Word: florid
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...Giraudoux down to weak, cynical undertones of Elizabeth Taylor: "He's dead. Listen to me. I'm alive." It is a spoof of everything from waltzing toreadors to Tennessee Williams; and like the characters of Williams' The Rose Tattoo, Kopit's people are named with florid symbolism-Madame Rosepettle, Rosalie, Commodore Roseabove, Rosalinda the Fish-but without even the simplest clue to the possible significance of all the roses. Yet the sum of all this is more than derivative lampoon and parody. Full of primary humor and insight, it is cohesively and originally a comic play...
Measuring Yachts. The plot, florid and foolish by turns, concerns Madame Rosepettle and her young son (Andrew Ray), moneyed travelers who ply the international circuit from hotel to hotel, taking with them the stuffed remains of Mr. Rosepettle. A sort of Auntie Maim, Madame Rosepettle also has a cat-eating piranha fish, a couple of man-eating plants and a psychopathic hobby: she stalks lovers on the beaches at night and kicks sand into their faces. She keeps her son locked away from the world to guarantee his presence when she finally decides the direction in which his future greatness...
...such humor as when, standing handcuffed in the pouring rain, he murmured: "If this is how Her Majesty treats her prisoners, she doesn't deserve to have any." By omitting such touches and emphasizing Wilde's plangent side, and by himself-if often eloquent-being often florid, Mac Liammoir piles Pelion upon Oscar, and turns what he dubs a baroque and rococo story into a rather mawkish and Victorian one. In both men notable showmanship can become mere staginess...
Richard Wagner it was who in his own music sought to make the distinction between opera and what he called "music-drama." Opera was Verdi and those other florid Italians; but music-drama adhered strictly to a text, translating and absorbing it into music...
...Stabat Mater's simplicity became a great virtue because of this change. While its melodies and accompaniment flow with ease and winning sweetness, its mourning draws back from florid tone-painting to achieve a simpler expression of grief. The introduction of the chorus was, indeed, not an intrusion, for Emily C. Romney, Assistant Conductor of the Choral Society, directed the group with simplicity and made the delightful melodies really sing...