Word: municher
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Spain during the Civil War, Kaltenborn broadcast the first live radio coverage of combat; once, he installed himself in a haystack on the battlefield so that listeners could hear the crackle of gunfire. For 20 days during the Munich crisis in 1938, he scarcely budged from his CBS studio in New York, where he subsisted on onion soup and slept on a cot. He provided running translations of the speeches of Hitler and Mussolini as they came over short wave and analyzed them on the spot. He saw the significance of Munich and warned his audiences accordingly: "Hitler always says...
...clipped, high-pitched, precisely accentuated tones of H. V. Kaltenborn, who died at 86 last week of a heart attack. In his prime in the '30s, Kaltenborn had roamed a sick Europe, producing fascinating, ominous interviews with Hitler and Mussolini, and his brilliant marathon coverage of the Munich crisis jarred American homes into a chilling awareness of the war to come...
Most Wagnerian productions are mounted either in Cecil B. DeMille rococo or, in recent years, Bayreuth Freudian. Last week, for a change, Munich's National Theater opened a new Tristan und Isolde that dispensed almost entirely with theatrical effects, set the most important scenes in near-darkness. Explained Director Rudolf Hartmann: "I wanted this to be a Tristan in which the main interpretation was left to the music." His concern, which would have delighted Richard Wagner, suited the occasion: the 100th anniversary of Tristan's première-also in Munich...
...opera's first production was almost as heavy with intrigue as Wagner's plot. Though the composer grandly pronounced Tristan "the greatest musical drama of all time," opera houses in Dresden, Berlin, Vienna and Munich rejected it as "unperformable." Moreover, to a public reared on Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti and Meyerbeer, most of Wagner's works seemed to be joyless monstrosities...
Wagner was presented with the king's priceless signet ring and a promise of a lavish première of Tristan in Munich. In addition, the king promised Wagner all the money he needed, a new theater, a new music school and a new home. Ludwig also bombarded the 51-year-old composer with tender letters vowing eternal devotion. Wagner, a short, haggard-faced man, was careful not to alienate his doting benefactor, but he had other irons in the fire. Immediately on his arrival in Munich he asked that his close friend, Conductor Hans...