Word: verona
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...needs make do with. The stage, when Romeo and Juliet was first presented, was little more than a gangway shunted shoulder-high through a roaring mob.*Down these bare boards an actor strode, and with a wave of the arm required his hearers to believe they were "in fair Verona, where we lay our scene." In later centuries, notably toward the end of the 19th, productions of Shakespeare became almost as richly furnished as they were badly played; but not until some 335 years after Shakespeare's death did a producer find the wit and the way to take...
...Renato Castellani, an Italian moviemaker (Two Cents Worth of Hope), had an idea: since Shakespeare had laid the story of his "star-crossed lovers" in Verona, why not actually photograph it there and, where necessary, in other Italian cities whose stones are better preserved? Why not set a Renaissance passion in a Renaissance scene? And why not let all this young love be made, for a change, by young lovers...
...mark the 100th anniversary of Giuseppe Verdi's birth, the city of Verona mounted a production of Aïda in its local amphitheater that was hard to forget: the 138-ft.-wide stage was filled with more than 1,000 singers and actors, not to mention ten horses and a cow. That was 40 years ago. More recently, Veronese have noted with pique that Rome's summer opera, in the huge old ruins of the Baths of Caracalla, have been serving up Aïda on a 167-ft. stage replete with camels, ancient obelisks...
...Verona was unwilling to leave it at that. Last week it staged a monster Trovatore, with mass movements akin to wheeling infantry; for this week, it was preparing a third Verdi epic, La Forza del Destino. Director Pabst was keeping his operation plans top secret, but Veronese had high hopes. Last time he worked on Forza (in Florence last spring), only the last-minute protests of the scandalized opera management kept him from bringing the Act III battle scenes up to date with armored cars and tanks...
JOHN W. HEATH Verona...