Word: nilsson
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...badly slipping Revue published what purported to be a sensational interview with Nikita Khrushchev in retirement, but the interview was judged to be a phony. Last June, upon learning that Der Stern was about to run some striking photos of a developing embryo taken by Swedish Photographer Lennart Nilsson (that also ran in LIFE), Revue faked an embryo sequence of its own. It drew a blast from Stern: "They borrowed textbook photos, and an institute lent them a fetus preserved in alcohol, and-the pen hesitates to put it down-the whole thing was photographed in a water-filled prophylactic...
...scenery. Grandpa's gods and goddesses journey toward their Gotterdümmerung through abstract-mobile backgrounds created by light projections with only the minimum of necessary realism: an oppressive Mycenaean Valhalla and a Gibichungen hall studded with hundreds of bleached animal skulls. A cast headed by Birgit Nilsson, Wolfgang Windgassen, Theo Adam, James King, Anja Silja, Lili Chookasian and Leonie Rysanek responded to Wieland's direction with magnificent singing. Under the baton of Conductor Karl Boehm, the orchestra became accompaniment and comment, echo and counterpoint of each gesture onstage...
Among themselves, singers are naturally divided. Soprano Birgit Nilsson has referred to a tenor partner as "having a resonance chamber where his brain used to be." Metropolitan Opera Soprano Teresa Stratas takes a feminine view: "Stupidity, no. Egomania, yes. Tenors seem stupid because they are so fully absorbed in themselves. Sopranos -they all have to be pretty smart cookies to have gotten where they are." Tenor Richard Tucker, in a cheerily frivolous reaction that goes far to refute the thesis, comments: "Since tenors usually carry their fat elsewhere, you can be sure they are not fatheads. And besides, the mere...
...Because she insisted on mounting productions that were "brand new from the first costume down to the last piece of scenery," Wallmann became the natural choice to direct premiere performances, from Darius Milhaud's David to La Scala's now-famed 1958 rendition of Turandot with Birgit Nilsson. Now Wallmann is off to Rome and a new opera by Italian Composer Mario Zafred; next, a production of Rossini's Zelmira at Naples, and Verdi's Otello for the opening of the Athens Festival. If her schedule holds, Wallmann will make it to Manhattan in time...
...would never draw in Las Vegas, but for the Met it seemed about right. Indeed, so much was just right with the performance that Nilsson's Salome will go down as the finest the Met has heard since Ljuba Welitsch sang the part 15 years ago. At the end, the first-night audience gave Nilsson a half-hour standing ovation. "It was," said Nilsson, "the biggest ovation I have ever heard." After 30 minutes of curtain calls, who even remembered those seven veils...