Word: sumptuous
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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This swaddled image lying in the damp, cramped cavern where Jesus may actually have been born is the center and model of numberless Nativity scenes all over the world. Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox or sectarian, there are crèches today almost everywhere there are Christians. There are Nativities as sumptuous as the presepio (manger) in Rome's 11th century Church of Ara Coeli (Altar of Heaven) on Capitoline Hill, with its Christ child-legendarily carved by St. Luke himself-so bedecked with diamonds, rubies, emeralds, pearls and gold that its form is barely discernible and the surplus treasure...
...vices and almost none of the homely virtues of the Lloyd C. Douglas novel that inspired it. For oldtime Moviemaker Rowland V. Lee (The Count of Monte Cristo) knows just where the millions lie: in fictionalized history, resplendently costumed, sexed up, and heavily flavored with religion. There are sumptuous orgies in palaces that look like the new banks of Beverly Hills; John the Baptist is beheaded in 70-mm. Panavision, color and stereophonic sound; and "the temptress" (Martha Hyer) moves about murmuring to Herod Antipas, "You thrill my inmost being." There is also the Sermon on the Mount, delivered...
...Bolshoi in 1946, Romeo and Juliet seems to Western eyes a curious dramatic anachronism, a bit like a brilliant butterfly under glass. As much emotion-laden pantomime as dance, it retraces virtually every twist and turn of Shakespeare's familiar plot in 13 scenes before a series of sumptuous but often ponderously literal sets. The heavily orchestrated score, boldly conducted without score by Conductor Yuri Faier (he is almost blind, can see only the dancers' silhouettes), is unabashedly romantic, gently moving in its lyric flights, occasionally distracting when the onstage movements are too welded to its melodramatic moods...
...plaintive entry in the Yule log at Honolulu police headquarters: a crew of canny thieves got into the sumptuous home of venerable (76) Multycoon (steel, cement, jeeps, aluminum) Henry J. Kaiser, filched a $500 watch and a sackful of other expensive trifles from underneath the Christmas tree...
...Completed by his friend Franco Alfano, Turandot is rarely performed despite the exotic splendors of its score. Chief reasons for its neglect: a certain harshness that sets it apart from the big Puccini favorites (Tosca, Bohème, Butterfly), some devilishly difficult vocal parts, and a need for sumptuous staging...