Word: verona
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...Verona...
...brilliant pranks like Peter Brook's Midsummer Night's Dream and strident vulgarities like Tom O'Horgan's Jesus Christ Superstar. The latest merry-an-drew is Producer Joseph Papp, who has turned loose a dramatic demolition team on Shakespeare's Two Gentlemen of Verona...
...took over the company ten years ago, he has been building a formidable repertory of splendid, full-length dramatic works. Romeo and Juliet was his first success, done to the traditional Prokofiev score. Typically, Cranko stripped the story of many a nonessential, involved the whole town of Verona in the clash of families, including a market-square fight with tossed oranges. He skipped the implausible intricacies of Romeo's exile and Friar Laurence's muddleheaded planning and then, to simplify the drama of the final tomb scene, dropped the ritual reconciliation of Capulets and Montagues over the lovers...
...setting of his story is Parma; had it been Verona the parody of Shakespeare's account of ill-starred lovers in Romeo and Juliet would have been too painfully obvious. Ford's Romeo is called Giovanni and he is played by an actor named Stan Nevin who has half of Leonard Whiting's credentials-a good physique-while lacking a strong or even passable voice for Ford's verse. Giovanni loves his sister Annabella, whose combination of wraithlike charm and physicality Lucinda Winslow succeeds very well in conveying. (Lucy Winslow, Loebgoers will remember, was superb in Dirty Hands. ) The worm...
...hapless Verona policeman once ticketed a misparked car belonging to hot-tempered Diva Maria Callas. His action touched off a string of unearthly trills and cadenzas. The soprano was fined for only a traffic violation, but Opera Manager Alberto Tantini was able to fix things with Police Chief Aldo Ballarini. A third gentleman of Verona, the magistrate, saw it all quite differently. He initiated a new charge against Callas of insulting a public official and even escalated the affair by accusing Tantini and Ballarini of bearing false witness and failing to report a misdemeanor. All that happened back...