Word: joans
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...changing of Parsifal from a man (Michael Kutter) into a woman (Karen Krick) at the moment he rejects the erotic advances of the temptress Kundry (Edith Clever). This apparently signifies Parsifal's transformation from a callow youth to a hero, as Krick's grim, Joan of Arc visage emphasizes. Yet the device, like so many others in the film, is arbitrary. Wagner's opera is merely a pretext for the director, a frame on which to hang a murky, convoluted and, finally, not very original cultural thesis. The performance is led with surprising authority and eloquence...
Several major singers, among them Mirella Freni, Joan Sutherland, Von Stade and Alfredo Kraus, are too rarely heard at the Met, although all four are appearing this season. And British Soprano Margaret Price, who sings in the major international houses, has never sung there. Somewhat ingenuously, Levine blames their absence partly on the Met's distance from Europe. Even in the Concorde age, he contends, they prefer to work closer to home, no more than a couple of hours' flight from Covent Garden, the Paris Opéra or Milan's La Scala, rather than take...
Once a week Bliss meets with his chief assistants, a quartet his secretary calls the "four Js: Joan, Joe, John and Jimmy." With their surnames attached they are known as Joan Ingpen, the scheduling wizard; Joseph Volpe, overseer of backstage activities; John Dexter, the production adviser; and James Levine. That weekly meeting enables Bliss to get the view from all four sides of the big house. "Sometimes," he observes, "an artistic decision will create a technical problem or a box office or funding problem. When you choose a new production, you also have to ask the question: Is this...
...small first-floor office, an ever present towel tossed over his left shoulder, Levine scans the mail and then meets with General Manager Anthony Bliss to discuss a choreographer for next season's opening production of Berlioz's Les Troyens; already three have declined. Assistant Manager Joan Ingpen, who is in charge of artistic administration, pops in to have Levine approve a "cover" for a sick tenor and to vet Director Jean-Pierre Ponnelle's request to adjust his rehearsal schedule next season. "Once we counted 40,000 castings arranged over a five-year period," says Levine...
There is Pope Joan (Selina Cadell), who is said to have ascended the throne of St. Peter around A.D. 855 and who was later stoned to death. Also joining the party are Isabella Bird (Deborah Findlay), an intrepid 19th century Scottish traveler; Lady Nijo (Lindsay Duncan), a 13th century Japanese courtesan who became a Buddhist nun; Dull Gret (Carole Hayman), who led an avenging legion of women into the precincts of hell in Brueghel's painting Dulle Griet; and finally, Patient Griselda (Lesley Manville), made famous in Boccaccio and Chaucer as the model of a loyal, submissive wife...