Word: napoleons
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Like Ford and Brezhnev, Europe's Big Four representatives had an impressive supporting cast. Although France was a defeated power, it was ably served by its adroit, persuasive Foreign Minister, Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord-whom Napoleon had once called "a piece of dung in a silk stocking," presumably because of his tendency to shift allegiances. Also present were some 32 minor German princes, representatives of the Pope, the Sultan of Turkey and numerous special interest groups (including the Jews of Frankfurt). They were accompanied by an extravagant collection of wives, mistresses and servants, and so much...
...Congress of Vienna convened in 1814, four months after Napoleon's exile on the island of Elba. It continued for much of the following year, even while the French Emperor made his last futile effort, in the famous Hundred Days, to recapture the glory that had been his France. After Wellington put an end to that dream at Waterloo, the leaders of Europe's Quadruple Alliance -Czar Alexander I of Russia, Frederick William III of Prussia, Lord Castlereagh of Britain and, above all, Prince Klemens Wenzel von Metternich of Austria -were free to determine in Vienna the future...
...seeming emptiness of his life, then discovering Rostov's beautiful daughter Natasha. That and the next six scenes depict, with a mixture of passion, intrigue and despair, the decadent social life of prewar Russia. The last six scenes are devoted to the French invasion of 1812. Napoleon struts nervously (to the accompaniment of diabolic fanfares in brass), while Russian Field Marshal Kutuzov praises the people and plots the invader's doom ("The beast will be wounded with all the strength of Russia"). There is little continuity in the libretto written by Prokofiev and his second wife. Prokofiev...
...rich-voiced singing of Soprano Makvala Kasrashvili as Natasha and Baritone Yuri Mazurok as Andrei -lay in the company's willingness to take War and Peace for what it is and never what it is not. It is an epic; but unlike the heroes of Verdi or Wagner, Napoleon and Kutuzov never meet face to face, nor do we ever see Andrei suffer his fatal wound, nor can Natasha save him. But although War and Peace is no lyric drama, Prokofiev is capable of remarkably delicate touches, like the soft rasping of strings that evoke the delirium of Andrei...
...bigger and better things. Already he's planning a re-enactment of Charles Lindbergh's flight across the Atlantic on the 50th anniversary of that feat in 1977. But that's a mere stunt compared to his ultimate fantasy. "I'd love to do Napoleon's retreat from Russia," he says. "Wouldn't that...