Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that can help answer the question.
Query: When was François Lay born?
François Lay, better known under the stage name Lays (14 February 1758 – 30 March 1831), was a French baritone and tenor opera singer. Originally destined for a career in the church, Lays was recruited by the Paris Opéra in 1779. He soon became a leading member of the company, in spite of quarrels with the management. Lays enthusiastically welcomed the French Revolution and became involved in politics with the encouragement of his friend Bertrand Barère. Barère's downfall led to Lays being imprisoned briefly, but he soon won back the public and secured the patronage of Napoleon, at whose coronation and second wedding he sang. This association with the Emperor caused him trouble when the Bourbon monarchy was restored and Lays's final years were darkened by disputes over his pension, mounting debts, the death of his only son and his wife's illness. After a career spanning more than four decades, he died in poverty.
In January 1797, Lays enjoyed one of the biggest successes of his career when he sang the lead role in Grétry's "Anacréon chez Polycrate". The takings from this opera (9,354 livres on the first night alone) helped rescue the disastrous finances of the Théâtre de la République et des Arts (as the Opéra had been renamed). If the quality of his voice was universally admired, his lack of physical elegance, his short and stocky build and the southern accent he never completely managed to lose predisposed Lays to comic rather than dramatic roles, particularly middle-aged buffo characters, in which, "singing of love and good wine, he proved to be sublime". Anacreon was one such role. Lays played the character again in 1803 in the opera Cherubini dedicated to the ancient Greek poet. A few decades later, Castil-Blaze – referring to the work by Grétry – commented:
The opera sparkles with charming melodies; the role of Anacreon is the most beautiful, the most complete ever written for Lays, the marvellous sonority of whose voice was deployed so well in the ascending virtuoso passage "Prends, prends emporte mon or, mes trésors pour jamais." The trio "Livre ton cœur à l'espérance" makes a delightful impression." (Castil-Blaze, "L' Académie impériale de musique (...) – De 1645 à 1855", Paris, Castil-Blaze, 1855, II, p. 61)
On 30 January 1989, his father died in a skiing accident near Vail, Colorado. Later, in 1994 Louis Alphonse would receive 150 million "pesetas" following a lawsuit against Vail Associated, which owned the ski resort where the accident occurred. Louis Alphonse was recognised by some members of the Capetian dynasty as "Chef de la Maison de Bourbon" (Head of the House of Bourbon) and took the title Duke of Anjou, but not his father's Spanish dukedom. He is considered the rightful pretender to the French throne by adherents of the Legitimist movement.
The French language was introduced to Laos in the 19th century when French explorers arrived in Laos trying to make inroads into China after colonizing Vietnam. The French did not pay much attention to the kingdom of Lan Xang but established a consulate in present-day Luang Prabang. The actual catalysts for the establishment of colonial protectorate over Lao cultural regions were French fears of economic and political competition from Britain. By the 1890s, border disputes with Siam and France led to the Franco-Siamese War and the borders of Laos and Siam were established in favor of France and Laos became a French protectorate. Unlike in Vietnam, the French did not pursue to fully exert their influence in Laos and it was not until the 1900s that French began to be introduced into schools in Laos, but it was mostly limited to Vientiane. However, French rule finally gained firmer ground and French soon became the primary language of government and education and the language spread into southern Laos following the founding of Pakse. The French language peaked between the 1910s and World War II and spread throughout the nation but, like Vietnam, was not widely spoken in most rural areas. French eventually became the language of government officials and the elite. When Japan invaded Laos in World War II, French remained in the educational system, unlike in Vietnam, where Vietnamese became the sole language of education, but the Lao language was briefly used in the government. French returned as the sole political language after France resumed its rule of Laos and was co-official with Lao when Laos was granted self-rule in 1949, but Lao became the sole official language after independence in 1953.
Le Loutre was born in 1709 to Jean-Maurice Le Loutre Després, a paper maker, and Catherine Huet, the daughter of a paper maker, in the parish of Saint-Matthieu in Morlaix, France in Brittany. In 1730, the young Le Loutre entered the "Séminaire du Saint-Esprit" in Paris; both his parents had already died. After completing his training, Le Loutre transferred to the "Séminaire des Missions Étrangères" (Seminary of Foreign Missions) in March 1737, as he intended to serve the church abroad. Most of the priests associated with the Paris Foreign Missions Society were assigned as missionaries to Asia, particularly during the nineteenth century, but Le Loutre was assigned to eastern Canada and the Mi'kmaq, an Algonquian-speaking people.
