Word: wagnerian
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...scudded away from sweltering Berlin to cool Bayreuth for four hours of Gdtterddmmerung and a visit with British-born Winifred Wagner, daughter-in-law of the great Richard and a soul mate whose name was long coupled romantically with the Führer's. This year's Wagnerian Festival was in the spirit of Hitler's Europe: no admission tickets, fashionable guests or foreigners, but a popular lecture before each opera to explain to das Volk what Wagner is all about. It was Hitler's gift to the nation, and he commanded 70,000 industrial workers...
Other signs of German conviction that peace is just around the corner were the preparations in German tourist offices throughout the world for a late summer season. Brand-new "Visit Heidelberg and the Rhineland" posters appeared in their windows and leaflets were circulated announcing that the Bayreuth Wagnerian Festival would be held this year as usual, featuring Wagner's Parsifal, one of the few German operas extolling peace...
With this scheme, moreover, Sibelius is able to pack climaxes of Wagnerian scope into a symphony a half an hour long. Bruckner had great conceptions, but his ideas meander baldly around and get lost in the involvements of the sonata form. Wagner, in order to work out his climaxes fully, had to extend them endlessly. But Sibelius's method is the essence of compactness, entailing none of the delays, enforced hesitations, and bridge-passage gaps of standard symphonic form, but allowing the composer to start on as low a level as he wishes, and move swiftly and cleanly...
...Baltimore, at the head of Washington's National Symphony, Maestro McArthur made his first appearance in the East. Behind him was a record of big-time symphony and opera conducting in Sydney, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago. A mere sprig of 32, he had already conducted more Wagnerian opera than many a veteran, had even been mentioned as a candidate for Manhattan's Metropolitan Opera House, where no U. S.-born maestro has ever held a job. Baltimore critics liked his version of Wagner, his lacy, intricate French scores by Ravel and Debussy, declared him the "most imagina...
...into a row with Manhattan's Met because it refused to engage him for her Tristans and Götterdämmerungs (TIME, Jan. 29). At the San Francisco and Chicago Operas she got her way, and McArthur was soon making himself a place among leading U. S. Wagnerian conductors. Today, Conductor McArthur gives all the credit for his success to Soprano Flagstad. Says she: "I wouldn't do this if I didn't think Edwin could deliver the goods...