dirac

I remember that nose, too, Mme. Hermine. It was a weird one. Thanks very much to all of you for putting in your two cents. I ought to have noted for the record that to describe a woman as less than beautiful is not to suggest that she would never receive a proposal or has to sit in a corner with a bag over her head. We are speaking in relative terms. It's a good idea to make a distinction between a character such as Jane Eyre, who is genuinely plain and has this unhappy fact rubbed in at every turn – and Elizabeth Bennet, who is pretty enough but no stunner – at least, not pretty enough to compensate for lack of background and money. Helene writes: I thought that perhaps Root was a little too plain for Anne. As Paul notes, Austen must sometimes be parsed closely in such matters, but as I recall Anne is described as “faded” – she was once very appealing, but worn down by time, disappointment, and relative drudgery. Root is a good actress but she could never have been very warm or attractive and it was hard to imagine Wentworth giving her a second look (hard for me, anyway). I dunno, Paul – in relation to Frank Churchill, Emma behaves very much “like a pretty girl,” I think – sure of her attractions and eager to put them to use. If you mean by "doesn't have to" that she's not flirting with Frank in order to extract a proposal, I agree. Again, these things are relative and I don’t mean to imply that Emma is ugly. I do think that Harriet is probably prettier – again, a girl of her station would have to be striking in order to rouse Emma’s imagination as she does, and in the film versions under discussion she’s either demonstrably plainer or made to look so, which is misleading. I liked Ehle too, chris217. Although, as an aside, I did think it odd the way she seemed to be forever stifling a smile or laughter -- it was as if she or her director felt it necessary to telegraph to the audience that "this is comedy."

More Booker Prize fun, from the Guardian. A quiz inviting you to identify the author by body part, with prizes. http://books.guardian.co.uk/competition/0,...1551453,00.html

Courtesy of ArtsJournal, a piece by Michelle Griffin in The Age, commenting on the looks discrepancy between the often less than stunning heroines in novels by Jane Austen and others and their usually stunning counterparts in film adaptations. The power of plain Much of what she says is on target, although I would note for the record that movie stars, especially female ones, tend to be cast for beauty in general, and so the roster of leading ladies from which your heroine will be chosen is going to be pretty limited in this respect. (This is how you get Nicole Kidman playing Virginia Woolf instead of a middle aged English actress who could actually have played the part, instead of showing us a well performed stunt. In the near future, La Kidman will also be presenting us with....Diane Arbus. Apologies to Ed Waffle if he should read this.) And beautiful people have an edge on the rest of us in the star business because we enjoy looking at them. Griffin doesn’t mention a phenomenon I’ve noted in adaptations of “Emma.” It’s quite clear from Austen’s descriptions of Emma and her protegee Harriet that the latter is actually prettier than the former. But in “Clueless” and the Gwyneth Paltrow “Emma,” plain girls were cast as Harriet, making Emma’s obsession with her inexplicable. It’s true that Austen, Alcott, and Charlotte Bronte were themselves no oil paintings, and all of them tended to cast a cold eye on the sort of fetching charmers likely to play their creations. Would they have been writers themselves if they’d had the looks and money that would have netted them a prosperous husband at an early age? Maybe not.

It was done with Otto Singer, but Strauss worked on it, or so I've read. I could, of course, have read wrong.

bart writes: The Marschallin is 32 or thereabouts, I think, but in that era she would be regarded as a settled married woman almost in middle age – at least 42 in our terms. So you could cast a relatively young ballerina and still have technically correct casting, but a contemporary audience wouldn’t necessarily understand immediately why she might be fretting about romance being behind her. (Think of Annette Bening in Valmont and Glenn Close in Dangerous Liaisons – Bening is really closer to the right age for Merteuil, but Close has the command and authority of maturity that the character needs.) Antoinette Sibley would have been a beautiful Marschallin, I imagine.

Looks like the crossover virus is spreading. I'm sure we can count on Villella to handle it right, but.

Kander was speaking more generally, I think. I'm not sure he intended to suggest that a rebellious younger generation would Rise Up against an eminence like Robbins or Toscanini, rather that such extreme cases probably wouldn't arise under contemporary conditions because such behavior was unlikely to become a pattern in the first place. carbro writes: If only we could all do that. I remember Saul Bellow writing in Herzog something to the effect that on occasion personality just does its thing, and all you can do is stand by and watch.......

danceintheblood may well have a point. In Greg Lawrence's bio of Jerome Robbins, he quotes someone -- it was either John Kander or the late Fred Ebb, I think the former -- about Robbins' notorious bad behavior, and Kander said something like, He did it because he could get away with it, he wouldn't be able to these days. Which may well be an oversimplification, but one with some truth to it. Toscanini acted like Toscanini because he could, but it would be difficult to get musicians to sit still for such treatment nowadays.

