Word: courtesans
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...Julia May Scott, daughter of an American Negro and a Russian mother) were unknown to the West. They were drawn from the corps de ballet on the theory that they would be less hidebound by classical technique than the older dancers (an exception: famed Soloist Maya Plisetskaya, dancing the courtesan Aegina). Lavishly supported by the government, the Bolshoi currently has some 250 regular dancers and mimes, including what is probably the most brilliant collection of soloists in the world...
...when she lost her voice during a performance of Norma. At the final curtain she took ten solo bows. The true measure of how totally Callas dominated last week's Traviata was the credibility she brought to the younger Dumas' tears-and-champagne tale of the consumptive courtesan-with scant help from a minor-league cast. As Alfredo, Tenor Daniele Barioni sang powerfully but uncertainly and sometimes off-key, acted in an emotional monotone that made his rages indistinguishable from his passions. In his U.S. debut, Italian Baritone Mario Zanasi displayed a smooth, ample voice but made...
Young Dumas' famed novel, The Lady of the Camellias (made into a play by Dumas himself and into a grand opera-La Traviata-by Verdi) was based on his love for Courtesan Marie Duplessis. She supplied him with "intoxicating orgies of the flesh"-and he, in return, struggled to reform her, adored her most when she "played the part of the repentant Magdalene." Marie died of consumption at 23, and young Dumas never forgot her glamorous, terrible life. He became "The Man in Flight from Temptation," began to write plays in which seducers were condemned with such cold precision...
What sort of woman was Miss Howard? "Intriguer," "courtesan," "creature," "English chain," are some of the unkind names she has been called. Gallant, Gallic Mme. Maurois will have none of these. At the end of a biography that lacks her husband's professional brilliance but is highly competent in its own right, Author Maurois tenderly quotes the description of Miss Howard given to an interviewer by an aged servant of Beauregard: "I shall never forget Milady descending the stairs in the Chateau on the tick of seven in a great crinoline and wearing all her pearls. Ah, Monsieur...
...Christmas tree, as Seurat's fancy did. Telescoping the centuries, one can see the coronation of Napoleon or Marie Antoinette in prison. Here is Paris drinking the cocktail of the sun, and here is Paris wrapped in the misty veils of a Salome. These books present a courtesan, the irresistible city of a thousand wiles, painted by her infatuated admirers...