Word: malfi
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...centuries, opera librettists snubbed The Duchess of Malfi. The cut was unkind, since her tragic tale is the very stuff of grand opera. John Webster's play, published in 1623, is admirably lurid and complicated. There is the Duchess's secret and forbidden marriage to her steward Antonio. There are her two evil brothers: Ferdinand, who is driven mad by incestuous passion for her; and the Cardinal, who schemes to be Pope. After her marriage is discovered, the Duchess is imprisoned and tormented by madmen. At the end, everyone dies violently...
...opera has embraced Webster's gory drama in a big way, with not just one Duchess of Malfi but two. The Santa Fe Opera company, which has presented 20 American and world premieres in its 22 seasons, has just produced the American premiere of The Duchess of Malfi by British Composer and Librettist Stephen Oliver, 28. A second Duchess has simultaneously been staged at Wolf Trap Farm Park for the Performing Arts, outside of Washington, D.C., this one a world premiere by American Composer Stephen Douglas Burton, 35, and Librettist-Conductor Christopher Keene, 31. Strikingly different?one discordant, the other...
Luckily for everyone, she is distantly related to Miss Marple. The old lady turns up in Dillmouth, and sternly leads Gwenda through the complexities of her past-most of them available to any reader who looks up the quotation from The Duchess of Malfi that the author drops like a stone early in the story...
Quite noticeable was Mrs. A. G., the former countess of Malfi, who was sensationally decked out in a long refugee coat by Mendes, tabbed and belted in webbing. It matched her bermudas matched to the cozy-collared, double-breasted battle jacket. On the lower level she was footed in Emm??? newly-designed shoes, like laced-up tennis sandals on thick crepe soles, in prairie green banded with jonquil yellow. She oohed and aahed the most when Canonero was brought out from his stall and admitted to being wild about all things Latin...