Word: tristans
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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...
Whether Wagner is tolerable with anything less than great singing is an arguable proposition, but one thing is certain. The Met's Tristan almost closed for lack of any voices at all. First, Sweden's Catarina Ligendza canceled out as Isolde pleading illness. Nilsson was busy elsewhere. Then Tenor Jon Vickers, who seems to tremble before Wagner but may just possibly be the Tristan everyone at the Met (including Nilsson) has been waiting for, begged out of his first two performances-he wanted more time. Not to be outdone, Conductor Erich Leinsdorf threatened to resign, complaining that...
Walking into such a pizzicato brouhaha merely seemed to strengthen Barlow's resolve. Tristan, it turns out, is in her tea leaves or, rather, the numerology she is fascinated by. It was the first opera she ever attended, a Met performance with Astrid Varnay. When Barlow sang the role the first time herself, it was in Kiel, Germany, in 1967, and the singer she replaced was, of course, Varnay...
...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...