Word: grandest
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...result, despite a rather timid James Horner score, is perhaps the first space opera to deserve that term in its grandest sense. The plot is as convoluted and improbable as anything Verdi ever set to music; the settings are positively Wagnerian in scale and, especially at the climax, full of his kind of fiery mysticism. Above all, the emotions of Stari Trek III are as broad and as basic as anything this side of Rigoletto. Principally, these are the province of Admiral James T. Kirk (William Shatner, of course). His attempt to answer the cries for help that Spock transmits...
Produced in the Paris Opéra's sumptuous Palais Gamier, Messiaen's work, to the composer's own libretto, is on the grandest scale. It lasts five hours and 40 minutes and requires a large chorus and 120-piece orchestra, including extra brass and winds, a large percussion battery and three electronic keyboard instruments called Ondes Martenot. The orchestra is so big that it overflows the pit to envelop both sides of the stage and several boxes. The subject is the spiritual transformation of Francis the man into Francis the saint. "I have chosen Francis," says...
...something new: pocket calculators, which have become essential for translating the volatile currencies of Europe into dollars. The dollar, as everyone knows, has never been lustier abroad,* and Americans are in the mood to spend. To encourage them, European Travel Commission ads across the U.S. proclaim: EUROPE! THE GRANDEST HOLIDAY OF ALL. NOW MORE AFFORDABLE THAN EVER. The Paris daily Le Figaro scolds the mother country for not wooing the American dollar more actively this summer and urges with a wiggle: "The objective in 1984 is to seduce the Americans." The Americans can't seem to wait...
...world is over, the awesome fleet and the tentacular intelligence service are but memories, and the sagacity of its statesmen almost (but not entirely) vanished." Nevertheless, says Barzini, the Britons realize their limitations. Helas, the French do not. They insist upon being treated as Europe's grandest military, economic, cultural and gustatory power. In fact, he notes, "foreigners have to remind themselves they are not dealing with a country that really exists, a country many of them love, with its admirable past and its actual respectable achievements, potentials, and capacities, but with a country that most Frenchmen dream still...
Wright wittily eviscerates the adolescents and haughty matrons who defended Claus (Character Witness Ann Brown, one of Rhode Island's grandest dames, addressed a lawyer "in a tone surely known to every butler in Newport"). But for all its malicious detail, The Von Bülow Affair never really answers the question that nags at every reader: Did Claus really do it? Wright plainly believes Von Bülow is guilty, and even Defense Attorney John Sheehan labeled the prosecution's case "overwhelming." But the examination of the clues is so clumsily marshaled that the reader is left...