input: Unlike Lully, who collaborated with Philippe Quinault on almost all his operas, Rameau rarely worked with the same librettist twice. He was highly demanding and bad-tempered, unable to maintain longstanding partnerships with his librettists, with the exception of Louis de Cahusac, who collaborated with him on several operas, including Les fetes de l'Hymen et de l'Amour (1747), Zais (1748), Nais (1749), Zoroastre (1749; revised 1756), La naissance d'Osiris (1754), and Anacreon (the first of Rameau's operas by that name, 1754). He is also credited with writing the libretto of Rameau's final work, Les Boreades (c. 1763).  Many Rameau specialists have regretted that the collaboration with Houdar de la Motte never took place, and that the Samson project with Voltaire came to nothing because the librettists Rameau did work with were second-rate. He made his acquaintance of most of them at La Poupliniere's salon, at the Societe du Caveau, or at the house of the Comte de Livry, all meeting places for leading cultural figures of the day.  Not one of his librettists managed to produce a libretto on the same artistic level as Rameau's music: the plots were often overly complex or unconvincing. But this was standard for the genre, and is probably part of its charm. The versification, too, was mediocre, and Rameau often had to have the libretto modified and rewrite the music after the premiere because of the ensuing criticism. This is why we have two versions of Castor et Pollux (1737 and 1754) and three of Dardanus (1739, 1744, and 1760).

Answer this question "Why did the Samson project come to nothing?"
output: because the librettists Rameau did work with were second-rate.

input: During their hiatus, Mayday released the autobiographical documentary titled The Wings of Dream <<Yao Gun Ben Shi >> , with ticket sales hitting more than NT1.2 million in barely three days. They also released an accompanying soundtrack.  After Masa's official release from the military, the band regrouped and made a return to the music industry. To mark the event, Mayday held their City of the Sky <<Tian Kong Zhi Cheng >>  concert on 16 August 2004 at the Taipei Municipal Stadium. The concert attracted nearly 40,000 fans, which broke the record for the most concert-goers in Taiwan, a record previously held by Michael Jackson.  On 11 November 2003, the band also released their 4th studio album Time Machine <<Shi Guang Ji >> . Sales of the album hit more than 15,000 within two days, with Mayday seeing no decline in their popularity despite their hiatus. Time Machine also won Mayday their second Best Musical Group award at the 15th Golden Melody Awards.  In the summer of 2004, Mayday also participated in the making of the soundtrack for the movie Love of May, in which they also presented new arrangements of some of their old songs. Stone also had a supporting role in the movie.  5 November 2004 saw the release of their critically acclaimed 5th studio album God's Children Are All Dancing/Flying Angels With A Falling Soul <<Shen De Hai Zi Du Zai Tiao Wu >> . This album used the simultaneous recording technique to create the distinctive "band" sound of their past albums and was specially recorded at Lake Kawaguchi, Japan. In 2005, they also released a best of compilation album Just My Pride <<Zhi Zu  Zui Zhen Jie Zuo Xuan >> , which included six new songs and favourites culled from previous albums.

Answer this question "Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?"
output: On 11 November 2003, the band also released their 4th studio album Time Machine <<Shi Guang Ji >> .

input: Theses on the Philosophy of History is often cited as Benjamin's last complete work, having been completed, according to Adorno, in the spring of 1940. The Institute for Social Research, which had relocated to New York, published Theses in Benjamin's memory in 1942. Margaret Cohen writes in the Cambridge Companion to Walter Benjamin:  In the "Concept of History" Benjamin also turned to Jewish mysticism for a model of praxis in dark times, inspired by the kabbalistic precept that the work of the holy man is an activity known as tikkun. According to the kabbalah, God's attributes were once held in vessels whose glass was contaminated by the presence of evil and these vessels had consequently shattered, disseminating their contents to the four corners of the earth. Tikkun was the process of collecting the scattered fragments in the hopes of once more piecing them together. Benjamin fused tikkun with the Surrealist notion that liberation would come through releasing repressed collective material, to produce his celebrated account of the revolutionary historiographer, who sought to grab hold of elided memories as they sparked to view at moments of present danger.  In the essay, Benjamin's famed ninth thesis struggles to reconcile the Idea of Progress in the present with the apparent chaos of the past:  A Klee painting named Angelus Novus shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.  The final paragraph about the Jewish quest for the Messiah provides a harrowing final point to Benjamin's work, with its themes of culture, destruction, Jewish heritage and the fight between humanity and nihilism. He brings up the interdiction, in some varieties of Judaism, to try to determine the year when the Messiah would come into the world, and points out that this did not make Jews indifferent to the future "for every second of time was the strait gate through which the Messiah might enter."

Answer this question "What is important about the dark times?"
output: