Word: austrian
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Richard Wagner conceived his Ring des Nibelungen as combining voice, orchestra, acting and settings into a perfect expressive unity, a "total artwork." That phrase could very nearly describe Austrian-born Herbert von Karajan. At 59, Von Karajan not only is the world's foremost conductor but concerns himself with every aspect of his epic productions, including direction, stage design, lighting. Head of the Berlin Philharmonic, director of the Easter and summer festivals at Salzburg, Von Karajan last week added the Metropolitan Opera to his realm by conducting and staging Die Walküre, first item in a new Ring...
Hoffmann graduated from law school, which he loathed, and the college of political science, which fascinated him, the same year, 1948. He then hoped to enter a newly-established school for French career civil servants. But his Austrian birth--in Vienna in 1928--made him temporarily ineligible. School regulations required that applicants be naturalized French citizens for five years, and Hoffmann, who received his citizenship in 1947 although he had lived in France since 1929, couldn't quality until...
Democratic Anarchy. Not surprisingly, the orchestra runs itself, choosing its managerial board from within its ranks and voting its conductors on or off the podium at will. It has 154 playing personnel, all of whom are actually employed by the Austrian government as musicians for the Vienna State Opera. They decide among themselves which members are to get together in their so-called spare time to give ten pairs of concerts as the Vienna Philharmonic, and which will make up the opera orchestra on which nights. This kind of shifting personnel might seem like a mindless...
...Polish countess, Valeria Tarnowska, then commissioned a second Perseus, which many consider even more finely modeled and technically expert than the first. The Polish countess paid 3,000 Italian gold sequins for it (about $120,000). Her heirs sold it in 1850, after her death, to a wealthy Austrian family. The Met, which bought it from the same family early this year in private negotiations, declined to discuss what effect two centuries of inflation had had on the price...
...royal standards, the lord was somewhat unorthodox. As a young man, he met and married a part-Jewish, Austrian-born pianist. Nor was the lord content to live off his rents, for he loved music, and he journeyed about the realm, setting up festivals in Yorkshire, managing the Royal Opera, and organizing the Edinburgh music festival. When he returned home, wife Marion would soothe her lord with her piano music. And so they lived-everyone thought happily-with their three sons in their palatial country house near Leeds...