Word: pearling
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Georges Bizet was just 24 when he wrote his first full-scale opera. He soon wished that he hadn't. The Pearl Fishers, wrote one caustic Parisian critic, had "neither fishermen in the libretto nor pearls in the music." Bizet, who died at only 36, went on to greater glory with Carmen, but Pearl Fishers has never had more than indifferent success outside France and Italy. Last week, at the opening of the Empire State Music Festival, it got a rare, full-dress U.S. performance. The performance suggested that Bizet's fishermen have been receiving less than their...
...Pearl Fishers' most conspicuous weakness is the one that plagued Bizet through much of his career-a limp libretto. Laid in Ceylon, it has to do with a colony of Indian pearl fishermen, two of whom are in love with a mysterious local priestess. After three talky acts, one of the suitors is stabbed by four priests, and the surviving principals make off to where "happiness awaits us yonder." Most productions follow the original Paris staging, in which the fishing village became as elaborate as a movie set, and the fishermen went about like oriental chieftains in turbans...
Died. Rear Admiral Ellis Mark Zacharias, 71, brash, bristly intelligence and psychological warfare expert, a self-styled World War II Cassandra who claimed to have predicted Pearl Harbor nine months in advance, and to have ferreted out a Japanese surrender feeler 13 days before Hiroshima, yet never convinced the Navy's topside of either story; of a heart attack; in West Springfield...
...habits. Down in Texas you start driving a car earlier, running around with girls earlier.'' John went on to Yale, Clint Jr. to M.I.T. John admits that, except for bistros and girls, his freshman year at New Haven was "pretty much of a loss." The day after Pearl Harbor, he joined the Army Air Forces-partly, he says wryly, "to escape the dean's descending ax." A year later, Clint joined the Marines...
Mistresses & Madonnas. Twice daily after she arrived in Paris, Alexandre went to Jackie's apartments on the Quai d'Orsay, brushing and shaping her hair in a huge silvery, mother-of-pearl bathroom. For a formal reception at the Elysee Palace, Alexandre, declaring himself inspired by pictures of Gothic Madonnas, thickened Jackie's bangs and "dressed her cheeks" with two sweeping waves. Anticipating complaints that the style hid too much of Jackie's face, Alexandre said: "A beautiful face needs foliage around it." For a ball next night at Versailles, Alexandre moved on from the Madonnas...