Word: wagnerian
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Baldheaded, 51-year-old Baritone Friedrich Schorr of Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera is a specialist in dignified Wagnerian Wotans. He almost never smiles. Last week, black-robed and bearded as Wagner's Flying Dutchman, he scowled his way through the second act, knelt with dignity upon the Metropolitan's splintery stage and prayed for his redemption. The prayer over, Baritone Schorr got up and, with a regal gesture, threw his black mantle about his shoulders. The gesture enveloped him in a cloud of dust from the Metropolitan's unswept stage. The audience guffawed. When...
First new voice to be launched was Wisconsin-born Tenor Eyvind Laholm's (real name: Johan Edwin Johnson). Tenor Laholm had already spent 14 years making himself one of the most famed Wagnerian tenors in Germany, had won personal applause from musical Fuhrer Adolf Hitler. But until two years ago, when he became Hitler's favorite singer, he was practically unknown in the U. S. Egg-bald Laholm, 40, an ex-boxer and heavyweight title holder in the U. S. Navy, exchanged his everyday toupee for a luxuriant blond Nibelung mop and took the stage as Siegmund, leaped...
...Austrian arrived in Manhattan. He spoke no English, but his first act was to make a translated statement to the press: "I hope to please the American public and if I do I shall become a citizen of your country. I do not wish to be known as a Wagnerian conductor, as I love the operas of all nations." Month later, stepping into the Metropolitan's orchestra pit recently vacated by Arturo Toscanini and his bald, black-bearded co-worker Alfred Hertz, Artur Bodanzky shook his baton at four hours of Wagner's Götterdämmerung...
...after a tiff with the Met's management, Artur Bodanzky. still a Wagnerian conductor, resigned to conduct symphonies for Manhattan's Friends of Music. Said he: "I shall not say I am sorry to give up opera." To replace him the Metropolitan imported an unknown named Josef Rosenstock. After five of Rosenstock's feeble exhibitions of batonistic piddle-paddle, Manhattan critics howled him down, sent him scurrying back where he came from. General Manager Gatti-Casazza persuaded Bodanzky to return. For ten more years he went on conducting Wagnerian opera...
Last week, just as the Metropolitan was brushing off its costumes for the opening of the opera season, 61-year-old Conductor Bodanzky died of heart disease. Willy-nilly, he left behind him a reputation as a Wagnerian conductor-one of the world's best. Under his morose, buzzardy stare, Tristans and Götterdämmerungs became not only the best produced, but the most popular operas in the Metropolitan's repertory. Behind the throne of General Manager Edward Johnson, Bodanzky was a great power in the Met, had more to say about who should sing what...