Word: medea
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Composer-Impresario Gian Carlo Menotti had never directed a straight play before, but this was one challenge he could not resist. It was the first Ital ian production of Jean Anouilh's Medea, with volcanic Film Actress Anna Magnani (Open City, The Rose Tattoo) in the title role. Menotti realized all along, though, that working with Magnani is "like working with fire. It might burn down the whole house if you let it go, but if you put water on it, the fire might go out. You must keep the fire burning without destroying the theater...
There was smoke right from the first reading. In Anouilh's updating of Euripides' tragedy, Medea is abandoned by her lover, Jason, who takes up with Glauce, daughter of King Creon of Corinth; in retribution, Medea kills her two children by Jason, and murders both Glauce and Creon. Magnani's view was that Medea had got the short end of the stick, that Jason was a no-good porco. Menotti did not quite see it that way. "Jason's story is like every Italian man's," he explained. "He is just a tired...
...another, all the disputes got settled in time for the opening last week. Magnani played Medea the way she saw it, chewing up a little scenery along the way. The critics were pretty dubious about it all. "Magnani is a popular personage whereas Medea is not," said II Tempo. She portrayed her role "more with her viscera than with her head...
...some 2,000 black-market recordings. They are packaged in plain black cartons and, though stamped "private recording not for sale," sell for $9.50 for a single copy, up to $25 for an album. For the Callas fan, for example, the catalogue lists her excellent 1958 performance of Medea with the Dallas Opera, taped by a college student who hid his microphone in the footlights, and a 1952 Covent Garden production of Norma, prized by collectors because the cast also featured a then unknown singer named Joan Sutherland...
...longer insists that "real" democracy must conform to a particular version of the parliamentary or presidential system. But any meaningful definition of democracy must meet certain minimum conditions. The ancient Greeks had some careful notions about democracy, and none better than Jason's eloquent appeal in Euripides' Medea that, A good Greek land hath been Thy lasting home, not barbary. Thou hast seen Our ordered life, and justice, and the long Still grasp of law not changing with the strong Man's pleasure...