In May 1715, a few months before the Sun-King's death, Fleury became tutor to Louis' great-grandson and heir, and in spite of a seeming lack of ambition, he acquired an influence over the child that was never broken, fostered by Louis' love and confidence. On the death of the regent Philippe d'Orléans in 1723, Louis XV came of age. Fleury, although already seventy years of age, deferred his own supremacy by suggesting the appointment of Louis Henri, duke of Bourbon, as first minister. Fleury was present at all interviews between Louis XV and his titular first minister, and on Bourbon's attempt to break through this rule Fleury retired from court. Louis made Bourbon recall the tutor, who on 11 July 1726 took affairs into his own hands and secured the exile from court of Bourbon and of his mistress Madame de Prie. He continued to refuse the formal title of first minister, but his elevation to cardinal, in 1726, confirmed his precedence over any others.
In 1925, Le Guennant arrived at the Gregorian Institute of Paris as director and teacher of Gregorian chant, succeeding Dom Joseph Gajard of the Solesmes Abbey.
After the Second World War, he organized many Gregorian sessions, not only in France but also in Fátima, and even Rio de Janeiro. Still teaching at the Gregorian Institute in Paris, this pedagogue and musician considerably boosted the teaching of Gregorian chant, by creating centres of study in several countries. When Maurice Duruflé thought about basing his Requiem on Gregorian chant, he asked Le Guennant for advice, and gratefully acknowledged his understanding. In 1960, Duruflé dedicated a composition to Le Guennant, his "Quatre Motets sur des thèmes grégoriens" which were also based on chant.
The soybean was first cultivated in France by 1779 (and perhaps as early as 1740). The two key early people and organizations introducing the soybean to France were the Society of Acclimatization (starting in 1855) and Li Yu-ying (from 1910). Li started a large tofu factory, where the first commercial soyfoods in France were made.
Louis XIV (Louis Dieudonné; 5 September 16381 September 1715), known as Louis the Great (') or the Sun King ('), was a monarch of the House of Bourbon who reigned as King of France from 1643 until his death in 1715. Starting on 14 May 1643 when Louis was 4 years old, his reign of 72 years and 110 days is the longest recorded of any monarch of a sovereign country in European history. In the age of absolutism in Europe, Louis XIV's France was a leader in the growing centralisation of power.
According to Michel Tribalat, a researcher at INED, there were 3.5 million people of Maghrebi origin (with at least one grandparent from Algeria, Morocco or Tunisia) living in France in 2005 corresponding to 5.8% of the total French metropolitan population (60.7 million in 2005). Maghrebis have settled mainly in the industrial regions in France, especially in the Paris region. Many famous French people like Edith Piaf, Isabelle Adjani, Arnaud Montebourg, Alain Bashung, Dany Boon and many others have Maghrebi ancestry.
King Louis XIV, son of Louis XIII, was only five years old when his father died. It was 20 years later, in 1661, when Louis XIV commenced his personal reign, that the young king showed interest in Versailles. The idea of leaving Paris, where, as a child, he had experienced first-hand the insurrection of the Fronde, had never left him. Louis XIV commissioned his architect Le Vau and his landscape architect Le Nôtre to transform the castle of his father, as well as the park, in order to accommodate the court. In 1678, after the Treaty of Nijmegen, the king decided that the court and the government would be established permanently in Versailles, which happened on 6 May 1682.
Bacqué (pronounced "BAH KAY") is one of four sons of Odon L. Bacqué, Sr. (1917-1993), and the former Lydia Aponte (1920-2007), a native of Puerto Rico who attended college in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Bacqué's brothers are Frank R. Bacqué, M.D., William J. Bacqué, and Jean Louis Bacqué (1949-1954). His Roman Catholic parents married in 1943 and moved to Lafayette, where he was born the next year. His mother, who held a degree in Chemistry, was a lab instructor from 1965 to 1986 at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, then known as the University of Southwestern Louisiana. Bacque's parents and brother Jean Louis are interred at Lafayette Memorial Park. His paternal grandfather, Frank M. Bacqué, served a single term in the Louisiana House under then Governor Sam Houston Jones from 1940 to 1944. 
From 1959 to 1961, Bacqué, attended Charlotte Catholic High School in Charlotte, North Carolina. He returned to Lafayette for his senior year at Cathedral Carmel High School, from which he graduated in 1962. In 1966, he obtained a bachelor's degree in History from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge and planned to enter law school but instead faced conscription by the United States Army. He entered officer candidate school and served in the former South Vietnam with the 5th Special Forces, popularly known as the Green Berets. After his two years in the military, Bacqué returned to Lafayette, launched a life insurance business, was later named to the Million Dollar Round Table, and became involved in various civic affairs.
