Word: pagliacci
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After a successful series of performances in Germany, Boulevard Solitude was chosen as a showpiece for Rome's two-week International Conference on Contemporary Music. Familiar as they were with operatic plots featuring faithless love (Pagliacci), harlotry (Traviata), rape (Don Giovanni), incest (Die Walküre), bastardy (Norma), Gomorrahism (The Rake's Progress) and murder (Tosca, etc.), Rome's select first-night audience balked at Boulevard Solitude...
Italy gave the world Pagliacci, the story of a man who laughs even in the face of tragedy. But the sharp, austere features of De Gasperi (cartoonists like to depict him as a wise, great-beaked black crow with lively eyes behind huge spectacles) remain glum even in moments of pleasure, and only his intense eyes glow. He has no notable administrative talent, and economists have been heard to mutter that he sometimes seems to be "an economic illiterate." He wears his imperfections humbly, like a suit of well-worn clothing, as if to suggest that attempting to discard them...
Metropolitan Opera (Sat. 2 p.m., ABC). Cavalleria Rusticana, Pagliacci...
...Rake's Progress, also in English (TIME, Sept. 24, 1951). These will bring to twelve the number of new productions Bing has staged in his first three seasons at the Met. Almost all of them have been cheered by the critics (exceptions: 1951's Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci). But even after forgiveness of federal taxes on Met admissions last year, the company ended the season with nearly a half-million-dollar deficit...
Lahr's best scenes, though, are worth the price of a balcony seat. His Space Brigade parodies TV sciencefiction programs to perfection as he wisecracks with the Queen of Venus and her Venusmen. Again in The Clown, Lahr soliloquizes as a cross-eyed Pagliacci, clowns through a superdeadpan imitation of Rudolph Valentino in Sapanish costume, and mimics a stately Spanish dance while peering down the front of a dancing partner twice his height. It is Lahr's grimaces, pantomine, and periodic exclamations ("Gonggg") that put these scenes across. The frequent appearance of six G-strung showgirls adds the final touch...