Word: moray
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Mary, Queen of Scots chronicles the seven-year period from Mary's return to Scotland in 1561, the widow of the King of France, to her flight to England in 1568, forced by her half brother James Stewart, Earl of Moray. Musgrave, the composer and the wife of Artistic Director Mark, also wrote the libretto. Her story crackles with emotional tension: between Mary, young, lovely and impulsive; James, who craves power; the hotheaded soldier, the Earl of Both well; and the weak courtier, Lord Darnley, her cousin who becomes her husband...
...shocks at predictable intervals. Early on, the effect can be ludicrous: Will David get stuck in an elevator? Will his wife accidentally drink a glass of hydrochloric acid? What is the meaning of her mysterious nosebleed? Later the blood flows everywhere and the sea is awash with gore: "The moray struck, needle teeth fastening on the man's neck, throat convulsing as it pulled back toward the hole. Blood billowed out of the sides of the moray's mouth." That moray eel, which figures in the book's penultimate scene, is unlikely to start a craze...
...RESTRICTED by social pressure, the "savage journey" accelerates downward, focussing Duke's attentions on a degraded physical level. Eating, drinking, and fouling like the rest, he somehow manages to retain a shred of self-respect. It alienates him from them, and causes repulsive hallucinations of lizards, moray eels, and huge reptiles standing in blood-soaked carpets sipping cocktails. The drive for success/money/power has created a world where an "eat the wounded" shark ethic prevails, but Thompson believes its apocalypse is imminent. He watches people burn themselves out in struggles for self-preservation, escaping "meat-hook reality" through dope, booze...
...aquarium's most impressive feature is the giant, four-story-high cylindrical tank that sits in the center of the building. Billed as the world's largest glass-walled fish tank, it holds 200,000 gallons of sea water filled with small sharks, sea turtles, moray eels and dozens of other creatures that dodge in and out of a huge simulated reef. The visitor can peer into the tank either through a vatlike opening at the top or through the glass walls as he walks down the curving ramps that surround it. The layout is so unorthodox that...