Word: duomo
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...behind such problems there has been a worse one. A century ago, most educated people drew as a matter of course because it was the best way to remember what they saw. Great Aunt Lucinda with her watercolor set, earnestly dabbling in the shade of the Duomo, may have been a figure of mild fun; but she (multiplied by tens of thousands) was also the ground from which the tremendous graphic achievements of a Degas or a Matisse could rise. Such amateur experience added up to a general recognition that to draw, to reconstitute a motif as a code...
...Punch. Fiat Nox (let there be night) he sees as the first commandment of the modern world. The result of seeking heaven on earth is hell. "Four freedoms lead to forty times more servitudes," cries Muggeridee, and Savonarola in top form and full throat from the pulpit of the Duomo cried no louder. We are gabardine swine losing life and liberty in the pursuit of happiness. The real modern religion is "utopianism," and by that ism, Muggeridge means the universal creed of the modern world. No more "fatuous" slogan was ever devised than the pursuit of happiness asserted...
...heaps of smashed steel and left a thick oil slick in its wake. Hundreds of rare manuscripts and books were destroyed in the slime. The water knocked out five panels of Ghiberti's "Doors of Paradise," the famed bronze reliefs on the doors of the Baptistery near the Duomo. It wrecked the priceless 13th century crucifix by Cimabue in the Museum of Santa Croce. In the basements and other galleries of the Uffizi, 1,200 paintings were spattered with mud and grease...
...fact, opera attendance in Italy has slipped off by more than 30% in the past 15 years. At the core of the problem is a serious deficiency in young talent. Time was when there were as many first-rate young singers in Italy as pigeons in Piazza del Duomo. But now, with the high cost of training, most singers are not willing to devote the seven to ten years necessary to cultivate their voices. Moreover, the number of Italian opera houses where a fledgling singer can test his roulades has declined from 80 in 1930 to only 17 today...
...habitué follows a more calculatedly relaxed schedule: a noontime apéritif in the sun-drenched Piazza del Duomo, where one was sure to see George Balanchine and the Maharani of Jaipur. Or late lunch in the Trattoria Panciolle, followed by a long siesta. The music of pianos, violins and vocalizing floats out of narrow Renaissance windows; artists and audience are on first-name terms within hours. After dusk, international jet setters in white dinner jackets brush shoulders with gaping locals in sweatshirts at the superheated discothéque. Then it is on to a 16th century vaulted cellar...