Word: bernsteins
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Everyone came to see and to be seen. All the celebrities sat in their appointed places, reaping their expected applause as they entered. Onstage was a production by America's most flamboyant serious musician, Leonard Bernstein, who had written Mass and equipped the liturgy with a bold array of theatrical trimmings (see Music). But the audience was almost as big a show...
Doyenne of the Kennedys and the undisputed star of the opening night was Rose Kennedy, at 81 looking incredibly youthful, the closest thing to a Queen Mother that the U.S. offers. Glamorously Givenchied, she sat beside Composer Bernstein while Edward Kennedy, Composer Aaron Copland and Washington Mayor Walter Washington provided background. For human interest there was Mrs. Walter Washington in a wheelchair and a hip-high cast, refusing to let a pulled ligament interfere with...
...Kennedy admitted in her husky voice that she had walked right by Sculptor Robert Berks' imposing bust of the late President without noticing it. "I've seen it before and found it very moving, but to be perfectly frank, I didn't look at it tonight." Bernstein's unconventional ways with the Mass upset some people, but not Mother Rose, who has been through too much travail to make stern judgments. "Jack would have loved it," she said. "It's the great expression of hope that is important. In spite of Jack's discouragement...
Notably absent was the former First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who had talked Bernstein into composing the opening Mass. With typical Jacquelinian unpredictability, she first promised to appear, then reneged. She was reported sunning on her private Greek isle. But up until curtain time, rumors still flew that she might show up after all. Pestered beyond endurance by reporters, Roger L. Stevens, board chairman of the Center, finally declared, "She's not coming. If she were, every photographer would have followed her every step...
...night, emotions ran high. Tears and cheers for the music made for a loud, if damp, ovation. At the end of the première, Bernstein wept helplessly as the audience thundered its applause, then launched into a marathon fit of kissing everyone in reach. "May I kiss you one more time?" he asked Rose Kennedy. Said Rose gently; "I think it will ruin my makeup." Tact may have accounted for some of the praise, but in the case of 87-year-old Alice Roosevelt Longworth, daughter of Theodore Roosevelt and one of Washington's more outspoken oldtimers, tact...