Word: duet
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Alzira, it represents Verdi's single lapse from musicianship and inspiration, and the preposterous libretto, inspired by Byron's The Corsair-the story of an Aegean pirate whose ill-starred romance leads to murder and suicide-scarcely helps matters. The one pleasing aria and the single engaging duet could hardly be expected to mollify a fastidious audience. Even the most pious Verdi worshipers could not help applying to their hero the only couplet in Byron's windy poem that is worth remembering...
Abstraction in art seemed to reach some sort of apogee when Kasimir Malevich painted White on White. But Paul Taylor, an avant-garde dancer, may have topped that ploy by choreographing stillness: he once fashioned a dance called Duet in which a cocktail-party couple stood stock still for four minutes. He has composed dances to the sound of rain, and he has taken a collection of human postures and set them to the chant of the telephone operator - "At the tone the time will be . . ." The whole thing lasted 20 minutes, longer than a good many of the audience...
...blow a shrill Tarzan victory call on a siren-whistle that could be mistaken for a hunting horn. He delights in the unexpected. In the middle of a flute solo, he will pop a child's plastic song flute into his right nostril and trill out a brief duet. For a performer who took up the flute only three years ago, Kirk plays it with astonishing virtuosity. He can begin with a slow, throaty, lyrical blues, punctuate the piece with jagged staccato yelps of outrage, and then tap the stops with his fingers like a woodpecker beating...
...Strings lacks greatness, but it is still one of the best musicals to have come from Broadway recently. Rodgers achieves a simple, pacific beauty in "Look No Further;" "Loads of Love" and "Be My Host" are bouncy and exciting. The duet "Maine" will probably end up as that state's official song...
...middleweight G. and S. with Glibert's jibes at Gothic melodrama complemented by some wonderfully quasi-Wagnerian effects by Sullivan. Purists might object to Director Robert Gibson's use of the shorter and weaker of the two second act finales extant and to his omission of the charming duet, "The Battle's Roar Is Over," but by any standards the production is a success...