Word: gallicism
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...great 20th century operas would have to start with Puccini's Turandot and Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier, which summed up, respectively, the Italian and German romantic traditions. It would also include Debussy's Petteas et Melisande, the French composer's 1902 masterpiece of Gallic allusion and understatement; Benjamin Britten's Peter Grimes, the most important work to enter the international repertory since World War II; and Alban Berg's twin monuments - Wozzeck, the seminal opera of our time, and Lulu, the apotheosis of the twelve-tone system...
...wisdom and absurdity, sadness and folly-and, above all, liveliness. This cheering, but unsappy outlook is much in evidence as the younger generation of French directors, like Diane Kurys and Jean Charles Tacchella, crawls out from under Francois Truffaut's overcoat. It seems to be an almost exclusively Gallic view, making one want to send the entire American motion picture industry to sum mer school in France...
...election of President FranÇois Mitterrand last month and the subsequent success of the Socialists in National Assembly contests proved once again what students of Gallic culture have known all along: In France, politics is both passionate and unpredictable. Observes Paris Correspondent William Blaylock: "French politics plops across the ideological platter like a dropped soufflé. Candidates seem to have no shared opinions, no established rules of fair play. Nor do they seem to want any." Correspondent Sandra Burton interviewed government officials and French sociologists to assess the impact of the new administration and was struck by the blas...
Indifference is an impressive but somewhat risky ploy. Rarely do public figures command the easy Gallic disdain of French President Valéry Discard d'Estaing. When Le Canard Enchaîné reported that Giscard had accepted $250,000 worth of diamonds as gifts from the Central African Republic's butcherous Emperor Bokassa, Giscard's reaction was roughly, "So what?" Of course, the French have a tradition of Non, je ne regrette rien. Across the channel, the Duke of Wellington once displayed something of that spirit when an old mistress (a Frenchwoman) threatened to publish...
...advisers are counting on French apprehensions, rather than gratitude or affection to win Giscard another seven years in the Elysée. "Where Mitterrand represents adventure," says one aide, "Giscard stands for security. He may be cold, but he's a pilot." That reasoning is an appeal to Gallic logic at a time when many voters seem tempted to exercise their equally French passions...