Word: falstaffs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
DIED. Fernando Corena, 67, Swiss-born buffo opera star who sang 726 performances with New York City's Metropolitan Opera from 1954 to 1978, specializing in such roles as Falstaff and Dr. Bartolo in The Barber of Seville and winning the delighted chuckles of audiences and critics, one of whom dubbed him "the greatest scene stealer in the history of opera"; of a heart attack; in Lugano, Switzerland...
...asks himself why he should bear fardels. We would now say burdens and so, probably, would Shakespeare. Thus, in a Hamlet for 1984, "Who would fardels bear?" becomes "Who would burdens bear?" See? Anybody who has studied Elizabethan English, who has lots of time to waste and possesses a Falstaff-size ego can do it. Exit anybody. Enter A.L. Rowse, who proclaims himself "the world's leading authority on Shakespeare and his work" and who has made all these changes and more...
...Verdi: Falstaff (Deutsche Grammophon). Renato Bruson is an autumnal Sir John in Carlo Maria Giulini's bittersweet live recording...
...through Robert Benchley's work is "to discover a good many of his sketches astonishingly bland, disarmingly gentle." The 65 pieces that pass Richler's scrutiny are trenchant, acrimonious and sharp. Most of them are also funny. But they are no more mature than the Falstaff put down by Prince Hal: "How ill white hairs become a fool and jester...
...Falstaff s touch, too, for the imposing phrase of self-deprecation: "Acting," he said in 1946, "is merely the art of keeping a large group of people from coughing." Like so many luminaries of his generation, he viewed acting as a job from which one should never take a vacation; in 63 years he appeared in more than 180 stage productions, 62 movies and at least a score of TV plays. Through his early years he was the middle-class Everyman, shuffling toward archetype with good will and capacious common sense. But as he aged, his characters turned imperious...