Word: plays
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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Hauptmann's play begins in the forest with Rautendelein and three of her faery ilk; Nickelmann, the old man of the well, all moss and weeds and dripping; a witch whose herbs were powerless against humans, and a mischievous faun whose first prank was to push down into a lake the bell which had just been cast by a certain villager named Heinrich. This Heinrich, like his wife Magda, the schoolmaster, the barber, and the pastor, was a simple peasant. All his life he had worked on the bell to hang in the church tower-so long, so hard...
Last week La Campana Sommersa, the music by Ottorino Respighi to a libretto by Claudio Guastalla taken from Hauptmann's play, had its U. S. premiere at the Metropolitan Opera House, Manhattan. Rautendelein was still its inspiration, Heinrich still the heckled human. And for it all Respighi had made lovely, lyric music. But operatic singers, operatic trappings rarely enhance a poetic mood. Soprano Elisabeth Rethberg as Rautendelein managed her bulk skillfully, sang difficult music easily, spent clear high notes' lavishly. But her appearance, her acting left little illusion. Nor could Giovanni Martinelli forget he was a tenor...
...Play Without a Name. Upon that familiar pattern, the triangle, Austin ("Seventh-Heaven") Strong has superimposed a less readily recognizable, fourth-dimensional figure. It consists of a strong-interlusive plotting of the working of the human brain...
...trephines the husband's skull, lays open the human brain. Centers of nerve control are represented by figures at sets of levers much like those in a railroad switching tower. One normal voice speaks the words that the husband has spoken aloud during the first scene of the play. Another voice, terrifyingly mechanical, intones the husband's unspoken thoughts. The "nerve centers'' also speak their reactions, crying "pain! pain!" when MacKenna stubs...
...brain scene ends and the play continues conventionally up to the inevitable amorous scene between the husband and his old flame. Once again there is a flashback to the cerebral. With no subtlety at all the action of the brain during a complete seduction is described...