Word: melodrama
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Down with Melodrama. Ironically, the real reason for Cenerentola's long neglect has been another quality of Rossini's score: it demands the coloratura style throughout. The men as well as the women are called upon for whirlwind runs, tumbling arpeggios and fluttering trills. Today's singers (except for a few sopranos with eccentric larynxes) consider coloratura about as easy as tightrope walking, and few bother to take the necessary strenuous training...
...Lincoln Kirstein, boss man at City Center, knew the company of young singers were willing to tackle anything, even coloratura. Moreover, Kirstein himself is tiring of the heavy melodrama of Verdi and the heavy orchestras of Wagner. He is betting that the future lies with compositions that combine high spirits and vocal acrobatics. He decided that Cenerentola might help him test his theory...
Williams has created a phantasmagoria of brutality, treachery, corruption, has doused it with sex, punctuated it with farce, dyed it in melodrama. Doubtless the play is at times revolting because it sets out to convey the author's own revulsion; and Camino Real is perhaps excessively pessimistic in reaction against Williams' previous Rose Tattoo, with its factitious "affirmation." But very excessive it is-and not only excessively black, but excessively purple. Camino Real lacks philosophic or dramatic progression (on that score, it might claim the dead-endness of a wasteland), but it also lacks all discipline and measure...
...long-run melodrama When Did You Stop Beating Anti-Communists? (Senator Joseph McCarthy, producer, director and star) introduced a new performer last week. He was Reed Harris, 43, deputy administrator of the International Information Administration, which includes the Voice of America. Witness Harris showed a bureaucrat's tendency to engage in long-winded arguments with his pursuers; nevertheless, when the curtain fell, he was still ahead of the bloodhounds...
...play is itself a blend of what writers Donald Vevan and Edmund Trzcinski call "comedy melodrama." The comic element is of an earthy, physical sort, inversely proportional to the supply of women. But it convulsed more of the audience than it embarrassed. Although not so funny as Mr. Roberts, Stalag 17 has an added element of melodrama. Tension arises when the prisoners' sabotage and escape plots fail with crushing regularity, making it apparent that one amongst them is a German informer. Their efforts to discover the culprit (they had a better word for him) provide grim and gripping moments between...