An Evening With Marilyn

Griffin, Merv; Barsocchini, Peter. Merv: An Autobiography. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1980. ISBN: 0671227645

The book is NEAR FINE with slightly cocked spine. Dust jacket NEAR FINE with light shelf wear. 287 pages with index plus 32 pages black and white photos. JMVintage specializes in books, magazines, and treasures related to the Duke and Duchess of Windsor..and other curious people. Dust jacket reads: Merv Griffin, one of television's most successful and popular personalities, takes us behind the scenes of a remarkable career, from his childhood (when he had to keep his piano lessons secret from his father) to his present 90-minute show, watched weekly by a loyal audience of 20 million viewers. Griffin talks about his adolescence, during which he had to overcome an embarrassing weight problem, and reveals the surprising steps that led to his becoming a highly paid radio singer by the age of twenty-one. For the first time, he discusses his little-known days as a contract player with Warner Brothers, the years in which he met such actors as Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, Marlon Brando and Marilyn Monroe. He traces his progress from band singer to game-show MC to the magical night when he became the guest host on Jack Paar's "Tonight Show;' an evening that changed his life. Griffin brings us behind the cameras of his talk show, sharing anecdotes about his interviews with Bertrand Russell, Robert Kennedy and a particularly volatile Russian ambassador, and offers a touching if shocking recollection of Judy Garland. With emotion and honesty he writes of his courtship of Julann Wright and recalls with extraordinary candor the pain of their sub- sequent divorce. Merv is a personal story of persistence and hard-won success. It provides a backstage tour of how a talk show is produced, an intriguing look at many of the stars and newsmakers of the past three decades and, above all, an inside view of a warm and human entertainer who has delighted millions with his music, candor and revealing interviews. Hard Cover condition: Near Fine in Near Fine dj

[SW: Biography/Autobiography]

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Ponchielli, Amilcare: La Gioconda (zweibändig) La Gioconda (in two volumes)

