Word: pit
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...concert hall of Minsk's Red Army House was packed, as for the premiere of a Shostakovich symphony. From the balcony seven baby spotlights painted the orchestra pit an eerie yellow. There was a nervous clearing of throats. But no baton was raised. Tonight the program was a trial of German war criminals, and the conductor was the public prosecutor...
...dancer from an eight-year-old student "rat" to the première danseuse in Giselle. Late in the evening, for the first time in its history, the Opera lifted all its backdrops, baring the entire 185-ft.-deep stage. Even members of the orchestra stood up in the pit to watch. Then stagehands in new blue uniforms (they refused to appear before the Americans in faded ones) changed sets, set up scenery for Les Deux Pigeons in two minutes, 30 seconds. In the lobby at intermission G.I.s talked knowingly of entrechats, and of how Nijinsky must have looked...
...first, the Winnipeg Ballet started ambitiously with a 48-piece orchestra in the pit, put a heavy handicap of debt on the troupe. But in 1941 the success of Walt Disney's Fantasia led to a money-saving experiment in canned music. Now the ballet is danced to recordings, boomed at the spectators from loudspeakers. Despite the tour, the company...
...bottomless pit Let us militarism bury...
During the war, U.S. commodity exchanges had little to do. Unlike World War I, when skyrocketing wheat and corn prices made millionaires in the pit from morn till midafternoon, the U.S. government controlled the big buying. It set ceilings on all important commodities except rye, made the once hectic exchanges as quiet as country stores. But traders squirmed under this cosy arrangement...