Word: nibelungs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Nibelung Nonsense. British Historian Trevor-Roper, whose book is the August co-choice of the Book-of-the-Month Club, picks up the pieces where Gisevius drops them and reconstructs a Wagnerian drama of the suicide "love death" of Hitler and Eva Braun. His evidence, gathered from documents and survivors, is circumstantial but pretty convincing. From the Führer-bunker, deep under the Reich Chancellery garden, the war "was directed by somnambulist decisions," he says. Russian shells crashed down overhead; Berlin was almost surrounded; in G.I. slang, the doomed party leaders were getting "bunker happy." Hitler himself deteriorated rapidly...
Firm Facts. Through the Nibelung fog a few relatively firm facts jutted...
...more effective it is the more effective the opera, but the quality of the music should be by far the most important standard of judgment. Shakespeare had to paint his scenery in words, and Wagner's eloquent orchestra does much more towards suggesting the barbaric atmosphere of his Nibelung saga than all the fancy dragons, thunderstorms, etc., that the "Met" can produce...
...musical Fuhrer Adolf Hitler. But until two years ago, when he became Hitler's favorite singer, he was practically unknown in the U. S. Egg-bald Laholm, 40, an ex-boxer and heavyweight title holder in the U. S. Navy, exchanged his everyday toupee for a luxuriant blond Nibelung mop and took the stage as Siegmund, leaped upon Hunding's dining-room table like a tomcat after a mouse. His singing, less athletic than his jumps, was fresh and youthful, with less of the buzz saw than most run-of-the-mill German-style tenoring. His semaphoric acting...
...rehearsals with a hot tongue ("Who told you you could sing?"). When he was feeling impatient he would sometimes drag a performance over the jumps as if he were rushing for a train. But when Artur Bodanzky felt just right, he could drive a pack of Valkyries through the Nibelung clouds like Wotan himself...