Word: pip
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...what of Dickens? It is fine to be "after Dickens," but in this case the distance is embarrassing. Great Expectations would seem to offer rich and practical material for an opera. Pip's progress through the world is eventful, and he does not meet a single dull soul on his road to self-knowledge. Yet the novel is not so diffuse that it could not be contained in a manageable number of scenes...
...focus has been shifted from young Pip to the vindictive harridan who teaches him his first lesson in cruelty and deceit. In Miss Havisham's Fire we see her on her calamitous wedding day, deserted by her bridegroom. (The young Miss Havisham is sung by Gianna Rolandi, who has a generous mad scene of her own.) There is a brushstroke plot involving an inquest into Miss Havisham's death, but the opera is really a star vehicle for a coloratura. Argento had Beverly Sills in mind when he began work two years ago. She agreed...
...surrounded by Pip, the haughty Estella, the lawyer Jaggers, the convict Magwitch, Miss Havisham could be the kind of flamboyant character, drawn with simple, sharp lines, on which operas thrive. Mozart used a similar virago, the Queen of the Night, in The Magic Flute. But Pip, Estella and Jaggers (Magwitch is left out entirely) appear and disappear, little more than shadows crossing Miss Havisham's feverish brain...
Littlechap is a pip-squeak who dreams of being a Pooh-Bah. Starting as "a coffee-colored coffee vendor," he manages to marry the boss's daughter (Marian Mercer), and with the quickest of strides reaches the top as a national and international business tycoon. Along the way he accumulates a bevy of English, Russian and German mistresses, all played with great comic zest by the selfsame Mercer. There is less sin than smirk in these accent-prone escapades...
...Angeles, the newest place is Dillon's, which has four floors (one loud); on each, patrons can monitor the action elsewhere on closed-circuit TV. The most elegant disco is still 4½-year-old Pip's, whose members are hand-picked by the board of directors (membership costs $1,000, plus $30 monthly dues). We live in a status world, and Pip's is status," says Stan Herman, a Beverly Hills realtor who founded the place with Playboy Publisher Hugh Hefner. Couples who join sign contracts providing for a second membership at the price...