Word: rakingly
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Stravinsky: The Rake's Progress (Hilde Gueden, Blanche Thebom, Eugene Conley, Mack Harrell; Metropolitan Opera Chorus and Orchestra conducted by the composer; Columbia, 3 LPs). When this three-act opera had its first U.S. performances last season (TIME. Feb. 23), audiences had difficulty with its baroque mannerisms and supercilious satire. Without distractions to the eye, this excellent recording allows the listener to sit back and select his pleasures: some melodious arias, some fine choruses, and some of the world's most inventive orchestration...
...conventional standards, Kemal Ataturk was hardly an admirable character. He was a bitter, sullen and ruthless man, a two-fisted drinker and a rake given to shameless debauch. Politically, though he proclaimed a Bill of Rights, he flouted it constantly; though he talked of loyalty, he hanged his closest friends. He was devoid of sentiment and incapable of love, unfaithful to everyone and every cause he adopted save one-Turkey. But before he died, his driven, grateful people thrust on him the last and greatest of his five names: Ataturk, Father of All the Turks...
Maggie McNamara as a fetching and demure ingenue is picked up by man-of-the-world William Holden, who lures her into his apartment. Socialite David Niven enters to aid in the seduction. And though no more dissolute and jaded a rake could be found east of Fifth Avenue, Miss McNamara remains secure in her faith that feminine right will conquer masculine might. By the end of the film, the rake is reclaimed and virtue triumphant...
...announces kissing to be fun and proceeds to enjoy it. And yet, whether her sophistication is educated naivete, or her childlike candor utter sophistication (one is never quite sure which), she is so fresh, pure and enchanting as to completely disarm Holden, Niven and her audience. Niven, the rake redeemed, tells her that every playboy has an innate respect for innocence. Miss McNamara is acutely conscious of the irony and humor of this transformation, and participates with gusto in the vindication of morality over vice...
When fall comes, the students will go right on with such chores. Though they will study the usual prep-school courses and get their share of skiing, riding and playing, they will also plant, sew, dig irrigation ditches, scrub floors, haul wood, tend horses, clear paths, pound nails, rake leaves, paint walls, and do any other manual labor the Holdens can think...