Word: diva
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...young people disrobe in an English mansion. Robert Altman had the inspiration to show a restless 17th century audience at Rameau's Les Boreades, then neglected to develop his night-at-the-opera sketch with any coherence. Derek Jarman's episode, to Charpentier's Louise, imagines an old diva taking a final curtain call, her mind garlanded with fading memories. Sweet but frail...
Lloyd Webber gives his wife every help, beginning with her vocal introduction. Although Phantom is garlanded with opera pastiche, it subliminally nudges opera aside in favor of pop by offering the winsome ballad Think of Me first in the overripe, rococo style of a diva (Judy Kaye), then in Brightman's appealingly unadorned rendition. The device hints that the Phantom and his chosen instrument will become the means for remaking musical entertainment. If that claim is to be taken as Lloyd Webber's judgment of his own role in the theater, however, it seems premature. His knack for crafting...
...East European talent to the West for cash or merchandise. Polish soccer goalies, Czechoslovak hockey forwards and East German handball coaches are only part of the business. Such athletes have been joined by thousands of other performers, ranging from the likes of renowned Czechoslovak Soprano Gabriela Benachkova, a diva at the prestigious Milan and Vienna opera houses, to Hungarian gypsy bands, Polish striptease artists, Bulgarian pop singers and Rumanian high-wire circus acts. Although the East bloc governments refuse to disclose the revenues they reap from the talent trade, Western economists estimate that contracts for 1986 alone may have amounted...
This adorable stuffed diva can be found in the Square...
...effervescent soprano made her arias appear effortless; the years of striving before she became an overnight star at 37, the tribulations and ironies of raising a deaf daughter, the difficulties of administering the New York City Opera were kept in the wings. All the public saw was a golden diva with a smile they could pour on a waffle. But Beverly Sills is 57, as she is the first to admit, and in her twinkling autobiography she is ready for revelations. She brings back the days of doing Progresso commercials on TV, catalogs the hilarities and humiliations of auditions, repeats...