Word: midi
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...state of revolt reigns in the south of France," warned Emmanuel Maffre-Bauge, president of the French Table Wine Association. "There are grapes of wrath in the Midi." Not only there. In the Mediterranean port of Sete, 30,000 irate French farmers rioted, protesting imports of Italian wine. In the Sicilian town of Marsala, schools were closed, anti-French demonstrations broke out in public squares, and local unions called for a general strike of the area's 20,000 workers. From Marseille to Perpignan near the Spanish border, French growers, meanwhile, set up roadblocks of burning tires to halt...
According to a bill of particulars filed by four inspectors, the scandal began when Broker Bert bought up huge quantities of cheap red wine from the Midi in 1973, when prices for Bordeaux reds had soared in a speculative binge. He also bought quantities of Bordeaux whites, whose prices were not rising. One odd loophole in the government's appellation controlée regulations was that official papers for wines were marked by region of origin but not by color. Bert was accused of switching the papers for the two batches of wines by stamping blanc on the Midi...
Later in the trial, a government fraud inspector testified that the house of Cruse had also stretched real Bordeaux by mixing it with low-class Midi red. A truck driver who frequently drove from Bert's warehouse to the Cruse cellars admitted that he had switched papers to disguise the origin of the cheap red Midi wine. Still another witness was a lawyer for le fisc (the French income tax office), who asked that the court fine the defendants $18 million for cheating the government...
Saturday evening began with Debussy's Prelude a l'apres-midi d'un faune, a liquid-sounding piece that flows in one continuous sweep. Wolff's interpretation evoked a number of mesmerizing images. However, the performance did not swell and gradually overflow in its fullness from one section to the next, but rather began de novo each time new instruments were signalled to play...
...Bach Society Orchestra, Hugh Wolff, Conductor, plays Debussy: L'apres-midi D'un Faune; Mozart: "Paris" Symphony, K. 297; and Beethoven: Piano Concerto No. 4, in G, Richard Kogan, Piano. Tickets: $1.00 at Holyoke Center and the Door. Saturday...