Word: contessas
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What to do? In desperation, Mrs. Stone consults an aristocratic procuress, a ludicrous old mascaraed barracuda who calls herself La Contessa Magda Terribili-Gonzales (Lotte Lenya). The lady provides Mrs. Stone with a handsome young escort called Paolo (Warren Beatty), who has big shoulders and a small title. No fool like an old fool. She falls absurdly in love with the boy, belabors him with costly presents and senescent lust. In the end, of course, he gets tired of it all and runs off with a Hollywood cinemama who offers him more fun, and more money...
...emotion, the monsignor, turned detective about the dead, runs full tilt upon love and hate, good and evil, in the living. Encountered in his investigations are a humanely skeptical Jewish doctor, a peasant woman who was Nerone's adoring mistress, their illegitimate teen-aged son, and a nymphomaniac contessa who clashes with a bitter homosexual painter over the boy. Watching past and present collide, seeing martyrdom cheek by jowl with betrayal and murder with suicide, the monsignor-before his own death-becomes a more troubled man of God and aware shepherd of men, as absorbed in the plight...
After 20 years of interviewing the city's rich and noble families for La Nazione Italiana, Journalist Giorgio Batini, 37, became haunted by the splendor of the private collections that ordinary people were never allowed to see. One day he approached the Contessa Bianca Cavazza, president of the women's committee of the Florentine Red Cross, with a plan: Why not stage a huge public exhibition for the benefit of the Red Cross? The journalist and the contessa started making the rounds, and one by one the Corsini, the Ginori, the Serristori, the Antinori, the Pucci...
...ever seen on the Metropolitan stage. Unfortunately, however, Messel's scenery was designed for an earlier production at Glyndebourne and has merely been adapted to the Metropolitan stage. Scaling up a small set doesn't always work at the Met and the second act decor, the boudoir of the Contessa, looks like an oversized parlor of an English country home...
...Messel's costumes, especially the glittering pair for the Contessa, worn with stunning stylishness by Lisa Della Casa, have a grand line that is perfectly suited to both the Opera House stage and the spirit of Figaro. Against the predominantly gray background of the settings, the pastel dresses of the chorus and ballet and the vibrant yellows and reds of the principals' costumes produce wonderful, eye-filling tableaux...