Word: ustinov
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Though best known as a film actor (Topkapi, Spartacus), playwright (Romanoff and Juliet) and radio and TV wit ("NATO? Six nations in search of an enemy!"), Peter Ustinov is also an old hand at opera. Over the past decade he has staged one-acters by Puccini, Ravel and Schonberg at Covent Garden, and in 1968 he directed a successful new version of Mozart's The Magic Flute at the Hamburg State Opera. Until that possible day when he sings and acts all the parts in Wagner's Ring cycle, Ustinov's most ambitious operatic venture will...
...Ustinov's Don Giovanni turned out to be in direct proportion to the cheese-wedge of a stage in Edinburgh's 1906 King's Theater. ("Kings came in smaller versions in those days," he quipped.) Stripping away the interpretive layers of two centuries, Ustinov kept his unit set spare, his cast mobile, and his dramatic touches brief but to the point. When Swiss Bass Peter Lagger came to life spookily as the Commendatore in the second-act cemetery scene after using a yoga technique to remain motionless, there were shivers in the audience...
...When we frighten, we frighten by the simplest means," said Ustinov...
...those who care less about which party is up or down than how entertainingly the game is played, the feat of Clay promises much more: a revival of wit at Westminster. As one of his admirers says, it should be "the next best thing to having Peter Ustinov" in Parliament...
When the camera is rolling, Mason's reactions are highly professional. He has an instinctive sense of where to stand and how to move, and he often translates scripts into his own words to make them sound more childlike. "I suspect that Mason will become another Peter Ustinov or Orson Welles," says Andy Dole, producer of the Underwood Chicken Spread commercial. "He has a directorial sense already...