Word: librettist
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...more than a personal triumph: he had also satisfied a debt of honor that had nagged him for 30 years. As a young man he had conducted Boito's pompously romantic opera, Mefistofele. Their friendship had ripened while Boito was busy winning greater fame as the librettist of Verdi's Otello and Falstaff-and plugging away for years at another opera of his own, Nerone...
Crude but Sympathetic. Peter Grimes is no conventional operatic hero. Britten found him in a poem written by Parson Poet George Crabbe (1754-1832) and added a few hints of Freud. Crabbe's Grimes was an uncouth and unsympathetic ruffian; to Britten and Librettist Montagu Slater he is still crude but somehow sympathetic-a character who, by his uncontrollable rages, continually puts himself at swords'-points with society, which Britten represents with the massive chorus. Sings Peter Grimes: "They listen to money, these Borough gossips. I listen to courage and fiery visions...
...while, he lived with his married sister Beth, but found it difficult to compose while Beth's children played trains under his feet, or left sticky traces of jam on the piano. Then he and Librettist Slater moved to Snape in Suffolk, to a windmill which Britten had remodeled as a house. There they plunged into Peter Grimes. Slater would work up in a bedroom, and shout down to Benjy, lolling on the grass, "How do you like this line?" They took long walks over the bleak Suffolk downs, saying nothing to each other, each busy with...
...people from Sardi's to Giro's see him in an unearthly glow. Says Razzmatazzman Billy Rose: "What do I think about him? That's like asking me what do I think of the Yankees, Man o' War and strawberry sundaes." Says his old friend, Librettist Otto Harbach: "He is a real gentleman of the theater." Says the wife of one of his collaborators: "He seems to have everlasting arms to lean on in trouble...
Mozart's librettist, Giambattista Varesco, brewed a confusing plot based on the Odyssey, with such extraneous characters as Electra thrown in. Idomeneo, King of Crete, is buffeted by storms on his return from the siege of Troy. To appease Poseidon, he swears to sacrifice the first person he encounters on landing. That turns out to be his son Idamante, who is in love with Ilia, daughter of the vanquished King of Troy. The gods finally clear up the whole matter, and the opera ends four hours later with Idamante and Ilia on the throne. Even the charm of Mozart...