Word: oper
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...nothing in either Berlin could quite compare with the Komische Oper, perhaps the world's best lyric opera company and East Berlin's finest cultural ornament. In an atmosphere where the culture bullets really sting, the East's operatic triumph had one touch of irony: Walter Felsenstein, the Komische Oper's founder and director, is an Austrian who lives in West Berlin...
...tenor? Could the West Berliners in his chorus and orchestra still cross the border for morning rehearsals? With bureaucratic agility developed by directing state opera houses for both the Nazis and the Communists, Felsenstein swept past the crisis with a flurry of bargains and deals, and the Komische Oper was ready to greet the season six weeks after the city was cut in half. Since then, the Wall has ceased to exist for Felsenstein - even though he must pass through it twice each day in order to enjoy the best of each side...
Glamorous Maria Callas, 39-long the favorite diva of Greek Shipping Tycoon Aristotle Onassis-stepped onstage at Berlin's Deutsche Oper, and her audience succumbed to love at first sight. Not so German critics, who ungallantly complained about the sound. "The passion has disappeared," said Die Welt's man on the aisle. "One gets the impression she has bidden farewell to art." Groaned another...
...lights came up on the curtainless stage of East Berlin's Komische Oper last week, and there, pregnant with portents of disaster, hung a textured moon that looked like a fly's swollen eye. A shock. When John the Baptist was pulled barefoot from his cistern prison, his long matted hair hung down to his animal skin sarong. Another shock. Then came Salome with her veils and her dances, and in a spirit perfectly suggested by the jewel stuck in her navel, she treated an earnest audience to a performance of Strauss's shocker that came straight...
...text was by England's great World War I poet, Wilfred Owen, who was killed in France a week before the Armistice. The music was by Benjamin Britten, a passionate pacifist and conscientious objector during World War II. After the chorus in West Berlin's Deutsche Oper had chanted the final line of Britten's War Requiem, the stunned audience sat in utter silence. Then came volleys of applause. Britten's nonliturgical Mass is fast taking its place as one of the rare modern masterworks for the voice...