Word: ah
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Tough Trick. Adriana may be a stranger to U.S. and English audiences, but the opera is a repertory staple in Italy. Composer Cilèa (pronounced che-lay-ah) wrote it when he was 35, and it established his reputation. He coasted on it from its premiere in 1902 until his death in 1950. It is a respectable enough opera, reminiscent of Puccini in its throbbing arias and duets and in its yearning strings. It even has a predictably pathetic ending, in which the heroine is punished for the crime of having fallen in love...
...that it was with a bit of a shock that I recalled de los Angeles' remark to her accompanist Gerald Moore in his book Am I Too Loud? When he arrived backstage, weeping copiously after one of her opera performances, she greeted him with: "Don't worry, my dee-ah boy, I was only pretending to die, you know...
Flying Potatoes. "Wah-ah, wah-ah," shrieked the police-type klaxons that Weidner had thoughtfully installed in advance. The Communist guards obediently raised the first of three barriers. But what was a bus doing on emergency duty? Suddenly the shooting began-too late. Wagner, at 40 m.p.h., was already crashing through the second barrier 100 yards ahead, then the third, only 20 yards away...
Well and bad, you say? Ah, but consider this: if the secretaries get so much as one of the five numbers wrong, the corporation's coupons go zipping off to the Great Beyond and can never reach their intended Occupants. For, since every one of the numbers means something, a mistake can never be detected. And, since secretaries hate numbers, mistakes will multiply like fruitflies...
...automatic door sometimes opened and closed itself at 30-second intervals all night. I learned to accept windows that had to be forced open and propped to stay open, kitchen cabinets that also had to be forced open (never to close again), lumpy kitchen linoleum, falling bathtub plaster and-ah, well, you told the rest of the story...