Word: avignon
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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DIED. Pierre Bernac, 80, French baritone who performed with the late composer-pianist Francis Poulenc for 25 years; of heart disease; in Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, France. Though best known for his interpretations of Poulenc art songs and other French vocal music, Bernac was also at home in the German and English repertory. Bernac, praised more for his technique and interpretative grace than for his voice, stopped performing in 1960 and concentrated on training singers in Europe and America...
...than the reader. For all his fascination with the theories of Einstein and Freud, with the fragmenting of personality and time, Durrell fortunately remains a devotee of Scheherazade. Livia stands comfortably on its own as a polished romance filled with bright, interesting characters. They gather in the 1930s at Avignon, home of the medieval and mysterious Knights Templars. The air is "full of the scent of lemons and mandarines and honeysuckle" and of something else: dread of the future that Hitler is planning across the border in Germany. Durrell is still prone to overripe passages, but some of his audacious...
...Frenchmen still insist on vacationing within France, most of them during July and August. Finding the unspoiled places is largely up to the individual. This means avoiding the Riviera and other trendy areas such as the Dordogne-Périgord, the summer festival towns like Aix-en-Provence, Avignon and Carcassonne...
...Italy's city-states were being ravaged by imperialist-republican quarrels, and the papacy went into exile in Avignon, part of a papal fief on the borders of France. Not unjustly, the exile of the papacy was called the "Babylonian captivity": the avarice and corruption of the papal court was unequaled even in the days of the Medicis and Borgias. Seven French Popes resided at Avignon before Gregory XI (1370-78) finally returned the papal seat to Rome...
Robert Wilson's Einstein on the Beach arrived for two performances at the Metropolitan Opera last week after causing excitement in Avignon, Venice and Belgrade. It is hardly an opera that sends audiences home humming and whistling. Wilson, 32, is a theatrical anarchist, a direct descendant of Dada. He believes in epic projections. One of his earlier plays, The Life and Times of Joseph Stalin, clocked in at twelve hours. Einstein on the Beach runs just over 4½ hours, unfolding through four acts, nine scenes and five "knee plays"-short connecting vignettes. Performed without intermission, it requires...