Lizzo FireSpitter – Lizzo, Memory from Cats, and Jellicle Cats
https://wiki.wizard101central.com/wiki/NPC:Lizzo_FireSpitter
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lizzo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sNlAvnBU__s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_(Cats_song)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdBVJbzkoqo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cats_(musical)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jellicle_cats
Thank you to Ally A. for this one.
It all started when the Fire Elves were rehearsing the song “Recollection” from Firecats the Musical. One of the Fire Elves shot a tiny arrow at Private Quinn and things spread like wildfire. The elves attacked their musical coach Lizzo FireSpitter. Quinn wanted to help but duty required him to secure his position. He sends you to check on Lizzo.
Lizzo FireSpitter is a musically-inclined third year Pyromancer residing on Firecat Alley in Wizard City, Lizzo was musically coaching the Elves before she was attacked. The Fire Elves stole her Spellbook, leaving her powerless. She held her position near the Forlorn Tower before eventually being met by your Wizard, who had come to her at the request of Private Quinn. Lizzo was initially dismissive of your Wizard as just a newbie, but quickly realized they were the Hero of Unicorn Way. She asked them to bring her back her Spellbook before directing them to Shelus Gruffheart, who she had seen when she was attacked, to ask if he knew where Gretta Darkkettle was. Lizzo believed the old witch could be convinced to use her magic to help the Fire Elves, but also held suspicion that she was the one behind the curse.
During all the confusion with the Fire Elves Melweena Smite accosts Lizzo demanding a part in Firecats the Musical. The crazy banshee knocked Lizzo’s orange juice right out of her hand. Flustered, Lizzo said the first words that popped into her head and told Melweena that she would add a part called a “Jucicle Cat” to the production. Lizzo is now stuck with either writing the part for Melweena or face the wrath of the banshee. Lizzo thinks Melweena won’t start a fight with your Wizard and tasks you with delivering the bad news that there really isn’t a part for her.
Melissa Viviane Jefferson (born April 27, 1988), known professionally as Lizzo, is an American singer and rapper. Born in Detroit, Michigan, she moved to Houston, Texas, with her family at the age of ten. After college, she moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she began her recording career in hip-hop. Prior to signing with Nice Life Recording Company and Atlantic Records, Lizzo released two studio albums, Lizzobangers (2013) and Big Grrrl Small World (2015). Her first major-label extended play (EP), Coconut Oil, was released in 2016.
Lizzo attained mainstream success with the release of her third studio album, Cuz I Love You (2019), which peaked at number four on the US Billboard 200. The album spawned the singles “Juice” and “Tempo”. The deluxe version of the album included Lizzo’s 2017 single “Truth Hurts”, which became a viral sleeper hit two years after its initial release. It topped the US Billboard Hot 100 and became the longest-leading solo song by a female rapper. Around this time, her 2016 single “Good as Hell” also climbed the charts, reaching the top ten of the Billboard Hot 100 and UK Singles Chart. Lizzo received eight nominations at the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards—the most for any artist that year—including nominations for each of the “Big Four” categories, and won the awards for Best Urban Contemporary Album, Best Pop Solo Performance for “Truth Hurts”, and Best Traditional R&B Performance for the song “Jerome”.
In 2021, Lizzo released the single “Rumors” (featuring Cardi B), which debuted in the top five of the Billboard Hot 100. Her fourth studio album, Special (2022), was preceded by its lead single “About Damn Time”, which reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and made Lizzo the first black female singer since Whitney Houston in 1994 to win the Grammy Award for Record of the Year.
Along with her recording career, Lizzo has also worked as an actress; she performed a voice role in the animated film UglyDolls (2019), and appeared in the crime comedy-drama film Hustlers (2019). She is also the host of the Amazon Prime Video reality television series Lizzo’s Watch Out for the Big Grrrls, for which she won the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Competition Program. In 2019, Time named Lizzo “Entertainer of the Year” for her meteoric rise and contributions to music. In addition to four Grammy Awards, she has also won a Billboard Music Award, a BET Award, and two Soul Train Music Awards.
“Memory” is a show tune composed by Andrew Lloyd Webber, with lyrics by Trevor Nunn based on poems by T. S. Eliot. It was written for the 1981 musical Cats, where it is sung primarily by the character Grizabella as a melancholic remembrance of her glamorous past and as a plea for acceptance. “Memory” is the climax of the musical and by far its best-known song, having achieved mainstream success outside of the musical. According to musicologist Jessica Sternfeld, writing in 2006, it is “by some estimations the most successful song ever from a musical.”
