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THE ROYAL FAMILY OF OPERA (London; 3 LPs). In this magnificently royal family, who really rules? It might easily be stars Birgit Nilsson as Brünnhilde, Joan Sutherland as Semiramide, Kirsten Flagstad as Elsa, Renata Tebaldi as Adriana Lecouvreur, or Regine Crespin as La Gioconda. Newer members of the royal family are Soprano Elena Suliotis, Mezzo Marilyn Home. Soprano Felicia Weathers, Baritone Tom Krause and Tenor Bruno Prevedi. The glittering assemblage of 37 singers perform arias, duets and trios culled from 30 operas.
CINEMA 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY. A cosmic parable of the history and future of man, directed by Stanley Kubrick. The visually magnificent scenes of space travel are out of this world.
THE SEVENTH CONTINENT. Director Dusan Vukotic tells a sometimes ingenuous but often ingenious fairy story of two children who drift off to a magical, adult-free paradise.
HUNGER. This grim Swedish-made tale of a writer on the skids in a big city is given depth and resonance by the powerful performances of Per Oscarsson and Gunnel Lindblom.
RACHEL, RACHEL. Puzzled by the present, plagued by the past, a 35-year-old schoolteacher struggles to break out of her bleak existence. Directed by Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward (Mrs. Newman) brings transcendent strength to the role of Rachel.
THE HEART IS A LONELY HUNTER. Alan Arkin gives a subtle, probing performance as a deaf-mute in this prosaic adaptation of Carson McCullers' novel.
ISABEL. Canada's Genevieve Bujold generates an air of adolescent terror in this chilling tale of a young girl growing rapidly to womanhood while tormented by the memories of another life.
ROSEMARY'S BABY. Ira Levin's bestselling tale of devil worship in Manhattan proves, in this film version, that Mia Farrow is not just a singer's exwife. Her performance is at the Oscar level.
THE BRIDE WORE BLACK. Director François Truffaut pays unabashed homage to Alfred Hitchcock in this sly and tautly acted thriller about a homicidal widow (Jeanne Moreau) who sets out to avenge the murder of her husband.
BOOKS
Best Reading
THE BLACKING FACTORY AND PENNSYLVANIA GOTHIC, by Wilfrid Sheed. Funny, feverish and very finely wrought accounts—worked out in a short novel and a long story—of two adolescents whose futures are staked out by their fantasies about the past.
ANTONIO IN LOVE, by Giuseppe Berto.
This is a simple story of boy meets girl, Italian style, given significance and deep resonance by the author's elaborate prose and sense of irony.
WELCOME TO THE MONKEY HOUSE, by Kurt Vonnegut Jr. A collection of short stories and essays in which the author, posing as a mod scientist at the controls of a literary time machine, explores the inner and outer spaces of the man-against-machine perplex.
THE BEAUTYFUL ONES ARE NOT YET BORN, by Ayi Kwei Armah. A Ghanaian novelist's parable about man's struggle for liberty and dignity, staged in post-revolutionary West Africa.
FRAGMENTS OF A JOURNAL, by Eugene Ionesco. The private jottings and night thoughts of one of the leading playwrights of the theater of the absurd.