Word: arutunian
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Clearly a lot of TLC went into the staging of Pulcinella, but to uncertain effect. Rouben Ter-Arutunian has tastefully re-created Picasso's costumes and his imposing backdrop-a blue-gray cubist evocation of a moonlit street in 18th century Naples. The vital young Jeffrey dancers, moreover, prance through the one-act ballet as if caught up in a marathon tarantella. But breathing life into this Pulcinella is rather like trying to revive a dead tree by gluing fallen leaves back onto its limbs...
...rightly employs a warm, mellow glow only once--for Duncan's arrival at Inverness Castle. She makes some use of a follow-spot, but it is never obtrusive in musical-comedy fashion. Many of her effects would be impossible without the marvelous unit set designed by Rouben Ter-Arutunian--two converging cavernous walls of shiny but unsmooth silver, parts of which can swing in; and, hovering overhead, a structure suggestive of some enormous gray mythic bat, through whose wings lights sometimes filter. Ter-Arutunian also designed the costumes, which belong to no one period. For the most part they...
Meanwhile, Osvaldo Ruggieri, who plays Jason, was having trouble with the pants designed for him by Rouben Ter-Arutunian. They were, he thought, too baggy. Whereupon he went out and got a pair so tight he was a sight. When Rouben tinted the pants dark brown, Ruggieri went into a rage. "You ruined them!" he cried. "You dyed them!" "I didn't dye them, I painted them!" huffed Rouben. "I'm a painter, not a dyer!" Moaned Director Menotti: "Why is it that an Englishman is always adjusting his tie, a Frenchman is always checking his pocket...
Rouben Ter-Arutunian's settings help immensely in Gielgud's staging of group scenes. The first-act outdoor set uses the depth of the Shubert stage with four planes of trees, but keeps the acting area forward and close to the audience, opening the stage more than is the custom in the conventional Chekhov...
...Moon tells the story of Ninette Lafont, a beautiful octoroon actress who flees New Orleans on the eve of the Civil War to forget her doomed love for Raymond Barlac, a Southern aristocrat. The wide-ranging plot, based on Dello Joio's own scenario, gave Designer Rouben Ter-Arutunian ample scope for lush sets that imparted a sense of grandeur to the opera's five scenes. American Soprano Mary Costa, who played Ninette, sang beautifully but seemed lost in the schmalz-larded story. Only the heroine's quadroon mother, Cleo, superbly sung by Contralto Irene Dalis, took...