Since 1905 the French Government has followed the principle of "laïcité", in which it is prohibited from recognising any specific right to a religious community (except for legacy statutes like those of military chaplains and the local law in Alsace-Moselle). It recognises religious organisations according to formal legal criteria that do not address religious doctrine. Conversely, religious organisations are expected to refrain from intervening in policy-making. Certain groups, such as Scientology, Children of God, the Unification Church, or the Order of the Solar Temple, are considered cults (""sectes"" in French), and therefore do not have the same status as recognised religions in France. "Secte" is considered a pejorative term in France.
The French health care system is one of universal health care largely financed by government national health insurance. In its 2000 assessment of world health care systems, the World Health Organization found that France provided the "close to best overall health care" in the world. The French healthcare system was ranked first worldwide by the World Health Organization in 1997. In 2011, France spent 11.6% of GDP on health care, or US$4,086 per capita, a figure much higher than the average spent by countries in Europe but less than in the United States. Approximately 77% of health expenditures are covered by government funded agencies.
Louis Alphonse de Bourbon, Duke of Anjou (, ; born 25 April 1974 in Madrid) is a member of the Royal House of Bourbon, and one of the current pretenders to the defunct French throne as Louis XX.
Louis Alphonse was born in Madrid, the second son of Alfonso de Borbón, Duke of Anjou and Cádiz, and of his wife María del Carmen Martínez-Bordiú y Franco, eldest granddaughter of Francisco Franco. Alfonso was at that time the dauphin (using "Duke of Bourbon" as title of pretence) according to those who supported the claim of his father, Infante Jaime, Duke of Segovia to the French throne. On 20 March 1975, the Infante Jaime ("Henri VI" by Legitimist reckoning) died. Alfonso then asserted his claim to be both Head of the House of Bourbon and Legitimist claimant to the throne of France and the Co-Principality of Andorra. As such, he took the title "Duke of Anjou", and on 19 September 1981 gave Louis Alphonse the title Duke of Touraine.
The national team's overall impact on France's efforts to integrate its minorities and come to terms with its colonial past has been mixed. In 2001, France played a friendly match at the Stade de France, the site of its 1998 World Cup triumph, against Algeria. It was the country's first meeting with its former colony, with whom it had fought a war from 1954 to 1962, and it proved controversial. France's national anthem, "La Marseillaise", was booed by Algerian supporters before the game, and following a French goal that made the score 4–1 in the second half, spectators ran onto the field of play, which caused play to be suspended. It was never resumed.
In 1946, the Loi Lamine Guèye granted some limited citizenship rights to natives of the African colonies. The French Empire was renamed the French Union on 27 October 1946, when the new constitution of the French Fourth Republic was established. In late 1946 under this new constitution, each territory was for the first time (excepting the Four Communes) able elect local representatives, albeit on a limited franchise, to newly established General Councils. These elected bodies had only limited consultative powers, although they did approve local budgets. The Loi Cadre of 23 June 1956 brought universal suffrage to elections held after that date in all French African colonies. The first elections under universal suffrage in French West Africa were the municipal elections of late 1956. On 31 March 1957, under universal suffrage, territorial Assembly elections were held in each of the eight colonies (Togo as a UN trust Territory was at this stage on a different trajectory). The leaders of the winning parties were appointed to the newly instituted positions of Vice-Presidents of the respective Governing Councils — French Colonial Governors remained as Presidents.
In Dallas, Texas the Bastille Day celebration, "Bastille On Bishop", began in 2010 and is held annually on 14 July in the Bishop Arts District of the North Oak Cliff neighborhood, southwest of downtown just across the Trinity River. Dallas' French roots are tied to the short lived socialist Utopian community La Réunion, formed in 1855 and incorporated into the City of Dallas in 1860. Miami, Florida's celebration is organized by "French & Famous" in partnership with the French American Chamber of Commerce, the Union des Français de l'Etranger and many French brands. The event gathers over 1,000 attendees to celebrate "La Fête Nationale". The location and theme change every year. In 2017, the theme was "Guinguette Party" and attracted 1,200 francophiles at The River Yacht Club. New Orleans, Louisiana has multiple celebrations, the largest in the historic French Quarter. St. Louis, Missouri has annual festivals in the Soulard neighborhood, the former French village of Carondelet, Missouri, and in the Benton Park neighborhood. The Chatillon-DeMenil Mansion in the Benton Park neighborhood, holds an annual Bastille Day festival with reenactments of the beheading of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI, traditional dancing, and artillery demonstrations. Carondelet also began hosting an annual saloon crawl to celebrate Bastille Day in 2017. In Washington D.C., food, music, and auction events are sponsored by the Embassy of France. There is also a French Festival within the city, where families can meet period entertainment groups set during the time of the French Revolution. Restaurants host parties serving traditional French food.
