Word: venusized
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...different songs entitled "Venus" were number one hits in 1959 and 1969, Who sang them...
...different songs entitled "Venus" were number one hits in 1959 and 1969, Who sang them...
...rejected his latest work, Tristan und Isolde, Wagner dusted off his Tannhäuser, which had been produced in Dresden 16 years earlier, and Frenchified it. He wrote new music for a ballet in the first scene and reworked the character and music of the love goddess Venus in his best chromatic, post-Tristan style...
...nearly a century the Paris Tannhäuser remained the most frequently performed version of the opera. Audiences loved the voluptuous new bacchanale; sopranos preferred to sing the more dramatic music of Venus. But eventually purists objected to the musical schizophrenia in the work, and came to prefer the earlier Dresden Tannhäuser. All the recordings, too, used the Dresden score until last week, when London released the first LPs of the Paris version-a premiere of sorts...
...recording is a knockout, fully comparable to London's history-making Ring cycle. Conductor Georg Solti, today's top conductor of Wagner, makes the opera brilliant and unabashedly grand. As Venus, Mezzo-Soprano Christa Ludwig seethes with eroticism, suggesting a world of impossible sexuality. Soprano Helga Dernesch as Elisabeth, Wagner's virginal opposite to Venus, is the perfect embodiment of pinched Victorian purity. Best of all is Tenor René Kollo, a German pop singer metamorphosed into a Heldentenor, who sings Tannhäuser with a gleaming tone, power, and a dramatic force unequaled since Lauritz Melchior...