Word: tedious
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Cosi fan tutte's plot is an absurd and tedious business about how two Italians prove their sweethearts faithless by disguising themselves as Albanians, and winning the girls handily. The New Opera acted as if its efforts with this situation were funny, and as if 18th-Century gags in Italian were comprehensible to Broadway. But the singers, only one of whom was over 40, voiced their airs and ensembles with Mozartean freshness and purity. Only one had big-time stage experience-Ina Souez, who was born Ina Rains in Denver, and had sung in Cosi jan tutte in Glyndebourne...
This obsession, more preacher's than poet's, drives Preacher-Poet Agee into some of the most exciting U.S. prose since Melville; into mind-wrenching gusts of irony, fury and scorn; into tedious stretches of self-indulgent introspection and childish philosophy. These are caused by Agee's determination to be ruthlessly faithful to his own thoughts and feelings, even when they fail to make sense. His chief failure is one Photographer Evans scrupulously avoids: he clumsily intrudes between his subject and his audience, even when the subject is himself...
Despite the tedious script (which fails to provide Comic Red Skelton with any comedy at all) and a pox of poor direction (e.g., composing a hit tune in about two minutes flat), the picture has some lively moments: the dead-pan vocalizing of frightened Virginia O'Brien, the up-from-the-jungle hoofing of the Berry Brothers, and the nostalgia of the old sweet Gershwin songs...
...this confidence there were several reasons. One of them was that nearly a half million of the Army's fighting men are on field maneuvers, have plenty of interesting work to take their minds off the tedious side of military life. Another reason: the President's "rattlesnake" speech had given many a soldier a better idea than he had had before of the vital importance of his training...
Even the Great Exposition and the Crystal Palace, his father's pet hobby, left Bertie unmoved. "And then, one day, wandering through the tedious immensity of the East India Company's exhibit, he discovered ... a lively group representing the murderous Thugs at their work. He was enchanted." It was almost as shocking as the only other incident that marred the Exposition-the assault on some ladies by a party of Welsh teetotalers...