Word: lyre
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Flowers." "Why Are Sharps Harder Than Flats?" and "Places That Don't Sound Right and What to Do with Them." The magazine was highly thought of by music teachers, who relied on it for hints on technique and for its advertisements suggesting graduation gifts ("A Very Attractive Lyre Design Pin-10K. solid gold, $1.25"). It was loathed by the thousands of rebellious children who had to plunk through its monthly exercises...
Onstage strode Orpheus, a fine, sturdy figure of a man, wearing a beige and green costume, and carrying a gilded lyre. In the orchestra the noble trombones swelled to the point where Orpheus would sing of his decision to seek Eurydice in Hades. Four thousand guests at France's Aix-les-Bains music festival, including Italy's ex-King Umberto and ex-Queen Marie José, leaned forward. The hero was about to make his impassioned plea: "Give her back to me, you powers of Hell!" Instead, the audience heard his hoarse shout in Italian-accented French...
Then Orpheus smashed his lyre to the floor and the orchestra ground to shocked silence. Thus last week did La Scala Baritone Giuseppe Valdengo-sometime (1947-54) of the Metropolitan Opera and a notable Iago in Toscanini's 1947 broadcast of Otello-throw the skids under one of the first operas ever written, Monteverdi's Orfeo (1607). From the wings issued a flying wedge of furies, shades and demons, screaming insults at the baritone, who made a hurried and unheroic exit. Umberto and his lady rose uncertainly as the audience broke into loud jeers, cheers and whistles...
...Valdengo balked was a retake for television kinescope, for which the rest of the company had readily agreed to perform free. Moreover, it was Monsieur Valdengo's fault in the first place: he did not know his part (he had pinned a copy of his score to his lyre), and had improvised to the point of making the retake necessary...
...with a caress and ends with a whiplash. You wear feathers and furs which seem to be part of your body like the furs of beasts and the feathers of birds . . . There comes to us, in full sail, a frigate, a prow's figurehead, a Chinese fish, a lyre bird, unbelievable and marvelous...