Word: berlioz
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...Pittsburgh post to conduct 48 concerts with the New York Philharmonic while Leonard Bernstein is on his sabbatical. Steinberg will also make his debut with the Metropolitan Opera, conducting 24 performances of three operas. "I have some real killers arranged for New York," he says gleefully, referring to Berlioz' rarely performed Symphonie Funèbre et Triomphale, a work for 180 musicians that will require the West Point Band as well as the Philharmonic, Leon Kirchner's Second Piano Concerto, and the American première of Bartok's Scherzo for Piano and Orchestra. "Then I have...
...Sibelius, Harvey Cushing, Santayana, Rolland, Koussevitzky, Sir Richard Livingstone, Gilbert Murray, Samuel Eliot Morison; or on the things absorbed into his marrow--the sweep of Homer, the wisdom of Sophocles, the vitality of Michelangelo, the depth of Beethoven, the ironies of Stendhal, the scope of Goethe, the imagination of Berlioz, the thrust of Ibsen, the grandeur of Wagner, the vigor of Whitman...
...knowing just how furious it will soon become; how else would everyone be sure to bring rotten eggs and carrots under his coat? The Paris press seemed to be coaxing up a fine rumble shortly after the first rehearsal of Maurice Béjart's new production of Berlioz' The Damnation of Faust. HOW BÉJART WILL UNDRESS MARGUERITE, promised one headline; FAUST IS A PEEPING TOM, declared another. It was no surprise that Paris greeted one of the freshest and most imaginative productions that the Opéra has had in years with the most furious...
...what Béjart did to Faust was something else again. Suppressing his chronic urge to spoon a little musique concrète into the score (out of veneration for Berlioz), Béjart saved himself for the "illustrations"--as he calls his scenes and dance sequences. Gargoyles dance a twist to parody the Last Supper, and the "sons of the Danube" show up in SS uniforms. The corps de ballet wear costumes that come close to perfection in their imitation of nudity, and their dances have an angular brutality. Faust appears as the prisoner of a giant glob...
...Better. As the "scarlet epidemic" spread, it became more distinguished to reject than to accept the award. Degas, De Maupassant, Clemenceau, Gide, Sartre and Camus all allegedly turned the Legion down. Offered the medal in lieu of payment for his famed requiem commissioned by the government, Composer Hector Berlioz snorted: "To hell with your Legion of Honor. I want my money." But a refusal cannot be worn in a buttonhole, and thousands of other Frenchmen still openly court the award...