Word: rappacini
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With a madwoman--who may not really be crazy, though everyone tells her she is--a conniving old woman who screams "Oedipus" with every word to the squabbling heirs, Suddenly sounds like a soap opera set in Rappacini's garden. There's even an implied castration...
Dajer is the most relaxed moving on stage. More careful direction could have helped the others. Elena Gragnalia slurs her authentic Italian accent maternally, yet as the landlady Isabel, she is reduced to desultory shuffling. Ponderous pauses mar Alan Fink's performance as Dr. Rappacini. He seems to have been set out to graze in his garden, talking to his vegetative creations with no sharp sinisterness. Even if he cares for his daughter, he's supposed to be a man who is imperious if not self-deifying. Fink improves at the end to bellow like the God of Genesis...
...Harvard) in less than six years, Davison settled down at the College as an instructor with vague notions of composing orchestral music. Encouraged by Dr. Karl Muck, conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Davison composed his "Tragic Overture," an orchestral piece founded on Hawthorne's gruesome tale of Rappacini and the sacrifice of his daughter. Performed by the BSO, the overtime brought favorable reviews which praised Davison's "uncrring taste and exceeding skill in the handling of thematic material and the arrangement of orchestral color...
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