As Chénier's love interest, however, Patricia Racette uses her bright, focussed soprano to etch a meticulous portrait of an aristocratic ingénue caught in the fires of the Revolution.
In reinventing Hedda, Ms. Burton uses her natural, radiant air of ordinariness to etch a stinging portrait of a woman who fears, more than anything else, being ordinary.
There were others before and after and in between, of course, but those writers who seemed to have led double lives thrilled me in a way the others couldn't, and I read some of those two-paragraph bios (always with a delicately etched portrait in the upper right-hand corner) over and over again, as if they contained encrypted instructions on how to become an adult.
Although Mr. Demme etched a portrait of one of the most vivid cinematic evildoers in history ("I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti"), he has said in the past, "Villains aren't interesting to me".
On another wall hangs a hunk of wood — at least 4 feet wide — etched with his portrait and the words "The Shatterer of Glass-Steagall".
What makes this gently colored, sharply etched family portrait so engaging is its understanding that laughter and tears, as responses to everyday life, are so closely connected.
Yet what makes this gently colored, sharply etched family portrait so engaging is its understanding that laughter and tears, as responses to everyday life, are as close and connected as Siamese twins.
That evening Diana Vishneva, sparklingly feminine, was seamless in the first act, delivering a Rose Adagio so euphoric that her unsupported balances etched a portrait of Aurora: a young woman learning how to stand on her own in an infectious celebration of independence.
Limited to what she can source in the capital, she uses a uni-ball pen to etch intricate monochromatic portraits on large sheets of white paper.
Meanwhile the swirl of allegations, stirred by more than 50 civil suits against the houses by buyers and sellers, has etched an unflattering portrait of the arcane and largely unregulated world of big-time auctions.
