Word: falstaff
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...Fortnight ago a fungus was insured by Lloyds of London for $1,000,000. Policyholder is the Falstaff Brewing Corp. of St. Louis, which thus treasures its unique, 50-year-old brewer's yeast...
Musically, the most notable Chicago operas were two performed last week: Richard Strauss 's Salome, blazingly conducted by Artur Rodzinski; and the best of modern Italian works, The Love of Three Kings, conducted by its Composer Italo Montemezzi. Best opera in English was Verdi's Falstaff, retranslated from the Italian to sound something like Shakespeare. Baritone John Charles Thomas patterned his make-up from a Falstaff beer advertisement, said "Falstaff is just a plain red-nosed comedian to me," acted that way. He got one of his laughs by singing, right out, "Go to hell...
Evans' Richard is still his best role-far better than his too-muscular Hamlet (whom Evans makes into more of a Great Dane than a melancholy one), far better suited to his talents than his not-deeply-stained-enough Falstaff. "A rough draft of Hamlet," Richard has been called; and though the vain, foppish English king lacks the charm and nobility of the Danish prince, both love words and fear action, both procrastinate, both are full of self-pity and self-mockery...
...German people love to eat heartily. Since they cannot in wartime eat heartily, Hermann does it for them, consuming cream puffs by the dozen, wolfing huge helpings of everything, dirtying his sleeves and vest in the process. He plays Falstaff both because it is good politics and because he likes the role. "Look at me!" he roars, slapping his enormous stomach. "I have lost pounds in the service of the country. Why do you complain at cutting down your meals a little?" It makes no difference to unser Hermann or his people that the 40 pounds he lost last year...
This is a book without "theories" about the plays, and I enclose the word in inverted commas because the book is in fact crowded with theories which are carefully to be distinguished from the stuff of doctoral theses. Mr. Van Doren's comment on Falstaff's style is a case in point: "(Falstaff) being old and fat, he is short of breath and so must be brief of phrase . . . He has made the most of this limitation. Artist that he is, he has accepted its challenge and employed it in effects that express his genius with a notable and economical...