Word: adrian
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...stage left sit four actors (Max Adrian, John Barton, Paul Hardwick. Dorothy Tutin) in evening dress, their only props a coffee table with decanter and water glasses, large leather-covered books to scribble in with quill pens, and a portable lectern. At stage right stand a harpsichord, a piano, a trio of skillful balladeers and their accompanist, who provide a harmonic counterpoint of period music to the proceedings. The actors read letters, poems and memoirs by and about royalty, together with historical reminiscences and profiles sketched by hard-eyed courtiers and literary greats from Malory to Jane Austen...
Joining Mr. Barton in The Hollow Mockery are Mr. Max Adrian, who fancies he is amusing as an effeminate and disgusting ambassador of Henry VII; Miss Dorothy Tutin, who fancies she is an actress, and proceeds to read a sketch of the Kings of England by the fifteen-year-old Jane Austen as if it were the work of Baby Snooks; and Mr. Paul Hardwick, who is plain enough. Musical interludes are provided by Mr. James Walker, a harpsichordist,--Mr. Barton, luckily, seems to have been unable to devise a way of making the harpsichord funny--and by three gentlemen...
...Adrian Boult's Messiah, the one he recorded last year, is still attracting a lot of attention; but it's still not worth buying. Sir Adrian chose Miss Joan Sutherland as his soprano soloist, and it was a noble choice, but, unfortunately, Sir Adrian is a man who thinks that Miss Sutherland can only sing well when she is singing Puccini (a palpable falsehood). Consequently, Sir A. has ripped Handel's oratorio untimely from its century, making it as operatic Victorian as he possibly can. The result is an orchestra sprawling and unkempt, singers bawling and dyspeptic, and tempi crawling...
...Sargent (Angel 3598 C). It's not up to the old mono recording--the Huddersfield Choral Society are worse than usual--but it's not unacceptable. The soloists' names are relatively unfamiliar in this country (with the possible exception of the tenor, Richard Lewis), but Sir Malcolm, unlike Sir Adrian, has used them to good advantage, restrained his extravagances, and produced a restrained, lyrical, and generally balanced Messiah...
...searching for in the far Pacific: the religious art of the Asmat, a little-known Papuan people who live on the waterlogged Casuarinen Coast. Last week Rockefeller's extraordinary collection of Asmat carvings was on exhibition by New York's Museum of Primitive Art, and Dutch Anthropologist Adrian A. Gerbrands, who accompanied Rockefeller to New Guinea, was on hand to explain the intricate symbolism...