Word: operas
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...Great Wall, but getting on. Age had thickened her features, and years of playing either stern villains or stalwart heroines had stripped animation from her face. Now it was an impassive mask, as if she were preparing for a Peking Opera version of a Samuel Beckett play...
...novel is narrated by Bertie Krohn, a frustrated actor languishing in the shadow of his famous father Perry, who created Starwatch: The Navigators, "TV's longest-running syndicated space opera," i.e., Star Trek by any other name. Bertie's a bright, affable fellow, but every little success he has feels cheapened in comparison with his dad's overpowering accomplishments...
...high culture; and the last 30 years, when those same custodians of taste were allowed, commanded, to express no interest. Readers of a certain age can recall when every New York Times music critic was writing about classical music, except for the guy on the jazz beat, and when opera divas graced the cover of TIME. (No rock performers were cover boys until the Beatles in 1967.) Now neither TIME nor Newsweek has a classical music critic, because neither magazine believes it has a need for one. They're just flying with the Zeitgeist...
...over the decades, did Carson. In his very first Tonight monologue, on Oct. 1, 1962, he told the audience, "I'm curious," and he allowed his social and cultural curiosity fairly free rein. The young host would acknowledge that he attended the opera (his favorite: Giordano's Andrea Chenier). He booked serious authors to fill the last 15 mins. of his then-90-min. broadcast. His musical guests eschewed rock 'n roll; they included crooners, opera tenors and sopranos, lots of jazz men, both in the spotlight (Joe Williams must have sung Every Day I Have the Blues 40 times...
...Cool liked so much that they wrote their own 30-sec. additions. Soon they had the beginnings of the 9-min., five-part Jesus of Suburbia, which introduced both Jesus, a character struggling against the country's "red-neck agenda," and the possibility of a full punk-rock opera. "At first, we wondered if we should even call it something like that," says Armstrong, "but, hell, why not make it as grand as possible...