Word: belasco
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Tamiko, while obviously oriented toward afternoon audiences, occidentally manages to give an up-to-date twist to a story that was old when David Belasco wrote Madame Butterfly...
...Singers. Puccini saw David Belasco's The Girl of the Golden West in New York in 1907, promptly announced that "I shall write the music and we shall have the American opera ... I have never been West, but I have read so much about it that I know it thoroughly." Puccini, of course, knew no more about the American West than he knew about Japan when he wrote Madama Butterfly. But operagoers in 1910, when Fanciulla had its premiere at the Met, were no fussier than televiewers are today: with Caruso and Emmy Destinn in the leads, the premiere...
Last week's performance was superb, with Soprano Price handling her warm and lustrous voice impeccably, and infusing the figure of Minnie with a believable passion that might have surprised even Playwright Belasco. Tenor Richard Tucker did an admirable job as Dick Johnson, the silliest role in the opera, and Baritone Anselmo Colzani, the only Italian among the principal characters, swashbuckled through the role of the sheriff like a refugee from Gunsmoke. And although the opera provided few memorable arias (one striking exception: Johnson's "Ch'ella mi creda libero"), it had a score full of surgingly...
...Home, the Broadway adaptation of James Agee's novel, A Death in the Family, opened at the Belasco Theater the end of November, won mixed but generally favorable reviews. But the next day's box office gross was a leukemic $882. Commenting that "they killed us with respect," Producers Fred Coe and Arthur Cantor announced that All the Way would close after four performances...
...office sales leaped to $5,700 a day, helped by private citizens who believed so strongly in the play that they made phone calls to friends at the rate of 50 a day, others who took newspaper ads at their own expense to urge people to hurry to the Belasco. By week's end, All the Way Home had been extended at least until the first of the year. If it runs less than six months, a lot of hats will be up for eating...