Word: coventionalism
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...humiliation was considerably soothed by his ascendancy to the directorship of England's Royal Opera at Covent Garden in 1961. Still something of a diamond in the rough, the Generalmusikdirektor of the Munich and Frankfurt operas had trouble adjusting to the British predilection for requesting rather than demanding. Recalls John Culshaw, producer of the Solti Ring cycle: "With such a bundle of energy who drives himself so hard, you either give him total loyalty or you can't stand him." Among those who could not stand him at first were the members of the chorus, outraged that...
Under Solti, Covent Garden had its most dynamic presence since the days of Sir Thomas Beecham in the 1930s. Aside from Karajan at Vienna, no other opera house was headed by a musician of Solti's caliber. When he took over, Solti proclaimed that "I have only one desire: to make Covent Garden the best opera house in the world." By the time he left in 1971, he had almost succeeded, and there was no one to dispute his right to the knighthood bestowed by the Queen a year later, shortly after he had become a British citizen...
Throughout his tour at Covent Garden, Solti was taking on polish-largely due to his first wife Hedi whom he had met during the war in Switzerland. Hedi was formal, proper, acutely aware of class structure; once they were situated in London, she began seeing to it that Solti mingled with the right titles. Friends recall the day that Solti was to have tea in a lordly London home...
...Everything and anything have been tried with it over the years. For all her moods and allure, Carmen is hardly a character susceptible, like Don Giovanni and Boris Godunov, to continuous re-exploration. English Cinema Director John Schlesinger (Sunday Bloody Sunday) once declined an offer to stage Carmen at Covent Garden because he felt that he could not improve on what the world had done with it already...
...labor outrage that followed the recent jailing of the "Pentonville Five" dockers on contempt-of-court charges was primarily aimed at Ted Heath's Tories, but the opposition Labor Party has not been immune. "As for the House of Commons," Bernie Holland, a porter at London's Covent Garden market, jeered last week, "in that club the Labor M.P.s are always getting up and apologizing for these unruly workers. We're all just the greedy, grasping workers...