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STOCKHOLM FESTIVAL (Sweden, Sept. 5-25) gives its fans opera. And more opera. Connoisseurs of spectacular metamorphosis will want to hear Birgit Nilsson on Sept. 5, when she switches her image from a monumental, silver-voiced Briinn-hilde to the spitfire passion of Floria Tosca.
THE WARSAW AUTUMN FESTIVAL (Poland, Sept. 16-24) will provide heavy but always enlightening doses of mostly contemporary music by Composers Penderecki, Varese, Stockhausen and Schoenberg as well as still-obscure youngsters. Performers include the Taneyev String Quartet from Moscow and the Groupe de Recherches Musicales from Paris.
LUCERNE FESTIVAL (Switzerland, Aug. 16-Sept. 7) boasts a familiar cast of vagabond troubadours: Szell, Von Karajan, Stern, Szeryng, Cliburn and others. But the scenery is different.
ISRAEL FESTIVAL (to Aug. 28) will go on with the show despite the recent noisy unpleasantness in the environs. Tourists who make the quick flight across the Mediterranean will sit in an ancient Roman theater in Caesarea while the strains of classic, romantic, contemporary, Indian and Yiddish music float about. Artists include Pianist Lili Kraus and Conductor Pierre Boulez leading the Kol Yisrael Symphony Orchestra.
CINEMA
THE WHISPERERS. Dame Edith Evans, 79, playing a lonely, penurious old woman, creates new proof that there is no age limit on greatness.
DIVORCE AMERICAN STYLE. The split of a suburban couple (Dick Van Dyke, Debbie Reynolds) provokes some tart dialogue: "The uranium mine to her, the shaft to me."
EL DORADO. John Wayne and Robert Mitchum both get shot in this old-style oater—but it just gives them a chance to prove that two old pros are better on one good leg apiece than most of the younger stars on two.
THE FAMILY WAY. John Mills is superb as a lout-mouthed father whose newlywed son (Hywel Bennett) and daughter-in-law (Hayley Mills) are unable to consummate their marriage.
THE DIRTY DOZEN. A World War II major (Lee Marvin) is ordered to transform twelve criminals and psychopaths from the camp stockade into a fighting unit fit for a suicide mission behind enemy lines. The denouement is grim and gory.
TO SIR, WITH LOVE. This film about a British Guianan (Sidney Poitier) who takes a teaching job at a London slum school attempts to blend realism with idealism—an unstable mixture saved only by Poitier's catalyzing warmth.
A GUIDE FOR THE MARRIED MAN. A sprightly scenario, the taut direction of Gene Kelly, and the uncommon acting talent of Walter Matthau turn this into one of the best sex comedies of the season.
BOOKS
Best Reading
THE DEVIL DRIVES: A LIFE OF SIR RICHARD BURTON, by Fawn Brodie. The author maps the life of the flamboyant Victorian explorer, linguist and erotologist and concludes that his real passion was not for geographical discovery, "but for the hidden in man, for the unknowable and therefore the unthinkable."
THE TIME OF FRIENDSHIP, by Paul Bowles. The title of this story collection, the author's first in 17 years, is ironic. For a Bowles character, it is always the time of hostility and hallucination, destruction and death.