Bøker av Charles Affron

The action takes place in and near New York City between the final days of World War II and the end of 1945. In Mrs. Levine's boarding house on the Lower East Side live three young people with growing and changing ambitions: Labal, in pursuit of a career as a cantor despite his rejection of his orthodox upbringing; David, a pre-med student with a passion for opera; Gussie, whose Left-wing ideals are tested by her infatuation with Labal. Their friend Jake, an older boarder who draws his power from personal charisma and mob connections, alters the course of their lives. Another boarder, Israel, subsists in poverty while his daughters, Shirley and Rosalie, are trapped in loveless if affluent marriages. The reader tracks Labal and the other denizens of the boarding house off Grand Street as they make their way uptown, some to luxurious Central Park South, others to the Astor Hotel, the Stork Club, and the Metropolitan Opera, to Times Square for the exuberant V-J Day celebration, to a prosperous West Side synagogue for a dramatic Yom Kippur Eve service. The often destructive, often conflicted relationships among the characters mirror the ferment of post-War society. Just Off Grand is modeled on Honoré de Balzac's Old Goriot (Le Père Goriot).

In the nineteenth century, the French lyric poets imposed their diction on the theatrical genre and thus illuminated the essence of both poetry and theatre. Ten plays by Victor Hugo, the standard-bearer of the French romantic theatre, and Alfred de Musset, the romantic playwright most frequently performed in France today, are analyzed by Charles Affron to answer the question, "e;Can the dialetic form of the theatre accommodate the solitary elan of the lyric poet?"e; As a functional point of departure, he considers those characteristics of lyric poetry-time, voice, and metaphor-which bring us closest to the singular attitudes of Hugo and Musset. Then, examining the texts of Hernani, Les Burgraves, Torquemada, Fantasio, and Lorenzaccio as well as several lesser known plays, Mr. Affron discusses such topics as poetic time, the scope of analogy, theatrical and poetic rhetoric, the guises of the poet-hero, and the manner of sounding the poet's voice upon the stage.Originally published in 1971.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The Metropolitan has stood among the grandest of opera companies since its birth in 1883. Tracing the offstage/onstage workings of this famed New York institution, Charles Affron and Mirella Jona Affron tell how the Met became and remains a powerful actor on the global cultural scene. In this first new history of the company in thirty years, each of the chronologically sequenced chapters surveys a composer or a slice of the repertoire and brings to life dominant personalities and memorable performances of the time. From the opening night Faust to the recent controversial production of Wagner's "e;Ring,"e; Grand Opera is a remarkable account of management and audience response to the push and pull of tradition and reinvention. Spanning the decades between the Gilded Age and the age of new media, this story of the Met concludes by tipping its hat to the hugely successful "e;Live in HD"e; simulcasts and other twenty-first-century innovations. Grand Opera's appeal extends far beyond the large circle of opera enthusiasts. Drawing on unpublished documents from the Metropolitan Opera Archives, reviews, recordings, and much more, this richly detailed book looks at the Met in the broad context of national and international issues and events.

At the time of her death in 1993, Lillian Gish was universally recognized as a film legend. This title uncovers a life that was cast in the shadow of self-generated myth. It shows how the actress carefully shaped her public identity while keeping much of her life private.