Word: ferrugia
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...celebrate the 200th anniversary of Mozart's birth by staging four of his best-known works, including The Magic Flute, and a company was born. Fifty years later, they have repatriated one of their finest exports, director David Freeman, to launch a new version combining vocal firepower (Amelia Ferrugia, Jaewoo Kim, Emma Matthews) with the aerial acrobatics of Legs on the Wall. Did someone mention crossover appeal? "You can't stay 19th century," says the production's designer, Dan Potra, who shares with his director the belief that opera will "die a slow, agonizing death" unless new elements are brought...
...Amelia Ferrugia ascends on her mechanical moon at a recent rehearsal, Freeman encourages his Queen to command the stage with her gestures ("but not Shirley Bassey ones"). Caught in the folds of her drapery below, Jaewoo Kim is coaxed to treat her presence like perfume. "Can that be more intense?" Freeman later asks. Every now and then, the director drops back to view the scene through the frame of his hands. Such details will make all the difference when his vision is unveiled, and Freeman hopes it will share with Shakespeare the quality of being "both spontaneous and inevitable...
...tape not rolling. Lots of quick camera cuts showing hubbub in the booth spliced with shots from the week's stories. The thumping music swells into a jazzy roar as Correspondent Jane Wallace dashes up a flight of stairs. The other three correspondents (Bob Sirott, Meredith Vieira, John Ferrugia) are presented in quick succession, getting out of chairs and talking on phones. If the two-minute scene looks a bit like The Big Chill meets Lou Grant, the introduction succeeds brilliantly in grabbing the viewer's attention...
...serve as the primary mental-health detectors. Teachers receive a checklist of the signs of adolescent depression, ranging from "lack of concentration" to "crying spells" all the way to "thoughts or plans of suicide." If a student matches the profile, teachers alert a 16-member team, led by Ferrugia, that intervenes by contacting other teachers and parents...
...Ferrugia works at the school only three days a week, and each counselor, in addition to doubling as a college adviser, must monitor more than 200 charges. Regardless of the resources pinch, there will always be some troubled kids who simply escape notice. "I call them the wallpaper kids," says nurse Buss, "those kids who will be carrying big loads, but they're so quiet nobody notices...