Word: ek
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...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...
Most operas concentrate on the obvious: love (usually thwarted), murder, political connivery. Not those by Czech Composer Janáček (TIME, Dec. 5, 1969), who had a taste for fantasy and the mysterious. Moreover, in The Makopoulos Affair, completed in 1925 three years before his death, the composer created an opera that offers no arias, no immediately whistleable tunes but is nonetheless marked by a considerable genius. Last week, when the New York City Opera produced it, a sellout audience responded with a twelve-minute ovation, a generous part of it in praise of the ingenuity used by Director...
...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...