Word: swanning
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Spaniards, who have seen little but heeltapping Spanish national dancing since Franco, gave their main applause to George Balanchine's new version of the classic Swan Lake. Oldsters in the audience had a dim memory, at least, of the classic style from the time when Diaghilev's Ballets Russes visited the Spain of Alfonso XIII. But they were more puzzled than pleased by such contemporary psychological pieces as Antony Tudor's Lilac Garden. Balanchine himself noted "a vast difference from the fiery enthusiasm I see at bullfights here...
...this time a witch came to town as a bondwoman to the wool merchant's widow. She was a Norse girl, a beauty with "great, sea-grey eyes" and hair "unbelievably golden"; her name was Swan Ygern. Swan healed the Lord Cinqmort of a bloody flux, and so becharmed his wicked soul that he even left off his wenching to eat her beetle puddings under the Weird Oak Tree. She gave her mistress' daughter the dread effigy of St. Uncumber-to whom unwilling wives prayed that he uncumber them of their mates-and when the poor husband failed...
Crowds overflowed the opera house for all three of "Papa" Monteux's final concerts. His swan song was the same great work with which he has closed his 16 previous seasons: Beethoven's choral symphony (No. 9). At the end, the audience gave the four soloists a polite round. When the old (77) conductor started to trudge offstage, he was recalled for ten minutes of shrieking and hysterical cheers. Papa Monteux finally waved them into quiet, then found that all he could say was: "Thank you ... I will not say goodbye, but au revoir...
Died. Ferenc Molnar, 74, playwright (The Swan, Liliom, The Guardsman, The Play's The Thing, and 38 others), novelist and raconteur; in Manhattan. A practicing newsman in his native Budapest for 22 years (until 1918), chipper, monocled Molnar Was sometimes called the "Hungarian Moliere." A Jew, he fled the Nazis in 1940, became a U.S. citizen. Recently, Communist-dominated Hungary labeled him a "western imperialist," banned his books, although Molnar avoided social and political comment and strove only for sophisticated entertainment. The successful playwright, he once said, must do "some swindling . . . Sometimes it is just cheating your conscience...
...company's 16 ballets, and the one that best fits the company's youthful talents. Unlike the senior Sadler's Wells, whose virtuosity is in classic ballet, the juniors do better in comic and contemporary works. Compared with George Balanchine's brilliant new Swan Lake for the New York City Ballet, their version seemed callow indeed. Nutcracker was a disappointing series of divertissements...