Word: commedia
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Italy has had a visible sense of humor, from the time of the commedia dell 'arte. Italians can still crack jokes (however unoriginal) about their miseries. From Lisbon last week New York Times Correspondent Herbert L. Matthews, on his way home from Rome, sent revealing samples: > Benito Mussolini visited a fortuneteller who told him that he would die on the eve of Italy's greatest holiday. She was unable to tell him just which day that was. When he asked his wife her opinion, she replied: "I know. It's the day after...
...Morgan described the interview: "He began hollering at me and yelling for me to dismiss Mrs. Preston Davie. . . . 'Fire that dame! Fire that dame!' he kept yelling." Mr. Morgan decided that the time had come. He handed over his resignation. LaGuardia snapped it up. Shouting, "La commedia è finita!,"* opera-loving Fiorello waved Mr. Morgan goodby, threw Mr. Morgan's secretary out after him and demoted Mr. Morgan's chief inspector. Gritted Mr. Morgan: "A complete and utter outrage...
...seven orchestra players, finally got the job done in ten days. At the first rehearsal, said Conductor Stock, the overture "sounded like Halifax." But its first playing proved it something else: a fine piece of musical escapism, which took its title Scapino from a character in the Italian Commedia dell 'Arte. Said Journal of Commerce Critic Claudia Cassidy: "A blithe, scapegrace, carefree sort of score, it makes you think Walton must have whistled it when he drove his ambulance through the London streets, spiritually thumbing his nose at Hitler." Last week England's No. 1 conductor, peppery, opinionated...
...conceived, produced & acted by Jimmy Savo). Little Jimmy Savo with his big black eyes, dwarf's body and appallingly baggy pants has often been called one of the world's great clowns, a pantomimist in Chaplin's class. Highbrows have rhapsodically declared that he brings the Commedia dell' Arte back to one-man life. Hundreds of vaudeville audiences have paid him the simpler tribute of howling when he whispered the song River, Stay 'Way From My Door and shooed the river away with childlike gestures. His last Broadway appearance was in the Rodgers & Hart musical...
...jury of competent literati could be panelled and polled on the question "What is the world's No. 1 Poem?" they might have some difficulty in arriving at a verdict. But certainly many a vote would be cast for the Divina Commedia of Dante. Unread in these days except by amateurs of literature or professional students, this Catholic epic is one of the boasted glories of Italy. Many a schoolboy has heard of Dante and his Beatrice, could even recognize a picture of the poet, but no one knows much about his actual life. Biographer Papini, adducing no factual...