Word: acted
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Opening night at Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera is an established American ritual. Everybody understands that the cast furnishes half the show and the audience the rest, and that polite ones on either side should not impinge on the other's act...
...irrelevant: Wagner continues to sell out. There are still some who prefer Flagstad's glacial perfection to Traubel's warmer but more uneven performances. Traubel's singing, being more emotional, generally improves as the evening goes on; she is at her best in the great third act of Tristan...
...relationship is Falstaffian. In Die Walküre, when Traubel is left alone on stage, Melchior sometimes prances about the wings as a Rhine maiden in a grass skirt, to try to make her laugh. Once, when she leaned tenderly over his body on the couch in the last act of Tristan, in the scene where Tristan dies of wounds inflicted by a jealous rival, Melchior muttered: "Helena, hurry up the Liebestod (love death). I'm hungry and I need a beer...
...Bodleian Library. The old Bodleian, which started in Shakespeare's day, was once the biggest library in the Empire, is still among the world's top 15 (an estimated 1,500,000 books). The bulging Bodleian long ago overflowed into nearby buildings and vaults; the Copyright Act entitles it to a copy of every new work published within the United Kingdom. Largely paid for by Rockefeller Foundation money, the new annex has space for five million books. Oxford considers it big enough to hold everything worth saving of what will be written in the next two centuries...
...even the wizardry of these performances and Garson Kanin's direction fail to hide the anti-climactic second act curtain and the heads-I-go-to-New-York-to-be-an-actress-tails-I-don't nature of the last act. In view of the strength of most of the play, however, these weaknesses should not be difficult to repair, and by the time it gets to Broadway "Years Ago" should rate as top-notch theatre. Even as it is, there hasn't been anything better around town all year...