Word: ek
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Addressing 1,200 delegates at the 14th Congress of the Czechoslovak Communist Party last week in Prague's vast Congress Hall, First Secretary Gustav Husák announced that his two-year policy of normalization and consolidation had successfully annulled the "dangerous" reforms of the Alexander Dubček era. Much of the session was a Te Deum to the Soviet Union, which still maintains 80,000 troops on Czechoslovak soil three years after invading the country and crushing Dubč's Prague Spring...
...those young enough to be considered serious contenders for leadership are concerned, no one can predict exactly how they would behave once the power was finally in their hands. Alexander Dub?ek, for example, had no reputation for liberalism before he came to power in Prague. By training and temperament, Mazurov, Shelepin and the others appear no more inventive or flexible than Brezhnev...
...human enough to be terrified of death, and the opera observes her ruthlessly searching and seducing her way toward a document that holds the prescription for another 300 years of life. Finding it, she also finds the unexpected strength to refuse it and die nobly. Through Janáček's music, the bitch goddess becomes an archangel...
...opera is remarkably powerful. All melody pared to its bare essentials, Janáček'a music illuminates Čapek's bizarre tale with a cold, exciting glare. Characters declaim in energetic syllables that leap from one end of their voices to the other, too tense to lapse into song. The orchestra vibrates with intense color and rhythm, microscopically reflective of each dramatic subtlety...
...ek's work depends upon a great singing actress for its ultimate effect. Emilia Marty should be beautiful, venomous, sinister and finally tragic. Her music is strident and etched in acid but when Marty accepts death, it soars toward the sublime. California-born Soprano Maralin Niska, singing her twelfth role with the New York City Opera, was almost up to her demanding role. Niska's voice is bright and well cultivated rather than monumental, but at her best she left no doubt what Janáček had in mind. She is a superb actress who lacks only...