Word: tristans
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...Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra showed remarkably few first-time jitters as it opened its season Friday night. Dancing in slow motion through the rich progressions of the Prelude and Love Death from Wagner Tristan and Isolde, it contrasted beautifully the mellifluous soft passages and the surging climax. Conductor James Yannatos directed the beginning with such strictness that the beat became too prominent in the phrasing, but the consequent stiffness vanished as both the music and the performers warmed...
...Viennese pastry tray of charm. A few years ago, all three of his heldentenors suddenly came down with colds at the same time. Rather than cancel a sold-out performance of Tristan and Isolde, he cajoled each tenor into singing one act apiece. When Bing decides that an aging singer should retire, he eases the pain with a line he has polished to perfection: "Wouldn't you rather have your public say, 'Already?' than 'At last!' " Of course, if the singer won't take the hint, Bing will fire him without batting...
...voice with the coloring of a baritone and the range of a tenor. Unlike the bel canto tenor who must employ vocal embroidery, the heldentenor must possess the raw power and endurance to sing the weightiest and longest roles in opera. The supreme tests are Wagner's Tristan and Siegfried, which require 65 and 90 minutes respectively, as compared, say, with the 22 minutes for Tosca. Lauritz Melchior, the last great heldentenor, did not attempt Tristan until he was 39. Thomas, now 38, figures that his voice will be ready in about three years...
...means he prowls the coffee shops, self-service laundries, bookstores and record shops in nearby Telegraph Avenue's grimy red brick buildings. One frequent stopping place is a shoestore called Sandals Unlimited; another is a self-service laundry where the machines, arranged in pairs, bear student-humor names: Tristan and Isolde, Godliness and Cleanliness, Toulouse and Lautrec, Dun and Bradstreet, Anthony and Cleopatra...
...months later, war broke out between Bavaria and Prussia, and Ludwig's untrained, ill-equipped army was crushed. Had Ludwig spent as much money for artillery as he lavished on Tristan, it is conceivable that European history might have turned out differently. As it was, Tristan signaled the birth of a new art form that changed the course of music. His music dramas, substituting daring harmonies and emotionally charged leitmotifs for set-piece arias, marked the end of "poetic" opera, and paved the way for such pioneers as Debussy and Schoenberg...