Elaine Paige originated the role of Grizabella in the West End production of Cats and was thus the first to perform the song publicly on stage. “Memory” was named the Best Song Musically and Lyrically at the 1982 Ivor Novello Awards. In 2020, Jessie Thompson of the Evening Standard wrote, “Paige’s version set the standard and enabled Memory to become one of the most recognizable musical theatre songs of all time.”
In Cats, “Memory” is sung primarily by Grizabella, a one-time “glamour cat” who has fallen on hard times and is now only a shell of her former self. For most of the musical, Grizabella is ostracized by her fellow Jellicle cats. She sings a prelude version of “Memory” at the end of the first act, recalling the time before she became an outcast.
Melodic fragments of “Memory” are then sung twice in a higher D major key by Jemima (also known as Sillabub), a young cat who is sympathetic to Grizabella’s plight. The first instance occurs at the beginning of the second act after “The Moments of Happiness”, and the second instance occurs near the end of the second act right before Grizabella’s final appearance. As Grizabella returns near the end of the musical, she sings the full version of the song as she pleads for acceptance, with Jemima joining in briefly to urge her on.
Cats is a sung-through musical with music by Andrew Lloyd Webber. It is based on the 1939 poetry collection Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats by T. S. Eliot. The musical tells the story of a tribe of cats called the Jellicles and the night they make the “Jellicle choice” by deciding which cat will ascend to the Heaviside Layer and come back to a new life. As of 2024, Cats remains the fifth-longest-running Broadway show and the eighth-longest-running West End show.
Lloyd Webber began setting Eliot’s poems to music in 1977, and the compositions were first presented as a song cycle in 1980. Producer Cameron Mackintosh then recruited director Trevor Nunn and choreographer Gillian Lynne to turn the songs into a complete musical. Cats opened to positive reviews at the New London Theatre in the West End in 1981 and then to mixed reviews at the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway in 1982. It won numerous awards including Best Musical at both the Laurence Olivier and Tony Awards. Despite its unusual premise that deterred investors initially, the musical turned out to be an unprecedented commercial success, with a worldwide gross of US$3.5 billion by 2012.
Jellicle cats are a fictional type of feline from Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, a 1939 collection of light poetry by T. S. Eliot. Jellicle cats were adapted for the 1981 stage musical Cats by Andrew Lloyd Webber, where the wide array of diverse Jellicles is central to the musical’s worldbuilding.
“Jellicle cats” are briefly mentioned in T. S. Eliot’s 1933 poem “Five-Finger Exercises”, although they are not described until Eliot’s poem “The Song of the Jellicles”, depicting the cats as commonly nocturnal, black and white, scruffy cats. Eliot specifically mentions how they gather at an event called the “Jellicle Ball”. The name “Jellicle” comes from Eliot’s unpublished poem “Pollicle Dogs and Jellicle Cats”, where “Pollicle dogs” is a corruption of “poor little dogs” and “Jellicle cats” of “dear little cats”.
In contrast with their source material, the Jellicles in Cats possess many kinds of coat-patterns, diverse personalities, and individual talents. Many of the ensemble characters were created by the original 1981 London cast through extensive improvisation sessions held during the rehearsal process. Musical theater scholar Vagelis Siropoulos noted that the level of detail given to each character was crucial in fleshing out the fantasy world of Cats, with even the minor cats having established personalities, relationships, and hierarchies within the tribe. In the musical, sub-plots involving individual Jellicle cats include the struggle of Grizabella, a former “glamour cat”, and the kidnapping of the Jellicle patriarch, Old Deuteronomy.
A total of 54 cat names are given in Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats, most of which Eliot derived from British culture, including references to Anglican traditions, historic and literary figures, as well as geographical locations. When not taken from a corresponding eponymous poem, many of the musical’s character names are from Eliot’s poem “The Naming of Cats”.
The current list of all the Wizard City references can be found here.
Lizzo FireSpitter image is from Wizard101, and is (c) KingsIsle Entertainment.
Lizzo image is borrowed from Wikipedia. It is copyright Raph_PH – Glasto2023 and is shared under the CC BY 2.0 Creative Commons license.
Cats images are borrowed from PBS.org and are copyright Really Useful Group
Cats logo is borrowed from Wikipedia. It is copyright Really Useful Group
Jellicle Cats cover is borrowed from Amazon and is copyright Old Possum Picture Books
Images are being used in a way that qualifies as fair use under US copyright law.
Text for this article is excerpted from the linked wiki pages
Vulcan Stev's Database 