The Rosenkavalier music used by Balanchine was the First Waltz Sequence, which was arranged by the composer himself. There is a Second Waltz Sequence also, from later in the opera. It is interesting that no ballet choreographer has never given it a try. There are parts of the story that might not work as dance, but that's never stopped them before.

Google takes a step back: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/technology...Copyrights.html

It seems they were having trouble inducing her to return. Also, the library felt it had some responsibility as apparently no one thought to check out the spelling before it was too late. Of course, many people just aren't good spellers, but very sloppy work on the part of the artist--how long does it take to check the spelling in a dictionary......

Donna Reed replaced her as Miss Ellie for awhile. She was awful. You wouldn't think of Bel Geddes as obvious casting for Maggie the Cat. So often the role goes to a sexpot a/o glamourpuss. Kazan didn't want that, though. He saw that the key to the role was sexual insecurity, not confidence, and he wanted an attractive girl who could convey that unsureness. (Unlike, say, Elizabeth Taylor.)

I missed this completely the first time around, and it happened right in my area, too. In Livermore, California, the artist Maria Alquilar, who misspelled names such as Van Gogh, Shakespeare, and Einstein on a mosaic outside the public library, returns to the scene of the crime to do a few corrections. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?.../10/LIBRARY.TMP

Thank you again, Renata. I agree, it is more pleasant to dwell on the good than the bad. (Perhaps we don't do enough of it, hence the topic under discussion. ) Your memory of Jacqueline du Pre is lovely. (It's sad to think of how many people out ther have an impression of her only from that movie from a few years back.) Rest assured, you won't wear out your welcome.

Helene wrote: Breaking the Not-a-Battle-thread guideline. Helene's comment and richard53dog's post have me reflecting that Battle's awareness of her lack of range and vocal options as she aged -- you can't sing Despina forever -- contributed to her temperament. She may have been feeling the pressure.

The Booker Prize longlist is announced. I am always heartened by the fuss surrounding each year’s Booker Prize. The UK papers give it Oscar-intensity coverage – gossip, wagering, argument, etc. People actually care about a book award. Booker longlist announced I would love to be able to claim to have read all the books, but alas. I’m rooting for Ishiguro but he will probably lose to Rushdie or McEwan. (I hear Saturday’s not all that great, but McEwan didn’t win for Atonement, so maybe he’ll get it this year, the way Russell Crowe won for Gladiator after losing out for The Insider, a superior performance. )

Thank you for the heads up. Wish I could attend.

The Associated Press obituary, by Bob Thomas. I should note, since Thomas doesn’t, that the blacklist abbreviated Bel Geddes’ Hollywood career even more definitively than Howard Hughes – she was off the screen for years until “Vertigo” in ’58. She was also the original “professional virgin” of the play “The Moon is Blue,” also unmentioned here. http://www.newsobserver.com/24hour/enterta...-11099764c.html

Barbara Bel Geddes, the original Maggie the Cat and latterly Miss Ellie of "Dallas" has died, age 82. Lovely lady. I always thought James Stewart was silly to chase Kim Novak around San Francisco when he had Barbara right there...... http://tv.zap2it.com/tveditorial/tve_main/...6855|1|,00.html Will post a more detailed obit as they come in....

I add my thanks, Renata. Yes, tell us more!

allegrovitch writes: That Mr. B knew how to pick them, didn't he? Diana Adams is so beautiful. I love those George Platt Lynes photographs of her. And from the tapes I've seen, she danced to match. Amanda Schull of San Francisco Ballet has a perfect complexion, in addition to her other attributes, as viewers of Center Stage may recall.

Hmm. You have a point. The only other book I can think of that would fit would be one I only recall from seeing in a used bookstore -- it was called "American Ballet Theatre Portraits" by the same author. I'd suggest trying a few other sites and seeing what they have -- www.alibris.com, www.powells.com, and www.biblio.com, for starters. It'll turn up. Or one of our very knowledgeable posters will know for sure.

Interesting point, bart. Wagner comes to mind.

Giselle05, judging from the description and details given, I'm pretty sure that the title refers to a calendar. I could be wrong, of course -- but that's what it looks like.

I think it’s legitimate to mention popular artists in a general topic of the sort that is the subject of this thread – as long as the discussion doesn’t wander out of the paddock into fan argument. So mentioning Springsteen wasn’t out of line, IMO. Popular artists can be geniuses. (Parenthetically, Dylan has written many other lyrics that display tenderness and sensitivity. He’s also composed lyrics that express scorn, sarcasm, anger, self loathing, despair, depression, etc. He’s an artist with many sides, although maybe not Mr. Nice Guy personally.) bart writes: Staying with the matter of topic discipline we don't want to turn this into the Battle thread. (I agree with you, though, bart.) kfw writes: It’s a very good question. I'd suggest that a genius is, finally, human and subject to all the ordinary human failings. And once you are acknowledged, even if only by a few, as a genius, and therefore special, you become a “star” of sorts and hence inclined to the kinds of self-centered behavior that characterizes all stars, even those who, well, aren’t even that talented.