Word: golovin
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...producing a drama such as Becket, whose expense is as high as its quality and whose entertainment is largely cerebral. Such sleaziness as Suzie Wong and such vulgar overproductions as Gypsy are balanced, surprisingly often, by a worthy and hopelessly unsalable show such as Menotti's opera, Maria Golovin. He can haggle with a star over $15, more or less, to be paid a dresser, yet he is often liberal with authors' advances. He is widely celebrated as Broadway's biggest s.o.b. since the heyday of Jed Harris, but he has the respect of many professionals from...
...week's end Maria Golovin closed after five performances, but it has already been recorded by RCA Victor, and NBC intends to produce it on television, which may provide a better setting for the work's small-screen passions. Golovin's best feature: its cast, including Franca Duval, Patricia Neway and the bass-baritone find of the year, 22-year-old Richard Cross, who left college (Iowa's Cornell) only 18 months ago, but sings Donato with power and conviction...
...Menotti. Figuring that there are more paying customers for a Broadway show than for an opera, Producer David Merrick billed Menotti's Maria Golovin as a "musical drama," insisted that it be reviewed by drama critics, even tried to bar music critics from the theater. Producer Merrick (nicknamed "The Abominable Showman" by Broadway wags) need not have troubled. Either as drama or as music, Maria Golovin (first performed in Brussels last summer) is something of a disappointment. The plot is built on a theme that seems to have an obsessive fascination for Composer-Librettist Menotti: the maimed (in this...
...music, a clue comes when a minor character (representing Menotti's caricature of modern-minded critics) deplores the romantic 19th century and asks: "Must music be only sweet?" In this work, as never before, Menotti proves himself essentially a 19th century composer. At its worst, the Golovin score is not only too sweet but too facile. Example: when the hero stomps up and down waiting for the heroine to keep a rendezvous, the effect is reminiscent of "suspense music" on a TV show. At its best, the score is hauntingly tender and compelling, notably in a trio, which...
...villa near a frontier in a European country," Maria Golovin unfolds a romance between Maria, whose husband is a war prisoner abroad, and Donato, a returned soldier blinded in the (undated) war. Donato at first seeks mere companionship with Maria. He sings: "May I touch your face? My touch is as harmless as a glance." But within a month they are lovers. Blinded further by jealousy, Donato visualizes imagined rivals. "When I had my eyes, I could close them and find peace. Now I imagine things. I see things." His love turns into hate, first suicidal, then homicidal...