Word: beggar
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Still Alive. Threepenny Opera's pedigree is two centuries old. Its original was The Beggar's Opera, John Gay's satire on the Italian operas of his day. Gay's comedy turned out to be the smash hit of the 18th century, so popular that it forced London's chief composer of Italian opera, George Frederick Handel, to shutter his own fashionable opera house and ultimately turn to writing oratorios. The Weill version took little but the characters from John Gay, was itself a satire on grandiose German operas. It so inflamed musical conservatives...
Manhattan's new version is neither a smash hit nor a matter for riot. It sometimes bogs down in prosy prose and amateurish acting. But the enthusiasm of audiences for Weill's score shows there's life in the old beggar...
...brother of the late dancer Isadora Duncan and Poet-Lecturer Raymond Duncan; of a heart attack; in New York City. In the late '20s, at the height of his career, he began losing his sight but continued to act, in 1932 successfully played the part of the blind beggar in Synge's The Well of the Saints, acted other roles with such skill that audiences often forgot that he could...
...give talks on the world's great literature, brought in actors to put on comedy skits. The judge haunted welfare groups, asking them to help him rustle up food and clothing. "There's no question," said one official, "that Härringer is the most gifted beggar in town." Said the judge with a smile: "We have to do the giving before we have the right to ask anything of these youngsters...
...Salaire de la Peur and Vittorio de Sica's Umberto D-were not shown in the U.S., because exhibitors thought they would not make enough money. Even so, the continental-import trade was a little shoddy. The British did somewhat better. They produced a top-notch musical (The Beggar's Opera), a funny farce (The Captain's Paradise), a first-rate war picture (The Cruel Sea), and The Conquest of Everest, probably the year's most memorable movie...