Word: grand
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...rapacious in its demands: loosen our inhibitions; make us laugh. Onstage, life is stripped to bare essentials. The voice, the timing, the jokes are your only weapons. Every second of uneasy silence is a little death. I launch into my monologue: "You've been reading about Kenneth Starr and grand-jury leaks. Well, I can't get one. I'm the Rodney Dangerfield of investigative reporters." A small laugh, less than a guffaw, more than a titter. But that's all I need. I'm launched...
This is opera, right? Absolutely, says David Gockley, general director of the Houston Grand Opera, which has mounted an up-to-the-second production of Georges Bizet's Carmen to show off its new portable outdoor stage, a $1.4 million innovation designed to get the much admired company out of its fancy downtown theater and into the lives of Houstonians who don't know Don Jose from Donald Duck. Gockley calls it "nothing less than a new way to produce opera." Irreverent locals dubbed the show Carmen a-go-go but turned out to cheer. More than 7,000 paying...
...bother? According to Gockley, Houston Grand Opera, which is internationally renowned for its avant-garde productions, had come to be seen by its hometown as elitist. "The political and funding community," he says, "was telling us, 'We know you have a certain stature, but if you don't begin to reach and touch more people, you're going to gradually drop off our priority list.'" So he asked Billington and Foy to create a fully portable stage suitable for special performances aimed at young, TV-oriented viewers unfamiliar with opera. "What does rock 'n' roll do? That was our mandate...
...Copley, you'll find the grand department stores Saks, Lord and Taylor and Nieman Marcus...
After speaking in Cambridge, Clinton traveled to Walden Woods, Mass. to attend the grand opening of Thoreau Institute with the First Lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton. The institute, founded by singer Don Henley, is an educational facility promoting land preservation and dedicated to American author, philosopher and conservationist Henry David Thoreau, class...