Word: ariosto
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...killer. In truth, the Italian actor has lately been playing against type, most notably as an aged and mellowed Casanova in La Nuit de Varennes. And in The General of the Dead Army, a burlesque, Grand Guignol black comedy, which opened recently in Paris, Mastroianni plays the flamboyant General Ariosto, who does not so much get the woman as argue with her over possession of the remains of her late husband. "In most of my roles," he protests, "I am more often the victim than the conqueror...
ORLANDO BELONGS--with Ajax and Avalon--to a curious breed of proper nouns whose senses have passed over the centuries from the epic to the cheap and commercial. Once the name was instantly recognizable as the hero of Ariosto's 16th-century narrative poem; now it conjures up the strains of "Tie a Yellow Ribbon "Round the Old Oak Tree" and the sun-soaked giant mice of Disneyworld, Florida...
When Handel composed Orlando in 1732, based on the Ariosto saga, his cast of characters consisted of the hero of the title, the Queen of Cathay, an African prince, a shepherdess, and a magician. The setting was simply a nameless forest. "Handel's audience didn't need to be told who Orlando was, as audiences today don't need to be told about Captain Kirk or Mr. Spock," Sellars writes in the production's program notes. "As soon as the characters appeared, the audience had a set of collective expectations, and was ready for action. Thus, I think the logical...
...Narrator meet an employee who "wouldn't givya a nickel" for the $70,000 Brancusi wood sculpture Caryatid, which he calls Mrs. Murphy's Bedpost. He calls a Jackson Pollack "that horror over there" and says it was hung on its side last month, but he likes Olitski's Ariosto's Kiss because the "painting seems to move." They visit the Persian Rug Room twice, but the rugs are on the wall, roped off. They get to the Oriental Room, where a grad student with a copy of the Tibetan Book of the Dead under his arm is looking strained...
...melodic and elaborately embellished Handel work proved to be one of those baroque affairs full of knights, courtiers and disguised lovers, all involved in magical complications. (The 1735 libretto was taken from the famed Renaissance epic, Orlando Furioso, by Italian Poet Lodovico Ariosto.) The imaginative Dallas production made all this easier to take by treating the piece as a play within a play-a musical evening in the home of a nobleman of Handel's period, with the opera itself presented as an entertainment for the guests. The opulent, columned and chandeliered set had a revolving dais at stage...