Word: luridly
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INES DE CASTRO. This is the twelfth opera by the New York-born composer Thomas Pasatieri, 30; most of them have been performed either by U.S. regional opera companies or on television. A lurid tale of murder, intrigue and frustrated love, Ines de Castro builds to a climax in which the demented hero Dom Pedro places the cadaver of his true love Ines on the throne and declares her queen. Stage Director Tito Capobianco has conceived a stunning production that conveys most of the libretto's horror. What is called for musically is the power and sweep...
Life on the ground was more trying and complex-as if Herman Melville had written Tom Swift. The press made a mockery of his quest for privacy. Today, no self-respecting journalist can read the lurid coverage of the Lindbergh kidnaping case without feeling embarrassment for his craft. "Experiencing a kind of publicity hitherto known only by royal families, Presidents, or movie stars, we had none of the official protection on public figures," recalls Mrs. Lindbergh in the latest installment of her diaries and letters (The Flower and the Nettle; Harcourt Brace Jovanovich). Her recollection is the main theme...
Martin does not stop there: using tape recordings (now a standard procedure at exorcisms) and entries from the diaries of participants, he reconstructs the five exorcisms. The material varies: at times he evokes nothing more than memories of William P. Blatty's lurid prose or of bad National Enquirer exposes; alternately, without warning, Martin produces rather alarming dialogues between exorcist and spirit that touch at the heart of modern evil. This is the strength of Hostage to the Devil; it offers an insight into the evil not only of Buchenwald and My Lai but also into the more personal evil...
...This lurid interpretation of events in Cambodia seems designed to shock readers and increase their fear of socialism. But the Times editorial version of events is based on liberal amounts of prejudice and half-truths--they even forgot to read some of their own news coverage of Cambodia. Also, the Indochina Resource Center, a U.S. group, recently released an exhaustively-documented report, The Politics of Food: Starvation and Agricultural Revolution in Cambodia, which sheds more light on events in that country...
Exiles never forget, of course, but the emigre communities in Miami, San Juan, and New Orleans have calmed down. Extremist groups may still throw a hand grenade down the gangplank of a Russian cruise ship or threaten the airlines of countries resuming diplomatic relations with Cuba, but the lurid billboard in San Juan that showed Cuban soldiers executing prisoners before a bloodsplashed wall disappeared years ago. Hardly anyone remembers its slogan...