Word: dionysian
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RAVEL: DAPHNIS AND CHLOË, SUITE NO. 2, and ROUSSEL: BACCHUS AND ARIADNE, SUITE NO. 2 (RCA Victor). For his first recording with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, new Conductor Jean Martinon chose flashy and familiar works-two Dionysian ballets by fellow Frenchmen. Orchestra and conductor show up well, from the airy pianissimos that signal the break of day in the Ravel to the wildly pounding bacchanalia that climax the Roussel...
...stars only when he is wallowing in the mud. He is modern, and not quite human. He is really a child of myth and philosophy. His symbolic antecedents are the Biblical false gods of ancient fertility rites and orgiastic sensuality, and the neopagan doctrines of Nietzsche's Dionysian antiChrist. What Brecht conceived of was not so much a free soul as an animal will, ruthlessly, amorally, narcissistically possessed by his creature instincts...
...same time in Miami Beach, the feudal, feuding barons of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. Executive Council (average age: 62) met at the gaudy Americana Hotel. As if aware of possible criticism, they avoided the Americana's pools, eschewed Dionysian pleasures, spent most of their time in worried huddles. At one point a reporter cornered A.F.L.-C.I.O. President George Meany in a corridor, asked him if he thought the A.F.L.-C.I.O. had a responsibility to end national strikes. Meany's face flushed with anger; his fist closed tightly around the cane that he now carries. "We have a responsibility...
...candelabra, the rare wines, the cates and dainties, a whole lamb. Like dukes the poor pilgarlics sit them down to a palatial feast that rapidly degenerates into a gutter brawl. But the brawl is intended also as a rite, as the dissolution of a desiccated society in a Dionysian mystery. In the depths of it, as the rabble bawls and dances, fights and fornicates all over the house, the leper puts a record on the gramophone, and suddenly with supernal irony the scene of chaos is explained and sanctified by a great chorus roaring triumphantly to Handel's music...
...Rosten made few additions to the play-with clear intelligence and rude male force. In his direction, despite a tendency to get cute with the camera, Sidney Lumet often achieves a noble seriousness that makes the drama seem almost a rite-as is only appropriate: classic tragedy was the Dionysian counterpart of the Christian Mass. The actors without exception excel, but Actor Vallone beggars comparison. He is the gritty essence of stevedore. He looks like one of Michelangelo's Captives, half man. half rock...