Word: salamanca
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Unlike his ancestor, the monsignor does not tilt at windmills, but joyrides on them, producing some superlative nonsense. In the university town of Salamanca, where Sancho once studied with the philosopher Unamuno, they wander into a Spanish house of prostitution. The unsuspecting Quixote comments, "What a large staff of charming young women for so small a hotel." Ignorant of films, for example, he picks a pious-sounding title for his first viewing. X-rated grunts of A Maiden's Prayer, however, make him wonder: "They seemed to suffer such a lot. From the sounds they made." His more worldly...
...case first, is a widower, standing on the cusp of old age, living on his late wife's money on a ranch somewhere in Bunuel country. He reads, plays chess against a computer, vigorously conducts the music he plays on his hifi. Sometimes he visits his mistress in Salamanca, more frequently he calls on his only friend, a priest, to chide him with anticlerical chat. He has become less worldly than the good father, and easy prey for Goyita, a 13-year-old schoolgirl (Ana Torrent of Cria), an instinctive siren who senses in him, despite their differences...
Perhaps the most interesting of the new productions, however, is the one by the least known composer. Bach, 42, a professor of music at Northern Illinois University in De Kalb, Ill., had written only one opera before The Student from Salamanca, but he clearly knows what he is doing. Using two short Cervantes works, which he put into words himself, he has created an amusing variation on an old theme: the young wife, the old husband and the handsome young man who comes along to complicate their lives...
When Craccio, the old man, goes out of town, Cristina, an attractive housemaid, brings two men to entertain her and her pretty mistress. The men, the town barber and apothecary, are comic oafs, and both women are relieved to hear another male voice from offstage. Enter the student from Salamanca, who has been beset by robbers and is looking for food and lodging-among other things. The husband unexpectedly returns, and the plot goes on its merry way to a happy ending...