Word: premis
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American Composer Leon Kirchner, 58, began the work, based on Saul Bellow's novel Henderson the Rain King, 18 years ago and finished it just before its première last week at the New York City Opera. The rather surprising title -the name of Henderson's second wife -came about because United Artists owns the rights to Bellow's title, and Kirchner feared a lawsuit. That is one problem avoided, but only...
...produced, however, is a 91-minute, one-act work in which Henderson simply fails to come alive as an operatic hero. Possibly he is too rambling, too widely split a character to be captured in the broad terms that opera thrives on. Certainly Kirchner, who conducted the première, has come up with nothing musical to match the rich flow of language in Bellow's novel. Instead, he has given Henderson a kind of Sprechgesang (the style of half song, half speech developed by Arnold Schoenberg) in which to rant and rave...
...shiny limousines. It was the opening of Pumping Iron (TIME, Jan. 24), and the first-night crowd for this filmed tribute to the glories of body building included Singer Paul Simon, Painter Jamie Wyeth, Princess Yasmin Khan and a half-dozen muscle-bound kids from Yonkers. After the première, Pumping Iron Star Arnold Schwarzenegger introduced fellow Strongman Franco Columbu, who proceeded to bend steel bars with his bare hands and burst a hot-water bottle with his bare breath. More hulks followed onstage to flex and pose, along with Actress Carroll Baker, who stroked their chests, rubbed their...
...star flack is rumpled, wary-eyed Bobby Zarem, 40, who in the past two years has become Manhattan's unquestioned master of the movie premiére, an opening-night party giver whose bashes are often better than the pictures they publicize. When the rock movie Tommy opened in New York, Zarem rented the 57th Street subway station and invited 700 funky-chic guests for a late-night dinner dance in the tubes. To hype The Ritz, a comedy set in a gay bathhouse, he took over the Four Seasons Restaurant and had the band perform from the pool...
...Office Bonanza. Prior to the 1892 première at the Maryinsky Theater in old St. Petersburg, Russia, Composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky thought that Nutcracker was much inferior to his The Sleeping Beauty. "Yes, the old fellow is getting worn out," he concluded. Tchaikovsky was one of music's great pessimists. The score is an indestructible delight. Over the years Nutcracker has probably played to more children, parents and lovers of both dance and make-believe than any other ballet in history...