Word: french
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...German soldiers and laborers worked through the night to lay down a crude barrier of cinder blocks, mortar and barbed wire. The resulting barricade gave graphic meaning to the political division of Berlin that had been imposed by Moscow in 1948, sundering the local population and leaving occupying U.S., French and British troops on the western side while the Soviets controlled the east. "In August 1961 the curtain was drawn aside to show us an empty stage," former West German Chancellor Willy Brandt recalled in his memoirs. "It was then that we lost the illusions that had survived even after...
...directors and set designers have been trying to figure out how best to present his sweeping 16-hour cycle. Wagner set the first production in timeless, mythic German prehistory. In his revolutionary postwar interpretation, the composer's grandson Wieland emphasized the influence of Greek drama on Wagner's aesthetics. French Director Patrice Chereau detected a 19th century Marxist dialectic at work with his controversial 1976 Bayreuth staging, while Set Designer Pet Halmen and Director Nicolas Joel used aspects of Kabuki drama in their recent Wiesbaden production...
...slick Loge. In the crucial role of Brunnhilde, Soprano Linda Kelm displays a huge voice and an enviable ease of vocal production, but she needs more refinement and a better stage presence before the part will belong to her. Presiding musically is an unlikely figure: Manuel Rosenthal, 82, a French conductor and composer who speaks no German and has never commanded a Ring before. Rosenthal leads a symphonic performance noteworthy for its clarity and color. At its best, as in Die Walkure, Rosenthal's view of the score is fluid and graceful; at its worst, as in Gotterdammerung...
...memoir by a Soviet dissident and notice how people introduce themselves -- last names first. "Good day, I am Scriabin, Alexander Nikolayevich." Notice too how often, perhaps in rebellion against those cumbrous Russian patronymics, they use only their initials. "Good day, I am Scriabin, A.N." The title of a French movie made a few years back, Lacombe, Lucien, was apparently intended to show how the German Occupation had bureaucratized and dehumanized the susceptible French. But the Russians do not have their reversed names imposed on them; they seem to reverse them freely on their own. Perhaps that is always...
...rioters were protesting the French government's crackdown on suspected ETA terrorists who have fled to France. Basque separatists have traditionally used the southwest of France as a haven and headquarters for planning future attacks, but in recent weeks France has handed over five young Basques to Spain. In a pre-riot visit to Madrid, French Security Minister Robert Pandraud said the deportations would continue...