Word: worsted
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...only do the personalities fascinate him, but the practice of politics evokes some of his best writing and worst predictions. Strout makes no attempt to hide his choice in each contest, yet he still seems to revel in a good dogfight. The election between Kennedy, whom he loved, and Nixon, whom he loathed, was "wonderfully close." Never afraid to put his head on the chopping block of prognostication, Strout writes on November 1, 1948, "In a hopeless battle, (Truman) stayed game to the end, and is going down fighting." And on November 16, 1968: Nixon "will probably wind up Vietnam...
...singing voices convincingly; the acting of singers showed embarassing flaws under the close scrutiny of the movie camera. Joseph Losey's Don Giovanni is remarkable not because it records a worthy performance--it's rifled with musical problems of evert sort--but because it solves the worst of the artistic problems that have kept opera off the screen. With any luck future directors will be able to use Losey's film as a manual for capturing better performances and interpretations...
...from the accomplished but not overdone leporello of Jose van Dam to Kenneth Riegel's wooden Don Ottavio. Among the women, Kiri Te Knawa's Donna Elvira stands out as the most musically agile and dramatically subtle. Edda Moser afflicts Donna Anna with an unfocused voice and the worst of operatic mannerisms--especially ludicrous with instant translation in English subtitles. She shrieks and sways--the subtitle reads, "I'm fainting." She shrieks once again and staggers to embrace a marble column--"I'm dying...
...even for breakfast), though "no Frenchman would give house-room" to the meal that follows. The canned fruit, the cannonball rolls, the senile salads. Some of the British inspectors' bitterest barbs are aimed at British Airways; pace Robert Morley, its "farcically pretentious Elizabethan menu heralded one of the worst air meals ever eaten." A British Airways official, who might have been speaking for most of the chastised carriers, retorted huffily: "I am afraid Mr. Ronay is totally out of touch with the views and tastes of today's airline passengers...
...Inca treasures, which the Spaniards melted down and shipped back home in the form of ingots, many of the ancient gold objects of the Colombian Indians have survived. Protected by rugged terrain, dispersed over a wider area in many different tribal groupings, the Colombians avoided some of the worst depredations of the European invaders. They also buried their treasures in hidden tombs that escaped detection until recent times...