Word: byronic
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...Others were not so sure. For all the guise of a basically noncontroversial interim appointment, an Administration had succeeded for the first time in almost 50 years in gaining political control of the FBI. Had Nixon selected a strong, less politically active permanent director-such as Supreme Court Justice Byron White or the Army Chief of Staff, General William Westmoreland-the new man might have preserved a measure of Hooverian independence. But by settling on a temporary director who has such close personal ties to the President, Nixon opened the way, in theory at least, for remote-control direction...
...Lola? Rumor had it (probably from Lola's own lips) that she was the daughter of Lord Byron ... or maybe of a matador. In fact, as this perfectly sober biography with a plot like a chambermaid's dream shows, Lola was born in Limerick, Ireland, in 1818, the daughter of an 18-year-old lieutenant and a 13-year-old chorine. When she was seven, Eliza's father died of cholera in India. Shipped home to Scotland, the child appalled her stepfather's Presbyterian parents by running naked through the streets. Hustled off to school...
Alas, no. Lord Byron is infused with Thomson's musical craftsmanship-adroit trios and sextets, transparent orchestral writing-but not the expressive spark to illuminate the drama. An exception is the nostalgic suite of dances for the third-act ballet (choreographed by Alvin Ailey) that depicts Byron's travels, amours and death in Europe. The rest is a feeble reminder of a once-insinuating talent...
...story takes place after Byron's death, so the hero appears only in flashback and as a ghost. The whole work is framed as an answer to the question of why Westminster Abbey would not allow Byron's body to be interred there. Thomson might almost have called it "One Sinner in Three Acts," because he dwells almost exclusively on the rakish side of Byron's character-his playboy excesses, his foppish haughtiness, his promiscuous escapades with both sexes. The listener must take Byron's poetic and personal genius on faith...
...does not help at all that in Jack Larson's libretto, Byron is given some of his own best lines. "She walks in beauty, like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies," is turned from soliloquy into colloquy, as the operatic Byron croons to one of his lady loves, "You walk in beauty," etc. Chuckles even broke out in the audience when Byron's friend, Thomas Moore, stepped to the stage apron to sing, "Remember that genius that gleamed in his verse." The tune turned out to be that for Believe Me If All Those Endearing Young...