Word: alberich
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...According to a report in the German magazine Der Spiegel, the results of the surveillance, codenamed "Operation Alberich," were discussed at the highest levels. President George Bush and German Chancellor Angela Merkel were updated on its progress over the past year, and the two leaders discussed the operation during the meeting of G8 leaders of industrialized countries in Heiligendamm, Germany, in June. The U.S. ambassador to Germany and Michael Hayden, the CIA director, brought it up regularly with German counterparts...
...same kind of weird beauty as the basement of Antoni Gaudi's Palau Guell. Here and there the lights pick up sparkles of quartz and waste opal crumbs embedded in the stone. You could imagine it as a set for a Wagner opera; you half expect to see Alberich and his dwarfs...
...that this Wagner parody doesn't even try to lampoon his scores. There are few pauses in the breakneck pace and very little in the way of real invention. Still, to any survivor of a real Ring cycle, it's refreshing to hear Wotan yell to his old enemy Alberich at the end, "Are you fryin' or drownin...
...soprano Deborah Polaski, playing Brunnhilde, especially in Die Walkure. Tall, handsome, heroic in gesture and carriage, she should make an ideal goddess. But with her bulky breastplate and helmet and huge skirt, she looks like the typical porky Wagnerian. The Rhinemaidens are decked out in biker gear, the dwarf Alberich wears one bright green sneaker. A reference to the Green movement? Who knows...
Singers like Levine's spacious pace. Ekkehard Wlaschiha, the excellent Alberich, says that "to sing this music fast, you have to be Superman. Levine fulfills the tempi and he gives you time to phrase -- you can better form a musical arch." Adds Manfred Jung, a properly servile Mime: "It's no secret that the orchestra plays more quietly if the beat is not fast...