S. 564, Amilcare Ponchielli (b. Paderno, 31 August 1834 - d. Milan, 16 January 1886) La Gioconda, dramma lirico in four acts (1875-1880) Libretto by Arrigo Boito after Victor Hugo's play Angelo, tyran de Padoue Preface Asked in 1876 for his thoughts on Italy's next generation of opera composers, Giuseppe Verdi was at no loss for an answer: "The one who can do the best is Ponchielli; but, alas! he is no longer young." Verdi's opinion has withstood the test of time: modern historians now regard Ponchielli as the leading figure in Italian opera (apart, of course, from the inimitable Bear of Busseto himself) between Verdi's mid-career masterpieces and late nineteenth-century verismo. But no less telling was Verdi's "alas!": Ponchielli was indeed no longer young. Shy, kindly, with little of that urge toward self-promotion so essential to success in the theater, Ponchielli spent the largest part of his career as a provincial bandmaster in Piacenza and Cremona - hence his curiously large body of seventy-five compositions and 218 arrangements for wind band. But by the 1870s, following Verdi's lapse into silence after Aida (1871) and the success of his own revived Il promessi sposi (1872), Ponchielli was chosen by the great Milanese publishing house of Ricordi to be groomed as the new hope of Italian opera. He was soon brought together with Antonio Ghislanzoni (the celebrated librettist of Aida) to write an opera on a remote northern European subject. The result, I lituani ("The Lithuanians," 1874), proved to be an impressive but gloomy and demanding succes d'estime. Chastened by the muted response of the public, Ponchielli retreated into a conservative posture more native to his character: "I believe that where the Italian public is concerned it's vital not to make too much of the drama, otherwise you land yourself in rhythms that don't arrest the attention, and you have to exploit the orchestra, and finally you need the kind of artist whom we don't have today [...] Therefore in my opinion it's best to stick to the lyrical side even if it means struggling to avoid hackneyed rhythm and accompaniments." Ponchielli held closely to these precepts and stuck to the lyrical side, henceforth turning for inspiration to Donizetti and, in his orchestral writing, to Mendelssohn. For Ponchielli's next project Ricordi decided to unite the composer with a young literary upstart and theatrical genius named Arrigo Boito (1842-1918), at that time busy turning out opera librettos under the transparent nom-de-plume of Tobia Gorrio. Although by nature a radical, Boito turned his gaze backwards to the grand opera of Meyerbeer and Scribe and selected, as his starting point, a lurid prose melodrama by Victor Hugo: Angelo, tyran de Padoue (1835). He then proceeded to rework the original almost beyond recognition, drastically downplaying the significance of the title hero, turning a minor character into a supreme operatic villain, transforming Hugo's prose into supple and imaginative verse, moving the scene of the action from Padua to Venice (with significant opportunities for local color), and finding room for a central ballet destined to go down in history as "The Dance of the Hours." The cast of characters was boiled down into six major roles embroiled in four unhappy love-relationships, each given ample opportunities for lyric effusion, and the whole surrounded by the historical pageantry, massed choruses, and drastic turns of plot that constitute the raison d'etre of French grand opera. It was a brilliant libretto, the precursor to Boito's later masterpieces for Verdi (indeed, one of its lines was adopted verbatim in Otello), and it proved ideally suited to Ponchielli's muse. This new opera was La Gioconda ("The Street Singer"), whose title also alludes, mysteriously and misleadingly, to the Italian nickname for the Mona Lisa. Ponchielli received the libretto from Boito in 1874 and began work on the score the following year. The new opera was soon ready for performance, and the premiere took place at La Scala on 8 April 1876. Although the response of the audience and critics left nothing to be desired, Ponchielli displayed a characteristic unwillingness to release the new opera to the public and subjected it to no fewer than four revisions. The first, mounted at the Teatro Rossini in Venice only a few months later (18 October 1876), featured a new furlana for the first act, a preghiera for Laura in the second, a new aria for Alvise in the third, and a caballetta for Enzo and Barnaba. Still dissatisfied, Ponchielli wrote a new Act 1 finale for a production at Rome's Teatro Apollo, again only a few months later (23 January 1877). Then the magnificent Act 3 finale was reworked for a staging at the Politeama Genovese in Genoa on 27 November 1879. Finally the definitive version, with various retouchings, was presented at La Scala on 12 February 1880. This fifth and final version far eclipsed the success of the earlier one heard at La Scala four years previously and launched La Gioconda on a triumphal march through the great opera houses of the world. It was staged in Naples the following year and in Bologna and Santiago de Chile in 1882. In 1883 it was produced in St. Petersburg, London, Barcelona, Budapest, and New York; and by 1884 it had reached Vienna, Prague, Warsaw, and Buenos Aires. It has continued to hold the operatic stage ever since. In the few years remaining to him Ponchielli tried to repeat the triumph of La Gioconda, but to no avail: his stream of inspired melody had abandoned him, as did his health and self-confidence. He was appointed professor of composition at Milan Conservatory in 1881 - an honor that had eluded him fourteen years earlier - and became in this way the much beloved teacher of the leading lights of the next generation in Italian opera, Puccini and Mascagni. His death in 1886, from tuberculosis, was made an occasion of national mourning in Italy. La Gioconda has become the only Italian grand opera besides Aida to remain in the repertoire. It launched Maria Callas's international career at the Arena di Verona (1947) and has become a special favorite at La Scala. But most of all it is inseparably linked with the New York Met, where it was sung by many of the greatest voices of the twentieth century, from Caruso (1904) and Emmy Destinn (1909) to Benjamino Gigli (1924) and Rosa Ponselle (1925), and thence to Rise Stevens, Mario del Monaco, Franco Corelli, Cesare Siepi, Robert Merrill, Renata Tebaldi, Martina Arroyo, Carlo Bergonzi, Placido Domingo, and many, many others. Outstanding complete recordings are available with Callas (1952), del Monaco and Siepi (1957), Tebaldi, Bergonzi, Marilyn Horne and Robert Merrill (1967), and Pavarotti, Sherrill Milnes, Nicolai Ghiaurov and Montserrat Caballe (1981). Dance of the Hours The "Dance of the Hours" (Danza della ore) is a complete and self-sufficient musical statement of roughly ten minutes' duration forming the core of the spectacular second scene of Act 3, where Alvise unveils the body of his supposedly dead wife Laura to the assembled guests in his private ballroom. It was composed well before La Gioconda itself and merely reworked to suit its new operatic setting. Its worldwide fame likewise preceded that of the opera, dating from 1878 when the ballet music created a storm at the Paris World Exhibition. Although universally translated as "Dance of the Hours," the "ore" of the title actually refer to the four Horae, the Greek goddesses who regulated the flow of time, and the ballet thus fits naturally into Italy's longstanding tradition of allegorical spectacle. Accordingly, it is divided into four sections representing the four parts of the day: dawn, day, evening, and night. Later the ballet was extracted from the opera and choreographed separately or performed in concert, in which form it became virtually the quintessence of light classical music - and the butt of countless parodies. Among its notable ...

