Word: aplomb
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...podium, Salonen projects an aura of crisp, businesslike authority. There is none of Mehta's grandstanding glamour; instead, the conductor he most resembles is his hero Pierre Boulez, guiding his players through the most intricate rhythms with unflappable aplomb. In 1985 Salonen signed an exclusive contract with CBS, now Sony Classical, and since then has issued a steady stream of albums (the best so far: Messiaen's formidable Turangalila-Symphonie and Grieg's Peer Gynt music). Already he is one of the few living maestros who can sell the standard repertoire on the strength of his name alone...
Lars Mellander (Ali), Dorothy Morris (Elvira), and Janine Wanee (Zulma) turn in performance of technical aplomb but little else. Mellander's inexpressive mime doesn't go beyond the essentials. Morris's Elvira is appropriately pitiful, but comes across more contentious than helpless, more an evil shrew than a hapless victim of a inane husband's scorn. And Wanee's Zulma, although not a major part, fades too easily into inconsequence...
...song and the plaintive aria to Carmen in the second act. But his positioning and gesturing were unguided, empty and often too quick and emphatic. His crescendos were sudden where they should have been gradual, harsh when they should have caressed the ear. He sang his part with technical aplomb but not with the heartfelt inspiration of a great portrayal...
Jonathan Weinber handles his role as the police captain with droll aplomb. As a portrait of savagery, the captain delightedly lectures on execution and demonstrates on a dog Selig displays appropriate confusion and horror at such antics...
...signery into scenery, recycling theater publicity photos, news shots (of the King with his horse trainer or Amelia Earhart being mobbed at the London airport) and even a gangster-movie poster of Edward G. Robinson. No American or European artist at the time used such sources with as much aplomb. Scorning British good taste and the Edwardian artist's role as the groom of new aristocrats -- a task he left to what he called the "wriggle and chiffon" school of portraiture, led by the American expatriate John Singer Sargent -- Sickert went down a few class notches, looking for a virile...