Word: vaughan
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...dispute was touched off by Australian-born Conductor Denis Vaughan. While studying Italian opera in Italy, Vaughan, 34, was struck by the variations between different printed editions of Puccini's operas. He visited Ricordi, turned his attention to Verdi and began comparing printed scores with manuscripts. Eventually, Ricordi officials confiscated Vaughan's notes and banned him from the archives, but not before he had made some surprising discoveries: there are 27,000 errors in printed versions of Falstaff, 8,000 in the Requiem, 18,000 in Tosca. Examples, from Falstaff...
...thousands who doused their lawns with the new chemicals is: Will they work? Five companies this year are marketing such products, most of them priced between $9 and $10 for a package covering about 2,500 sq. ft.: Scott's Halts, Dow's Crab Grass Killer, Vaughan's Pre-Kill, Pax's Crabgrass and Soil Pest Control, Swift's Rid; others, presumably with names like Stomp, Unconditional Surrender...
...value of such a music-drama is therefore dependent to a very large extent on the text used. And while Purcell or Mozart could always easily transcend or merely ignore their libretti, Vaughan Williams' Riders can be, ultimately, little better than the J.M. Synge play from which it was adapted. And that play, unfortunately, is not a very good...
Synge's work is a tragedy in undertones; and Vaughan Williams has effectively captured the stark and broken tones of the mutterings of Synge's Irish peasants. But the peasants themselves are not intrinsically interesting. Maurya, the matriarchal mother, has lost a husband and five sons to the sea before the play begins; during it she loses the sixth--he rides the family mare into the sea--and is left, stoically resigned to life, with two unmarried daughters. ("They are all gone now, and there isn't anything more the sea can do to me. We must be satisfied...
...unworthy opera, perhaps. But the performance is very good, and as such Riders becomes indeed a worthy companion piece to Man of Destiny. Go to the Shaw, of course; but stay for the Vaughan Williams. It's more than worth the effort...