Word: royalities
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...venues actually look more like painters' dropcloths. But they do relieve the mood of the barbed wire (see DESIGN), and even the main villages at U.S.C. and UCLA are unforbidding. Strangely, no rifles and very few sidearms are in view. The only visible security forces, Ueberroth's Royal Blue Berets, are khaki-clad women and men as affable as park rangers. (Rest assured, there are hidden police gunmen.) Less than the customary Olympic access is being accorded the media. Once processed into the U.S.C. village, reporters have been quarantined just past the gate, a consideration probably involving privacy...
...lake-encircled capital of the Aztecs one November morning in 1519, they were stunned by its grandeur. A shining metropolis of some 300,000 people, far larger than any city in Europe, Tenochtitlan displayed immense stone temples to the gods of rain and war and an even more immense royal palace, where Aztec nobles stood guard in jaguar-head helmets and brightly feathered robes...
...performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1977, Peter Nichols' musical play was a daft and bitter satire on Britain's declining imperial fortunes. A troupe of conscripted music-hall artists bumble and camp their way through post-World War II Singapore, drawing flak from their stiff-upper-twit major and sniper fire from local guerrillas. Alternating farcical skits with wicked song parodies, Privates was a near perfect stage piece, and thus an unsuitable candidate for filming. Some of the songs are gone; the plot is attenuated and detoxified; and Director Michael Blakemore (who also staged the R.S.C...
Many things can go wrong with a new opera production, and most of them did with the Royal's Turandot. The casting, for instance. In the title role, veteran Soprano Gwyneth Jones still has a preternaturally loud voice, but her control over it has long since departed, and her wobbly singing is now merely painfully impressive. Tenor Placido Domingo is one of the finest of operatic actors, but even his persuasive characterization of Calaf, the unknown prince who overcomes the ice princess's sexual misanthropy, could not disguise the fact that the part lies uncomfortably high...
...Trinculo and Stephano, for example, and a hint of Peking opera mannerism for Ariel - but they effectively underscore the contrasts between the spirit and human worlds, making the confrontation even more pointed. This is a Tempest of clarity, strength and purpose - exactly what was lacking in the Royal Opera's Turandot. The cross-cultural irony is inescapable: the English company presenting the Italian opera had failed, but the Italians staging an English classic had made a glorious success...