Word: soundness
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...until very recently, simple technical problems stood in the way of decent opera films. Movie theater sound systems couldn't deliver the dynamic range of operatic performances without unbearable distortion; directors didn't know how to dub singing voices convincingly; the acting of singers showed embarassing flaws under the close scrutiny of the movie camera. Joseph Losey's Don Giovanni is remarkable not because it records a worthy performance--it's rifled with musical problems of evert sort--but because it solves the worst of the artistic problems that have kept opera off the screen. With any luck future directors...
Despite the musical ambition implicit in the international cast and the Paris Opera name (Bergman used an all-Swedish cast for his Magic Flute), this Don Giovanni is musically undistinguished. Lorin Maazel's conducting sounds muddy and sluggish throughout--which could easily be the fault of the Exeter Street's Rocky Horror-blasted sound system. None of the singers does very much of the ornamentation most music scholars today believe was a critical part of performances in the composer's time. Most of all, there's a surprisingly lackadaisical air about Mozart's music as Losey presents it--as though...
Fast, aggressive and confident. The preseason adjectives for the women's basketball team sound encouraging, but the squad will need more than potential to beat UMass in tonight's opener...
...territory. Geneva, for instance, has the facilities for such a procedure and there the Shah would be able to get the kind of medical help his doctors would insist on. The possibility of putting on trial even a head of state would also, in the long run, be a sound legal policy which could make despotism less attractive and be a means of preventing extreme situations of this sort...
...character. Henry James is missing. Still, there are some things the film captures in their ripe fulness. Where the frontality of the characters makes us want a wise mediator, the simple scenes of a New England autumn in rain and in shine, the bubbliness of rambunctious young love, the sound of crickets at night and of a cello playing "Tis the Gift to be Simple" seduce us into forgetting for a moment the key-fumbling criticisms and to trust without sorrow that everything is just the way it looks...