Word: rara
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...RaRa Rasputin, lover of the Russian Queen/ Russia's greatest love machine...
Once there were not enough hours in the imperial day for all he sought to accomplish as that political rara avis, a 20th century absolute monarch. Now there are too many. Time hangs heavy for Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the deposed Shah of Iran, in exile with Empress Farah and their children in a Moroccan palace on the outskirts of Rabat. As the days drag on and the reality of lost power dashes pretense and undermines hope, the Shah has grown irritable, subdued, even morose...
...this University had actually gotten off the ground. Student interest and pressure can help keep it in flight, and may, indeed, be essential to keeping it in flight. But partial and, I'm afraid, somewhat automatic newspaper responses to what's being done to nurture this (for contemporary Harvard) rara avis, are not too helpful. Peter Dale Allston Burr Senior Tutor
Cenerentola is less popular than Rossini's The Barber of Seville, probably because of its emphasis on bravura ensemble work over traditional solo arias. Further, the title role is written for an almost extinct species, the coloratura contralto. La Scala has such a rara avis in Lucia Valentini Terrani. She really has too hefty a look for an ideal Cinderella, but her voice was lusciously bronze and agile. The production is by France's Jean-Pierre Ponnelle; within a delightful children's cutout house, he manipulates his characters like a swinging Coppelius. How, for example, Soprano Margherita...
...manager, Ronald A. Wilford, brought me to the United States in 1955 for my first appearance on this continent, he advised me that in the majority of instances I would be introducing an art form that might be totally unfamiliar to most of my audience. The pantomimist was a "rara avis" here--but I soon discovered from talking with many people who visited me backstage that this was only because most of them had been unfamiliar with the term. What they had not realized was that here in America they had seen some of the greatest pantomimists of the century...