Word: dictional
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Adams did his usual superb job preparing the large chorus, however. Like all Adams choruses, they coupled clear diction and impeccable intonation with beautifully blended tone. The Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra was not nearly as impressive. Ragged and insensitive string playing and poor intonation in the winds marred many of the soft choral sections as well as the expressive sole arise, Beverly Morgan, Frank. Hoffmeister, and David Evitts handled their sole chores admirably but soprano Mary Sindoni was not up to the task. Her voice sounded almost out of control at times and her phrasing was stiff and lifeless...
...film, Fellini Roma, Fellini occasionally has members of the cast step out from the tapestry to address his audience, like Anna Magnani as she reaches the door to her apartment and bids us all good night. In Amarcord Fellini plays around further with this device; along with the exquisite diction of the Italian actors and the rhythm and beauty and strangeness (to the English ear) of what they are saying, this lends a theatrical, almost ritualistic quality to the film. These characters, though, are faintly ridiculous. By stepping out of the community to address us, they forfeit the strength...
...couple's deadly secrets unveiled, Rattigan relies on a kind of question-and-answer man, a mutual American friend, Mark Walters (Martin Gabel), who has become rich writing sex novels, and who dotes on Lydia with unrequited love. Long noted for resonance of voice and clarity of diction, Gabel gets the messages across to the playgoers all right and he may qualify as the highest-paid facsimile of a Western Union boy in the history of the legitimate theater. To give Gabel's unclouded intelligence its due, the gravity of his mien is sometimes tinged with...
...chance to perform a patter song. His "I've Got a Little List"--perhaps the number that has proved most useful to later parodists--sounds fresh and crisp; his "Taken From a County Jail," though, didn't come up to this high standard and lacked the clarity of diction essential to understanding Gilbert's lyrics...
...Lenny Bruce and of scores of people who nurtured, cared for, lionized or harassed and preyed on him. He does so without in the least sanctifying Bruce himself, and he renders dignity and wholeness to people whom Bruce scorned. Goldman employs the same narrative techniques and extremities of diction, the verbal overkill, that characterize a faulted New Journalism, but he uses them with a measure of critical judgment, detached reflection and craft that others lack...