Word: troilus
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...Troilus and Cressida (by William Shakespeare) has only once-and then as a Players Club frolic-been done on Broadway within living memory. Its neglect is easily explained: Troilus is a difficult as well as an imperfect play. Yet its neglect is scarcely warranted, for there is much that is special, fascinating, even fine about it, and much in its mood for a modern audience to respond to. With bitter and debunking cynicism, Shakespeare slashed in Troilus at the great fabric of the Trojan War, to rend its romance and heroism to tatters, to reduce its Homeric clang to verbosity...
...harlotry of love and the homosexuality of friendship, shows war grotesquely fumbled and honor traduced. In the violence of its mood and the slackness of its method, in its surface disillusionment and its underlying disgust, in its fierce, fanged bite-yet its biting off more than it can chew-Troilus and Cressida resembles a little those harsh Huxleyan "sophisticated novels...
...Richard II, Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, Troilus and Cressida...
...last arose after his baton flew out of his hand and struck a player. Able Conductor Halasz was sacked in 1951 and replaced by Austrian-born Joseph Rosenstock who staged a world premiere (Copland's The Tender Land) that failed, a New York premiere (Walton's Troilus and Cressida) that succeeded, two gloomy but interesting U.S. stage premieres (Von Einem's The Trial and Bartok's Blue beard's Castle). He did only passably well by standard repertory, and the board of directors could rarely agree on just what kind of opera it wanted...
...Troilus' firm foundation is British Poet Christopher Hassall's libretto, which keeps things happening from curtain-up. The plot presents the human side of the besieged Trojans and particularly the widow Cressida (sung by Phyllis Curtin), who succumbs to Troilus (Jon Grain), partly through the conniving of Pandarus (Norman Kelley), only to be captured by the Greeks. By the time she puts herself to the sword, she is at least as credible as Tosca, as touching as Mimi...