Marie Jean Pierre Flourens (13 April 1794 – 6 December 1867), father of Gustave Flourens, was a French physiologist, the founder of experimental brain science and a pioneer in anesthesia. Through the study of ablations on animals, he was the first to prove that the mind was located in the brain, not the heart.
Lee De Forest produced a program broadcasting opera phonograph records from the Eiffel Tower in Paris in 1908. This was just an experimental stunt for other nearby hobbyists and not considered a public broadcast as the public had no access to receivers at the time. At one point, when testing the radiotelephone for the Navy, Lee de Forest played patriotic phonograph music as the ships entered the harbor.
About a million people of Polish descent live in France. They are concentrated in the Nord-Pas de Calais region, the metropolitan areas of Lille and Paris and the coal-mining basin ("Bassin Minier") around Lens and Valenciennes. Prominent members have included Frédéric Chopin, Adam Mickiewicz, Rene Goscinny, Marie Curie, Michel Poniatowski, Raymond Kopa, Ludovic Obraniak and Edward Gierek. For centuries, there was an alliance between the France and the Polish-Lithuanian Commmonwealth. Many Poles settled in France after the rule of Napoleon and the collapse of the Duchy of Warsaw, when 100,000 Poles, largely political refugees, fled the Russians and Prussians, who took over Poland. The Great Emigration, from the first half of the 19th century onwards, caused many Poles to be enlisted to fight in the French army. Another wave of Polish migration took place between the two World Wars, when many were hired as contract workers to work temporarily in France. Polish refugees also fled the Nazi and the Soviet occupations in the 1940s. From 100,000 to 200,000 Poles haved been estimated to live in Paris. Many EU guest workers are the south of France, including the cities of Arles, Marseille and Perpignan.
He was born François-Étienne Lévesque in Quebec City, the son of François Lévesque and Catherine Trottier Desauniers Beaubien. Lévesque studied law with Jean-Antoine Panet and Alexis Caron, was called to the bar in 1796 and set up practice in Montreal. He served as a major in the Quebec City militia. Lévesque lived outside of the province, probably in New York, from 1807 to 1811, when he returned to Montreal. He was married twice: to Cécile Robert in 1796 and then to Sarah Ann Morriss in 1823. He did not run for reelection in 1804. Lévesque died in Montreal at the age o5 51.
In late 1795, Lays was named Professor of Singing at the newly opened Paris Conservatoire. Four years later he resigned to avoid being involved in the quarrel then raging between the managements of the Conservatoire and the Opéra. Quéruel credits Lays with teaching two future stars of the Opéra: Madame Chéron and Mademoiselle Armand. The latter is a possibility;
the former had begun her career in 1784 under the name Mademoiselle Dozon, and is thus unlikely to have attended the Conservatoire more than a decade later. Lays did play a part in promoting her early career: he had auditioned her when she was a young unknown in 1782 and had facilitated her studies, entrusting her to the best singing teachers available.
The year 1798 was a turning point in Lays's private life: Marie Barbé, with whom he had been living for several years, gave birth to a daughter and Lays, to legitimise the child, decided to marry his companion, even though it was against his father's wishes. Old Lay was furious that his eldest child, who enjoyed a successful career, was marrying a foreign woman with no property. The couple went on to have four more children, including one son who would unwittingly cause Lays enormous grief.
Sil Lai was born in Maui, Hawaii. The father listed on her birth certificate was a Caucasian American serviceman and her biological mother is ethnically Chinese and born in Hong Kong. Her parents met during the Vietnam War. In 1975, her parents divorced when she was the age of five. After the divorce, her family moved to Seminole County, Florida. For the early part of her life, she believed she was racially Caucasian and Chinese due to her father's insistence that her skin color was a result of her being born in Hawaii. At age 14, Sil Lai learned that the man she called her father was not biologically related to her and that her biological father was a black Air America pilot with whom her mother had an affair. Sil Lai received her GED at age 15 and spent the much of her time as a teenager running away from home and battling alcoholism.