Word: besting
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Which is the smartest race on earth? Many nominate the Jews, whose intellectual achievements are out of proportion to their small numbers. C.P. Snow thinks the Japanese may be even brighter. Such musings are best muttered at late night bull sessions. In public, ranking races by intelligence is apt to smack of simple racism...
...also an exceptionally alert recruiter of new talent. Remembers Heiskell: "He was terribly proud of bringing up people, making them into something." Among his discoveries were James Agee, who became TIME'S film critic, and Sloan Wilson, who worked as Larsen's assistant and modeled his best-selling 1955 novel, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, partly on his boss. Says Wilson: "Roy had energy, courtesy, selfdiscipline. When most people were running on twelve volts, he was running on 440 volts. Asking him for a raise was like stabbing a billiard ball, but he had class. When...
That night the claque never materialized. Neither, in a sense, did Scotto's performance. Possibly unnerved by all the squabbling, she was not at her best vocally or dramatically. Pavarotti came through splendidly. Playing a 17th century nobleman who is enmeshed in a conflict with the Venetian Inquisition, he made bold entrances in full cry. His spacious second-act aria, Cielo e mar, which used to serve Caruso well, was traced in long, limpid lines that glowed with emotion. ins voice soared out of the big ensembles, seeming to carry the chorus into the air with him. At the curtain...
...great voices of this century, Pavarotti combines the pastosa (soft) beauty of Beniamino Gigli with the effortless high notes of Giacomo Lauri-Volpi. Others hear echoes of Jussi Bjoerling's silvery refinement. Pavarotti inmself cites a more recent predecessor as a model: Giuseppe di Stefano, who at his best had a burnished, flowing style...
...weighty Othello as well as bel canto parts?but he sometimes loses impact because of a veiled timbre and somewhat muted personality. Jon Vickers, 52, can match Pavarotti's intensity and puts more serious thought behind his performing, but his is an entirely different kind of voice: rugged, heroic, best suited to dramatic works such as Otello, Les Troyens and Peter Grimes. Nicolai Gedda, an elegant, unfailingly attractive singer, is a supremely versatile stylist, at home in several languages; at 54, however, he is understandably not a powerhouse. Perhaps the challenge ultimately will come from a younger singer like Jose...