Word: opera
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...world's best triathletes, competing at an Olympics for the first time, will have a view of Sydney's two favorite structures as they swim: the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House. But the week after next, at the test event, no one will be thinking about the view. A spate of shark attacks and sightings around Sydney Harbour, including two attacks in two days on schoolboy rowers, has triggered panic among some competitors. "The Europeans are pretty worried about it," says 1997 world champion Chris McCormack. "They're used to swimming in freshwater lakes, where the most...
...Chianti region in the ’70s is, thank heavens, a bygone era. Not so the deluge of so called supertuscans that resulted from the fiasco. Obiter dictum, the word “fiasco” alludes to another bygone era of Italy. One in which an opera singer’s wretched performance was greeted by a barrage of wine flasks or “fiasci” at the offending artist. Hence the fiasco. But I digress. The supertuscan promiscuously blends a veritable smorgasbord of internationally known grape varieties. The veneer of its glamor has faded...
...wait and see what he does before putting too much credence in his words. Western leaders have apparently decided, though, to take Putin at face value--his best face. Albright called him "a leading reformer" even before she met him. British Prime Minister Tony Blair went to the opera with Putin in St. Petersburg earlier this month and, in order to strike a friendly note, soft-pedaled Western concerns over Chechnya. Even though nothing substantive was accomplished, London declared that Putin was "a man we can do business with," an echo of what Margaret Thatcher famously said about Mikhail Gorbachev...
...anyone wanted to talk about was the pyramid. It was a giant motorized contraption that dominated the stage during the Atlanta pre-Broadway tryout of Elaborate Lives: The Legend of Aida, Disney's musical retelling of the tale of ancient Egypt that was the basis for Verdi's famous opera. The pyramid opened, it closed, it transformed itself into different sets. It seemed a suitably dazzling follow-up to Julie Taymor's innovative production of The Lion King, Disney's Broadway hit. The trouble was it didn't work, at least not very often. "Every time I saw the show...
...sure, this is unmistakably a Disney product, mounted and mass-audience-tested like a theme-park ride. The opera's tragic story--about an Egyptian captain, Radames, and his forbidden love for the slave princess Aida--has been put through the studio's familiar food processor. Each of the main characters clashes with an authoritarian father; Aida is a feisty, headstrong heroine in the line of Mulan and Pocahontas; the bad guys dress in fascistic black trench coats. (And while the Nubian slaves are mostly African Americans, the Egyptians seem to have acquired a blond gene.) Those Disney magicians have...