Word: opera
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...fond of Italian opera, particularly of Verdi, whom he considers one of the greatest figures in music. For him Mozart and Mendelssohn "are the two greatest geniuses of the orchestra," and Beethoven, "the master above all others." However, in a recent interview he remarked with a twinkle: "All good composers lived in Egypt 5,000 years...
...Among startling unlocked for discoveries were X-rays, natural radioactivity, artificial radioactivity. X-rays caused such a furor among laymen after their discovery by Roentgen that the New Jersey Legislature introduced a law forbidding their use in opera glasses, for fear that prurient individuals would be able to see through the garments of ladies...
...living cats were always grey angoras, always named Line. His women were less uniform. To him the four most important were Mme Vasnier, wife of an aging friend, who brought him from adolescence to manhood; green-eyed Gabrielle Dupont, who lived with him while he worked on his opera, Pelleas et Melisande; Rosalie Texier (Wife No. 1), who had an unpleasant voice which finally got on his nerves; Emma Bardac (Wife No. 2), a singer with a pleasant voice who lived with him until his death...
...equally Bohemian. A short-legged, thick-set man, seldom in funds, he was forever wandering indolently into Left Bank and Montmartre cafes. There he would sit in a cape and large felt hat, ordering rarebits and English ale, rolling his own cigarets. He preferred the circus to the opera, and disliked listening to music, though he accepted several jobs writing music criticism for Paris publications. He finally succumbed to cancer of the rectum one spring when Big Bertha was dropping shells into Paris...
...aims include pensions for indigent debutantes and for "well-bred worthies who can prove they have never soiled their hands with labor." Cried an aristocracy-rouser: "What will happen to our American culture if our upper crust is robbed of the substance with which to endow art galleries, the opera and racing stables...