Word: sicilian
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...died that night, and three families are thrown into desolation," said a swarthy Sicilian with set lips one day last week, "but it was a crime of honor, and, praise God, honor is a word still held sacred in Sicily." "Where there is no honor," said his companion in solemn agreement, "there is chaos...
...roiling and boiling over the cobbles of its main street, the Way of the Deluge, threatening homes and crops alike. But whatever else may suffer in Borgetto, honor-particularly a maid's honoris sacrosanct. No man may fall victim to the lure of dark eyes in a Sicilian village without the certainty of reaping his reward in death or marriage, and the maiden who talks with a man on the street from her chamber window and then lets him stroll out of her life will never find another, for the neighbors will ever after know her as sfrontata...
...coloraturas as easily as she trumpets out a stinging dramatic climax. Like her operatic sisters of a century ago, La Callas can sing anything written for the female voice. Because of her, La Scala has revived some operas (Mozart's Abduction from the Seraglio, Verdi's Sicilian Vespers, Cherubini's Medea) that it had not staged for years because no modern diva could carry them...
...full-fledged member of the company, or they would not get her at all. "They expected me to beg for a role. I would rather have died," she told friends. In 1951 La Scala capitulated. At the age of 28, she opened the Scala season in Sicilian Vespers...
...Said one Sicilian last week: "The people know that good people aren't attacked. It is the criminals who eliminate each other." Besides, it is doubtful whether even a Sicilian-run police force could soon overcome the centuries-old code of omertá, which makes informing-even against a rival gang-the greatest sin. Commenting on last week's murders, one Palermi-ano said with undisguised pride: "The black-clad widows don't speak; nor the children who nourish in their breasts their first thoughts of hatred and vengeance. That is the way of Sicilian blood...