Word: tristans
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...floor of a small apartment in Munich. Before her lie cloth and scissors. She is making her own costume for another night's work in another small town. Suddenly, word arrives that in Manhattan the fabled Metropolitan Opera desperately needs a soprano in Wagner's Tristan und Isolde. Off goes our heroine in her Lufthansa pumpkin and lands the job. The audiences love her. So do the critics. The New York Times announces on Page One: "A triumph...
...fleeing the strangulating responsibilities of family and a 9-to-5 job. Lion is on his way to Detroit to see his wife and the child she was about to bear him when he took flight. Max is trying to get to Denver to visit his sister Coley (Dorothy Tristan) and invest his frugally accumulated prison pay in a proud new business tentatively christened Max's Car Wash. He takes Lion on as traveling companion and prospective partner. "I'm the meanest son of a bitch alive," Max tells Lion by way of a warning and a boast...
There are some excellent supporting performances, most notably by the superb and subtle Miss Tristan, an actress who is not used often or deeply enough; by Eileen Brenan as a bitchy, blowsy barfly; and Richard Lynch as a sadistic homosexual. The film also has some remarkable photography by Vilmos Zsigmond (Deliverance, McCabe and Mrs Miller), whose graceful, supple lighting manages to be both realistic and quietly sensuous...
...Most of the critics' reviews-and raves-went to U.S.-born Soprano Marion Talley, who made her debut in the evening. "She lasted five years," according to the Met's Robinson. Melchior's day finally came in 1929 during his first performance in Tristan at the Met. After that Melchior reigned as opera's supreme heldentenor...
...work, which sometimes invited criticism. He scorned rehearsals, frequently played hooky and provoked one conductor to waspishly observe that, if nothing else, one could depend on Melchior to make the same mistakes. While that judgment was harsh, it is true that during one of his umpteen performances of Tristan, Melchior fell asleep onstage, waking only when the mighty Flagstad fell over him at the conclusion of the Liebestod. But his dedication to his art was such that when he fractured his big toe during a performance of Die Walküre at the Met, he managed to hold his note...