Word: weill
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Schwab has persistently criticized fellow Bank-America board members for indecision in cutting staff and closing branches to stem the company's hemorrhage of red ink. In February, Schwab was among the minority who backed an unsuccessful bid by Sanford Weill, the former president of American Express, to infuse the bank with $1 billion in new capital in exchange for the chairmanship. Says Banking Analyst Joseph Arsenio of San Francisco's Birr, Wilson investment house: "Schwab had to be frustrated with the gradualist approach taken by management and the other directors...
...partial dissent, Justice William Brennan warned that White's balancing act "portends a dangerous weakening of the purpose of the Fourth Amendment to protect the privacy and security of our citizens." James Weill, legal director of the Washington-based Children's Defense Fund, claimed that "the court hasn't been sufficiently protective of the unique status of children." Weill believes the court should offset children's vulnerability by giving them added rights and protections...
Even if these worthy but obvious sentiments had been set with the wit of a Brecht or the irony of a Weill, the piece would still be weak. But Librettist Tage Danielsson is no Brecht, and Werle shares with Weill only three letters of their surnames. In an opera as dependent as this on sure- handed pastiche, Werle's parodies of American lounge acts and soulful Russian folk songs consistently fall flat. Surely, the company that premiered Conrad Susa's magical chamber opera Transformations in 1973 and has championed resident Composer Dominick Argento could have chosen a better piece...
This idea of human savagery is further reinforced by Richard Peaslee's songs. Set to lilting tunes resembling those of Kurt Weill's, the words are as bitterly ironic as Brecht's. Throughout Marat/Sade, the singers repeat the refrain: "Marat we're poor/And the poor stay poor,/Give us a rise and we don't care how,/Give us a revolution...now!" The link between mass revolt and sexual lust is the theme of another rollicking song: "And what is the point of a revolution/But general copulation?" On the word "copulation", the singers perform a neatly-choreographed little wind...
...raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens for these guys. Kander's tunes have the catchy dissonance of a Broadway traffic snarl just before show time; violins cower mutely in the pit while the percussion sets a tempo of edgy energy and the horns bleat like Kurt Weill's orphaned children. Ebb never wrote a lyric as clawing as the imaginary one cited above, but he revels in devising anthems of urban indomitability. Everything that outsiders hate about New York City-its grime and pace, its inhabitants' steamroller pugnacity-Ebb sees as fodder for his romantic cynicism...