Word: harlequins
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...podium and began to orate: " 'Tis not for children, not for gods, this play; for understanding people 'tis designed . . ." Finally, Conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos appeared and gave the downbeat, and the perplexed audience settled down to the first U.S. performance of Ferruccio Busoni's "theatrical capriccio," Harlequin...
Busoni, an Italian who spent much of his life in Berlin and was more famous as a pianist and pedagogue (and transcriber of Bach) than as a composer, wrote the libretto for Harlequin on a visit to the U.S. in 1915. He hung his sardonic and sometimes savage satire on romantic opera, World War I and man in general, on a framework of commedia dell'arte. Harlequin is Faust in evening clothes, and his suave cynicism corrodes everyone it touches-an old Dante-reading tailer, his young wife, Harlequin's own wife, her lover, a doctor...
Maria Montessori seems happy enough to be away from the rest of the world and its politics ("that harlequin mixture of rags and silk") and wars ("If men can respect cows during famine, as in India, men can stop killing each other"). She is not even thinking of retiring. Said she: "Work is necessary. It can be nothing less than a passion. A person is happy in accomplishment...
...view in a Manhattan gallery, and a Boston gallery displayed the work of 31 Zerbe students and twelve of his admirers. Manhattan critics went overboard for Zerbe's crisp, quiet cityscapes, still life jam-packed with unlikely objects, sombre circus pictures, and portraits in costume such as Aging Harlequin (see cut). According to the New York Times, the show was like "a crescendo roll of drums . . . puissant, clear, resourceful, uncluttered." As technical fireworks, each painting had proper sparkle. Did any of them also "mean anything"? Said Zerbe complacently: "If you are bright you can also enjoy the symbolism...
Outstanding among the present collection of ten paintings are the brilliant and exciting "Harlequin's Carnival," the naive "Birds and Insects," with its cheerful blue background, and the mysterious and suggestive "Composition...