Word: librettist
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WALTON: THE BEAR (Angel). British Composer William Walton premiered this one-act gem only a year ago. He was fortunate in finding an excellent librettist (an increasingly rare breed of writer) named Paul Dehn, who based his freewheeling lyrics on Chekhov's farce. Walton's eclectic styles are more than equal to the idiotic but entertaining plot about Popova, a widow who so enrages a creditor that he challenges her to a duel, but they suffer the fate of operatic lightning-love and fall into each other's arms. The work is laced with musical and verbal...
...secret of Falstaff's miraculous funnies doesn't end there. The phenomenon of Falstaff is that the composer, Verdi, and his librettist, Boito, changed roles. Verdi composed like a playwright and Boito wrote like a musician. Take away all the words from Falstaff and you will still know exactly what is going on. When the orchestra trills from one end to the other, you know that Falstaff has just taken a colossal chug of wine which is going to work on his insides; when the trombones blast, you know that Ford is feeling the full gamut of green-eyed emotions...
...Librettist Henry Butler stripped O'Neill's six-hour epic to focus exclusively on the psychological currents that seethe beneath the surface of each of the main characters. Boris Aronson's ghostly sets created decadence and onrushing doom. As drama, the opera unfolded with all the shivering tension of one long, gradually building shriek, thanks in part to the almost balletic direction of Director Michael Cacoyannis (Zorba the Greek). But what made Mourning move was the inspired acting of two darkly beautiful sopranos-Marie Collier as the lusting mother, and Evelyn Lear as the revengeful daughter...
Julie, in short, is something else-in Hollywood, but not with it. Unencumbered by the cotton-candy fantasy life in which most stars invariably shroud themselves, she has stayed resolutely honest and unspoiled. She is an actress, as Librettist Alan Jay Lerner once remarked, who achieved stardom "with nothing to offer but talent, industry and an uncorrupted heart...
...famous cinema trilogy-Marius, Fanny, Cesar. And then Merrick spent three months nailing down the subsidiary rights and three months persuading Josh Logan to go see Pagnol's pictures and three months marking time until he was ready to direct the show and six months working with the librettist and the songwriter and three months signing up Ezio Pinza and Walter Slezak and two months building the supporting cast and two months wrangling with the Shuberts about a theater and three months working up an advertising campaign and two months in rehearsal and two months on the road...