Word: backdrop
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WHAT ARE WE TO MAKE OF Virgil Thomson's impish opera Four Saints in Three Acts? Composed to a nonsense text by Gertrude Stein, originally sung by a mostly amateur all-black cast and set against a 15,000-sq.-ft. cyclorama backdrop made of cellophane, the work was a sensation at its Hartford, Connecticut, premiere in February 1934 and quickly moved to Broadway for a six-week run. Ever since, music lovers have been debating what, if anything, it means. "Pigeons, on the grass alas," indeed...
...impediments to be avoided by such an institution was that of traditions; to which the reply was made that there was one tradition of which the speaker would doubtless approve, and that was the tradition of frequent change. We certainly have that tradition here." If this attitude formed the backdrop to Harvard's instituting reading period, then it follows that the University should not hesitate to make changes today...
...think I'm awful, don't you? I am, I'm dreadful and I'm not pretty," and, where the Japanese tend to present images of happy families, Toshi notes, Americans "offer up their unhappy childhoods like movie plots, or like gifts." All this is set against the backdrop of the Crown Prince's dating Brooke Shields, protesting farmers dumping foreign rice, and "laid-off Toyota workers burn[ing] AMERICA=AIDS into the brush on the southern slope of Mount Fuji." While cultures fight, their products flirt...
...Asia Society in New York City, even this pared-down version of the exhibit illuminates the ever-relevant subject of split national identities. To the exacting eye, however, the show comments more tellingly on the individual, human reaction to adversity in general, merely placed against the sometimes straight-forward backdrop of nationalities...
...always trust the majority leader to bear the banner of the revolution. (He has called him "effective," though maybe not "comfortable" with it.) But that may not matter. What Gingrich needs is a Republican President, even a squishy one, to sign bills into law. He's already sketched the backdrop for the campaign. "When Bob Dole and Phil Gramm give a speech in New Hampshire, it's to a crowd of people who have Newt Gingrich's world view," says Norquist. If Dole wins, and Gingrich is still Speaker, it is hard to imagine the Republican President vetoing any major...