Word: simonize
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...burnished voice the natural embodiment of opera's great villains-the grandly tormented Macbeth, the insinuatingly oily hunchback Rigoletto, the ravening Count di Luna of Trovatore. But he was also wonderfully effective in roles that called for massive dignity and restraint-Germont in Traviata, the title role in Simon Boccanegra. What Warren lacked in natural acting ability he more than made up with his remarkable and splendidly controlled voice; it had impressive size, fine texture and immense range. Warren even commanded the top notes, including the high C that many a tenor lacks...
...Warren voice, Conductor Wilfred Pelletier, who was directing the auditions from a control room, thought somebody was playing a joke on him by slipping on a record of a famous baritone. Warren won, and he began his Met career in 1939 singing the minor role of Paolo Albiani in Simon Boccanegra...
...great baritone, the Met last week opened a performance of The Flying Dutchman the day after his death with the prelude to Act IV of Traviata. Earlier in the week Warren himself had supplied an even more fitting tribute when he appeared in a new production of Simon Boccanegra, in which he had made his little-noticed debut 21 years ago. Last week's revival (the first in a decade) benefited from some magnificently colorful sets, the muscular conducting of Dimitri Mitropoulos and fine performances from most of the cast. But the opera was chiefly Warren...
...fact mattered little in The Wind, in which only one character is of much importance. The Grass, which tells the story of the deterioration of a French provincial family, as an old aunt lies dying, is more intricate and less suited to Simon's techniques. Parts of the book are brilliant-notably the scenes of bickering between the dying woman's brother and sister-in-law. Realist Simon forces the reader to note precisely the tics and twitches of decaying minds, and to feel the texture of withering flesh. But something is lost when Simon's subject...
...best, and one of the most eccentric, of France's New Realist writers is Claude Simon, author of the powerful and murky novel, The Wind (TIME, April 13). His current book is a little less powerful and somewhat more murky. Author Simon's moody, fitful sentences blow on for a thousand words or so before subsiding. He qualifies each thought, hedges each qualification, follows divergent ideas out of sight through cat's cradles of parentheses and dashes. He is as fond as Faulkner of the present participle. When it seems that he must stop, affix a period...