the creation of their wildly successful comic operas. For more than 20 years, the pair created a host of now-classic light operas, such as "HMS Pinafore" (1

Dramatic, Lyrical, Musical theater, Overflowing, Pathos, Playful

The unlucky landlord of "Rent" died the night his smash Broadway musical was born in 1996. Following the musical's final dress rehearsal, Broadway's Great White Hope for the American musical unexpectedly perished in his apartment of an aortic aneurysm at the age of 35. Theater's wunderkind reworked

Bombast, Dramatic, New american musical, Overflowing, Pop, Tragic

Eons before "Days of Our Lives" reared its ugly head on television, Tolstoy was a master of the soap opera. His serialized surveys of nineteenth-century Russian society are devoted to detailing in relentlessly romantic prose the epiphanies of love and war, the travails of the individual on the battle

Dramatic, Epic, High realism, Huge, Monumental