Word: cherubic
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...tuned up and ready to blow, the National Symphony Orchestra of Washington waited on the stage of the austere concert hall at the John F. Kennedy Center. A cheerful cherub of a man walked swiftly to the podium and smiled at the audience. His face was a pale Russian winter's landscape, his blue eyes shone mischievously. He turned toward his colleagues and, with a sturdy slash of his baton, launched into a high-speed, raucous overture that seemed to roil the Potomac. It was strictly show-biz razzmatazz, a pastiche stitched together by Leonard Bernstein from his 1976 musical...
...small. The number of people who had heard of Rubens' work when he was alive would probably not make up a week's attendance at the Metropolitan Museum. But they were the people who owned and ran Europe. Few of Rubens' paintings, except the altarpieces-the cherub-borne Madonnas rising into the infinite blue gauze of heaven, the squirming cascades of rosy, tormented flesh in hell, the marmoreal dead Christs and grandly virile Apostles-were meant to be seen by a plebeian eye. They hung on palace walls, firmly reminding the autocrats of Catholic Europe-Habsburg...
...YORK: ELOQUENT CHERUB...
...Strehler, Cherubino is not really a silly little cherub, but a hot-blooded youth out to touch, hold, kiss and sleep with any woman who will have him. The result is that Cherubino becomes the mirror reflecting everyone else's sensuality. Other directorial details linger in the memory: the Countess singing of her lost love (Porgi amor), while behind her lies a trampled bed, the obvious result of a night of lonely tossing; the haunting way the light in the palace recedes in different layers of intensity as the day wanes...
...movement of the sea of minor characters is much more skillful than their acting. The cherub's voice cracks and the angels' shrieks are irritatingly devoid of feeling, but they scamper and perch insolently and daringly on the tiered balcony of their Kingdom. The court scenes are a frenzied brew of comic motion, alternating between medieval Italian dance, bouts of wrestling and the Comedian Dell'Arte's pantomime. Among all the dancers the devil's mute partner, Salme (Charlotte Spanos), stands out. Her sinuous form oozes gratuitous corruption. Pulcinello's (Kevin Grumbach) mime effortlessly steals the show for awhile. Even...