Word: venetian
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...Eugene Pallette successfully blusters through the role of Joe Martin, grocery-store magnate and the girl's father, interested only in the grossest of profit and spectacle. He transports gloomy Glourie Castle to sunny Florida, outfitting it with radios in suits of armor and Venetian gondolas "to give that European look" to the moat--the ultimate in unintentional incongruity. Pallette makes the most of the only part which requires genuine interpretation...
...premiere last week and there, before a large audience of well-wishers (and an estimated 9,000,000 who listened on radio), fell flat on it's libretto. Continental capitals, more used to new operas than the U.S., had taken The Rake pretty much in stride since its Venetian premiere (TIME, Sept.24, 1951). But as the first modern work the Met had produced in five years, it seemed pretty effete. Written by Poet W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman as an 18th century moral fable, The Rake's book pointed its moral more in irony than in earnestness...
...Their Majesties Ferdinand and Isabella ran their royal fingers through the soft-furred pouch on the beast's belly and marveled at such a freak of nature. In that age of exaggerations, the little cat-sized creature grew into weird shapes in the minds of men. To the Venetian court reporter, Peter Martyr, it looked like a "monstrous beaste with a snowte lyke a foxe, a tayle lyke a marmasette, eares lyke a batte, handes lyke a man, and feete lyke...
...Time of the Cuckoo (by Arthur Laurents) concerns Americans in a Venetian pensione, and some of the more controversial points of international love. While a pair of elderly Babbitts dutifully take in the sights, a young American painter, despite his love for his wife, strays with his worldly landlady; and a lonely spinster, Leona Samish (Shirley Booth), becomes involved with an antique-shop owner (Dino DiLuca).All the more romantic about love for never having known the reality, Leona has a saddening experience. Not only does she find that the man is married; he cannot pay for the garnets...
Green is backed by a fine company, Robert Eccles plays the proud Pooh-Bah with corpulent pomposity, elegantly waving a fan the size of a Venetian blind. A suitably menacing Mikado, Joseph Macaulay, handles Gilbert's lyrics deftly as he gloats of his plan "to make the punishment fit the crime...