Word: baton
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Where this really shows up is in her ability to cope when things go wrong onstage. Last month, while singing under the baton of City Opera Director Julius Rudel, she inadvertently skipped a few bars and hit a high A too soon. "I held up my hand, and she knew immediately what the problem was," recalls Rudel. "So she held the note until I lowered my hand eight bars later. To make anything clear to her, a finger, an eyebrow, is enough...
Actually it took five, but promptly at one o'clock Rudel was at the podium raising his baton-or, rather, a thin white knitting needle-to start the Carmen overture. His instructions to the orchestra were brief and to the point: "Trumpets, didn't you notice I slowed down?" Politely but firmly he told an overeager tenor: "Please don't cut off the baritone in mid-phrase." He remained unperturbed when a voice from backstage implored: "Wait, Julius, wait. Don José's costume has just fallen apart." The singer finally appeared onstage clutching uncertainly...
Hubert Geroid Brown was once a Boy Scout in his native Louisiana. At Baton Rouge's Southern University, he majored in sociology for three years, then dropped out in 1962 before graduating to devote his energies to civil rights work, eventually for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. By the time he took over as S.N.C.C.'s national chairman from Stokely Carmichael in 1967, he had become H. Rap Brown, an intractable militant in the Afro hair style, sunglasses and denims that became his uniform. "You'll be happy to have me back when you hear from...
...minutes of movements without commands, every exercise counted out; circles, squares, lines through lines and, finally, one long line of 24 Marines ready for inspection. Sergeant John Marley, the inspector, grabs a presented rifle. He whirls it, twists it, winds it round his shoulders, again and again with baton-twirler precision, and then flings it back. Next the double inspection-also known as "the mirror." Marley exchanges rifles with another Marine, and they repeat the routine, movements perfectly synchronized, rifles beating the air before being flipped back with the same seemingly casual contempt. Marley walks off looking straight ahead...
...crescendo' and all those beautiful words they use for war-which makes you think you should hear violins instead of tears-I begin to get the feeling lately that I'm in the middle of a scenario, and the President is leading it with a baton...