Word: fafner
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...50th-anniversary season, citizens and patrons were busy proving their devotion. In what other major American city would the mayor set aside a big chunk of downtown (Union Square) and invite 10,000 for a musicale? Where else would Jesus Freaks mingle with bankers and hard hats to watch Fafner the Dragon chase Wagner's Rhinemaidens and the clowns from I Pagliacci on specially constructed mini-stages? Who else but Adler could persuade Prima Donna Joan Sutherland to brave both the crowd and the city's infamous outdoor air-conditioning and sing Ah fors...
Killer & Astronaut. In Wieland's revised version, he visualized Alberich and Wotan as archetypes of "wheeler-dealer politicians," the heroes Siegfried and Siegmund as self-sacrificing astronauts, the Rhinemaidens as the bosses' sexy secretaries, Wotan's wife Fricka as everybody's nagging mother-in-law, Fafner and Fasolt as Murder Inc.'s cold blooded killers, Briinnhilde as a man's best pal, the temptress Gutrune as a call girl...
There were compensations. The Metropolitan's Soprano Astrid Varnay sang such a sumptuous Brünnhilde that she made up for her missing helmet. In Siegfried, the dragon Fafner, an immense 30-ft. creation, emerged from a gaping cave in front-center (instead of from a miserable little hole to one side, as at the conventional Met). Fafner was so terrible in his oversize plungings and snortings that, probably for the first time in history, Siegfried seemed really brave to tackle...
...collected about $400,000 from the Bavarian government, radio networks and festival devotees. They cleaned up the Festspielhaus, hired musicians, replaced costumes and sets destroyed by playfully masquerading American G.I.s quartered in the building at the end of the war. The Wagners also designed some imaginative props. Example: Fafner, the dragon in Siegfried, is a 30-foot, steam-snorting monster with bloody ten-foot jaws, and teeth a foot long. Mused Wolfgang: "Grandfather, in the sky, probably would not like what we are doing. But on second thought, he was such a revolutionary himself, he would probably go along...
...looked last week as if, excepting the unlikely eventualities of extensive U. S. aid for China or of internal collapse in Japan, China's military dragon might suffer the fate of the dragon Fafner in Wagner's Siegfried-be given a good long time to sing its last sad words, then get it in the neck...