21.   As Amfortas, a bronchitis-ridden Wolfgang Brendel limped through the first act and gave way to James Courtney in the third.

22.   As a meditation on relationships, the brilliant first act yields to a diffuse second half.

23.   As the characters play their game of musical chairs in the first act, there is nothing in the least lacking.

24.   At the close of the first act, they stepped into the audience in a carnival parade up the aisles.

25.   Balanchine said that real people populated the first act.

26.   Belgrade City Hall would go to Djindjic and his Democratic Party, where their first act of governance was to haul down the red star from atop the building.

27.   Beware multihour first acts.

28.   Both the aria by the Trickster God that opens the first act and the ruminations of John Quincy Adams that conclude it go on far too long.

29.   A few hours later, his presence seemed prophetic, as if a screenwriter had deftly foreshadowed in the first act what would happen in the third.

30.   A sigh, in fact, is her first act in the entire series.