Word: bumpkins
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...story was familiar, at least in outline: Librettist Eric (Let's Make an Opera) Crozier had freely adapted his comic libretto from Guy de Maupassant's Le Rosier de Madame Husson. A bumpkin is chosen King of the May because in the village there is no girl virtuous enough to be Queen, eventually winds up on a roaring toot. To this, Composer Britten hitched a witty, somewhat Peter and the Wolf-ish score, in which each instrument seemed to portray (or mock) a character on stage. There were other Britten trademarks: well-fitting songs and exciting ensembles. Even...
...three uncontradicted facts: 1) that Chambers had in his possession copies of secret State Department documents; 2) that these documents were all dated in the first three months of 1938; 3) that all but one of the typed documents were copied on the Hiss typewriter. With all "that country bumpkin stuff," the defense attorney had refuted none of these points...
...page size and came to enclose miniature paintings sometimes as detailed as murals. Within one huge blue and rose G, an artist had drawn St. Francis kneeling to receive the stigmata (see cut). Gradually the illustrations were separated from the text, and sometimes they almost supplanted it-so that bumpkin barons and illiterate lords could "read" their books like comic strips. They had no trouble identifying each character; the beasts were beastly, the saints saintly, and the maidens maidenly...
Radio's outdated version of the U.S. farmer-a Mortimer Snerdish bumpkin borrowed from the burlesque stage-has changed radically in the last month. In a new quiz show called R.F.D. America (Mutual, Thurs. 9:30 p.m., E.S.T.), the real farmer turns out to be an alert, articulate, well-schooled young man-with no straw in his hair and no quid in his cheek...
...first two operas, Peter Grimes and The Rape of Lucretia (TIME, June 9), were both dark and tragic. For the new opera, Albert Herring, Librettist Eric Crozier did a slapstick adaptation of Guy de Maupassant's cynical Le Rosier de Mme. Husson, in which an innocent village bumpkin goes off on a wild, sinful night after being chosen King of the May. Britten scored it for chamber orchestra in his familiar brittle, witty and forcefully dissonant style...