Word: comical
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Pasquale, Baritone Frank Guarrera peeks behind a screen where Coloratura Roberta Peters is making an onstage costume change. "Brava," he sings with a leer. "Brava, brava!" That sentiment might well serve as comment on the whole production. Peters & Co. have turned Gaetano Donizetti's old (1843) comic opera into something to cheer about...
Fernando Corena, as Don Pasquale, entered wearing a vivid green apron, for the Met staging makes him a passionate amateur gardener; he sang in a deeply resonant style that may ultimately restore their proper musical qualities to comic basso roles, long lost in mere boom-and-rasp renditions. Tenor Cesare Valletti sang with the sweetness and eloquence of a low-pressure Caruso. Pretty Coloratura Peters was expertly coquettish. Using her voice almost as if it were a tangible object, she tossed a trill to port, another to starboard, a third dead amidships of the great opera house...
...very richness and confusion of the play make it difficult to perform. When tragedy and comedy follow each other so closely, only a very talented director can keep them from colliding. John O'Shaughnessy does not quite manage it. The comic scenes are satisfactorily quick and lively but, when the drama assumes a more serious mood, the staging begins to look like a religious procession. A ceremonial air may be appropriate at times, but not quite as often as O'Shaughnessy seems to think...
...Grosset & Dun lap; $4.95), is the year's bargain in children's books, a fat, discriminating collection of writing from Beatrix Potter to Phyllis McGinley, and illustrations by such immortals as Kate Greenaway, Arthur Rackham, Palmer Cox and others nearly as good. If there really is a comic-book menace abroad, this book is much the best way to cope with...
...dentist searching for a patient's mouth in his beard, and Bing Crosby with a full head of hair. Sound effects have been dubbed in expertly, and the old-timers are consistently hilarious. As a matter of fact, the present-day Steve Allen is plainly overwhelmed. His comic narration serves mainly to illustrate how much the art of slapstick has declined in the past two decades...