Music: Stripped-Down Mozart

Though best known as a film actor (Topkapi, Spartacus), playwright (Romanoff and Juliet) and radio and TV wit ("NATO? Six nations in search of an enemy!"), Peter Ustinov is also an old hand at opera. Over the past decade he has staged one-acters by Puccini, Ravel and Schonberg at Covent Garden, and in 1968 he directed a successful new version of Mozart's The Magic Flute at the Hamburg State Opera. Until that possible day when he sings and acts all the parts in Wagner's Ring cycle, Ustinov's most ambitious operatic venture will be the...

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