Word: starkness
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Some observers admired the staging, which was done under Composer Henze's direction. The backdrop was surrealistic, the action stark; much of the time dancers moved in the distance, derisively, sometimes vulgarly satirizing the downstage action. But the critics denounced the work unanimously, suggested that the composer was too much the child of a corrupt and violent age. "His soul," wrote Il Tempo's critic, "is a page on which the evils of our age have written cruel words...
...manner of Kipling's fictional "wolf-suckled, snake-taught, elephant-advised" Mowgli, Ireland has produced a sheep boy, Africa a baboon boy who devoured 89 prickly pears in one sitting. Seven years ago, newsmen seriously reported that a gazelle boy, was found running, at 50 m.p.h., stark naked across the Syrian desert. (The giveaway clue: he was obviously accustomed to wearing clothes since his arms and face were tanned, but his body was white...
Primarily because Climatic Changes contains the results of such widely differing scientific methods, it seems to evade the audience. The specialist will wait for reprinting in trade journals of the few articles in his field. And it will be the rare layman, unusually inspired by the stark mountain peaks on the book-jacket, who will decipher formulae for luminosity of the sun in order to lay bare an astronomer's scientific reasoning. The book would be improved by several additional papers on the earth's climate, how it molds the earth's terrain, and whether storminess is essential for human...
...Fresh Standout. In two rooms alone there were 19 Rembrandts. including a masterfully calm and triumphant self-portrait and the reverent, mystical Head of Christ. In other rooms, there was a breath-taking assemblage of masterpieces by Velasquez, Goya and El Greco (including his stark, disturbing View of Toledo*) that could not be equaled in any museum outside of Spain. Pieter Bruegel's ecstatically tranquil Harvesters dominated one room. Caravaggio's Musicians another. In the galleries devoted to modern painters. Pablo Picasso's peaceful Woman in White, recently acquired from the Museum of Modern Art, and Edouard...
...realm of abstract speculation, now the very power of Bacchus. In all these shifting moods the composer's emotional intensity must be just a degree less than the poet's; the musical setting must heighten, not dwarf the spirit of the poetry. Finally, there is the language--the cool, stark quality of Latin in this case--to render beautiful, Mr. Bonvalot's settings fulfilled these qualifications to a remarkable dgree. The power and intelligence with which Mr. Bonvalot, one soloist, conveyed both the dramatic and musical aspects of the work further contributed to their overwhelming impression upon...