Word: widower
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Troilus' firm foundation is British Poet Christopher Hassall's libretto, which keeps things happening from curtain-up. The plot presents the human side of the besieged Trojans and particularly the widow Cressida (sung by Phyllis Curtin), who succumbs to Troilus (Jon Grain), partly through the conniving of Pandarus (Norman Kelley), only to be captured by the Greeks. By the time she puts herself to the sword, she is at least as credible as Tosca, as touching as Mimi...
...were the only class of scenes," wrote Hawthorne, "in which our ancestors were wont to steep their tough old hearts in wine and strong drink and indulge in an outbreak of grisly jollity." When a man died, in-laws and out, friends, neighbors and creditors descended on the sobbing widow, who was expected to welcome them with all kinds of vittles-beef, ham, turkeys, oysters, fruit, cheese and sweets-as well as gallons of the local mulekick. After the corpse had been volleyed to Kingdom Come by the customary funeral fusillade, there was bowsing and bundling sparking and frisking...
Another group of strong Tories on the Row was the Vassall family. Colonel John Vassall and Penclope, the widow of Colonel Henry Vassall, both fled with their families rather than live with the rabble of rebellion. A relative by marriage, Lieutenant-Governor Thomas Oliver, who was a member of the infamous (to revolutionaries) Mandamus Council, also moved to Boston, at the request of a mob of 4000. Another mob, composed of "boys and negroes," persuaded Chief-Justice Stephen Sewall to take his "soft, smooth, insinuating eloquence" elsewhere...
...vigorous brother-in-law who is now just terribly old; her overserious, not very human son (Hume Cronyn), a civil servant who has lost out on the girl who loved him and is losing out on a career. There is the girl herself (Jessica Tandy), now a middle-aging widow who loves him no longer. Devoid of pasts or futures or both, the characters are drowning with the utmost politeness; it is sometimes hard, in fact, to distinguish desperation in them from mere lassitude...
Americans have heard German Soprano Elisabeth Schwarzkopf in everything from Bach's B Minor Mass to Lehar's The Merry Widow-on records. But, except for scattered concerts, they have not heard her in person. This season, the San Francisco Opera gave her a chance to show off not only her brilliant singing but also her remarkable acting. Her roles: the Marschallin in Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier and Donna Elvira in Mozart's Don Giovanni. Her score: bull's-eyes in both roles...