Word: appealing
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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This view of opera as overwhelmingly sensuous enhances Koestenbaum's later exploration of opera's artistic ambiguity, the equilibrium between opera's dramatic and musical appeal. One chapter, entitled "The Unspeakable Marriage of Words and Music," describes not an egalitarian relationship, as Wagner dreamed of, but a constant exchange of submissions. When interviewed, Koestenbaum readily admits his lack of experience with European languages, which limits his perception of the true balance between text and music intended by the composer; however, he still manages to capture something of the incomparable and rich sensation that the sung word brings about...
...operatic knowledge that he displays is immense. Unlike the expert, who learns to love, Koestenbaum loves to learn all he can about the field. In a country where opera has been "validated" intellectually as a cultural institution worthy of serious study and where opera must rely on snob appeal to sell tickets, Koestenbaum's perspective is refreshing and appeals not only to those with an interest in gay studies but also to those with an interest or merely a curiosity about an art form with a glamorous past and a shaky future...
...genial, affable and frank. He suggest, as does the subtitle of his book, that one of the primary motivations for writing The Queen's Throat is a "desire to explain desire,". And indeed, the book is liberally sprinkled with personal anecdotes that serve to illustrate the many-faceted sensual appeal of the opera world. These range from the visual (such as Joan Sutherland's misaligned and garish lipstick on an album cover or the combination of Renata Tebaldi's ample bosom and her tight costume on the over of Aida) to the aural (Marilyn Horne singing "Mon coeur" from saint...
Koestenbaum's chapter on "The Shut-in Fan" is poignant testimony to opera's appeal to the pent up and repressed, as well as to the changes that the advent of sound recording brought to the art. With the commencement of Texaco's Saturday broadcasts from the Met and the massive sales of opera recordings, opera was brought into the home, to the joy of the reclusive and antisocial...
...weeks the whole world is young and strong and fearless, sporting and peaceful and clean. That is the Olympic myth and the wellspring of the Games' enduring appeal. They are like a national patriotic day for the whole world, a day when flags wave and people march and the grim realities of the past and, often, the present, are forgotten in a global surge of pride and unity. The reality has often been less inspiring -- in Hitler's Berlin in 1936, in the Munich beset by Palestinian terrorists in 1972, in the tit-for-tat cold war boycotts...