Word: desdemonas
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Robeson, however, is but the major part of a complete theatrical spectacle. The rest of it depends upon the portrayal of the crucial roles of Iago, Desdemona, and Emilia, and upon the direction and setting of the play as a whole. As director, Margaret Webster presents work that is perhaps better than her previous successes with Shakespeare. It is through the directing that the play becomes a living thing. Upon her conception of the play depends the unity of the final product. She has created the motivation which in the written form is hard to follow, by emphasizing the characters...
...opening performance buxom Neapolitan Soprano Maria Caniglia was found crawling about the Met's splintery stage in search of bent nails. Reason: An old Neapolitan superstition that bent nails mean luck. She found a half dozen, toted them about with her while she sang the part of Desdemona in the season's opener, Otello. Thus equipped, Soprano Caniglia sang lustily, was lustily choked in the last act by Tenor Giovanni Martinelli (Otello) who finally covered her face with a pillow. The performance over, she had the ecstatic satisfaction (see cut) of being smothered again by flowers...
Last week's blackface Otello, veteran Giovanni Martinelli, could have won his audience without the smash-clapping and howling of the inevitable claque. Elisabeth Rethberg (Desdemona) substituted massively for Eide Norena, who was ill. Long-legged, snub-nosed Lawrence Tibbett (lago) acted so enthusiastically he almost made a home-plate slide in the second...
...actress wife (Gertrude Lawrence) and a spinster secretary (Miriam Hopkins). When the secretary breaks off her affair with him because his wife is about to have a child, he resolves on that stage-worn device-actually killing his wife when as Othello he is smother ing her as Desdemona. This time, how ever, Desdemona lives to reconquer her Othello...
...master. Robert Keith is in general quite satisfactory as Iago, although his appearance is more suggestive of a mischievous schoolboy than of a malignant traitor, and in spite of the somewhat excessive faces and eyes he makes. Nan Sunderland (Mrs. Huston) is as vivacious and as sweet as Desdemona should be, but she can't help looking a little mature. Euqal praise might be extended to Natalie Hall as Emilia and G. P. Huntley, Jr. as Cassio...