Word: brilliante
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Cross's Simple (Stephen Cooke) is a funny, friendly man, but he lacks the brilliant wit of the Simple of Hughes's stories. He remains the thread that unites the disparate characters of the play, but pales beside the vitality of some of the other roles. Something of Simple's peculiar brand of militancy and tolerance, obstinate pride and humorous self-depreciation, is missing in this show. Cooke handles his part well, especially in the second act when more of the show centers on him, but Cross's script sacrifices some of the folk hero in her attempt to show...
...either tenor or contralto. The female version is more elaborate, and Conductor Schippers prefers it. Decked out in armor and an elegant Zachary Scott mustache, Verrett moved enough like a man to make the impersonation halfway acceptable. Hers is not a warm voice, but it is clear and brilliant. Dramatic coloratura lines spun out in the third act's "Non temer" brought Verrett a three-minute ovation of her own. As Maometto, the tall, athletic Justino Diaz not only displayed one of the richest, manliest basses around, but actually made this terrible Turk a figure of dignity and believable...
Author Simon Gray has produced a story that can't fall far from home. As we watch Ben Butley lose both his wife and his best friend in a single day, it becomes clear that he is a brilliant, captivating man who has failed his promise. At the end of the play, he turns to Joey, reminds him of their past creative relations, to which Joey replies. "I know. But those were in the days when you still taught. Now you spread futility, Ben." And Butley's importance lies, ultimately, in its subtle ability to lend an understanding of this...
...finally revived by the New York City Opera, with Jeritza, now a remarkably robust and handsome 87, sitting in the fourth row center. Even in the 1920s, Die Tote Stadt was an anachronism. Korngold was to Richard Strauss what Engelbert Humperdinck (Hansel und Gretel) was to Wagner-a brilliant but minor follower. The style of Die Tote Stadt is a lush, clamorous, occasionally schmaltzy orchestral sonorama that lies somewhere between Der Rosenkavalier and Elektra, with special added effects from Puccini, Debussy, Mahler and Rimsky-Korsakov. The best of its vocal moments, like the taunting Marietta's Lied, sound like...
Sexily Luscious. Director Frank Corsaro has staged Die Tote Stadt as a brilliant, psychologically adroit multimedia show. Movie and slide projectors play on the front scrim. Four slide projectors illuminate a scrim in the rear. Corsaro and Cinematographer Ronald Chase spread a series of images that are at times dazzling in their three-dimensional effect-grotesque faces, Gothic walls and towers, eerie grottoes, flowers, woodlands. The production opens, for example, on the exterior of Paul's house. Then, through the masonry, the portrait of Marie begins to shine. The lights come up behind the scrim in Paul...