"The story has an epic movement, and at the last is heart-stirring and somberly beautiful."

Handel also taps the deeper levels of the tale though his wistful love duets and a somberly beautiful chorus that warns the happy couple of fate's decree: "No joy shall last."

Curtains of powdered snow danced across the glacier in front of them in a somberly beautiful winter ballet.

These impressionistic and somberly beautiful photographs constitute a deeply affecting portrait of a place and a people struggling to emerge from a terrible war into an uneasy peace.

Ermanno Olmi's leisurely paced, somberly beautiful movie portrays peasant farm life in northern Italy at the turn of the century.

Mr. Turturro and his somberly beautiful wife, Katherine Borowitz, play out the section of "Illuminata" that gives it ballast and heart.

By beginning his program with a work of uncompromising integrity - Bach's somberly beautiful and intellectually formidable Partita No.6 in E minor - Mr. Pletnev challenged the opening-night audience.

Strauss's somberly beautiful late work for 23 strings, "Metamorphosen," is usually performed at orchestra concerts.

But none of the characters are allowed to draw too near in Bertrand Tavernier's film, which is content to watch them from afar as part of a larger whole in a way that is "muted, as dark, restrained and slow moving as it is somberly beautiful" (Maslin).

Still, much of "Life and Nothing But" is muted, as dark, restrained and slow-moving as it is somberly beautiful.