Word: splendids
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...then, once upon a time again, the same little girl grew up and fell in love and married a prince. She seemed so happy for such a splendid moment that the whole world paused to marvel at and rejoice with her, falling in love with Diana in love. But she quickly learned that the dynasty she had joined was dysfunctional and synthetic, that although she had borne her husband an heir, she could never truly become his Queen. And when she died, suddenly, a day after the 36th anniversary of her christening, the world, still in love, stopped...
Eleven days before the election, the President is accused of sexual dalliance with a visitor to the Oval Office--an underage visitor, at that. What's needed, the spin doctor (a coolly cynical Robert De Niro) decrees, is a splendid little war to divert the populace. None being handy, one will have to be invented out of rumor and falsified electronic imagery...
...loveliest music in Messiah, and Bauwens proves himself wholly equal to it. His Part II recitatives, "All they that see Him laugh Him to scorn" and "Thy rebuke hath broken His heart," separated by the magnificent "He trusted in God that He would deliver Him" chorus, comprise a truly splendid few minutes. In contrast to Bauwens' clear, smooth timbre is the bass, Eric Owens, whose very deep, very dark-sounding voice seems almost to emerge from some inhuman source. This rumbling, rapid-vibratoed effect seems especially apt in the prophetic aria, "Darkness shall cover the earth." The sinister threats...
McMurtry's new novel is both sequel and prequel, chronologically the second installment, though written last, of a four-part saga whose splendid third book (written first) is that most beguiling of all horse operas, 1985's Lonesome Dove. A raunchy, sentimental narration about a couple of old Texas Rangers on a cattle drive, this Pulitzer prizewinner was McMurtry at the absolute top of his form. The author, as much in love with Lonesome Dove as his readers were, contrived a sequel, Streets of Laredo (1993). It was pale and sad because Gus McCrae, one of his heroes, was dead...
This is not to say that her performance is never affecting. In the second act, after family conflicts boil over into a splendid conflagration, her Moya is particularly heart-wrenching as she minimizes her husband's peccadilloes and as she finally breaks down under her weight of grief. But even when she jerks tears from the audience, her performance seems incongruous...