Word: rakings
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...this has happened on the screen. Now Russell has turned to the stage for the first time-directing, of all unlikely things, Igor Stravinsky's opera The Rake's Progress at the 45th Maggio Musicale festival in Florence. Stravinsky, whose centenary is being celebrated this year, conducted the premiere of The Rake in Venice in 1951, and the work has acquired the status of a classic among the composer's admirers. But Russell, ever the iconoclast, has turned it upside down. The jejune quality of Stravinsky's cool, mock-Mozartian music is engulfed in a rush...
...problem with The Rake has always been the music. Stravinsky's neoclassical score is much admired by musicians for its technical accomplishment as a modernistic evocation of the classical period. But The Rake rarely succeeds at being anything more than a pastiche, and as a result, it fails to engage the emotions as a full-blooded opera should...
...Rake-inspired by the famous series of Hogarth engravings-tells the story of Tom Rakewell (Tenor Gösta Winbergh), a naive but lustful country boy who falls under the spell of the Devil, Nick Shadow (Baritone Istvan Gati). Abandoning his sweetheart Anne Trulove (Soprano Cecilia Gasdia) for the fleshpots of London, Tom sinks ever deeper into degradation until he finally goes mad and is committed to Bedlam. In Russell's production, Tom sports a gold lame suit and a Sony Walkman. Baba the Turk, the bearded lady whom Tom marries, is a blind pop celebrity in a bright...
What make this man so special, though, is neither his longevity nor his achievements but the way he approaches his profession. In a sport known for its individualism, McCurdy has developed a program that revolves around team unity and produces teams which can win dual meets, not superstars who rake in individual titles. And, as a result, during his 30-year tenure, the Harvard track mentor has consistently turned out teams whose successes surpass all expectations. In 1950, McCurdy's first year as the Crimson's assistant coach, a powerful squad from Yale ran away from everyone at the Heptagonals...
...ominous that when life and death eyeballed each other at the denouement, it mattered which one blinked first. No such laws operate in Diva. In an early scene, we see a harried woman trudging barefoot through a Metro station; she recognizes two men-a skinheaded punk and a swarthy rake-and smiles enigmatically as they pursue her out of our sight; she runs into the street and collapses, a knife in her back. So far, fine: the sequence has pace, atmosphere, humor, suspense. But the questioning child in every moviegoer wants to know more. Why the bare feet...