Word: fops
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Lorenzo da Ponte was not only a fop but a flop. As Poet to the Imperial Theaters in Vienna, it was his duty to write librettos for "great composers," but Da Ponte had muffed the job. In 1785 he decided to collaborate with "an almost unknown, second-rate composer" named Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Joseph II was shocked by such folly, but eventually, the amiable Emperor gave his approval. The new opera was Le Nozze di Figaro. So began the greatest collaboration in operatic history. To this day, says British Biographer April FitzLyon, nobody quite knows why "the facile, mediocre poet...
...whimsical and the wacky. There will be cartoons on such artists and inventors as Henri Rousseau, Robert Fulton and Samuel F.B. Morse: the adventures of Dusty, a circus boy; comic versions of famous historic moments (Nero Fiddles, The Trojan Horse); etiquette lessons by a well-meaning but maladroit fop named Mr. Charmley...
...that recalls H. L. Mencken's sour description of the sort of youth who generally gets stagestruck. "Is he," Mencken asked, "the alert, ingenious, ambitious young fellow? Is he ... the diligent reader, the hard student, the eager inquirer? No. He is, in the overwhelming main, the neighborhood fop and beau, the human clotheshorse, the nimble squire of dames. He seeks in the world, not a chance to test his mettle by hard and useful work, but an easy chance to shine...
...gentle and completely suitable manner. But Sonia Grant, although she is funny from time to time, does not seem to make nearly as much of 'Arsinoe as she might. It is difficult to forget that she is acting. Tom Whedon is at his very best in making the effeminate fop Clitandre a most unmitigated poseur, and shows how much can be done with a relatively minor part...
Somehow, practically the entire plot of Put Them All Together involves the efforts of a precious 29-year-old fop to rid himself of his mother's apron strings by sharing his bed with her attractive nurse. To varying degrees, the rest of his family approves of his venture, and forms a cheering section outside his bedroom door. Overnight a remarkable change takes place: by dawn the young man has shed his drab finales and pale timidity for a West Coast sport coat and a jut-jawed aggressiveness. This action is marked by an exchange of witticisms which in places...