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Krishen Khanna,Norbert Lynton Illustrator: NA: Krishen Khanna: Images in My Time, Mapin Publishing/ Grantha/ Lund Humphries 2007 ISBN: 9788188204953

New Hardcover NA Krishen Khanna is a painter whose work engages the social, historical and political landscape of India. Born in Lahore in 1925, Khanna learned the tools of his trade at the evening classes conducted at the Mayo School of Art, Lahore. In the wake of India's partition he moved to Simla and thereafter to Delhi, where he currently lives and works. This book is the first to combine an Indian artist's monograph with the discussion of the socio-political context which motivated a generation of Indian artists. Khanna's style is discussed by Norbert Lynton: the artist dabbled in abstraction as a member of the Progressive Artists Group, a brief movement practised by artists striving towards modernity and challenging India's caste-driven structure, but ultimately he returned to representational art. This monograph places the artist's work in its biographical, historical and social context through the examination of several of his paintings, among which are The Flagellation and a series of bandwallahs (musicians) from the 1970s. The artist has contributed to the book with a discussion of his work which offers the reader a unique insight into the thoughts and motivations behind his work. In addition, five essayists pay tribute here to the thematic variety and visually arresting images of Khanna's oeuvre. CONTENTS: Foreword/Tanuj Berry and Salman Malik; 1. The Betrayal and Flagellation/Norbert Lynton 2. Serenading Lajwanti/Gayatri Sinha 3. The Secular Miracle : on the Krishan KhannaaEUR s the Raising of Lazarus 4. A Stranger at GyanijiaEUR s Dhaba/Norbert Lynton 5. Musicians/Marilyn Rushton 6. O.K. Tata/Gayatri Sinha 7. The Blind King and Blindfolded Queen/Tanuj Berry 8. Evening News/Norbert Lynton 9. In Retrospect/Krishen Khanna Chronology Printed Pages: 144. First edition

[SW: Krishen Khanna: Images in My TimeKrishen Khanna, Norbert Lynton9788188204953]

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Edited foreword Connery Chappell, coloured frontispiece of Marilyn Monroe, articles by Margaret Hinxman, Ronald Morris, Donovan Pedelty, Alan Ladd, illustrated with fotos profusely in color & B/W: Picturegoer Film Annual 1953-54 ( coloured frontispiece of Marilyn Monroe with Story & Pictures, featured as Upcoming Girl of the Year ) includes the Queen at the Pictures, An Evening with Charlie Chaplin,Your Slip is Showing, The Bad & The Beautiful, Odhams Press Ltd, Long Acre, London, 1954 1954 ; fester Einband / hard cover; 1. Ed.

Hard Cover. No Jacket. First Edition. HBNODJ Issued,1954, 1st edition,Blue Cloth Cover minor rub & Wear,144 pgs, indes, Nice & Tight, VG+/VG, NODJ First Edition No Jacket Hard Cover; First Edition

[SW: HOLLYWOOD MARILYN MONROE]

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